This Must Be the Moment We Wake Up to Learn We’re Still Watching the Movie

You know, I’m sure there was something interesting in this post, but I was too busy looking at the apparently broken neck of the guy on the obviously photoshopped “gaydar.net” banner to notice. Also, Nojo, what the fuck is this? It’s like a bad acid trip in here or something.

@JNOVjr: I’m not permitted to click your link, or Google will take away my beer money.

@JNOVjr: So it’s not just me? Thought I tripped something with my, um, browsing habits. Um. COVER YOUR EYES, JR! You might catch something!

@nojo: What are you trying to do to my kid?

Okay. Seriously. WTF? Now I have a criminal record that needs to be cleared?

@JNOV: I have no idea what you folks are seeing. I’m getting a house ad for Google Apps.

@JNOVjr: What did I tell you about auto-erotic asphyxiation, Jr? BITE THE LEMON! Have you learned nothing from CSI?

@nojo: I’m getting Netflix now. Huzzah!

Still, it’s better than Facebook advertising for Vocaloid figurines. Spoilers: Vocaloid has nothing to do with anime or video games. Well, not directly, anyway. It’s a “singing synthesizer application” that has anime-style people as mascots :|

@JNOVjr: Wait. What — I think you made a leap that’s hard to follow. Do you mean FB marketing sexytime stuff to kids?

I’VE GOT A FUCKING CRIMINAL RECORD AGAIN? I thought that was expunged.

@JNOVjr: You can block that stuff from appearing on your Book of Faces page. I don’t know how to do it spontaneously, but I got an invite from someone for something incredibly stupid and when I clicked “decline” BoF gave me an option of banning any reference to that stupidity from my sight.

Yay!

After reading further: Oh, well, I didn’t look at the thing very closely. A quick glance left me with the impression it was like for that creepy Farmville or something.

Carry on.

@JNOV: No. I mean it’s trying to sell me crap that looks like anime, but isn’t anime. This is what Vocaloid does. There’s a few different “characters” that you can use to make your songs and what not. The one in the video is Hatsune Miku. The really scary part, though, is that Vocaloids aren’t being sold out in the US. The whole thing is an internet phenomenon that mostly came about because of Nico Nico Douga (the Japanese equivalent of YouTube) and spread to the English-speaking internet through 4chan. All I need now is for Facewaste to start trying to sell me Touhou (again, not an anime, and again, something that gained most of its popularity thanks to 4chan) and I’ll be ready to leave the internet forever.

@JNOVjr: Okay. I have no fucking clue what you’re talking about. This is what I read:

staticstaticstatic ANIME staticstaticstatic JAPAN staticstaticstatic 4chan! And then I think about /b and flee. I have NEVER been to /b. I think you warned me off it.

@JNOV: First off, it’s “/b/.” Always with both slashes or you will be cursed at by the entire internet. Second, imagine if I tried to sell you a cardboard cut-out of an onion because you told me you like garlic. That’s what they’re doing to me.

@JNOVjr: Dear gawd, don’t mention /b/ unless you want those brats to crash the server.

@JNOVjr: Like I give a fuck about the entire internet. Pfft. You do know me, right? Apologize to Nojo RIGHT NOW!

Mr. Jealous: Hush now, don’t explain. Just apologize, apologize, apologize.

@JNOVjr:

Regardless of how it’s spelled, see Rules 1 and 2. :)

And that link to the ad for the Farmville knockoff is bizarre – what exactly has caused the poor farm animals’ eyes to bug out? Is it secretly an ad for some sort of online livestock-fucking simulator?

Nah, couldn’t be – they wouldn’t need to advertise, they’d have so much business from teabaggers…

@JNOV: Never.

@karen marie: I assumed you were responding to the part of our conversation that veered toward Facebook, anyway. :P And yeah, they’re clearly trying to make a profit off of Farmville’s popularity. Video games have basically hit that stage in a creative medium’s life where the mainstream stops doing it out of love and starts doing it for the cash alone.

