Unfettered Blather

Just last week I was treated to a long lament about “the good old days” when men could be men all the time but now they have to retreat to places like Hooters in order to do the things that men like to do naturally. The office was a place where playful banter was acceptable and men knew the limits and it’s this politically correct culture that has made the workplace hostile to men. Now, I hate political correctness. I think it’s silly and I think that we have effectively made it a crime to offend someone in certain circumstances. We are definitely breeding a culture of oversensitivity and thin skin in this country. I do disagree with the notions of harmless playful banter or that women were treated respectfully by their co-workers. I also acknowledge that most men, certainly men with normal healthy sex drives, enjoy looking at women in skimpy outfits and also like having pretty women paying attention to them even if there is nothing sexual behind it. This is normal. I disagree entirely that the workplace is an appropriate location to indulge in these activities.

As much as I have railed in the past about women who dress inappropriately in the workplace and how much they should be expected to be taken seriously, the flip side is that there are some very hard working women who do present themselves in a professional manner that deserve respect as peers. Indulging in relatively harmless male behavior is not the way to show respect to a woman. While I think people should have fun at work, we are still a professional environment and I expect everyone to have a certain standard of behavior. Certainly, when I am away from the office those standards can fall away. I think I surprise people when we get off-site and I am lot more open in my thoughts and casual in manner. The difference is that the workplace is a place for work and all other distractions are a detriment to that. Professional behavior is not about political correctness but efficiency. Let’s face it, unprofessional behavior can lead to personal issues that can affect the final outcome of our work. Anytime I have to spend trying to resolve petty disputes between Employee A and Employee B just means I am not spending time working on productive tasks and the involved parties are unlikely to be fully productive either.

Women in the workplace deserve to be treated according to their merits. Men who want to indulge in their overall maleness should not do so at their co-workers expense. I’ve worked in environments where “playful banter” could be quite common and even encouraged. There was nothing quite like spending 4 hours in training about sexual harassment only to have a female deputy grab my ass on the first day of work! However, despite the rowdy behavior the culture still demanded that we treat those women as equals. These were people who had to watch our back and there was definitely a need to be more comfortable and possibly more casual than the office environment that I work in now.

Women in a professional environments have a difficult challenge because they are expected to be feminine but run the risk of not being taken seriously. Sadly, even today there are men who see women as their inferiors in the workplace. To me, a woman who is more interested in showing off her work rather than her chest deserves to be recognized. No, this is not a double standard, but professional office environments are rarely attract men who are little more than brainless beefcake. What happens all too often is that women who try to get by on their looks have a negative impact on those that are trying to honestly contribute to the bottom line. All the more reason to take people on an individual basis and not judge them based on things like gender. Being attractive is not a crime either. A woman who happens to be attractive yet is also good at her job deserves to be treated as a valued team member and not eye candy. I don’t miss “the good old days”. The good old days might have been a more comfortable time, but they were also times when a woman would have to put up with remarks and attitudes they did not deserve. Really, this isn’t a gender issue. People should be treated with respect. There was a time when it was socially acceptable to disrespect a woman and no one would raise an eyebrow. Maybe this didn’t happen all the time, but it happened often enough.

I had not thought about it much but this is going to be a somewhat special MLK day. Even though I have not thought much about Obama’s “race”, the fact that he will take the presidency tomorrow is actually fulfilling part of MLK’s vision. The fact that Obama’s race has factored little in my mind shows some success in achieving Mr. King’s dream. MLK always talked about brotherhood, he wanted a country that looked past race, that didn’t care about race. We’re not quite there yet, but I think the signs are hopeful.

Martin Luther King Jr. would have been 80 years old as of last Thursday. If he had not been killed there is a chance he could still be alive today. I would very much have liked it for him to be here tomorrow.

It’s the holiday season (no I am not going to sing the Andy Williams song so whoop-tee-do and dickory-dock!) and as to be expected people begin projecting their personal issues everywhere like Christmas lights.

