My New video game Onslaught, finally released...

I was originally going to wait till October 31'st on midnight to release onslaught... But a serious issue has come up. We are getting a tropical storm around that time where I live...  So I have to get the release out of the way now... Because I will not be on my PC to do it then.... It will be off and unplugged... Hopefully the Storm doesn't damage too much stuff.....  So here we go... I spent the whole night last night play testing most of the maps minus the secret maps... And it's complete...


The game, which is called Onslaught : the cult within, is based on an old idea for a FPS game me and a friend had back in 1995. We thought of the whole story, who the villains were, what you were as a player back then... You played as a cybernetic mercenary named "asshole", who happens to listen to extreme metal.  You get hired by a mercenary guild to stop a mad cult who is bombing all the cities in the world in an insane attempt to bring on the apocalypse. Since they control the secret military programs of every country they can actually do this... They also have access to nukes and worse. In 2078 they nuke Paris and Washington DC...   They then use secret experiments gone wrong, horrible abominations of nature, to wipe out the survivors.  Then by using technology gotten from tortured aliens they are able to clean up the radiation and set up a base in the ruins of DC. The group you work for is fighting this CSC cult and is losing. You are hired to do missions for them to stop this cult, from stopping more experiments from being created to stopping future nuking plots by the cult... As a cybernetic mercenary you can do things that most people cannot do, such as put a impenetrable forcefield around you, regenerate health, etc. A trailer was made for youtube recently, which you can view here:

The game is an old school/tactical  hybrid FPS game with a non linear level system and many other features. You choose what missions you want to do with a mission computer in your HQ which is always the first map you start. The HQ has no enemies in it, and you can use a switch to chose missions and then another to start the mission you chose.... You can also buy items and weapons with money you earn in each mission, 5 minutes in, based on how many kills you get...  In each mission you face enemy counts from 150 to around 1000. It's a lot like serious sam. But in difficulty and realism terms it's more like STALKER. You will die very quickly if you don't take cover and remember to heal yourself often with medical kits and other methods, such as cybernetic upgrades and "eating gibs" to heal yourself.

As a cyborg, you also get cyborg powers you can use at any time. You have 5 powers, activatable with the f1-f5 keys. F1 cloaks you. F2 heals you to a certain degree. F3 gives you nightvision mode which makes cloaked mutants (very common and annoying) visible. F4 puts a forcefield around you for at least 10 seconds making you invincible. F5 is called metal rage and by default makes you fire your guns twice as fast for 20 seconds or so. All of these powers can be upgrade by buy able upgrades available at the HQ levels.  Make sure to use these wisely, because they are needed to survive even basic levels on higher skill settings.

In the HQ map the "exit door" on the right in the second room leads to the mission computer room. The switch (grey notched texture) on the column selects the mission you want to do next. Press it again to select the next one. It will keep selecting the next one till you get to the end... The other switch warps you to the mission you selected....  If you go back to the previous room outside the mission control room, and go the other way away from the entrance of the level, you will see an open door on the right hand side of the next room.  This room leads to the item store.. There are 2 more switches here... The left switch cycles through items to buy and prints the cost of the current selected one also. The right switch buys the correct item but only if you have enough credits to do so...

Level design wise, I ended up using a random map generator that makes great urban themed maps to make all the levels. I really don't care if idiots say this is bad.... Blah blah blah...  I don't even care... It works for me... But really I never even cared if the maps were hand crafted or not...  I did end up editing them quite heavily afterwards, by adding dynamic lighting, enemy placement changes,  etc...

The textures were taken from many sources, mostly free texture download sites and a HL1 texture pack called the Photorealistic texture pack... They were all enhanced with a free Painting program, using a bump mapping filter, since Gzdoom cannot do bump mapping.

The enemy, item and weapon graphics came from custom enemies that came from realm667.com. This is a repository for  items, weapons, and enemies made for zdoom that are brand new.. Many of them used or use sounds from other games... I tried to remove as many as possible by replacing the sounds with sounds from Freedoom (what this is based on), and custom recorded horror styled screams, etc... But I may have missed a few.... It's not my fault really,  many custom enemies use sounds and graphics from other games... I didn't make them.. so Don't blame me. I got most of the skyboxes from a Jdoom skybox pack, and some other sources, a skybox pack made for Gzdoom. Something like  that, I forget where...

The game is quite scary at times... Mutant enemies (the CSC experiments mentioned above) are very scary in nature and make loud screaming noises often. At least one has the ability to scare you shitless. There are also randomly played ambient sounds that sound like a monster but are not, to freak you out... and randomly occurring night zones, when the whole level will go dark to freak you out for 20 seconds, accompanied by a screaming noise and a monster teleported near or behind you. The game also has a scripted day/night cycle as well, using appropriate skyboxes, and light coloring effects. The game's time scale is increased so each day goes by in 20 minutes, so it's more obvious in the smaller levels....


Anyway... The actual game has been released and tested quite a bit.... It's available here. Download the zip file and unzip all files  to a new folder, C:\ons or something like that. Then run gzdoom.exe in that folder to play... Doom itself is not required to play... It is totally standalone, but uses a free copy of freedoom as an IWAD, because I don't know how to make an IWAD myself to make this standalone any other way. Freedoom is a completely free and non-id software based resource set and IWAD that allows people to play Doom levels that are custom without actually owning doom itself. All of the content in it is new, So I thought it was the perfect base IWAD to include in this, because I cannot be sued for simply distributing it, unlike a copy of the doom2.wad that comes with Doom 2. The game requires at least a system with these system requirements:

Pentium 4 1.8 GHZ, 1 GB Ram, Ati-Radeon 8500 or Nvidia Geforce 4 TI or higher, decent soundcard, and   450 MB of free disk space, Windows as an operating system.

I tested it on my system which has these specs:

Pentium Dualcore 3.0 GHZ, 2 GB ram, Nvidia Geforce GT 520, soundblaster live external USB soundcard, Windows XP.

Make sure to configure your controls with the options menu > configure controls options before playing. I recommend new players to play now higher than "badass" (medium) due to the difficulty.


Neccisary but pointless Disclaimer : This game has lots of bad language, gore, bathroom humor, and other "offensive" content... Just a friendly warning... This is for mature gamers only... Not something that should be exposed to young kids..

