Feb 16 2009
Do You Hear The Whining Of An Unhappy, Over-fed Baby?
“v., whined, whin·ing, whines. v.intr.
- To utter a plaintive, high-pitched, protracted sound, as in pain, fear, supplication, or complaint.
- To complain or protest in a childish fashion.
- To produce a sustained noise of relatively high pitch: jet engines whining.”
Whining as defined on Answers.com. I decided to share this definition as I find it amusing. Sometimes when you search for a word on Google in order to check usage you find the most interesting things.
I finally inserted a header, though it looks like complete crap. Blurry, washed out, all the like. Just temporary until I get something going. I was going for a powerlines/video-game projection bit. To keep consistent with the whole Electric Frag thing. My header will have something to do with that in the future. Whipped this one up in 10 minutes or so. Wasn’t careful. So there you have it.
But I haven’t even gotten to the topic of this post. My apologies. I asked in the title, “Do you hear the whining of an unhappy, over-fed baby?” I do. I don’t know if you have heard but it seems there is a little scuffle taking place over the rights to Brutal Legend. Allow me to explain.
Activision had the chance to publish Brutal Legend, and then they passed it off and I guess EA nabbed the rights. Now they are suing because they believe EA’s rights are illegitimate or something like that. Why are they suing? There could be plenty of reasons. What turned their attention to the case in the first place? Maybe now that Brutal Legend is starting to look like it will attract that very large Guitar Hero crowd? Maybe. I’m sure Activision is hurting as well as everyone else who has money right now. Maybe some extra dollars would help. But EA is hurting too. So the hungry and wounded are fighting for the last of the food? Don’t these people have honor? You lost out on a chance to publish something brilliant, man. So take it like a man and learn from your mistakes.
I suppose I sound awful pompous and self-righteous sitting here and pointing my finger, being able to sit back comfortably and condemn while really having nothing to do with the dispute whatsoever. And I get to wear my internet anonymity like a shield. So be it. I’d rather be that than what Activision is displaying. Why compare them to a baby anyway? What is there to make of this?
Maybe it isn’t really Activision’s fault, to be fair. When an intelligence (let’s just assume a corporation to be a large, somewhat coherent, alliance of intelligences, thus a general intelligence) is over-fed on something like power, it seems to approach an almost solipsistic mindset, or the belief that one is alone in the world and everything is a product of its thoughts. Babys begin with solispsism until they learn certain basic concepts that inform them that there are other things in the world. So they whine and cry and make all the noise in their power until they get what they want. So Activision, as a coherent intelligence, is used to getting stuffed and stuffed and this effect multiplies as it becomes more egocentric, until little things like a lost opportunity become unbearable, and so we get to compare Activision to a baby, because externally, that is how it is acting. Can the company help itself? In a way, it is physics, right? Or -insert scientific field of study here-.
Still. It is up to the public to condemn. So people that go through with these actions are reminded that it is stupid and annoying to do so.
The worst part of this whole thing is that poor Tim Schafer’s creation has to go through all this crap to get itself published. Those of us who played Psychonauts know what this man and his team are capable of. And Psychonauts had a rough time commercially itself. So why does brilliance get held up at every turn and mediocrity come flooding out of every crack consistently, time and time again? A bigger question that has its roots in the beginning of time maybe, and would take a ton of pondering and writing to articulate.
Ah well.
