Half-Life

Let me start by saying this is all my opinion. I'm not the most professional or the most subjective on this matter so I won't be mad if you disagree, that's where you can use the comments.

All pictures i use in this article are taken from their respective Wikipedia pages... 

So yeah, I've played through pretty much all official versions of Half-Life (Half-Life, Half-Life 2 (I'll abbreviate them with HL and HL2), Episode 1 and Episode 2) and I liked it.

Why?

Well, the games don't consider their players to be the largest retards ever. In the first game there wasn't a tutorial incorporated in the story (you could play the tutorial if you really wanted to know what ways of movement are possible but nothing too complicated...) and in the second one it was a very minimalistic one in a (later in the game unexisting) HUD popup (wsad to move and picking stuff up).
Further on there are no indication of where to go to, which way to go or what to do, you have to figure that out for yourself. Of course there's only one right way which becomes obvious after a few tries, but still, that isn't too obvious from the start.
The game does tell you a lot of things indirectly. When introducing a new enemy for example it does this from a distance and mostly while fighting something else so you already know how it attacks and how to avoid it. Usually there are a few health packs lying around for the hard learners and the usual way of killing it is by firing a lot of bullets at it.

The game takes its time to give you a weapon. In the first one you get the crowbar pretty early, but only receive a gun once someone carrying it dies. Later you may find a shotgun laying in some guard's locker or an assault rifle after you've shot a trooper... It's never handed to you, you have to "earn" it in some way.

Introducing new areas happens in an interesting way. For example Ravenholm in HL2. Before you even get there you hear the sentence "We... We don't go to Ravenholm".
Eventually you wander in and see some improvised traps, mangled zombie limbs and some booming voice you are not sure to trust. Combine this with a new howling zombie type, a town without any visible human residents and a pitch black night and you have one hell of a level.
Sure, everything is linear, But it doesn't feel that way. There are no invisible walls, if the level designer doesn't want you to go some way there is a pretty good reason for. A giant canyon, a huge wall or a radio-active river prevent you from wandering off course.
Sure, in the original game some level elements aren't logical ("Why is there a railing here?", "How would anyone get up here?", "Where was this ladder supposed to lead to?") but this is less the case in HL2. Not only that, but the source engine in HL2 was used to its maximum to show off that can be done. This with an improved level design makes HL2 one of the best looking games I can run on my laptop.

The Half-Life series ware also the inspiration for many mods that in some cases became even more popular than the original game. CounterStrike, Portal and Team Fortress are all spin-offs or mods from one of the HL games and have a huge player base.
There is even a Half-Life revisited mod available for free, called Black Mesa, that recreates the original story of HL in a more recent Source engine, making it more beautiful to play and still keeping as close as possible to the original story. Only the last chapter is unfinished and should be released some time next year.
The mod didn't just take all the original HL models and placed them in the Source engine like Half-Life: Source did? The team recreated most of the models and sometimes they used models from HL2 or Garry's mod. They also re-imagined most of the levels so every platform has a (closed) door leading onto it, every ladder seems to have a purpose and sometimes they improved the design of some levels to look better.

It made me ooh and aah more than once, laugh at some details and sometimes jump up from my chair when something jumps out of a dark corner... I'll embed their launch trailer which shows only in-game footage. It's just incredibly beautifu

There is even a comparison video that compares the first few scenes of the original with the Black-Mesa version. IGN did a commentary video with two Half-Life veterans where they give their opinion on what's awesome about the game.

Best part of all: Half-Life has no cutscenes. if you have a gun and a guard is giving you directions of where to go you can go and shoot him, cutting off his monologue and continue playing the game. If that guard was supposed to open up the next part of the level you're stuck. There is also a lot that can be going on in the background (a scene comes to mind where a scientist smashes a headcrab with a monitor, but still gets headhumped by one behind his back) which you can miss without being too much in a rush, which may be not optimal, but you as player of the game stay in control of your character at all times.
Compare that to some modern shooter (Spunkgargleweewee if you like) where you as Tanker McTank get bitchslapped around by some dude with only a handgun while you have a minigun on your back but can't use it because it's a cutscene...

