Xbox Live Bans Teh Ghey

It just makes me want to set up a new Live account called ImHereImQueer. I don’t exactly know how to feel about this, Microsoft has apparently taken to banning gamertags on Xbox Live with the word "gay" in them, including a dude who supposedly used his last name "Gaywood" in his. Yes that’s right, the service known for being stuffed to the gills with 13 year olds calling each other "faggot" fifteen times in any given match of teh Haloz finds a little gay in your gamertag offensive. Or rather, the "greater Xbox community" finds it offensive according to one supervisor.

Which leads me to question: are they trying to protect gay people from being made fun of by homophobic Xbox Live gamers, or are they trying to protect homophobic Xbox Live gamers from having to knowingly interact with someone who identifies themselves as gay? This insofar is pretty unclear, but many gay gaming sites (yes they do exist) are a tad concerned about this.

Where it may come as a surprise to some people out there that gay people are gamers… and tax payers, and home owners, and generally walk the streets among the general populous, you can rest assured there are gays on Live. Read the rest of this entry »

Vote No on Mother’s Day!

So I heard something rather amusing today. Over 100 Republicans voted against a simple resolution to recognize Mother’s Day. You heard me. The same people who go on and on about FAMILY and how they represent FAMILY and how they’re protecting FAMILY and how everyone else but them is trying to destroy FAMILY voted against a recognition of Mother’s Day.

Why?

Well apparently they’ve been trying to spite the Democrats by just voting against everything they propose, no matter what it is. Aren’t you glad we have such reasonable, level-headed and mature individuals running this country?

Video Games and Kids

This post is sort of a spiritual sequel to my oldschool post "It’s the Parents not the Video Game". I was perusing Game Politics reading typical posts about people in the public harping on about 8-year-olds playing games like Grand Theft Auto and acting like it’s somehow the game’s fault entirely for just existing, as if it’s just some malevolent force that materializes in the Playstations of every child in the world. But that’s not the part that got me thinking.

I happened across a comment by a parent saying that they get to decide what games are right for their kids, and if they want to give an 8-year-old an M-rated game that’s their decision and no one else’s. That’s true (even though it causes an endless source of annoyance for gamers and the image of the video game industry as a whole), and if a parent is going to make decisions like that it’s up to them. But aside from the violence, prostitution, strip clubs, criminal activities and all else in the GTA series my thoughts began to turn to an entirely different reason kids shouldn’t play these games.

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The McCullough Mass Effect Debacle

So much can happen so quickly on the internet in just the span of three days. I’ve been following such a whirlwind regarding Kevin McCullough, a conservative blogger and apparently an obscure radio and/or podcast personality who seems to know jack-all about jack half the time and mistakingly extended his school-yard taunting thinly disguised as journalistic blogging to the world of video games.

McCullough posited that the video game Mass Effect (which I have completed, by the way, and am considering doing final impressions on) was some sort of sex simulation game where you could design characters specifically to "hump" in, and I quote, "the most realistic sex acts ever conceived". He even goes on to claim Mass Effect contains rape and sodomy. Oh lawdy. Read the rest of this entry »

The Magic Stigma

A few days ago I was helping out a customer at work. She said her 14 year old son had a Wii and no real games for it so immediately I recommended Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, boasting what a good and fun game it was. And she said no. Why? She didn’t want her kids exposed to anything with magic in it.

My stomach sank, not only because I knew I’d have to be dealing with someone annoyingly uncooperative but because I knew if I took anywhere near a combative attitude with her I’d risk causing a scene in a crowded store. Even after I lightly quipped "well how do you feel about Sci-Fi?" and reached for Metroid Prime 3 she repeated her feelings about magic in the content of entertainment, proceeding to tell me her life story about how she allowed Lord of the Rings because her husband liked it (and just sorta ignored me when I interjected that Zelda TP was alot like LoTR) but she personally believed in her "personal beliefs" that "whatever you put in is what you put out."

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