Onslaught : Free FPS video game being made by me.

Back in 1995, me and a friend came out with an awesome idea for a FPS game.  In it you played as a cybernetic mercenary who happens to be a die hard metalhead/heavy metal music fan.  You started down in cape cod, MA or in a prison in outer space (in later drafts of the game idea).  A mercenary guild called the Anti-Social Services (or A.S.S. for short) would contact you and offer to hire you to do work against the main villains of the game, a mad cult called the Cult of the Serpent Church, which was in total control of at least the US and Canada during this time (the game took place around 50-60 years from now, in post apocalyptic ruins of cities). This cult was attempting to exterminate humanity, for whatever reason. They nuked washington DC and Paris a few months before the game started. They had total control of every major countries militaries. The Anti-social services were fighting them and losing. So they hired you, the cybernetic mercenary to help them out. You would be whisked off to many different cities along the whole east coast of the US, the move to the west coast, then Canada, then Antarctica, then finally the ruins of DC for the final level to fight and kill the mad cult leader. We named the character you played as as bastard at the time. He was really a badass, Duke3d like character, with BAD one liners, etc. My friend wanted the character to be a real anti-hero. Not a goody too shoes. The plan fit. For the next 6 years from 1996 to 2002  we kept on thinking of enemy, weapon, and level ideas. We had hundreds of each. The plan was getting so ridiculous that we eventually stopped updating it and scrapped it. We wanted it to be  given to a game company, and get paid. It never happened... But that doesn't mean Onslaught is not being made.. MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

Using Gzdoom you can easily make standalone games without using anything from the parent game (doom 1/2 etc). I've been doing just this to make onslaught as a standalone Game, using Freedoom as a base. Freedoom is a free Doom IWAD, and allows anyone to play any doom addon without the full game even installed. Using resources from realm667.com I have managed to recreate many of our old ideas for monsters, cult soldiers and weapons. Only thing left was levels. Not a big fan of doing my own maps for Gzdoom I decided to use a really good Doom Random Map generator that does really well designed urban levels (for that time anyway). I used these levels as a base and simply retextured them with free Photorealistic urban textures, and added enemies here and there and tweaked other things. The project is almost done, after almost 15 years of developement time! I plan to release it by midnight on Halloween 2012. Some things need to be changed though... Not major changes mind you, but some minor issues. But most of it has been completed, including all 32 levels.

Gameplay wise, onslaught is quite different from normal shooters. Number 1 it is excruciatingly difficult on higher skill settings, and even has heart attacks simulated in it's scripting library for low health. Number 2, since you play as a cyborg (now being called Asshole), you get to use cybernetic powers with the f1,f2,f3,f4 and f5 keys. F1 gives you a temporary cloaking ability. F2 heals you. F3 gives you nightvision that allows you to see invisible mutant enemies. F4 puts up an impenetrable force field around the player for at 10 seconds at the default level.  F5 is the best though. It's called Metal rage, and is aptly named. After screaming out a metal related phrase at the top of his lungs, our character gets 2x boost to weapon fire rate for quite some time.  Using Forcefield and Metal Rage make the game much more bearable because you do 2x fire speed and are invincible.  F2 can save you from some bad situations. In this game you get punished for low health a lot more than others. Once your health drops below 75 you start bleeding, making your health drop slowly over time. The lower your health gets, the more health is subtracted per 2 seconds.  It's important to keep your health above 75.  Good thing that there are many ways to heal you. Health kits are everywhere but you can use them any time you want... Also killing enemies gibs them even with light weapons. You get health by eating gibs in this.  The more gibs you create per kill the more health you will get.  Using machineguns is advisable because you cause more damage per second. Adding metal rage doubles it so always hit f5 to make it more gory. More guts, more health. In this game enemies are around every corner at the start and you eventually run into 200+ per level later on. It becomes like serious sam, enemy concentration wise. Combine that with the difficulty and you get a mix of tactical and twitch shooter gameplay aspects. I think it's quite cool.

In terms of level progression, this is quite different from most FPS games. Each level is linear for the most part but the progression from level to level is not. You start the game in your HQ. Once you go into the computer room, you get to flip a switch that selects what mission you want to do. Flipping it again selects the next one, till you reach the last, and flipping it then will select the 1st again.  Flipping another switch warps you to the selected mission. Once you finish the level the mission is in you return to the HQ with your guns stripped from you to ensure you start each level from scratch. There are so many guns in this game that carrying them over from level to level will make it too easy. 25 guns is a lot. You can replay all the levels multiple times and more levels will be made later to make it even more fun, so that you get not 32 but 64 levels to explore. 32 more bonus levels... This in scope is closer to something like Skyrim then a normal FPS game. although each level is totally linear (the random level generator has no option to remove locked doors, etc to make it nonlinear), it is still fun. In a bonus pack down the road you will get an option to go on a "vacation" and explore a randomly chosen map from the 32 bonus ones.... Something to make the game more replayable.

You also get money in this game to use on spending on new guns to start new missions with. Once you visit every room in the first HQ map you will run into buy and sell switches in another room.  Pressing one selects the item to buy. Pressing it again selects the next one, etc. Pressing it once you reach the end makes it select the 1st. Pressing the second switch buys the selected item for the mentioned cost.  The difference in Onslaught is that the money comes as a bonus for good performance 5 minutes in in any level. The more monsters you have killed by the 5 minute mark, the more money you get.  So in harder levels, you get better rewards, money wise... The game has innocent civilians who are all big assholes but are not hostile... You get generic male civis, female civis, teachers, violent video game protestors and idiots from doomworld.  They all count as enemies to kill so killing them will get you more money..  Each is a parody on idiots of real life.  Male civilians, and female civilians are based on idiots I dealt with in real life. Teachers are based on the idiots we had for teachers in many schools I went to.  The video game protestors were a semi-joke making fun of real life anti violent game activists. Killing them is optional and often time they get killed by the enemies by accident... There are at least 10 per level in most levels..