Let me ask a question, one nobody really feels comfortable asking (my favorite kind)

I am never going to understand why people feel the need to attach their racial bias to something as generally accepted and universally understood as Santa Clause and even Jesus and the Disciples Both of these men either in historical or fanciful interpretations are either a white guy of European descent or of Jewish origins. There isn’t a legitimate debate here, Santa Claus is and always was a European concept.

Most people would say “Its no big deal”, but isn’t it?

What does Santa Clause represent afterall? He is a jolly fat man that rewards all good children with gifts. He has evolved over time to represent goodness, kindness and giving to all the children of the world, a spirit of generosity, one that is universally recognized.

Santa Clause as an image, when twisted reveals more about the people doing it than they may be comfortable with. Do you really need to pay homage to your visions of race with something as well-meaning and accepted as Santa Claus? Is the idea that you cannot abide a figure unless they are forged in an image you feel comfortable with. If you cannot accept Santa Claus because he is white or Jesus because he is Jewish, then why bother. The Jesus issue is especially pointed. If you believe in Him then he willingly offered up his life in exchange for the burden of your mortal sins, does this ultimate act of self-sacrifice only work for you if he is presented as being a member of your race?

This boils down to simple racism, Santa Claus and Jesus are images that evoke unity and love. If Santa and Jesus have to be Black, Hispanic or Asian, then you are a racist and you are perverting something wonderful to pander to a selfish vision. You are using them as cheap banners to tout your bias and looking like a first rate nutjob in the process.

I really can’t think of a better way to qualify your true feelings than to do this. If you really care about what the message is, then you will leave the images alone and respect them for the meaning.

I know some people don’t like the phrase “Your own worst enemy” but I keep seeing evidence of how true this is.

The problem with fandom is that ultimately it begins to fester (not “foster”) a feeling of entitlement. Fans begin to develop expectations that are going to be a detriment to the success of whatever franchise they feel so emotionally invested in. I’m not really sure why fans continue to do this. Businesses have made it clear that if they have to choose between making fans happy and being profitable they’ll choose the money every time. They are not evil for doing so. They have employees with families to consider. Making fans happy and making money can be the same thing but when its not the fans will lose. What many fans continue to not grasp is that they are a minority. They think they are a majority but echo chambers always amplify the noise. Loud in volume but small in number, they have appointed themselves the keeper of intellectual properties they do not own and defend them fiercely despite a continual disregard for the very existence of the fans by the real owners of those properties.

I scratch my head and wonder at how thick people can be to detest a thing because it isn’t exactly what they wanted. Most recently it was Fallout 3 for me, a perfectly awesome game that did depart somewhat from the originals, but I think the originals are being regarded a bit too highlt. My favorite example is the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. Again, I think the fans views are distorted. I re-read the Lord of the Rings and was quickly reminded how much fluff and nonsensical crap was in it. Tolkein, great writer that he was, could become obsessed describing the moss on a rock. As I re-read the books I found myself skipping entire paragraphs as he insisted on painstakingly describing the landscape. The landscape! Fans cried foul that there was no Tom Bombadil, but I didn’t even miss him. Guess I’m not a fan? Doesn’t matter, I’m there for the experience, the story, the entertainment. I acknowledge that Peter Jackson took some liberties with Lord of the Rings but he also made the best fantasy film series I’ve ever seen while staying true to the source material.

Let’s tackle Fallout while we’re at it. I’m pretty sure people are remembering these games better than they were. I have people now telling me how great Fallout: Tactics was and how much they missed it. That seems pretty different from the cries of blasphemy when the game was first produced. Does it get a pass now because it was yet another isometric 2D sprite game? What makes Fallout 3 such an abomination but Fallout: Tactics is so fondly remembered? I have many people tell me Fallout 2 is one of the best games they ever played. Was I playing something else? What I remember was a game that crashed repeatedly, had game crippling bugs, and could easily take 10 minutes or more to load a game or area because of a memory leak that shipped in the game. Most of these issues were patched out later, but the first run of the game was horribly broken. Even after it was patched, the game setting itself was horribly inconsistent, as if the designers had run out of ideas and decided to just abandon the idea of a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland whenever it became inconvenient. The whole game smacked of trying too hard. I’m not saying Fallout 2 was horrible, at least not once it was patched, but it was hardly the same level of genius as the original game.