“Casual” games like Farmville (as opposed to “hardcore” games aimed at people who play video games as a hobby, and not just in passing) have been around for years (mostly in the form of puzzle games like Bejeweled and Tetris), but they didn’t really explode until the Wii came around. No-name 3rd party developers jumped on-board left and right in an effort to make a quick buck off of the novelty of the Wii’s new control scheme, instead of the quality of the games, themselves.

Casual games are kind of like made-for-tv movies. Because the games are relatively cheap and easy to develop, and they appeal to a wider demographic than just the jerks that like to scream obscenities into PC headsets for hours on end, there is much less risk involved in making an investment.

This is basically the video game equivalent of the industrial revolution. Chances are that Zynga (the makers of Mafia Wars and just about every game with “-Ville” in the name) already outsources most of the programming to starving Chinese children, and it’s only a matter of time before the ESRB has to start testing to make sure there aren’t lethal levels of arsenic in our game disks or something.

It’s worth it to note, though, that the “hardcore” market isn’t much better. They’re just geared more towards satisfying 14-year-old boys than satisfying 40-year-old housewives.

@al2o3cr:
(a) Everyone knows the only Rule that’s actually true is r34.
(b) I’m telling you, someone was having a bad trip or something when they came up with that, man.

@JNOVjr: So, what kind of gamer am I, since you’re laying down the knowledge and all that? I am over forty…ahem.

@JNOVjr: Never? Kiss your birthday present goodbye. Bye bye!

ADD: Not like you’ll be kissing anyone for like a week…

@al2o3cr: +1!

@JNOVjr: Oh, and stop it with the Japanese? What the hell does this mean?

Kyashaan wo korose Kyashaan wo kurae Kyashaan wo korose…

I hate it when you know stuff I don’t know. :-P

@JNOV: Depends. You were pretty into Ninja Gaiden (“guy-den,” like a person and the things lions sleep in, not “-dan” like the name :P), which is solidly in the “hardcore” category. Generally, the thinking is that the more “mature” (i.e., the more violent) a game is, the more “hardcore” it is. The other half of the equation, though, is the frequency with which one plays games in the first place. As far as I’m aware, it’s been a while, so your status as a gamer is really more past tense than anything.

This article challenges the notion that gamers these days are really “hardcore” by any definition. I think it does a pretty good job of it, too.

@JNOVjr: OMG! You called me a has been! Thinnnnnn ice, Mister! Thinnnnnn ice…

ADD: Wait — and you’re making fun of my accent, too? No soup for you!

Haven’t played since I achieved satori one night with Centipede.

Yes, I was majorly stoned. Why do you always have to ruin things?

@JNOV: “Kill Casshern. Eat Casshern. Kill Casshern…”

@nojo: How did you do on Galaga? That centipede hypnotized me when I was sober.

@nojo:
@JNOV:
I will always regret that I never got to grow up with any real arcades nearby. It’s not like they don’t still make arcade games.

@JNOVjr: DUDE! Why is that video rated MA?

ADD: NO, I DID NOT CLICK! You’re a horrible child. Oh, and have you ever played pinball in your life? Oh, flashback to being drunk as shit and finally for the first time in my life winning something from that claw thing — got you that Coca-Cola polar bear — remember? Cost me a quarter. :-)

@JNOV: Well, um, Centipede was actually the only game I was decent at, once Breakout went away.

@JNOVjr: Looks like video poker.

@nojo: BREAKOUT!

@JNOV: SPOILERS AHEAD! There’s lots of violence and some blood. Granted, the violence is almost always against robots. A couple humans die in the show, but only one of them does so violently, and she comes back to life later so…yeah. Actually, I’m not even sure she was really a human. Casshern: Sins is a really fucking weird reboot of an anime from the 70’s. The only real relation it has to the original show is that two protagonists and the antagonist from the first one are in it. Their roles are pretty switched around, though.

@nojo: I totally sucked at Centipede. I couldn’t focus. Oh, look! A squirrel!