Anyways, I like the Half-Life series a lot, if you haven't figured it out yet. I recommend you to go and play at least one of these games to know for sure what I've been talking about..

Thank you for reading all this and see you next time.

-ThOR

Abomination

I saw an abomination a few days ago.

It was a Macbook Air.

Not that it's a Macbook, not even because it's the way-too-slimmed-down version on it. It was because the owner (a nitwit to be honest) installed Windows7 on it.
No, he did not install Win7 via a virtual machine. Win7 is since the installment his main operating system. I'll let this sink in for a minute.

I can accept that he (the owner of the laptop(I can't even call it a Macbook anymore)) is using Apple hardware because he can afford it and thinks it's superior, and I can accept that he thought Win7 is the OS he can cope with best and fits his requirements, but those 2 things are not meant to ever be together in one laptop.
 I can imagine that the guy who got the assignment of installing Win7 as the main OS on that Macbook felt like he had to do a hellish task, because someone who's capable of doing such things should know what monster it will become.

Not that it ran badly, no, it started up like any newly bought laptop would do. It's just the moment someone told him to bringing up the context menu he started wondering how to accomplish such a thing without a mouse.
You see, Apple has a few was to accomplish this where Windows has right-click. You could for example press "ctrl" and click at the same time. It would've worked, but Win7 doesn't recognize this. Windows on the other hand has the open-context-menu-button on the right of the space bar, but sadly Macbooks lack that kind of feature.
This, combined with the fact that the poor owner doesn't really understand computers at all made me feel like I've seen an act of defiance to all the good that is in this world.

It was such a horrible thing that I wanted to share this so you would know to avoid this kind of things.

-ThOR

PS: I may have exaggerated with my feeling over a simple right-click function, but please, for the sake of all that is good, remember that 2 good things together may become much worse that they were good.

Angels

I've talked earlier about spirit, souls and bodies, and somehow I believe in angels. How could i possibly connect that as they are more than just material creatures and still manage to exist somehow on the material plane (you can call it the "dimension" of matter).

Well, inspiration for my view on angels come from the "His Dark Materials"-trilogy by Philip Pullman.

Angels are ancient and immortal beings whose true form is composed of intelligence and feeling, since they are structures of Dust. 

Angels are creatures with a spirit, a soul and a body, but their body is an abstract something. They don't consist of material, so their form is not fixed. They appear to us as we think they should appear, we see them as we expect them to be seen.
If you think they are all sexless and winged, then they are. If you think they are all child Putti like many baroque painters imagined them to be, then they are. There are many ways to perceive angels because they are immaterial, our minds give them an appearance.
What that appearance is is not important to them, but they still need some place in the world to occupy, otherwise they would not exist.

Believing or not believing doesn't matter. If your mind cannot give they an appearance they'll be just a voice if they need to transfer a message to you, or a bright light if they need to show you something or whatever you more can imagine, as that's what limits your mind from seeing them.

Why would they need to be seen, why would they need to contact us, why do they exist?
Those are big questions we can't even answer for ourselves, but important is that they with their knowledge and their existence in this world can transfer messages from forces even greater than ours.
So why?
God knows why, and we can only guess.

There's one angel that I find interesting. This idea is not exactly from the above-mentioned trilogy, although a slightly inspired. Death.
Yes, Death too is an angel.
Maybe a bit of rephrasing is necessary: Your own death is an angel.

There are many stories about people meeting their Death. Greek mythology had Thanatos, we have the Grim Reaper (not necessary cloaked skeleton with a scythe) and there are many more personifications to be found on wikipedia and seeing most of them predicts an untimely death, sometimes even creating a "self-fulfilling prophecy" (man sees his Death-vision, runs from it and because he ran he dies/passes away/causes a lethal accident/dies of a stroke).