In terms of how easy it is to use stuff to make a game, you really have to be careful what you use. I had to change sounds for 99% of the enemy cast, and had to cut many enemies and weapons because idiots on realm667 were uploading custom monsters and weapons that used sounds from other games. This is something that can get you sued as a game developer, for distributing copyrighted sounds from another game, even though you weren't the one who ripped the sounds from the other game in question. I had to cut out a LOT to get around this and it pisses me off. You'd think the people in charge of that site would add a stipulation that says (non-infringing content only!) but they don't. It isn't my fault that half of that stuff steals content from other games and it pisses me off.  I had to get rid of 40% of the old stuff due to this. Not a small %.

The textures I used come from many sources, but none come from other games. Most are from a photorealistic texture pack released on half-life forums years ago. Since gzdoom supports hires textures this was the obvious choice for good looking GFX. Add the dynamic lighting around torches that you can boost by setting the max size and intensity of all lights,  and you can make the old gzdoom engine look as good as HL2 graphics wise, maybe not architecture wise, but it looks almost that good.  Some textures came from free texture download sites which don't exist anymore. I altered many to get them to tile and bump mapped every single texture in a painting program to make them look even better. The sheer amount of graphic detail the environment has in it is insane in Onslaught.... Here is a trailer I uploaded to youtube today...

Check that out... I plan to release it soon, within the next 2 weeks or so.... I plan to release the game as a free download in 2 week or so. It won't require any doom game to play.. Completely standalone. It WILL require hardware acceleration though because it uses lots of dynamic lighting and high-res textures and skyboxes.Stay tuned...

Comments attacking violent games on news articles, filled with BS, Surprise!!!!

For years, I have been seeing BS comments on newspaper articles that attack video games for controversial reasons such as causing school shootings, violent content, etc. Calling violent games "trash", "junk" or "garbage" is a common one I have seen thousands of times since 1999. Always being bugged by crap excuses like this and people saying crap about gamers, I committed myself to studying just how many of the comments from articles I found, could be considered inflammatory toward gamers, games, the industry, and most important, spread lies about violent games. The results were quite shocking, to say the least...
So I embarked on this study last year. The total results were from 7 parts published on my wordpress blog and the details are cited below... Part 6 is available here as well. (The first 5 out of 7 were deleted due to possible libel complaints down the road... I wanted to avoid that, but the specific comment types were recorded in another post online, but that was accidentally deleted last night)


"I am continuing my study into the nature of comments attacking violent games on articles in newspaper sites online. By definition the comments must fit these categories to be considered ‘attacking violent games’…

A) Spread lies about violent games

A2) Making up new lies about violent games .

B) Call for games to be banned outright

C) Call for games to be restricted to adults

D) Enforce negative gamer stereotypes

D2) Shows dislike, hate, or a grudge towards gamers.

E) A Bias towards gaming, such that the person commenting thinks games don’t deserve 1st amendment

protection,  the industry is marketing “trash” to my kids, etc.

F) Not sure what violence effects on kids are a restriction might be in order…

G) Attacking the ESRB due to some flawed thing like the FTC study or the fact ‘my 9 year old’ could get bulletstorm.

H) Wants violent game manufacturers sued or games boycotted.

The Previous 6 parts of the study found that, out of 77 comments, 57% were spreading lies about violent games, 31% had a clear bias towards violent games, 7% wanted violent games banned, or violent game makers sued, and 4% wanted violent games restricted to adults.

Results:

Out of all 97 comments in parts 1-7, 64 are spreading lies about violent games. That’s 65%

Out of 97 comments in parts 1-7, 26 have clear bias towards violent games, violent gaming companies, or the industry. That’s 26%

Out of 97 comments, 5 wanted violent games banned, and 5 more wanted the companies that make these game sued. that’s dropped to 5% for each.  3% wanted violent games restricted to adults.

Out of 97 comments, 7 made up totally new lies about violent games. that’s 7%. It’s small but still significant that this is happening.

Out of 97 comments, 4 enforced negative gamer stereotypes.  (4%)

Out of 97 comments,  4 showed a clear hate or dislike towards gamers. (4%).

Lies that are made up from the blue seem to be getting more popular in the last few articles. These lies are brand new, and are being spread by commenters. They are not from various news articles, or psychologists. These ones are troubling. Who would gain from complete nonsense being spread about a violent game by people who knowingly spread these lies that they know are not true? If you make up a total nonsense claim about a violent game you know you haven’t heard before, you have to know it’s a lie… Right? So who would gain?

Do anti-gamers sign up under fake names and spread more lies?

I can’t say. But these lies seem to hint at that. These aren’t the things I have heard from the so-called “experts” on media violence. These are totally new to me….  And they are false… But…  Do we really have a generation of libeling right wing anti-violent games groups hiring members to sign up with fake names to make up BS claims about violent games and post them in comments? I think we do. But I can’t prove it. But if they ARE doing this… It is VERY alarming… I will keep track of these lies that seem to be made up by commenters to see if others repeat them in other articles. I have an idea to see how many people are gullible enough to believe nonsense that is spread. More on it later…."

Now to read the worst of the comments and my response (if I responded to it in the original surveys at all):

(A certain comment, quoted from part 6)

“And it games cause violence, so be it. If a gamer tries to be violent with you, remember this one rule of thumb, so to speak. Since gamers spend a lot of time inside playing games, they are physically weak. As long as you can avoid their powerful, unnaturally strong thumbs, you should be able to subdue them.”

Pitiful. Who in the hell actually thinks that “violent gamers” should be “subdued”. Someone who hates gamers who think gamers cause school shootings, like that idiot who threatened to kill me on the newspaper forum back in 1999 after Columbine. This goes beyond a mere perpetrating anti-gamer stereotypes and goes to wanting them physically hurt. Is this a trend? First we’re bullies, and now we need to be “Subdued”. Moronic.

Source : https://www.npr.org/templates/story/storyComments.php?storyId=137660609&pageNum=1

(source story DELELTED to cover it up?)

“others are using pseudo facts to support their bias towards games in the guise of anti-censorship”.

Source : http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-10430358-17.html

"games have 'passive and casual avatar rape and murder' in them"  

2 Words : Custer’s Revenge. 1989! Stop making this damn fake claim of rape simulators up… It’s idiotic. These people read biased articles that keep putting that lie in the game and everyone believes this  tripe. It’s ridiculous.

