October 7, 2009 at 7:38 PM (Ayaikun, Rants For Great Justice)
Tags: rant
Well, I’ve been considering writing about this for a little while, but always decided against it because of the slightly personal nature of the subject matter. But after recent events, I’ve decided it’s a consistent and interesting enough subject to at least put my two cents in about.
I have a bit of an anxiety problem. It’s nothing that I need to see a doctor for (at least, I don’t feel the need to), but it’s definitely there. I have the specific form of OCD called ICD: Impulse Control Disorder. More specifically, I have trichotillomania. In the same way that gamblers can’t stop gambling and pyromaniacs can’t stop setting things on fire, I can’t stop pulling my hair out. Fortunately, I’ve never pulled the hair out of my head, and I’ve been able to “ween” myself off of my eyebrows (which are fully grown in, now, and have been for a few years), but my anxiety still ravages my eyelashes. Luckily, unlike head or eyebrow hair, a lack of eyelashes is easy to cover up with a little eyeliner, so hardly anybody ever notices this fact unless I point it out to them. It’s a pretty 1:1 equation; I get anxious, I pull my eyelashes out.
Other than that, my anxiety usually manifests in the way that everyone else’s does: headaches, stomachaches, and shoulder tension. I have experienced a few anxiety/panic attacks, but they’re always triggered by something (usually, something medical or talking about something medical). But I’ve found an interesting solution to both my hair-pulling and my occasional attacks: video games. Read the rest of this entry »
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September 4, 2009 at 2:40 PM (Ayaikun, Rants For Great Justice)
Tags: pc, ps3, rant, team fortress 2, xbox 360
Yeah, yeah, I know. With the current escapades of Team Fortress 2, I’m sure this is probably a pretty tired subject right now… but I’d like to give my two cents anyway on the subject of MMO bannings.
For those who haven’t heard the news, this is basically the scoop: Team Fortress 2’s random “hat drop” system (which I’m not entirely familiar with, only briefly playing the game months ago) has recently been at the center of a lot of controversy surrounding measures taken by Valve against the use of a third-party program that gave users the advantage over legitimate players. Basically, anyone using the program (which aided them in idling to obtain more hats than those that actually played the game instead of leaving it on while they did other things, like sleep) lost all of their hats, while players who did not partake in the exploit were given a bonus hat. Since this is online gaming and therefore SERIOUS BUSINESS, outrage in both directions was sure to rear its ugly head in no time. Players who wer punished for using the exploiting software are crying out against Valve, citing that they only did it because of weaknesses in the system, because there was no explicit rule against it, etc. etc. The list goes on and on. Either way, there’s a lot of general unhappiness and hostility against the players who DIDN’T cheat, who are now experiencing hardship in game for their honesty.
As a long-time player oFinal Fantasy XI (five years, actually), I’ve seen things like this happen more times than I can count. In this TF2 example, my opinion is pretty clear cut: You cheated. You used third-party tools that probably went against the TOS. It should have been common sense that you there was always the possibility of punishment, and you should’ve been ready to accept it. Honestly, Valve is being pretty lenient in not just outright throwing bans left and right like other companies may have. But it’s always not so easy, and sometimes the innocent become casualties in mass-reprimanding movements of the online community. Is it always right, or can it turn into a witch hunt? And why is the community always so angry? Read the rest of this entry »
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