Get a Load of This Idiot

 At the very least, his thin skull will ensure he does not suffer. 

There’s a special class of dimwit innate to videogames, one that I think we’re all frankly a little overloaded on. You know, the type that probably grew up, for certain values of “growing up”, on an anonymous chan board, who thinks slurs are the cruise control to cool or at the very least, an acceptable greeting for people not actually in the slurred outgroup. The people who were so into the whole “being a nerd” thing that they forgot to develop socially, and just so because they happen to be into hobbies that were sitgmatized before they became mainstream as fuck (HBO used to run Dream On; whatever your opinion is on Game of Thrones, the shift to epic fantasy represents upward ladder rungs), they felt that any sort of social pressure on them is from their hobbies, and their hobbies alone.  You know, not the fact that they learned how to interact socially from a dialogue tree, view sexuality as a trade transaction of niceness for intimacy, and are so unused to real adversity from the all manufactured adversity of videogames they’ve taken in, they think being able to die in Dark Souls without throwing a controller makes them tougher than living with queerness in a straight society, or a disability in a world still built for the healthy.

I’ve seen that actually, live in the wild. It was unreal, and it had a little implied ‘don’t mess with us’ threat at the end. I sure hope that kid doesn’t poison himself with his first drink.

The point I’m getting at is that videogames has its own, distinct brand of obnoxious stupidity. It’s not just in its more worthless and vocal members, either. It’s in the bovinoid eyes of every PR meat puppet Electronic Arts marches out on an E3 stage to introduce their next Annual Entry in their long line of Popular Products, before the board determines they’re being paid too much and they’re promptly (but humanely!) downsized via cattlegun. It’s in the sleazy smile of Todd Howard, the man who will lie to your face about the fact that he’s lying to your face, all while never losing that infuriating little smirk, possibly releasing several new, shitty ports of Skyrim in the process of doing so. And it’s especially in Randy Pitchford, the intersection of idiot and liar that becomes “lying idiot”, manifesting in the shape of a shitty party magician, wearing entirely too much hair product that’s, ultimately, not really doing anything useful at the end of the day. Which is much like his entire fucking company at this point.

A man whose presence can be described as "crackling dried gel, mixed with notes of frustration and anger over Jim Sterling."

So when the Washington Beltway drops trou and lays a big old steaming turd at the doorstep of games, it’s actually kind of novel. And would you be amazed if I said the turd in question is in the shape of… a old, dumb white guy? Oh my stars and garters.

*drunken Cameron Mitchell voice* CLOSE THE FUCKIN DOOR

I don’t know this man’s name. It might as well be Lobbyist, because that’s all he is to me, and all we need for the purpose of this. I dunno, maybe it got said somewhere in this mess, but if I missed it, I don’t care, because that’s about the level of effort this guy deserves. What you’re looking at is Hawaii State Legislature, specifically the in session for Hawaii State Representative Chris Lee, an individual who would say that he strongly likes games, but strongly dislikes lootboxes. The person you’re looking at this the agent of the Entertainment Software Association, the monied dressing horse they sent to contest Lee and Co’s claims that lootboxes are predatory gambling practices that are also entirely unregulated and without oversight, and in need of both. I can’t tell you what his argument was, because he couldn’t tell me what his argument was. In fact, it appears the entire reason he even showed up to Hawaii in the first place was to bleat some dumb words about how the ESRB is a ratings board that keeps games with objectionable content out of the hands of children (since when?) before getting decapitated by someone who neither works in the same industry, nor actually really showed up for a political fistfight. But he got one, because he was so obviously unprepared for this task that he fucked up saying the ESRB. See, first he called it the Ratings Board, then he said the Self Imposed Ratings Board. Then, when attempting to yadda yadda past his bullshit statement about how the games industry has “always been proactive” with regards to self regulation (snicker), the US Congressman reminds him of the acronym put in place by his own organization, the Entertainment Software Ratings Board, or ESRB.

Which, upon repeating it back, with a nod that seemed to say “I know, I know,” he called the EBSR.

Rep. Chris Lee started off by pointing out that the videogames are a billion dollar industry, saying to Lobbyist that he was sure he wanted to talk all about his "pride and accomplishment" over that fact, which is a joke that is better and more pointed than I'd expect from a sitting politician.