Source : The same link that was deleted above

“Remember when the cigarette companies kept saying that no one had “proven” that cigarettes CAUSE cancer? So we continued to let the ads run where all the kids could see them. Lots of people died. Has it yet been scientifically proven that cigarettes cause cancer? Do you believe they do anyway?

Here’s the future of gaming: TVs as big as your entire living room wall. Life size enemies. Realistic wireless game guns with a loud bang and a huge kick. Maybe actual gun makers will make a wireless game clip that you can pop in the real gun where the bullet clip goes. Maybe someone will make an accessory that throws fake blood all over you when you shoot a game enemy at close range.

That’s OK, because no one has scientifically proven that violent games make the players more prone to violence. Until they do, let the carnage continue! “

Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-10430358-17.html

Now you can see the idiocy being spread by commenters and how many comments attacking violent games are filled with anti-gamer stereotypes, hate towards gamers, games, the industry, etc, and how much they spread complete lies, fabrications, all designed to make violent games look bad after a school shooting. Every time I heard the media using fake claims like "violent games make kids violent/aggressive", "violent games are used in the military to break down the inhibition to kill", "violent games link to real life violence is greater than cigarettes link to cancer", "Violent games are being marketed to kids", "violent games are recruitment tools", "violent games that allow you to rape and pee on people", "violent games that allow you to stalk virtual women and rape them", "violent games are training tools", etc, I always here at least 1 commenter per article respreading them, and in some of the claims, you get "special anonymous advertisers" repeatedly and maliciously advertising the book for the author who made up the "video games are being used in the military to break down the inhibition to kill" BS claim, on talk shows after Columbine, a Hack Psychologist. You also get TONS of comments, on how gamers are psychopaths, sociopaths, how gamers should be subdued, how we're "gamer shitheads", how we are "gamer druggies", how gamers are all potential school shooters, and much worse. It's a real problem, because the exact same claims made about gamers being sociopaths/potential school shooters/violent people were also made by certain anti-gaming fundies on newspapers as well, after 1 or 2 immature gamers threatened their lives.... Being a death threat victim myself from similar people to the people  who claim they are being threatened (and multiple ones claim they did, without proof of course), it makes them look like complete hypocrites, because they unknowingly (or knowingly) support people who intentionally make other peoples lives miserable on message boards just to prove "gamers get violent", as  the moron troll on the message board of a newspaper did to multiple gamers 24/7 for 3 months, and said "I have enough evidence that gamers get violent" (the responses to their death threats probably), has been swept under the rug and covered up. It's pathetic. The fact that there are people out there that think all gamers are sociopath's because of people like Eric Harris, or any other damn reason, I don't give a fuck, is sick in itself....  I know at least 10 guys who have played video games before, 5 were serious gamers, NONE were sociopaths. Maybe 1 or 2 gamers are "sociopaths" but that's just a goddamn coincidence, not proof that games take completely normal children and turn them into sociopaths... Sheesh..

Now to show off comments making complete NEW lies up, all completely false, but apparently some people besides wackos in anti-gamer right wing religious groups like to make up false claims about violent games...

“But the videos in question, which the court ruled that kids can see, allows them to virtually stalk, beat, rape, and defile virtual women in a range of perverse and degrading ways. That is purely sick”

THERE ARE NO GAMES THAT ALLOW PEOPLE TO DO THESE THINGS….

Source : http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/07/sex-and-the-supremes/

“It’s offensive and embarrassing the Supreme Court will afford murder in all its contexts—self-defense, revenge, military mission, zombie killer, mobster—and variety–disembowelment, decapitation, abassination, guns, chainsaws—more protection that sex.”

Most of these things aren’t even murder…… Only assassination, mobster are… The rest are either military combat, “self-defense”, or combat…. how is “zombie killer” murder? Idiots like this astound me. Especially when they bring up disembowelment, and and decapitation, which are rare in most violent games!

Source : http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/07/sex-and-the-supremes/

"1 comment of type A2) Making up new lies about violent games – Claims violent games as training tools to recruit military at young age, says violent games ‘permanently burn memories’ into the minds of children, blah-blah blah… Common. Back up your crap. You can’t therefore it’s a lie."

Source : http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-10430358-17.html

1 Comment of type A2) Making up new lies about violent games – Claims violent games and action movies have too much things happening at once, overloading the brain, causing ‘anti-social behavior’ in kids. WTF?

Source : http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-10430358-17.html

“But the videos in question, which the court ruled that kids can see, allows them to virtually stalk, beat, rape, and defile virtual women in a range of perverse and degrading ways. That is purely sick”

Source : http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/07/sex-and-the-supremes/

"The Commenter Claims just because he drove around for days and because of the length, he was forced to automatically do things without knowing he did them, the ‘kids that play games 18,20,24 hours a day will go into kill mode!’ Is this another hack psychologist worshipper unknowingly or knowingly advertising his best seller?"

Now they are making up utter crap about games in comments.... Some of these comments seem like something a moron in a right wing pro-censorship group would say, like the "perminantly burn memories", and "overloading the brain", and the "going into kill mode" ones...  In my honest opinion we have a bunch of pro-censorship morons both saying things like this, all completely made up to the media, especially after school shootings, and also on forums with fake names. I can't prove it, but those 3 comments are too suspicious to ignore, in light of all the very similar nonsense made up claims anti-gamers keep on making on talk shows, newspapers, etc after a school shooting. I have heard every single goddamned fake claim being made up about violent games by the anti-gamer right wing morons. I know them all by heart... These ones are new to me... What actual gain would a normal person have to actually post some claim they made up to make games look bad on a message board? None. Now what gain would a right wing anti-gaming moron from one of  those anti-gaming groups that keep spreading crap about violent games in the media, have to post something like this on forums? More people could believe the lies they post, and their claims could be spread to other forums. It all spirals out of control when one person online says one fake claim, others repost it quite quickly, everyone believes it because people today have been brainwashed to believe everything they hear.  This effect, greatly aids such right wing violent game censors, trust me it does..

