Keepalive: My Big Mouth Shuts, Yakuza, Republic Commando

Sorry for the slow updates. I've been spending some time with family I don't get to see very often.

I gave up on doing any good by arguing on the internet. I tried to be fair. I tried to stick to the point. I tried to overcome prejudice. I failed utterly.

Because the people I talked to had seen a lot of selfish, arrogant people on the other side of the D3 debate, they paint everyone who isn't "on their side" with that brush. It's prejudice. Just like racism, religious intolerance, and partisan politics. In the end, it hurts everyone.

And this is only toy prejudice. Nothing worse than a little stress has been caused here, and it's our own faults for taking ourselves too seriously.

And I'm caught in the paradox of what's at stake. Shouldn't the fact that there's so little at stake make this easy to resolve? But maybe it's the opposite, and with so little at stake, it's not worth the pain of eating our words and apologizing.

Enjoy the rush of anger. Be engaged in the challenge of trading insults. Be thrilled when you say something clever. It's just some self inflicted stress and an engaging waste of time. Geez, sounds like gaming, doesn't it?


Speaking of gaming, :) Yakuza and Yakuza 2 came in the mail. I'm actually surprised how similar the first game is to the demo I played of the second one. There's more fighting in the original. It's pretty annoying actually. You can't go two blocks without some hoodlums trying to accost you. At least they've got a little variety. Sometimes it's Yakuza. Sometimes it's common hoodlums. One time a gal yelled that I touched her butt, and her giant "boyfriend" said he'd let me go if I paid him.

Actually seeing a coordinated con in a video game was cool. It was just window dressing, really. There was only the binary choice of fighting or paying, but it was something different.


Because all my internet heroism was falling flat, I went for the comforting, familiar heroism of Republic Commando. I've learned to run rings around most of the bad guys, but that's part of the appeal of the title as "comfort gaming". I still love when the music comes up, exhorting me to play extra hard.

But sometimes I feel weird about that. These are the soldiers who will eventually serve the empire. We're the bad guys. It's like saluting a swastika. Sure, were fighting bad guys (trade federation aggressors, thieves, and slavers), but with that patriotic music always playing, I don't get the impression we're going to start disobeying once the orders to kill good guys start coming in. I should read the Karen Traviss Republic Commando books and see what happens after the game.

In the meantime, I've got thugs to pummel and battle droids to wreck. :)