A few interesting examples are the Japanese "Shinigami" (very close to the western Grim Reaper they represent a horrible creature, not necessarily a skeleton (not even humanoid) and haunt people dealing with death or who are about to die), the "Doppelgänger" (an unexisting twin who is often just seen by the person he's impersonating, sometimes by more, puzzling all of them, sometimes no more but a shadow of the person), known deceased friends (calling to join them in death) and many more.

Reason for so many "visions" of death?
They are angels.
They bring the message of "You're going to die" or "Remember you're mortal" which are basically the same.
Don't get me wrong, they don't kill people, they just tend to be present at those moments. And again, they rely on the mind of the person to be perceived. Some may be accompanied constantly by their Death, others may never see it. Or they may see one after they passed away to guide them to wherever they go after this life.

I often think immortal people are in constant company of their own Death angel. These immortals would have to find a way to live with their Death, even though they can't experience it. They can hate them and try to run away from them, or they could accept them and see them as an old friend.

Speaking of immortals, there is this Dorian Grey, a guy who sold his soul for immortality and transferring his aging to a portrait of himself. In some way this portrait also could've been seen as an angel of death, as it reminds Dorian of every year that has passed without him aging and keeping every wound that was inflicted to him.
This lasted until Dorian Grey couldn't bear to look at it anymore and put a knife into the portraits heart and so killing himself.

I have no idea what I will do if I ever see my own Death. Now I think I could live with it, but I'm afraid that may not be the case when the moment actually comes. Anyways, I'll write some more until that moment comes, so I'll see you next time.

-ThOR

The Hunger Games and more...

We all know those people.

Those people that have bought the all the Lord of the Rings movies from the moment they were to be bought. Not once, but at least twice as the 12 disc special extended edition (with at least 2 hours of extra footage) just HAD to be bought.
The same people that watched all the Twilight movies at least twice in the cinema (waste of money I'd say), that went to the re-screening on the Titanic movie, that have the complete collection of Harry Potter (both movie and books)...

One of those people is a very good friend of mine and is living in the room next to me.
And he bought the "Hunger Games" DVD...

I didn't want to download it and borrowed it from them. I tried downloading it, but there are more fakes and bad cams than there is a good version of it. Easier to borrow it from a friend than to trust Mister Anon to provide something you don't really want all that much.

So I watched it and I must say I'm not impressed. Even reading the book (a few months ago) was kinda m'eh. Actually the book spoiled it for me. If I'd have read the book after the movie the general impression would've been better.
The reason for this is the writing style. It was too easy to read because the book didn't do anything else but telling the story, telling stuff that's important to the story.

Isn't that what a book's supposed to do?
Not really. A book should also create an atmosphere in another way than by the stuff that happens to the main character.
An example: Currently I'm reading "The Dragon Keeper" of the "Rain Wild Chronicles" by Robin Hobb. Between every chapter there's an intermission where you can read the correspondence between 2 pigeon keepers which gives a broader view on the ruined city after the war that ended in one of the previous trilogies. Concerns about released slaves mixing with the uptown Traderfamilies, concerns about inexplicable illnesses that appear and whatnot.
Next to all that you have dragons that have no idea what happened to them, humans that slowly turn into reptile people, a lost civilization no-one really cares about except for the awesome stuff they left behind, pirates, knights in the north, some angry asshole-nation a bit south of that, and a giant world filled with confusion and mishaps...

Really, I'm not all that into "the Hunger Games", obviously. It could've been so much more if it weren't so easy and accessible (the main reason why it caught on and got itself a movie...)

There are so many more books that could be translated to the  Big Screen with ease. The Night Angel trilogy for example (more on that in a later post) or the Left Hand of God. Those are interesting books and may result in some nice series or movies...

But yeah, I've written quite a lot, maybe it's time to call it a day and have you guys read it...

-ThOR

Deverry

Yeah, so recently I finished the Deverry Cycle...
It took me 15 books to get to the end. But yeah, it's finished now.

