#NoMansSky: What the hell Happened?

    When No Man's Sky was first teased in 2013, it was well received and and immediately began generating hype. "An infinite procedurally generated universe filled with all sorts of strange flora and fauna and terrain features to discover on countless worlds" caused it to fit right in with the likes of Elite: Dangerous and Star Citizen as people have been scrambling to get their hands on the perfect Space Sim. As short and vague videos of zooming over gorgeous planets and wandering through alien forests, shooting down pirates and blowing chunks out of asteroids out in space were released, people went crazy and with the continued vagueness about the game's actual game play as well as the typical indie studio mistake of making ambitious promises they don't have the ability to keep, they hype train for No Man's Sky reached biblical proportions. As the years dragged on and people got more and more eager to get their hands on what they believed would be a game that would bring about the second coming of Christ, the hype train reached speeds that would only result in a catastrophic crash...and that is exactly what happened.
    People believed that a dev team with only a couple completely unrelated games under their belt comprised of only 15 people would be able to do in just 3 years with barely any funding what Triple-A studios with hundreds of people and millions of dollars behind them have been unable to. So when the game finally launched just a couple short weeks ago, people were met with the harsh reality: No Man's Sky was very obviously a game made by an inexperienced indie studio with just 15 people behind it. Optimization issues, crashes, bugs, laughable generation of creatures, the rubiks-cube syndrome (in which yes there might be a quintillion combinations but they all just look like a rubik's cube, so to might there be a quintillion planets in No Man's Sky but only a handful of those will be distinguishable from any of the others), and a lack of easily noticeable depth to the game. It was a video game, not the answer to world peace, and that is what people need to realize about hype: the end result will NEVER live up to the expectations of  years worth hype, so declaring "there ain't no breaks on the hype train" will only result in your experience being far less than it could be. Hype killed No Man's Sky's first impressions.

    So is No Man's Sky any good? Yes. It actually is in spite of everything that has happened. No, there is no multiplayer, no the game looks nothing like the trailers, and yes, it is disappointing compared to what the hype made it seem like it would be, but in the same way that Elite: Dangerous is a niche title that requires a certain kind of person to enjoy it, so to does No Man's Sky require a special kind of person to truly appreciate what it offers. Pictured here is a planet that I discover in what I dubbed the "Horizon System". The planet, Horizon 1, was a lush tropical forest world of large islands and shallow oceans teeming with life and filled with rare and valuable resources, protected by highly aggressive sentinels. The world had frequent rain storms and gorgeous sunsets that reminded me of mangos, which only added to the feeling of being in a tropical paradise. Deep caverns filled with glowing crystal formations, as well as being dotted with the ancient ruins and monoliths of the Vy'Keen race of aliens ensured that I had hours upon hours worth of content to explore here. And that's really what No Man's Sky is about: exploration. Finding something you haven't seen before, something that catches your attention and imagination and makes you say "I want to see everything on this planet!". The game's narrative and ultimate goals might be shallow, but the lore and interactions with the various alien races and the exploration of planets is very deep indeed. Somebody who truly loves the journey of a game rather than the destination and finds relaxation in wandering aimlessly wondering what they're going to find next will find endless enjoyment in No Man's Sky.

    If people would learn from history and stop getting so hyped over things, and realize that it's okay for people to like things they don't, disappointment like what happened to No Man's Sky would be kept to only the truly atrocious games such as Arkham Knight, Ride to Hell: Retribution, Aliens: Colonial Marines, and anything Konami produces post-Kojima, then niche titles such as No Man's Sky will get the praise and attention they deserve. On top of that though is also another underlying problem: the fact that publishers and studios have banked in on preorder culture as hard as they can and are now purposefully trying to drive the hype up and then suppress pre-launch reviews to make sure that their day-1 sales are as high as they possibly can be, so that way even if day two sells four copies because the game turned out to be utter garbage, the company can still say they had a successful launch and then move on to the next project to do the same exact thing.

DO NOT GIVE IN TO HYPE CULTURE.

No Man's Sky can be purchased on steam for $59.99 here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/275850/

World of Warcraft is Coming to Steam!

     That's right! And you can vote to have the worlds most popular MMO available through steam right here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=694488420! Hm? What's that? This isn't actually World of Warcraft? This is just some random schmuck uploading the Russian version of the "Arthas, my Son" cinematic trailer for World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King? CONGRATS! YOU ARE MORE INTELLIGENT THAN THE ENTIRETY OF VALVE!

     In the latest chapter of the long and bloody history of Steam Greenlight, we see one of the single most idiotic submissions to ever show up. This isn't an asset flip, this isn't some trash meme game, this isn't even another submission of Shooter Tactics, this is literally some buffoon uploading World of Warcraft thinking "this is totally okay to do". And why wouldn't he think that? So much other garbage is allowed on to greenlight that he probably thought his idea would be pretty good compared to some of the other putrid slime of degeneracy that infests that section of Steam. And it is for this reason that I actually voted this game up. That's right. I WANT this to get greenlit. Do you know why? Because if this actually manages to make it on to the store front, Blizzard will send it's army of lawyers dressed up like the god damn Scourge to Valves door step to have a long and very violent chat about "Copyrights". And when that chat is finished, Valve will have no choice but to start having a dedicated quality assurance team overseeing greenlight submissions.
     I'm thinking something along the lines of "you submit your game and then it gets reviewed, and if the QA team thinks your game is high enough quality to be sold, then it will be allowed on to greenlight to be voted on by the masses". I like that idea. It would certainly stop the majority of Shooter Tactics and Slaughtering Grounds and MLG 420 GOTY and your WORLD OF WARCRAFT SUBMISSIONS.