This whole spread of lies is, IMHO, part of a much bigger scheme to get violent games banned for 1 reason, they offend religious right nutjobs.  There is evidence to suggest in many places that the media makes up utter crap about violent games, and the politicians believe it. But that isn't enough to get a ban to happen, because they need faked evidence to sway the supreme court, to fight against a claim of unconstitutionality. Faked evidence in the form of hoaxes were spread in April/May 1999 and in an Amicus Brief done by a right wing pro-family group, these hoaxes were cited as evidence to prove violent games make people violent.... This group has been known to recycle 2 very false claims about violent games over and over again, the claims that games have "decapitation of prostitutes" and "sodomizing victims with broomsticks". This groups claims cannot be true, because research done by me on my wordpress blog revealed how fake these 2 claims are. 

This whole thing is been engineered to create the violent game bans the censor/anti-gamers want.... The thing is that the media spreading lies and hoaxes being made by the media and others are being used to hijack the supreme court now.... You then add in justices who are for violent games through the election of a conservative christian president (like the candidate who supports a complete game ban), and what's to stop the supreme court from having a hung jury (and going back to the law that was passed before they looked at it on grounds of unconstitutionality), or even finding it constitutional via faked evidence in Amicus Briefs and 4 justices who support the idea of a violent games ban. This could happen if you add these 2 things in, the faked evidence in Amicus briefs and new justices who support bans... It's scary... Something must be done about it and the lies being spread... More on that for another article or video... Stay tuned gamers

Surveys about violent games not to be trusted (old post)

(this is an old post from my wordpress blog that got deleted there by accident a long time ago, after it was published in 2011 or 2010. I thought it was important that I republish it here)

So the anti-gamers are at it again.... A new 'phone survey' says that 67% of adults surveyed want violent games restricted to adults. No suprise there... But the real issue, is that the survey also says that 39% of adults surveyed think that violent game makers should be held liable when "it can be proven that a violent game causes a real life crime to happen".

You might think this is some honest survey, but trust me it is not .Here is the wording of the study, according to the gamepolitics article I got it from (look in the comments):

"For those wondering, here is the wording and order of the questions in their survey:

1* How concerned are you about the level of violence in many video games today?

2* Do violent video games lead to more violence in our society?

3* Should states be allowed to prohibit the sale or rental of violent video games to minors?

4* Who is more responsible for limiting the amount of sex and violence children are exposed to in video games – video game makers, the government or parents?

5* Should the makers of violent video games be held liable in court if it can be shown that their games led to someone committing a violent act?"

Question 1, makes the viewers think about the violent games link to violence, and question 2, makes them think about their opinions on whether violent games cause real-life violence, biasing their answers after that.  Question 4 then uses that bias to incite a yes response! This is especially troubling, because what it does is that it makes certain people want to sue, or advocate lawsuits against, violent game makers. If question 1 and 2 were never asked, the chance is greater that question 4 would have had less people who say "yes, sue the assholes marketing violent trash to my 2 year old!"



This is another sly tactic to win viewers over, to make them believe the nonsense that violent games make kids violent, when the only people who said that were biased talk show guests misrepresenting studies that were biased in themselves, that seemed to prove violent games make kids more aggressive. It's mind control, plain and simple... In a sense...


Take the amount of people who thought violent games should be outright banned or sued (11% of 44 comments, 38% of all comments wanting legal action performed (banning, suing, restricting to adults) to all age groups on my study of comments (here), and you see more people want game makers sued than ever before. It seems it's a new fad, "sue ID software,etc" after a school shooting. More people are believing these lies spread around, even in an Amicus Brief for SCOTUS (whose lies were debunked here), and it's scary..

Another issue I would  like to bring up, is that the sample size of the survey is a mere 1000 people (probably 1000 people who are in right wing conservative communities that believe the nonsense about violent games that the above amicus brief used to try to sway the SCOTUS decision), out of 300 million. That is 3% of the population of america surveyed, less than a population of one state! In fact that 1000 people surveyed, although it seems big to people who don't look at this stuff, is a mere 1/200000 of the population of one state of the US on average... It's tiny. According to true knowledge, the population of Boston, MA was found to be 618,231 in 2011. That's 618 times as much as the survey sample size. So basically the sample size they used skipped 97% of the population! It's just to small! I'm not saying the survey would have to encompass an entire state or the entire US, but 1000 people, is way to small. I think they chose 1000 poeple who were anti violent games being sold..... Just my opinion. They never asked "Do you think violent games should be banned to all age groups?", to anyone, but since so many people wanted violent game makers sued out of the sample size, it makes me think that they wanted them banned too. Usually people who want lawsuits would also not want games they think cause violence, sold to anyone... No matter how old.  Just My opinion...

So basically they are saying the 390 or so people want violent game makers sued out of 1000. That 390 is 39% of 1000, but on the scale of all the people living in an area the same population as Boston in 2011, that's only 0.6% of the population of that area! In contrast, the 67% of the 1000 who wanted violent games restricted to adults (roughly 670 out of 1000) is 1% of that area with the same population of Boston in 2011. That's bigger than the 0.6% but is still tiny..... These survey's don't mean much when 1% of the population of a boston populated area want violent games restricted to adults. There are probably more people in that area who think President Obama should be Impeached.



Speaking of surveys.... I am planning an experiment to see how far the anti-gamers will go. Stay tuned...

Insite into the Controversy Surrounding certain Video game Mods... (old blog repost)

(This blog post was posted on my other blog at wordpress a few years ago but got deleted for some other reason. I am reposting it here)

After reading about that article complaining about the ‘game’ (really a Half-life 2 MOD)  school shooter 2012, I began to wonder how the people writing the biased article linked in that debunking got their hands on the mod. It’s not like the mod was popular. It wasn’t even popular in the HL2 Community, so how the hell did the people attacking the game on the article find out about it?