What do I think of it?
Well, it's quite the read, although it takes a while before a storyline is finished.... It's a hell to get to the end of a story that took a few centuries to finish, certainly if you take into account several rebirths with some people surviving for some of those centuries. every book ends with a big battle (which sometimes is a bit unnecessary) and some story lines took way too long to finish...

Honestly this is only for those who would take the time to read all 15 book one after another...

The magic is quite interesting, but it didn't really change any views I have on this matter.

If you want it better you should read the Robin Hobb, Realm of the Elderlings series, where every 3 books can be read as a separate whole.
Sure, the story goes on in every book, but the story ends with every few books.
The only problem I have with it is that it's an on-going series, while you can read until "latest released" you'll have to wait until the next one is finished and released. I'm waiting for the "The Rain Wilds Chronicles" to end so I can read them from beginning to end.

Anyways, that's all I can write at the moment. If I have enough time I'll change some things, but now I'm writing this it a slightly tipsied state (2 "La Chouffe", 2 cognacs, 2 Filliers Gins and a Dürüm) this post may seem a bit out of my usual writing style.

Thank you anyway for reading.

-ThOR

Magical additions

After posting my previous post on this matter I remembered I forgot some things.

For example the wands/staffs many link to magicians.

In my opinion I think they don't hold any real power by themselves, they merely are a way of focusing. For example instead of visualizing yourself focusing on something you can use for example a wand to point at what you're doing  and it will help you keep your focus.
Of course some may "cheat" and add some life power or some thinking abilities to it so it helps out with performing the magic I'm describing (more on that in a future post).

Of course, once you figure out the atomic changing you can do pretty much anything.
You could, for example, figure out how an eye is build, figure out how it's connected to the rest of the body and give yourself a third eye.
You could improve your body, you could adjust things that never were adjustable before... but this would be very dangerous as you could accidentally kill you in the process.
This atomic fiddling is of course not the easiest thing to do, so only great masters of concentration would be able to do this.

Also knowing that most magic is basically the manipulation of energy big magician cities should have some kind of energy pool, a central place that can store energy for magicians to use. The hardest part of having this is being able to use it from a distance. Your spirit is in general only able to manipulate energy in your body. A magician is already able to manipulate things outside his body, still close enough to focus on.
Anyone wanting to use the energy pool needs to be able to focus on (reach with his spirit to) that energy pool. The easiest way to circumvent this problem is to come closer to the pool, so you can easier access it or carry some container with you or using your body as one. The last one is again very dangerous, as you could drain too much from your body and die from it (gee, I've got a lot of dieing in this post...).

Anyways, there will be at least one more post on this subject, but not now.

Until the next one.

-ThOR

Games I would like to see finished

So, E3 is going on but for some reason I don't feel like paying much attention to it.
Why? Shooter, shooter, shooter and some other genres. Not much variety in there. I think the best shooter has been made years ago (the Half Life series for singleplayer, Counterstrike for multiplayer) so I'm a bit more interested in other stuff.

Let me make a list of the few games I'm actually waiting for to be finished so I can throw some money at it:

Fract

Fract is an adventure type game, from what I understood after playing their prototype. You walk around in an amazingly nice looking low poly world solving puzzles, getting old machinery working without actually knowing what they do and gradually discovering more of the world.
It will have real-time synthesized music that you'll be able to compose your own music with it (I kinda hope for a built-in recorder) presented in a very nice low poly look.

The art style of this game is enough for me to instantly want to buy and play it, but unfortunately it's still under development (like all the games in this list).

Castle story

We all (should) have heard of a terrifying game called Dwarf Fortress. I would have liked the game and have played it fully if only it had a more accessible interface. Luckily Castle story looks like it will live up to that hope. Sure, the developers don't have that much depth planned, but I'm pretty sure after this game releases someone will make a mod that adds all these functions to it. All the more reasons to wait for this game to be released.