If anything, Fallout 3 is the closest to the original game despite abandoning the classic top-down isometric perspective and opting for a first-person view. It leverages modern technology to make an attempt at a more immersive experience. For the most part it works and the game is genius in its own right. Yet the fans are going to turn up their noses and sneer at it because it wasn’t done the way they wanted?

Here’s the real problem. No two fans are going to agree completely. Companies don’t try to make fans happy because it’s impossible. If being a fan means I have to actually stop enjoying the things I enjoy now, I hope to never be a fan again.

I gave up on PC gaming some years back. I won’t go into details why but consoles have been my primary focus for gaming since 2003. I play the occassional PC game but it has been more of a novelty.

Every now and again the PC grognards will rally together and insist that the PC will once again dominate the market. Reasons like having the biggest install base, the ease of development, etc. etc. We’re all very familiar with the laundry list. Yet despite all these advantages, the people who actually publish PC games not only continue to fail to learn from their mistakes but insist on making new ones. It is not that I do not believe in the PC as a platform, I simply lost all faith in the people who are creating content for it to do so effectively.

The other assertion is that services like Steam will help a resurgence in PC gaming, but the problem no one seems to have bothered to notice is that Steam is still not that well known and entirely dependent on consumers having prior knowledge of Steam. Steam faces a real chicken and egg problem. If your product only exists on-line, how do people find out about it? The Internet still exists as a vast and nigh impenetrable sewer of content and the rare diamonds like Valve, who own Steam, have trouble getting their message out to the masses. There is a very good reason Valve still sells retail boxed copies and have ported over most of their games to consoles.

However, even if you get the retail brick and mortar stores back and get publishers to stop making lame-brained decisions, the real problem is that the PC is not going to be a viable platform for much longer.

Let me be clear, the PC as a platform is going away.

When was the last time you booted up your mainframe to run a program someone had written for you in assembler. How many people wouldn’t even understand what I just said? Today’s PC desktop is going to quickly go the way of yesterday’s mainframe computer. Even laptops are going to be considered large and clunky. The contemporary blackberry or equivalent device does many of the functions that people use an office PC for and does them just as well. We already have docking stations for laptops so what is preventing someone from being able to hook up their blackberry to something similar and having access to a full size monitor, keyboard, and mouse. That set-up would easily allow the average office worker to do the exact same tasks on a piece of hardware that fits in their pocket. The iPhone, despite all its flaws, allows someone to surf the web just fine. These devices are not powerful and not designed for the game experiences we are used to. Sure, games will exist for these devices. Show me an extensible electronic device that someone hasn’t figured out how to turn into a toy. Even early GPS devices had a type of game developed for them. Not software, but people found a way to “play” with them. That is not the point, the blackberries and iPhones are not designed first and foremost as game platforms. You might be able to squeeze something equivalent to the DS or PSP into them, but that will be the extent of it.

So where will we get our games from? Consoles? No, in the long run the market will tire of the current multi-platform mayhem. I’m not bemoaning the current state, I’ve long held that the three way competition has been beneficial to gamers but eventually someone is going to emerge dominant, and from there we’ll just integrate the winning concepts into some other device. What we need is a gaming standard, and that hasn’t emerged yet but it will. Video games are a huge market and unlikely to go anywhere, but how we play videogames today will be quite different. Say what you will about the Wii, but compare it to the Atari 2600 and it is indeed one high-tech piece of gear. Inconceivable back in the 80’s.

Specifically though, how would PC gaming make a comeback when the PC platform is shrinking? The very concept of the personal computer is now obsolescent and will likely be obsolete in five to ten years. From a long term business perspective it is a bad investment. The time for the resurgence was ten years ago, now there may not even be ten years left.