It sailed right over Lobbyist's head.

Anyway, the “always been proactive” was the answer to the question “has there been any measures to self regulate the practice of gambling-like mechanics in games with real money transactions.” Which is, in fact, an answer to the question, “has the industry been proactive with regards to self-regulating its own moneymaking ventures.” It would also be a lie, mind, at least in my opinion of someone that was chewed up and spit out by this awful, crooked industry, but it would be an actual answer to the asked question.

But since the question was basically ‘do you allow kids to gamble with resources they have to buy with a credit card,’ just asked more politely, that was not simply an invalid response, that was Beltway Bullshit. That was talking around the answer to a question, then presenting all the words you just said that weren’t an answer, as an answer. You see it all the time when people in the wretched intersection of corporation and government have to say something, but they can’t actually say anything. That was “the administration neither approves nor disapproves of the actions of,” writ at a very pathetic scale by a very pathetic man. And given that this matter is too small to actually matter for any assholes with actual power to be paid off by the AAA Publishers (yet, but this year is yet young), his gambit fails and he instead gets asked if he can answer the question.

Regret is a posture.

Which causes the guy in the aloha shirt next to him to speak for him, since he says it too quietly for himself: “No, he cannot.”

Now, I wanted to roast the guy for the shirt he’s wearing, which is… like, I know it’s Hawaii and I’m all about appearing professional for the sake of keeping down the heat (not like actual heat, metaphorical, person-to-person heat), so tone it down, but he’s on our side it turns out. I was confused as to what he’s all about, because at first he appeared to be giving a hand to Lobbyist. As it turns out, he was the closest person to provide help, as he later turns on the dude for people’s concern over how publishers have been hiring psychologists and patenting technology for the purpose of mindfucking people into paying real money for a randomized grab bag of fake digital shit. So let’s not talk about him, he’s okay.

Let’s instead talk about the ol’ Gray Nutria he’s sat beside. I’d ask if his parents had any children that lived, but I think their donated organs are the only thing keeping this guy upright. You know, he’s a much beloved comedic actor, but I gotta say, Gary Cole crossed a line when he introduced his new character, “Liver Sclerosis David Lynch.” 

Motherfucker looks like a casting call reject for Better Call Saul. More to the point, he acts like it too. He swaggers in, cocksure, last to sit down so everyone sees that he’s fashionably late. And he probably sees some babyfaced Democrat that looks like too much of a goodboy to be a fratboy and thinks “easy mark,” right up until the fact he makes the claim that it was the internal findings of the ESA that lootboxes were not gambling, and that same babyface begins reading a list of countries that have begun legislating them as such- England, Belgium, China. 

Does he happen to know about any of this?

“I can’t answer that question,” he says, looking like a child realizing his dad really was willing to turn the car around and go home. I bet he thought he only had to put out a small fire, that all he had to do was pull the pin and squeeze the handle, and whoosh, job done. I bet he didn’t expect that the hand extinguisher he was carrying was actually full of aerosolized guncotton, and was clearly marked as such, and it’s entirely on his own dense self that he didn’t do his homework, he didn’t read the label. That woosh became a violent boom, and now the cabinetry is ruined, as with much the rest of the house, and he only has his own unique arrogance as a lazy, overpaid capitalist mouthpiece to blame.

"I have just taken poison."

This man showed up to a hearing about the exploitative practices of lootboxes, and talked as though this was going to be yet another government hearing about videogame violence. Which is back in the news, by the way, because Beltway Bullshit from people that can’t be trusted with kitchen knives, let alone a press conference, is neverending. Maybe he thought it was, he’s old enough to have had the same position as a corporate shill back when that dumb shit was the hotbutton issue. But instead, he got put in the hotseat over the exploitative practice of putting pay-to-play hands of Three Card Monte in games with $60 price tags, the prizes being shit that should have been already provided in the game as part of that price tag. They could be, depending on the game, anything from something that makes you look more unique in the game, to something that literally makes you more difficult to defeat by players who didn’t open their wallet and pay until they finally got the same item. In that position, he might as well have been asked to perform surgery for all the aptitude he showed as a lobbyist, because at the very least, there would’ve been some competent nurses on hand to save his patient. Instead, he became the living definition of “we have heard the fans and are listening to feedback.” He lit himself into the warning fire that a lot of us have been seeing for a long time, but more tangible, an individual that has no answer other than “I dunno, look, just shut up and give me your money.”