0x10^c

The "New Game From Notch" (aka "oh ex ten to the cth", "Ox ten see",  "Oxy tensee" but actually its "0x" as in "the next number is in hexadecimal" and the "10^c" as in "that's 16¹² in decimal").
A space game, low poly graphics, sandbox, RPG, fully customizable spaceships with fully programmable computers, single and multiplayer connected via the multiverse, duct tape and lots of engineering. These were only a few features Notch has planned for it.
Together with the raging community this will result in piracy, epic space battles, player programmed Operating Systems, custom ships with a lot of references to movies or series, ... just way too much to think of.
The game is just in it's starting phase, meaning Notch barely has the general gameplay mechanics implemented (gravity, lighting, movement) while he often requests for community input. This means we all still can dream of what it will become.

It just recently got in development, so we'll see what becomes of it.

There are some alternatives to this concept like Rodina and Infinity-Universe, but even those are under development...

Minecraft

"Haha!" you may think, "You can't fool me, Minecraft is out for about half a year now!"
Yes, it is, but no it isn't out of development yet. The Mojang team is working hard on getting the game to where they want it to be, Minecraft development is far from done. Although I already threw a bit of money at it.
The effects of a Minecraft out of development are easy creation of mods, easy installing of said mods, optimized gameplay with lots of terrain features, a less raging community (since there won't be huge updates anymore), bug free playtime and much more.
Minecraft still has a bit to go until it's complete, but it already is one of my favorite games ever...

--
(end of list, for now) (hmm, I thought there would be a few more...)

Anyways, I think I talked enough about games, let's play them...

-ThOR

Magic

We all have heard about it somehow, somewhere, mostly in stories (like movies, books and games).
But what is it?

Well, I don't know and I won't tell you that, I'll only tell you what I think it is.

But first I'll have to explain to you guys how I think living beings live.
If you hadn't noticed: this post will be a quite philosophic one.

In my opinion any living being exists out of 3 main components. A soul (the energy), the spirit (the thinking ability) and a body (a "vessel" for the other two). Please note these terms have nothing to do with what a dictionary says they mean (I didn't search it), I use these terms because they are the closest to what I mean when using them.

So the soul contains the energy a being needs to think/live/be, the spirit is a term to describe the thoughts and the consciousness while the body is "simply" the embodiment of the immaterial parts of the being.
Despite the many abilities a being has it's limited to what the it can do. A spirit without a body or soul can't do much more than think (and therefore only "be"), a soul alone would only be energy floating around and a body on itself would fall apart. On the other hand a being without a soul wouldn't have the energy to do something, a being without a spirit either and a being without a body wouldn't exist in this world all together.
So every part needs all the other parts for the being to be functional and every part needs all other parts to be functional. Because of this every part is limited to what all other parts can do. A spirit can't influence anything outside the body, a soul can't "power" anything because of the same restrictions.

But imagine someone who can use his spirit to influence energy. This someone could take energy from other places (or his own body) and use it to influence something else.
This someone (from now on called "the Magician") would firstly be able to control temperature by moving energy away from whatever should be cooled and towards whatever should be warmed/heated/combusted. Yes,in my opinion that should be all it takes to make something burn. It may be a bit of a problem to gather enough energy for something to catch fire but within this frame of reference it's the easiest and most imprecise way because you just "put" a lot of energy in on place or take it away from another.

The next step would be to move something. Since temperature makes atoms move faster or slower the Magician already does this, but now he should apply this energy in such a way that it actually becomes a force that influences his subject. Making a ball roll, making a Rubix Cube solve itself and making things fly are all in this category.

The final step is taking a material and changing it into something else. Why should this be one of the hardest things? Because it involves manipulating energies on a (sub)atomic scale.
To be able to do this kind of stuff the Magician first needs to know what he's doing exactly and until now some parts of quantum physics are by (the real, existing) scientists explained as 'magic' for lack of a better word. (For example electrons. Once you try observing them as particles they'll start behaving like waves. Try observing them as waves they'll start behaving like particles. Why? Magic!)
Once the Magician has figured out what he's doing he has to manipulate energy in such a way it affects that atom just in the way he wants it, which requires some serious focus.
For some decent results he also needs to do this on quite some atoms, so I can imagine real atom Magicians would be very rare.