Mod communities are closed communities. Fans of the game the mod is made for, and only those fans, go to the communities looking for mods for it.  So how does a nanny state representitive who wants to find the newest violent game to complain about find out about a mod, to complain about it?  In the case of a real game like GTA, there is countless ads on TV, articles about it coming out, etc. For mods none of this exists.  So for someone to find that mod to attack it on a site, must mean that they are in the Community releasing the mod, at least I think so. Do the anti-gamers go to gaming mod sites, and then write articles complaining about the mod being released by the mainstream video game press… It seems likely this is the case…

Only problem, is this is the only time that I’ve EVER seen a mod for a game, be targetted like it’s a game, by the violent game attackers. The thing is that this is not the first time someone has made some tasteless school shooting level or mod for a game. Go to Doomworld idgames site (where doom levels are hosted) and you will find this lovely gem, from back in 1997. Overlooked by all the anti-gamers. Was really the same thing as school shooter : american tour 2012, minus the kill yourself ending. Not that I like this kind of game, but….. It’s been done before. What caused SSAT 2012 to get so much negative press? It's content is horrible, making light of the school shooting tragedies, make no mistake, but if this article would never have been written, no one would have commented on it outside the gaming community. There are tasteless mods for many games online... None are complained about in the media.

Who is inside these communities finding this stuff to write about? Is it someone being an idiot and seeing all the bad responses to get something to laugh at, because he has a sick sense of humor? Is he someone doing this on purpose to see how idiotic the comments are about violent games, to see what misconceptions they spread? Was the whole mod made for that purpose? Or is the writer some anti-gamer latching onto a mod that is tasteless to use it as ammo to attack Valve software with. It's not like Valve hasn't been hit with lawsuit threats before. Some lawyer threatened to sue valve when 'he' (the lawyer - in a news article, no less) named counterstrike as an influence to the V-Tech Killer's rampage. With no other proof that Cho played counterstrike, presumably to use it as ammo against valve in some big lawsuit, even though valve did not make Counterstrike. The thing is that he said that 'Cho Played Half-life'.  Currently, the articles slamming the Mod (or "game" as they label it for this purpose) don't mention Valve. But what if one did? The company who has developed some of the best FPS games ever (half-life, HL2, Portal, Left 4 dead 1/2) would be ruined.... Out of all the gaming companies that DON'T deserve this kind of link to a school shooting, valve is it.  Their games are usually puzzle intensive, where combat is a challenge, and violence is not rewarded like in GTA. They pretty much started the ideas that formed the tactical shooter revolutioin, and lead to Far Cry, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., etc.


 Valve would get lawsuit threats, a crapload of media complaints, and maybe even another senate hearing that could lead to stronger restrictions, a govt enforced rating system that I think could be abused to 'effectively' ban violent games to all age groups in the US. Is this the purpose of the article......
I don’t know. But I would love to find out

ANOTHER Site Spreading BS about violent games... WHEN WILL IT END?

So I was browsing the net looking for a certain candidates views on violent game bans that I was writing about last week, when I  came across this lovely right wing Conservative site that is spreading utter BS about violent games to people, claiming to be a trustworthy source. Now I will add a disclaimer,  the site may not be Intentionally doing this, but many of the PRO side points are quite suspicious at best, and down right fabrications or bad misinterpretations at worst... Anyone looking at this will believe the points debunked below, because most people believe what they hear: Here is the site I am talking about.

http://videogames.procon.org/

Now on  to the debunking, shall we.. After all, this IS what I do here, debunk BS spread about violent games by ANYONE!

"97% of 12-17 year olds in the US played video games in 2008, thus fueling an $11.7 billion domestic video game industry. In 2008, 10 of the top 20 best-selling video games in the US contained violence." Really, 97% of 12-17 year olds played video games? Shocker. Notice it said video games, not Violent ones...  It then tries to claim that this is the reason that the gaming industry made so much money. Then it immediately tried to assume this 12-17 year olds must have played  the violent ones!!! So  "10 of the top 20 best-selling video games in the US contained violence" Shocker!!! Let me tell you one thing. Most violent games aren't even played by such "young kids"... The target demographic is 18-35, according to the ESA. They also say that the average age of gamers are 30 years old... They even did a study proving this, unlike the article linked above, which tries to imply that 12-17 year olds are playing "violent" games. Now Let me define violent game. A game with Combat in it, and killing. Not neccisarily a Uber Violent one like GTA where you run over old ladies, or games where you decapitate people, BLAH BLAH BLAH. The media for years has been using examples of rare tastelessly violent games as a way to say most games are like this, but it's more than wrong because, according to a study I did using a wikipedia list of 605 FPS games released since 1986 on my other blog, only 4% or so were what I think most people would  consider "tastelessly" violent. That's 21 out of 605. Not even 1/10! The real number of tastelessly violent games is actually lower than this because FPS games make up only 1/5 of total violent games and tastlessly violent games, at least to me, seem quite rare... Now on to the more severe lies...

"Increasing reports of bullying can be partially attributed to the popularity of violent video games. The 2008 study Grand Theft Childhood reported that 60% of middle school boys who played at least one Mature-rated game hit or beat up someone, compared to 39% of boys that did not play Mature-rated games."

The sample size is not mentioned here, 60% of anything less than  5000 people means nothing... A lot of studies  that try  to prove this stuff use small sample sizes to make it look like it's an serious issue, and by possibly manipulating the results to show high percentages of people pre-chosen to show the result they want they can fudge the study. Recently a study was done saying that 1000 people all supported violent game legislation. 1000 people may seem like a lot to the untrained eye, but 1000 is Tiny, like in 625 times smaller than the Population of Boston, MA in 2011, 625,000 or so. So finding 1000 people who support legislation ignores the other Millions who do not. It's statistically insignificant, and the fact that such studies, more than likely pick and chose 1000 people who support it anyway, means that they should not be trusted. Not saying the study above isn't trust worthy or the one mentioned in the article but you have to learn how to critically examine such studies...



"Video games often reward players for simulating violence, and thus enhance the learning of violent behaviors. "

Most violent games don't even do this at all. Ones that do are things like GTA, Sure, and uber violent games like blood, but many games don't even make dead enemies drop items at all these days. Very few actually force players  to even kill any enemies, notable exceptions are quake 2, and serious sam type games. So much for rewarding violent behavior. Yes, killing is part of many games, but to kill, in order to survive hostile opponents trying to kill you, isn't really rewarding anything but survival. Very Few FPS games that I have played (and I have played 100's), really give you substantial rewards for killing... The whole realism thing in modern shooters (a BIG thing today) prevents significant rewards because realism requires minimal rewards per kill... A lot of these games focus on puzzles and missions to accomplish as well. Killing enemies is secondary. You can beat 90% of shooters without killing enemies. Just because killing is part of these games doesn't mean they reward "simulating violence". Also the claim that games that "reward simulation of violence" enhance the learning of violent behaviors is crazy. Most people who play violent games won't go out and kill people because they have been rewarded in a game to do so in the game, not in real life... These points mentioned completely ignore that real life violence is different than simulated violence in a game, on purpose many times, to make it look like people who play violent games will want to kill for real... 



