Minstrel’s Log

Remember those days? Remember when games were places where you did horrible things to relatively innocent characters? Remember when the “old folks” were worried that gamers might confuse the imaginary world of video games with the real world? Remember when every time someone went crazy and killed a bunch of people we’d quickly learn that they were a gamer who couldn’t understand that games are nothing like reality?

Well the tides have turned. Now there are such responsible games as Heavy Rain - where empathizing with the game’s Father-Son relationship is a core element of the game, or Prius Online - where at a certain level you get a “companion” who you care for, and whose personality you can shape as the game progresses. Which is not to mention the countless other “caretaking” games, where you grow fish, tend a garden, etc, etc, etc.

So what’s the latest horror to come out of computer games? Well apparently a couple let their baby starve to death while they were off playing Prius Online. The media is spinning it as if they were off taking very good care of a kid in the fantasy world, and didn’t take any care for their kid in the real world.

Yes, you read that right, it’s now (effectively) being said that the problem with gamers is that they’re not putting what they do in games into real-life.

But hey, maybe that’s a good thing. We’re only one step away from the problem being that “gamers” aren’t putting the right parts of the game into real life — ie. when people do bad things it’s not because they’re “gamers”, it’s because they are people, and they are acting stupid of their own accord.

Perhaps one day someone will say: “Remember the good ol’ days of video games, when we could do really stupid things and be excused because the video game made us do it? Ah, well.” And then they’ll start World War III, or unleash some biological super-weapon, or dress all in black and jump out of their spaceship, and no one will blame it on a video game.

They’ll blame it on the evil waves from those newfangled quantum gravity cell phones - those things’ll make your toes fall off, haven’t you heard?

In a fit of sheer Genius, the boffins at Redux Beverages, working with Omni Consumer Products, have created the electrolyte-containing drink that’s got what plants (and, it is presumed, all other self-respecting organisms) crave - Brawndo: The Thirst Mutilator!

Redux Beverages, some may remember, is the same relatively new drink producer who brought us Cocaine (currently known as No Name or Insert Name Here: in the U.S.), that delightful drink which got the FDA to produce such gems of literature as:

• “Your product, Cocaine, is a drug”
• “Street drug alternatives are not intended to supplement the diet.”
• “Accordingly, street drug alternatives do not qualify as dietary supplements.”
• “Your sale of Cocaine without an approved application[…]”

(See the Official FDA Warning Letter for the full details.)

Omni Consumer Products, however, has been around since at least 1987, lending some much-needed stability to the brand. While one of their previous products (the ED-209) was blasted by critics for being unreliable, it is not expected that sales of this product should suffer. In a side note, it appears that Omni has simplified their logo, removing the “C” and “P” from the middle yet keeping the hexagonal “O”.

Story at PE.com
Some of the reaction
Brawndo Marketing Video
More reaction, this time from a well-respected film critic
An Old OCP Communications Advertisement (Warning: May not be suitable for children)

I came across an interesting site the other day. Not something I expected to come across, but…

fishbase.org

It’s a database of fish. 29,400 Species, 222,400 Common names, 43,000 Pictures… there’s a fascinating link on the main page to Fish Identification that leads you through identifying any fish you may happen to come across.

A great site to explore.