Now Donkey Kong — don’t even get me started on The King of Kong.

@JNOVjr: I’ll take you to a real arcade next week and show you how it’s really done.

@JNOV: Lol, it’s way different than video poker.
@JNOV: Squirrel!

@JNOVjr: You better hope there’s some class in the history of anime or something — or you could teach it. Speed Racer and Marine Boy were kind of my thing. And UltraMan, but that was live action. So much better than the Power Rangers. :-P

@JNOV: @JNOVjr: I have to know: are you two in the same house right now? Because that would be too funny.

@JNOVjr: ZOMG! The story of my life! “It’s just a weird tic or something!” Hahahahaha!

@Mistress Cynica: We’re one wall apart. Sometimes we’re in the same room. And we IM.

After the flood in our apt, he took his computer in his room (AC in living room on the fritz), so we don’t hang out in the living room together any more — that’s usually where we are when we do this, sitting feet apart. :-)

@JNOVjr: w/r/t your arcade game clip — but that looks like any other video game you could play on your couch. The thing about being in an arcade back in the day was:

1. You were standing — you could move a pinball machine just so much before you tilted it. Only the wusses sat on stools.

2. It’s NOISY! Like, incredibly noisy, so you’re getting this weird sensory overload thing going on.

3. When you really start to kick ass, kids milling around take notice and come and watch you, so you’re kind of not trying to fuck up, but you’re also a rock star.

And you know what — that arcade in Santa Cruz was a real arcade, not some bullshit Dave and Busters. Remember the first time we saw DDR? Or was that in that place in SF — the Sony place with the virtual bowling? Virtual bowling was FUCKING AWESOME!

@JNOV: Also, depending which part of the fading era you caught, mechanically noisy. Pinball machines were thoroughly analog, at least until digital scores arrived.

@JNOVjr: Oh, hey — what was that arcade in Disney World where I got shot in the leg with a rubber ball and they thought I was going to sue? We played that crazy dinosaur game where you climb up buildings and shit — I think we got it later for the 64…

@nojo: Much preferred the analog and the tick tick tick as your score got higher. I did like the pinball machines where you could trap balls, release them through some combination of shots and then have three balls in play at once. But I did dig the noise of the counter.

@JNOV: DDR and virtual bowling were at the Metreon.
@JNOV: I really don’t remember much of what was at the Disney World arcade. I believe you’re thinking of Rampage, which is actually older than I am.

@JNOVjr: YES! Rampage! The arcade version was much better. I can’t believe you don’t remember us in those little cars shooting at people with little soccer balls. If you hit the target on the car, it froze for a little while. Maybe it spun, too. The cars were enclosed, but a ball somehow managed to hit me in the leg and left an impression. Hurt like hell. I think we got some free stuff out of it, though…

@JNOV: @JNOVjr: @Mistress Cynica:

Well jeez louise, someone had a party and I didn’t even get an invite!

/pulls up chair, opens popcorn/

Go on…

@JNOVjr: “Facewaste” was good, but Nico Nico Douga is phenomenal. I spent a day touring the Tokyo underground with Shonen Knife playing on my – ahem – Sony MiniDisc player, and although I never ended up liking them all that much, I certainly appreciated where they were coming from.

@Nabisco: Hahahahahaha! So you’re The Guy Who Bought The Sony Minidisk Player! I always wondered who that was. No worries — my dad had a BetaMax and paid $80 for Thriller. Ugh. My brother watched it over and over and over…

@JNOV: Hey, no mocking. I could get four hours of digitally reproduced music on one of those tiny discs, with spectacular fidelity using an optical cable that ran from my “amplifier” to the player.

Yeah, um, a coupla years before I bit the bullet and started listening to lossy mp3 clips.

But I still have it, and some day will unload it on eBay for, like, $20. Better than selling plasma!

@Nabisco: Oh man. Japanese bands are so fucking weird. I’m willing to bet that Puffy AmiYumi drew more than a little inspiration from Shonen Knife.