"Violent video games desensitize players to real-life violence. It is common for victims in video games to disappear off screen when they are killed or for players to have multiple lives."

There is actually no real evidence to support the idea that violent games desensitize people to real life violence. Define Real life violence, then look at what desensization really means. It means that people who consume violent entertainment get more used to the violence in it. Real life violence is Completely separate from  this, Period!  There is evidence to suggest that consuming said violence entertainment, or anything really, will make a person more used to it. That's all the evidence is really saying. Saying it proves that people get used to a completely separate, different thing (real life violence), is a willful, stupid, and deceitful misinterpretation of studies that prove something different. If there is any study that says violent games desensitize people to real life violence, then I seriously doubt that it isn't flawed like all the other video game "aggression" studies being linked as proof of violent games causing real life violence by anti-gaming morons everywhere for 10 years. 

Now on to the claims that there are lots of games that have multiple lives, and disappearing characters. Where the hell did they get this from? Only Extremely KIDDIE games like Super Noah's Ark 3D have Disappearing characters that completely disappear. Only one recent game series features this, that's serious sam. Most games have corpses that NEVER disappear. Making Dissapearing characters is way to make a game seem LESS violent to kids, and is only done in KID type games to prevent the game from showing off VIOLENT DEATHS... HELLO!  And the idea that people in games have multiple lives. I can name all the popular games in FPS history that conform to this. Wolf3d, Descent Series, and Serious sam. THATS IT. Most FPS games ditched the whole lives thing because it made it too easy. The change was made in 1993 for gods sake, with Doom, which revolutionized  the idea that players who die don't get to come back without restarting the level or loading a save game. Lives in FPS games are almost non-existent.




"A 2000 FBI report (187 KB)  includes playing violent video games in a list of behaviors associated with school shootings."

Ok... So there is this study that lists risk factors for school shootings, and it listed being obsessed with violent entertainment. So a bunch of anti-gamer DickNozzles starting purposely interpreting it as proof that playing violent games is the risk factor, not being obsessed with any form of violent entertainment. Since I couldn't actually quote the study, I screenshotted it below. Lo and Behold, this proves it again. The people who made this site committed this crime.

Nowhere here does it A) Single out violent games B) Make it so simply playing them is a risk factor like the article linking to it says.  The article above is Purposely misinterpreting the facts to create a moral panic. Plain and simple.   The FBI study finds that "themes of hatried, violence, weapons and mass destruction Recur in virtually all his activities, hobbies, and past times". So simply playing violent games will make this happen? WTF! Sounds like these people who posted the article Don't know people who play violent games mostly Do NOT obsess over real life violence. The study also says "The student spends inordinate amounts of time playing games with violent themes and seems to be more interested in violent images than the game itself". Where does this equate simply playing violent games with school shootings. NOWHERE.   Then it says "On the internet the student regularly searches for web sites involving violence, weapons, and other disturbing subjects. There is evidence the student downloaded and kept material from these sites". Where does this equate playing Violent games, with school shootings? NOWHERE. It equates being Obsessed with Real violence, Hatred, And wanting to commit real violence, as a risk factor. This whole paragraph DOES NOT simply link playing violent games with school shootings. It links OBSESSION WITH VIOLENCE IN GENERAL. These people are making up BS about this.... The FBI wouldn't actually link simply playing violent games at all. They aren't pro family enough to do  that... Only right wing nutjobs who want violent games banned do that..




"Violent video games cause players to associate pleasure and happiness with the ability to cause pain in others."

Looking at  the source of this proved that it came from one of the "hack psychologists" going around on talk shows in April 1999 claiming the military uses violent games to break down the inhibition to kill, all while selling his book, a big batch of lies... If a blog run by an actual person who was in the armed forces debunks the claim, then this claim sounds suspicious as well.. I know for a fact that even though I played wolf3d for the first time at age 13, duke3d at age 16, etc, I did not "associate pleasure and happiness with the ability to cause pain in others". The whole idea that this happens, is using the same analogy as people misinterpreting desensitizing studies to prove that violent games desensitize people to real life violence, not the fake video game violence. This makes it look like games that make people want to cause pain in a virtual environment make people want to do it in real life. It's BS... Just trust me on that... If it were true, you would have a LOT more cases of gamers hurting real people. I don't see that, or any evidence that that is actually happening... So this is more than likely bunk too, IMHO.

"A 1998 study found that 21% of games sampled involved violence against women (165 KB) . Exposure to sexual violence in video games is linked to increases in violence towards women and false attitudes about rape (47 KB)  such as that women incite men to rape or that women secretly desire rape."

Number 1, the (probably) flawed study was done in 1998! More than 10 years ago! Number 2, since then most FPS or violent games, don't even have women to kill in them. And if they do, that's not saying they do this on purpose to single violence against women on purpose. Then the thing makes up the claim about sexual violence. Like all the other claims of "rape simulators" in violent games, this is also BS, because the last time a game actually had a scene where there was a controllable rape scene where a woman was a victim and the player was a perpetrator was, Custer's Revenge, in 1989, an ADULT only game not sold in normal stores!!!! Since then only 3 games have even had rape in them, Phantasmogoria, which features the player being raped in a cutscene, and Fear 2, which ends with the evil chick villian Alma, Raping you in arguably  the most fucked up ending any game has ever had, but get this, it is most likely a dream sequence....  Not once has there been a game that had virtual rape in it where a women was a victim, and if a guy was a victim, well, I have never heard of it. And the claim  that violent games lead to "increases in rape" came straight out of a moron Fox news put on their "bullshitting" on Bulletstorm 3 years ago, which they tried to say bulletstorm causes real life rape, with this analogy "Since Rape is a violent crime and violent games cause violence, then violent games have caused rape"... It's Fucking bullshit. The person saying this had NO proof that violent games caused real life rape, just said they did without actual evidence.



