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OMG! wer did Evry1 go!
You may, or may not, have noticed that things have been just a teensy bit quiet here at Kit Games. There have a been a few issues on both sides of the Country that have kept us staff from making regular updates, but fear not! We've got some content coming to you this week, so check back very soon. (y'know...like..monday or tuesday. Soon)


Nass

News For The Week Of May 4th

Another week, another post. On time, once again.

• Advergaming powers activate! Shape of an H&M shill! I totally don't get this in it's entirety... Never really dug the Sims too much, so maybe it's just over the top of my head here, but shouldn't advergaming still be making gaming... uh, cheaper? Where's the goodwill for the people who you might want to soon sell your affordably priced fashionable clothes to? Or are gamers not included in that demographic?

• Now I've said in the past that Consumer Affairs is basically worthless. They have a tendency to write to the lowest common denominator which always leaves me feeling like someone is talking to me like a rather dull sheep. Fairly often I'll read something there and it's kind of like they don't actually have someone checking things for grammar or flow before they are posted. Some of the stuff they have is good info, do not get me wrong, but this article on video games is not some of that stuff. Take every gamer stereotype and have some drunken travel hippy (you think I kid...) rehash it for you in a semi-cohesive manner and there you go. Have these people ever actually tried to immerse themselves into gamer culture before writing an article? What's that? No? Curious.

• Oh my god. Seriously? Srsly? It's not like this kid said "OMG VATECH SHOOTZES WAS SO AWZOMNLFDSKL!!!1" and built the map. This had to take time to do, the kid was proud of his work... He just had really bad timing. And a hammer is a deadly weapon? what the hell? There is so much wrong with this whole thing I don't know where to start. Which also reminds me, why didn't they arrest the other kids in the school who played the map? They were doing some terroristic training, you know?

• WoWcard? WoVisa? Are you kidding me, a World of Warcraft Visa card? I want to dismiss this out of hand, but you know... No annual fee, a fairly reasonable APR after a 12 month 0% rate and a full penny on the dollar (one 'reward point' per dollar spent... almost like xp!) goes to buying you more months of WoW. A WoW player with half-assed financial skills could be playing for free indefinitely just based on monthly purchases. Or every time you buy another 2000 gold, it's like Bliz encourages that and gives you a free month's worth of play for it. Huzzah!

There will be more. There's always more.

I'm Not Making Any Friends, Either.

I really want to dismiss this out of hand. But I cannot entirely disagree with Save the Children's statements, though there is no real methodology to the conclusions they draw. The gist of their study being that since kids are given more things that are insulating (ie: video games, ipods, TV) to the outside world, they don't interact as much as they could or should with others and it retards their ability to make friends or deal with people. Now, mind this was determined via a survey of primary (in the colonies we call it elementary) school teachers.

This is where I agree and disagree. Children don't find these insulating devices and pastimes on the ground. I'm pretty sure in most first world countries they cannot go ahead and get a job down at the textile mill to buy these things themselves. You get where I'm going with this? Don't think I'm singling parents out, either. I'm looking square at you too, primary school teachers and staff.

Here's the trick... As children, they are in our care. Ready yourselves for some Hillary Clinton style bullshit right here: it takes a village to raise a child. There, I said it. Especially in this day and age where people are increasingly busy and insulated from the surrounding world.

Technology is no more evil than a rock or a tree. It all comes down to how you use it. The problem here is that parents are just giving their kids these implements and turning them loose into the world. Once loosed upon us, they become our problem. When they are herded into a school that I as a taxpayer paid for, they become society's problem. Schools should be largely gadgetry free. You step into those buildings and that shit gets shut off. Anything else gets confiscated until either the end of day or until the parent can come on in and get it back.

Like everything else that some application of technology gets blamed on, this comes back to the human animal. Kids don't need less technology (they probably do, but that's an argument for another post), they need to be taught how to use it and deal with it, and when to turn it off.