I say it again: this is just how I think Magic would exists, if it would happen to be real. I don't know if it really does exist, I wouldn't know if it doesn't.

Anyways, I think I wrote enough for now.

See you a next time.

-ThOR

Lecture - Literature

Let me start off by saying I haven't read a lot.
Very probably did I read more than most people of my age, but I still could've read more. I remember sitting on the bus/tram/train and wishing I had a book to read. It wouldn't matter what book, just anything to read.
Yes, I could spend that time listening to music, but my iPod is dying (barely a few hours battery life in normal (20°C) temperatures, "Back/REW" and "Play" button are refusing to work (thank you Center Button for not giving up on me), so I expect I'll need to replace it with something else by next year) and I often forget to stop by the library to pick up a book.
But thanks to friends I sometimes have something to read...

Anyways, back on topic.

Recently (today, that is) I finished the "Hunger Games" book. The first one that is (No, I haven't watched the movie, maybe I'll download it next year... or maybe I could convince someone to go to the cinema with me...) and I'm hoping my brother will find the sequels fast enough so I can finish the story.

But I don't like the writing style.

Don't get me wrong, it's a page turner once you get into the story (read it from begin to end in less than 2 days) but there aren't any passages where you can feel the translator had a hard time translating something that is very specific for the English language.
Yes, I read a Dutch translation, but I don't expect reading it in English would improve the story in any manner.

Let me bring in another story for comparison. One that many know, that isn't too complicated and that also has a movie coming up. (Sheesh, did I get distracted for a few hours while trying to copy that link...) (To those hesitant to click the link: it's "The Hobbit")
I've read the story in both Dutch and English and believe me when I say that the latter is way more enjoyable. The first time I read it I needed a dictionary to figure out some words (oh, the synonyms for walking) but I liked it all the more.

If we go even further down the way of literature we find Gormenghast.
I've read it a few years back, but I must say I'm still impressed by what the writer (Mervyn Peake) did with it.
It doesn't have a clear theme in which it's written. At first sight you may say it's "Fantasy"... But once you're reading you notice there isn't any magic happening, there are no characters that aren't human by definition (although lots of them are brute caricatures of humans) and everything seems plausible, since it may happen if some castle would've grown from the roman age and slowly progressing in size, building styles, functionality and weirdness to finally end up like the humongous castle that's described.
"Fiction" covers too much of what the book actually is and "Historical Fiction" isn't correct as there is absolutely no attachment to our existing world. In my opinion "Surreal" is the most fitting description.
Let me give you a quote from the book (found on the Wiki):

Mr. Flay appeared to clutter up the doorway as he stood revealed, his arms folded.... It did not look as though such a bony face as this could give normal utterance, but rather that instead of sounds, something more brittle, more ancient, something drier would emerge, something more in the nature of a splinter or a fragment of stone. Nevertheless, the harsh lips parted. "It's me," he said, and took a step forward, his joints cracking as he did so. His passage across a room -- in fact his passage through life -- was accomplished by these cracking sounds, one per step, which might be likened to the breaking of dry twigs.

Here is described one of my favorite characters is the series.
I bet none of you know anyone like this Mr. Flay, now try to imagine him... May be kinda hard, lacking a lot more info on it, but I imagine most of the characters as cartoon characters instead of trying to compare them to real people.

But the book provides more than just strange characters. If you plan on reading it be prepared for pages filled with descriptions of a river running through a landscape, "hopping" from character to character while you're reading (you start with one, he meets someone, you hop on to that character, another encounter, another hop, and so on...), passages of "Internal monologue", changes in telling perspective, ... A real feast for people enjoying the art of writing.