"Violent video games can train youth to be killers. The US Marine Corps licensed Doom II in 1996 to createMarine Doom in order to train soldiers. In 2002, the US Army released first-person shooter America's Army to recruit soldiers and prepare recruits for the battlefield. "

Nowhere here, did they mention that the first was a training for group tactics, and was a Modification of the game not the game itself, with HEAVY REALISTIC changes to gameplay, and graphics, almost nothing from Doom in it at all. They want to make it look like the military uses real games like Doom 2 to train soldiers to kill on, but the blog ran by the military dude linked above "design synthesis" disproved that, didn't it?  Now the thing about americas army is true, it WAS a recruitment tool. But it's the only game that ever was a recruitment tool, period. That's out of THOUSANDS of violent games, most of which aren't tastelessly violent..



"California passed a law in 2005 that would have required violent video games to include an "18" label and criminalized the sale of these games to minors. On June 27, 2011, the US Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in Brown vs. Entertainment Merchants Association (485 KB) that the law violated free speech rights."

What they don't say is that this law would have used a really subjective Obscenity clause like language to determine what games would be fined, by saying that games that are morbidly violent and "lack literary, scientific and educational value" are targeted for fines. This would allow them to fine any game they got offended by, period, causing many tame games to be fined, causing stores to pull any game that could be fined under the law off  the shelves, causing most violent games not to be sold in stores, causing the companies that make lesser known games go out of business at the least. That's what the BS article REFUSES to tell people...  It claims to be a trusted source on the points made by the experts...  All it is is spreading plainly debunkable lies to fuel censorship... It's stinks, like most of the polished turds that get released by the anti-gamers...

Google lists thousands of takedown notices of Fraudulent "Infringing" Content

So I was reading how google would put any site lower in their search results based on copyright takedown notices given to them by copyright holders. On an article about this (not the linked one), there was a link to this google site showing how many takedown notices google receives per month and what sites are complained about. Most are free file hosting sites, and warez sites, but some big surprises crept in..

First, nearly half of the 2000 links I looked through when browsing page 1 to the page where the 2000 link was posted, were porn sites. A lot of blogging sites crept in as well, and so did facebook, twitter, and other social networking. However, their have been copyright takedowns of gaming file hosting sites as well, probably fraudulent ones.

Here are 10 screenshots showing what sites were given fraudulent takedowns, all circled in red.. These results were set per month so the URLS listed were all complained about in 1 month.

I saw quite a bit of blogger listed, mainly because there are blogger blog with pirated content on them, but wordpress? Sounds like a fraudulent claim, because I refuse to believe that wordpress hosts 763 URLS that have infringing content on them.

Yahoo? WTF!  It's a search engine and doesn't actually host anything that could be considered pirated or infringing. With 1808 "Url's" to boot. I refuse to believe that this is a valid takedown notice, mainly because besides yahoo mail (which nothing pirated can be hosted on), and my.yahoo, what else do you have?

No We have the 335 Facebook takedown notices. Now on facebook, there might be some infringing content, but 335? Sounds awfully fradulent to me. I refuse to believe that 335 URLS have been found per month with obvious infringing content.  Same thing with the below twitter.com takedowns. Twitter doesn't even allow people to host anything but file links with very short descriptions and short 30 character "tweets", where are the 333 twitter infringing URLS? Made up, that's where!

Yet another fraudulent search engine takedown notice with 274 URLS of "infringing content" that is supposedly on a site that can't even host that stuff. Google.com has search results and the mere idea that they are linking to infringing material might cause these "takedown notices" but there actually isn't any material on google that is infringing, and notice how this said "google.com", as in the search engine, not youtube, not gmail, not anything else but the search engine itself... Sounds really fishy to me.

Now we got 239 quite possibly fraudulent takedown notices of content on Scribd.com, a document hosting site.  I've never heard of scribd.com even being used to host copyrighted material, and while these results could be genuine, I'm not so sure... Moving on...

Now HERE is the one that pisses me off. Gamefront, formally known as filefront, is a gaming file hosting site, a really big one. It has thousands of video game demos, patches, mods, etc. Not once have I ever encountered anything pirated being hosted there... And I have never even heard of it being associated with piracy, but yet we get 232 takedown notices per month on a gaming file hosting site which probably deletes anything that could be infringing. Are these legit? Hell NO! These sounds fraudulent beyond belief. It's like 2 copyright holders and 2 more organizations insisted on filing takedown notices on all legal files, because If you believe that filefront/gamefront has mostly legal files, how the hell can they have 239 pirated URL's discovered per month? It sounds really fishy, fishy like an attempt to take down mods or something like that...

Now we get 192 takedown notices for dailymotion.com, a video sharing site. Whether these takedowns are legit or not remains to be seen, but judging by youtube and it's thousands of fraudulent takedown notices done by people trying to make a buck off of innocent uploaders, you really cannot trust these to be genuine, can you?

Another yahoo.com search result... Moving on...

Finally, another 66 livejournal URL's being "found" per month, by 26 quite possibly bogus copyright holders, and 19 "organizations". I have never heard of livejournal as a source for infringing stuff, and I refuse to believe that 66 have been found per month.....

What we have here, is an example of Copyright Fraud being done on a large scale by people trying to shut down sites that host LEGAL, Non-infringing content. Not once have I discovered any infringing (full games,etc) files on Filefront, or infringing content on Google itself, or on yahoo or wordpress  or on Scribd, etc. Infringing documents maybe but 239 per month? Yeah Right!!! It seem like most of these circled ones are quite questionable at least and obviously fraudulent at worst. And to bring up another completely different subject : Look at all the porn sites listed.... Is copyright law being abused to shut down porn?

It looks like it is, maybe part of the GOP's "War on Porn" that they announced recently. If the morons in the right wing can over abuse copyright  law to take down Porn, then they can abuse it to take down any site that gets their panties in a bunch (Porn, Violent Games, Modding Sites, Youtube, Social Networking), because I don't believe that Porn is infringing, hell I don't see how 16,000+ notices on tons of  porn sites are all infringing on someones copyright. I see how they are all fraudulent to censor them too..

If these results are the ones that will all be listed lower in the search results, then the internet has already been censored, and it will only get worse...