This pile of miscoloured snow, improbably shoveled onto a chair somewhere in Hawaii, had the temerity to show up to a meeting of politicians wanting an explanation for a practice so shady and openly contemptuous of end users, it tainted the hype of a Star Wars release, with a load of “we have always been proactive” and “I can’t answer that question.” At one point, after being blown out with statistics from the UK Gambling Commission, he simply says “no” with the same tone of voice as a father trying to pick out a casket for his son. He’s so shell shocked by the experience of being fired upon with accuracy that he straight up just dropped his gun, held up his hands and continued to hold his position without even realizing he’d surrendered. This man, when asked if where information could be found on videogames containing lootboxes and their odds information, pointed all present to ESRB.org. Except he didn’t say ESRB.org, he said “the Ratings Board, uh, web, site.”

When asked if that site actually contained odds information for games with lootboxes in them, he said, “I don’t know.” He then turned to Aloha shirt guy and asked, “do you know?”

A baby in the chamber then cried loudly.

There’s that saying, “we’re not ruled by who we think we are.” In the classic sense, it means our true masters are people with the money and resources to be unknown, and that we even know of their presence and influence on our lives is the work of actual investigation and journalism. But there’s also another way to spin that statement, one I’m growing increasingly more fond of the more I realize what a shit bunch of villains this generation has been cursed with. Namely, we think the people in charge of us as sophisticated masterminds, well-honed and practiced puppet masters that gracefully pull strings from behind the scenes. At one time, that was probably more true than it is now, but as things stand, that image is only the wishful thinking of those people’s realities. Fact of the matter is, we’re not ruled by who we think we are, because we think the people above us are actually smarter than us. 

They aren’t, they just have more advantages. 

In fact, they have so many advantages, they can afford to be significantly stupider than the average person like you and me. That is why a professional lobbyist, an individual who gets paid to argue on behalf of a very lucrative industry, proceeded to say one wrong thing and then shit his pants in the ensuing backlash, a backlash that appeared to be stiffer than it should have simply because he had done that little casework of his own. I almost feel sorry for the guy, in the same way that I can almost feel sorry for the guy who gets sloppy drunk, tries to start shit at the bar and gets thrown on his head on the way out. You feel kinda bad that someone got hurt, then you realize, “wait, fuck that guy” and move on with your life. So much so to the point that a more conspiratorial part of me thinks this is the ESA’s declaration of war. That this is the beginning of AAA starting to play shadier than they have before, because they think they’ve got enough crowbar to manage the leverage. Part of me wants to believe they marched this hapless fucker down the ramp to just get his head torn off, intentionally, as though they were wringing the neck of a chicken and throwing it at a royal- it’s an unconventional slight, but on the other hand, who wants to get a corpse tossed at them? No, this means war, says the ESA, in my mind, and in order to convey this message, here’s a confused and possibly sick Egon Spengler, fresh off sleeping in his own suit, to waste your time.

Whatever the case, that sort of laid out the cards on the table. The ESA doesn’t think about the harm of lootboxes, because why would they, they’re benefitting from them. The US Government, as well as other governments aboard, are not pleased, and beginning to adopt the posture of a vice principal with a student that refuses to do homework. Whatever fire that this was supposed to put out has instead flared it. This was only supposed to be a feeling out process, to see if there really was as much a problem as it first seemed. In that respect, yes, actually, turns out there’s a big fucking problem, because Grandfather Frost here just responded to a cop asking him “what’s going on tonight?” with “HUAAAGH UH NOTHING, NOT ANYTHING ILLEGAL, DRUGS, FENCING GOODS, NOT ANYTHING OF THE SORT, NOPE.”

And if Beltway Bullshit is about to be part of current events in games once again, we might as well strap in for the long haul, and learn to love watching the foolish hang themselves. Because otherwise, this is just going to get really annoying, really fast.