And here's the big thing I miss in a lot of stories. The art of writing the story. Not just telling it in a way so we know what's happening, but using the language you're writing in to the fullest to tell the story.
Sure, the Hunger Games lured me in because of the story, but I miss the joy of language. The playing with sentences to make some parts stand out, the vocabulary enrichment I kinda expect every book to be...

But hey. I'm not going to ignore books because of this, I just wanted to point out some things I would like to see more in modern literature.

I'm not saying my parts here are pure literature... I don't really think about the sentences, I just write whatever comes into mind, as some may have noticed...

But I'd rather read something more complicated (Maybe I'll once try to read Finnegans wake, but not very soon) instead of another "high fantasy" story where Elf and Dwarf and Man fight with/against each other and Light tries to defeat the Dark...

Anyways, I said enough on this topic for now.
If anyone has propositions for books to read, tell me in the comments.

Thank you for reading.

-ThOR

Games

Jah, sure, it couldn't take long before even I'd react on the latest news event.

Wondering what I'm talking about?
Google "Breivik video games" and read the most recent entries.

I just opened the first one, read through it and i the end it adds 5 examples how some murderers (including the most recent, Breivik himself) were inspired by movies/books/games to commit some murders.
Note, there are only 5 listed, 5 cases between 1974 and now.
Sure, these aren't the only 5, but it's still not terribly much compared to the total amount of murders committed...

But now they are all blaming it on video games, saying Breivik used them to prepare for the final "attack" he planned. All those articles against video games, but none noting Breivik himself never said such a thing. He for example played WoW for more than 16 hours a day over a year to "take a sabbatical" (his words), to not be preoccupied planning all that stuff, to do something he'd love to do before he'd die (as he planned his actions to be suicidal).
Not many sources mention his extensive planning BEFORE playing these games, his many hours in a shooting range, perfecting his aim, his claims to be a member of a "anti-Jihad crusader-organization" and his legal/illegal acquirement of his weapons. Nope, it's just video games.

No, I don't want to defend his cause in any way. What he did is horrible and he should be trialed for what he did. But don't blame it on video games. As realistic some first-person-shooters claim to be, they still don't prepare you in any way on the real deal. You can't revive after you die in real life, you can't heal instantly from a bullet in your arm by picking up some health-pack, you can't run around with a rifle, waving it around like it's made of plastic and then kill someone (accurately) seconds after rolling into position by simply playing video games.

You seriously CAN'T.

I remember my first time I fired a bullet.
Yes, it was in an ex-soviet state.
And yes, it was a AK-47 or Kalashnikov.
And no, after all those hours playing Counter Strike 1.6 (I can't link too much, I never exactly know who my audience is...) I still wasn't prepared on anything that thing did.

First off, that thing's HEAVY. You try holding a 5 kg (11 lb) bag of potatoes with arms stretched and imagine shooting stuff with it... take a break before your arms fall off.
The kickback is also a surprise. It's those same 5 kg stomping you in the shoulder every time you pull that trigger. After the first bullet I already had a bruise and I was deaf for the next few minutes. Because that small detail game designers tend to leave out: The bang is so loud you can only understand your own words after 5 minutes. To understand others it takes even longer...
No movie, no game ever actually tells you this, it's all soldiers that storm into battle, screaming to their brothers in arms who understand them from 2 meters away, waving their guns without real fatigue...

As far as I remember I only saw one movie that kinda did show this correctly. And it was some strange French movie we had to watch with school for some reason...

So no, nothing in popular media can prepare anyone on a real battle, only hard training can.
But as long as no one talks about it they all tend to forget about this and blame only video games.

As a final thing I would like to link a more gamer friendly article.
Sure, it starts with the usual panic-inducing headline, with some more panic blah that should accompany these articles, but halfway the writer quotes gamers (more than 30 year-old-gamers) that express their concerns on the current situation.