World of Warcraft? Seriously? Of all things you chose World of freaking Warcraft?

#TrustAndSafety: The day Freedom of Expression on Twitter Died.

     It's official, ladies and gentlemen. Freedom of Speech on Twitter is dead. Twitter has created a "Trust and Safety Council" to dictate what is and isn't acceptable behavior on the social media platform. Every single person on that council is a special interest group that seeks to further their own agenda and nothing more. Among them is counter one Anitsa Sarkeesian, who is infamous for attacking gamers over and over again and then screaming "HARASSMENT" when they inevitably fight back. It would seem that if you cry harassment enough that you get invited to twitter to destroy free speech! Twitter has a long history of pandering to the extreme left and political correctness at the expense of their own stocks and value as a company out of fear of being the latest target of the Social Justice Nazi harassment brigade. In a way...poetic. In every way...absolutely despicable. What Twitter has done is give a bunch of people who consider criticism in any form to be harassment the ability to make it harassment. These people all want the same things: to have their ideals go completely unchallenged and for Twitter to be made in to their personal "safe space". For years, ever since the Gamer Gate controversy began, these people have shown over and over again that they want to censor everything they deem "problematic", silence anybody that disagrees with them, and force people in positions of power to give them what they want. And now, Twitter is actually doing it.
     Allow me to explain exactly what is going to start happening. Trust and Safety council gets founded, people complain and express their frustrations at Twitter and everybody involved, and then it just kind of sits there for a while. Waiting. Then, when it all dies down and people think nothing is really going on. Whoops! A well-known figure who openly denounces SJ culture gets banned for "instigating harassment" and "hate speech" and "being problematic". People are going to flip, it's all going to be blamed on the Trust and Safety council, and rightfully so. Then, with all the rage and frustration, the council is going to go to Twitter and say "Look! Look at all these people who are angry! This is all mass harassment! They're from a terrorist group called #GamerGate!". And then over the next several weeks, you're going to start seeing major figures in Gamer Gate get banned. And then less major figures will start getting banned. All for "instigating harassment" regardless of what they actually did. Then you know what will happen? Major right-wing political figures will start to get their twitter presence removed all in the name of "safety". After all! You don't like gay marriage, that makes you problematic! And we can't have ANYBODY that is...problematic... And then what's left? You ever told an SJW to fuck off? Banned. You follow somebody who posts to Gamer Gate who got banned? Banned. You get blocked by Sarkeesian in the past? Banned. Don't like feminism? Banned. Ever said anything that could ever be considered offensive by anybody ever? Banned. Banned, banned, banned, banned. BANNED.

BANNED

     It might take a while. It might not happen for months, maybe a year or two. But this is merely the first step towards total censorship of anything the extreme left doesn't agree with. When you give people who's entire purpose online is to push a political agenda the tools and power to do so...it doesn't matter what their "intentions" are, they will always... ALWAYS abuse their power to ensure that their narrative remains unchallenged. The people on this "Trust and Safety" council are in it for their own sakes. They don't care about anybody unless that person shares political ideals with them. Don't believe me? Just watch. How much you willing to be that if a Social Justice Nazi doxes somebody and sends them death threats...that nothing will happen to them? Oh but God help them if a white christian male who's voting for Donald Trump does it...they'll be banned instantly. "It's okay when WE do it, because we're the RIGHT people doing it for the RIGHT reasons."

#RIPTwitter 

#RIPTwitter: Because apparently we don't know what we want to see

     The current number one trend on Twitter is #RIPTwitter. That seems a bit drastic, as what could possibly kill the social media juggernaut? Some new system that take what twitter does right and makes it better? Nope. Could it be something to do with Anita Sarkeesian showing up to tell twitter how to improve? Doubtful. How about Twitter itself? Ding ding ding. It would seem that Twitter has decided to get rid of the sensible chronological timeline, and replace it with one that uses an algorithm to essentially tell users what they want to see.
     There hasn't been any official word of this yet, but it would seem that it was leaked to several news sources that Twitter intends to release and algorithmic timeline as soon as next week. This would essentially spell disaster for the social platform, as it has been one of the only real-time focused sites out there. Many users have stated in the past that Twitter has saved their lives due to easy access to news reports and instantaneous messaging. Now, if that crucial tweet from your local weather station warning you to stay indoors gets put at the very bottom of your feed because the algorithm decided that you dont really want to see it...you're kinda screwed.
     This is just the latest attempt from the platform, who's obsession with pandering to the political correctness crowd is well documented, to attempt to arbitrarily dictate what people see. The algorithm (if it comes in to effect because let's be honest here, nobody is pleased, at all) might start off harmless, with just showing you the most popular tweets among those you follow, but what's to stop twitter from using their algorithm to detect things you say they don't like? Speak negatively against radical feminists? Flagged. Make a joke about ISIS? Flagged. You associate with the right wing? Flagged. And if you're flagged the algorithm decides that "nobody really wants to see anything you tweet..." and will shove you down to the bottom of every timeline. And if that starts, whats to stop them from shoving all their promoted tweets at the top, or ignore who youre following and just fill timelines with people who share twitters flawed political beliefs?
     When social media starts using algorithms to dictate what people can and can't see...they are essentially stating "we have a narrative we want to push, and you are going to listen whether you like it or not". Social Justice Nazis have in the past stated they want twitter to be turned in to a safe space, and this could very well be the first step to making that happen.

Don't assume anything yet, as there is no official word, and twitter could very well back off with this move due to the mass outrage, but that doesnt mean don't be weary. If this does come to fruition, mark my words, nothing but predetermined "safe" tweets from "designated safe tweeters" will show up for anybody in the not so distant future.