-ThOR

PS: I found a funny quote in the last linked article:

Breivik said a holographic aiming device used in Modern Warfare helped him develop skills with a real gun.

...
Now think about it.
How could a virtual "holographic aiming device" possibly help someone aiming a real gun?

PPS: Oh, hey, turns out there's more articles up now. Go read this analysis posted yesterday (currently second result when googling...). I started writing this yesterday, there were more "doom is upon us because video games" articles then, so the current google search may not be all that correct...

PPPS: Thank you for reading.

Downloading

There's been a lot of attention to it some time ago: Illegal downloading.
Lots of protests against SOPA and PIPA (what was ACTA again?), lots of lobbying to get it through anyway... Why?

Yes, I do download.
And some of those downloads aren't the most legal content.
But I must say: sometimes I want to play a game that's long gone from the stores (Homeworld, Descent: Freespace, ...) and knowing the original creators already got involved in bigger stuff, stopped caring about their first spawns or maybe just don't exist anymore I'd think they wouldn't mind that I enjoy their stuff and praise it without actually buying the game.

It's not that I refuse to buy the game... I'd buy it if I had the money. After all it's easier to do so than waiting for a few-Gig-file to download, installing the software, running activation blockers, or finding the folder the game got installed in to replace some files with cracked (and possibly virused) files. I'd rather insert the disk, let it run and play right away, while being assured of a decent support center when something goes askew...
Not to mention the (mostly) broken multiplayer you get with an illegal copy, which sometimes is basically the other half of the fun.

On the other hand, some software just is a tad bit expensive. Buying Adobe Creative Suit 4 as a requirement for your studies, using it for a year and then having to buy CS5 the year after was really an attack on my bank account...

But I still don't get why Big Companies are playing witchhunt on those who extend their software's user base and increasing potential buyers. After all, if it wasn't for illegal downloads I would've never thought of getting a Steam account where Valve could dangle some 5$ games in front of me, making it very attractive to buy more...

And what the hell happened to demo-versions? The only things you sometimes see when a game gets promoted are pre-rendered trailers and you basically have to rely on your computer to be strong enough to handle the software you've just bought...
For example: I (being a total hardware noob) am considering buying Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (purely hypothetically speaking). There is absolutely no way to test if my computer can handle the game or not, I have to rely on my own knowledge (very little) and the info given under "Minimal System Requirements" (note: unexistant on the main website) to understand whether my 5 year old laptop would survive it when I install such a thing. What do all those numbers and letters mean? I tend to figure it out, but I can imagine a lot of people who wouldn't know where to start...
A demo would be nice in those situations to see if your system is willing to handle all that violence and to see if the game is what you expect/want/like it to be. That's mostly what I use cracked games for: to see if my computer would run it may I want a good multiplayer.

(a small remark on MW3: Don't think I'll ever buy the game. The best military shooter has been made already (CounterStrike), now I would like a shooter with more challenge/imagination/creativity (Half Life 3 would be nice))

Anyways, I'm glad there are other approaches. For example (you may have wondered why I waited so long to bring this one up) Notch, creator of Minecraft has tweeted that he's pretty fine with someone pirating the game. "It's a minor offense in the scale of things". Sure, it's quite illegal, but in comparison to the number of people that actually bought it there isn't much reason to worry. Especially knowing Notch is currently a millionaire by making a (relatively) cheap but more than awesome game from scratch and with a completely new/original idea (something we don't see that much lately).

Especially knowing this I don't quite get why the Big Companies keep hammering on "their intellectual property" and how no-one else should have the right to do anything alike except for themselves. Want some more info on what copyright has currently come to? CGPGrey did a very nice instructional video explaining what the current laws are capable of doing.



(Ahh, the joy of successfully embedding videos in you own page)

This post is goining on longer than I originally intended.
Let me wrap this up...

I do download different stuff.
I don't like Big Companies with a lot more digits of income limiting us in distributing/recreating stuff they made.

Heh, that's about it.

Thank you for reading all this.

-ThOR