I present you with this nightmare fuel for the evening:
Now I’m going to sleep, we’ll see what my brain does.
The Blue Whale Challenge is a great Red Herring for banning video games
I read an article today about two children in Saudi Arabia committing suicide due to a game called “The Blue Whale Challenge”, and as a result their government banned 47 different games including The Witcher 3, Bayonetta 2, Okami, Life is Strange, etc etc. This sounds like quite the over-reaction more so than one might realize considering the game itself is social media based, the challenge has become infamous enough to have been given its own Wikipedia article. Basically the Blue Whale Challenge is a list of 50 challenges that a person has to complete with proof of doing so, and each challenge or task is given to someone calling themselves a “administrator” or “whale”. These challenges start off innocently enough (if you call following stupid instructions from a random person on the internet innocent) such as drawing a picture or waking up at 4:20am, but then it gets darker when they start telling you to carve sentences and words into your arm or leg, poke yourself with a needle, among other acts of self harm all the way up to telling the person to off themselves. The whole process is designed to break the person down, to manipulate them into doing whatever they want, and sadly it seems quite a few children have fallen victim to these sick assholes.
Now, how does this relate to the 47 games that have been banned as a result of these two suicides? Nothing really, a good portion of the games on the list aren’t even multiplayer… and why is Okami on the list? That’s like one of the most calming games I’ve ever played. O_o I’m actually surprised that out of all of the games on the list Dishonored isn’t included, it still would be just as stupid to ban but it DOES have things pertaining to whales. 😛 At least there would be some form of an attempt to tie things together.
This reaction makes about as much sense as banning commemorative dinner plates because people masturbate. Why go after video games over an act that took place on social media? Wouldn’t it make more sense to, I don’t know… ban social media instead? That’s still an extreme measure and that’s clearly not the best answer either, but it would at least relate more to the offending act itself. In some ways this reminds me of our government in the states trying to relate violent video games because of gun violence, which went up in smoke. Our government is not as religious however, at least not yet. They’re working on it…
Fallout 4 Photo Bomb
I continued onward with my adventures in Fallout 4 or as I like to call it Skyrim with guns… or in my case swords, no idea how it always ends up that way. I do appreciate the details they’ve left in the world, from objects to physics, and how such objects and bodies are placed in the world.
Here we see three former people having a netflix and chill night minus the netflix, and as you can see only two of these people are wearing clothes… hmmmm. Playing off of what a friend said on Steam, the naked guy stripped naked and mooned his mates; then he let out a giant fart and ended the entire world.
I’m not entirely sure what to make of this one. Why are the mannequins revolting against this dead schmuck? Why a plunger? What kind of kink factory is this? Well, at least the mannequins got head… in the toilet.
The irony here, he is now just as mobile as the mannequin, goes to show you can even love your possessions in the afterlife.
Thanks to Yutram I got my hands on some more mods for the next play session (mainly bug fixes and other game improvements with some fun stuff). But if anyone has some other mod suggestions feel free to float them by me. I think after two days of Fallout 4 though I’ll be giving myself a break and doing something Source related, assuming I’ll have the energy for it tomorrow after work. Time to see if I’ll be able to walk off this sprain…
Sunday Open Thread
As if last weeks back issues weren’t bad enough I had a small fall down the stairs last night. Nothing broken or swollen, just really sore. I’ve been taking it easy, mainly playing Fallout 4 while sipping tea.
I even completed a quest! It wasn’t just wandering around killing random raiders and monsters, there was some form of purpose… also I modded the moon and really wanted to see it in action.
In other news I’m still tired
Hopefully I’ll have more energy when I get off work tomorrow… weekend! :happy:
They say to follow your dreams, what happens when yours involve games?
Not much for me to type tonight. I’ve been playing around in Source FilmMaker trying to get the creative juices flowing again. I have some ideas for something but not sure how to act on them… you could say some of it came to me in a dream in the form of giant watermelon-sombrero UFO’s. Putting the two items together in SFM and enlarging them is about as ridiculous as it sounds. Although it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve recreated a dream in this program. I still remember when I had this one:
It was actually quite similar to the animation, when I dream it usually involves whatever I’m playing. Lots of people at the time were making their own Portal 2 Personality Sphere NPC’s (and in doing so lowered the property values on the Steam Workshop with their lack of personality personality spheres. I did it to give myself somewhat of an online presence, it was better for me to hide behind a character model, only sharing a corrupted soul. Of course, I haven’t had any dreams like that in a few years. I still dream constantly, but it has all taken another form. I’d like to start doing this stuff again, maybe not recreating a dream, but SFM in general. This is assuming I have the time on my hands to do so. 😛
DLC never tasted so good
I’ve been pondering the games I’ve left unfinished lately, although Jazzpunk is one I’ve already finished more than once. But then came The Flavour Nexus DLC, something I should have touched a long time ago. The DLC itself is rather short, but packs quite a bit of humour and slapstick into it to make it worth the playtime. They somehow managed to make grocery shopping entertaining. I touched everything I could, and was even treated to a jump scare involving a mummy.
Unfortunately for the mummy his curse didn’t do anything to me… I’ve already had to endure another. :melon:
Games and agony
I took to wandering the wasteland today, didn’t feel like doing much else. I somehow managed to conjure up pain in my shoulder blades this morning; I can’t remember how exactly, but once it happened I heard a crack followed by an intense pain that I’ve only been able to get the edge off of with painkillers and candy. That and playing a bit of Fallout 4 with 2Boss. 😛
I also ventured into XCom 2, a friend of mine from work recommended it to me during the summer sale. I’m not really one for RTS games, but when he mentioned modding and the amount of customization you can put into making your own characters that made my ears perk up. I don’t have any screenshots yet, but give it time. I think it might even be worthy of recording, or streaming at the very least.
Oh, also on the subject of games I revisited Myst Online: Uru Live yesterday. It was interesting to see how it performed on my new processor, for some strange reason one of my cores was pegged at 97% at all times. It wasn’t that big of a deal considering I have 16 threads total, it’s just really bizarre. Then of course there was Cards Against Humanity with friends. Something I really shouldn’t play before bed, as that caused some really strange dreams I’d rather not go into detail about. :zorak: We’ll just say that I turned Gollum Hitler into a potato by stabbing him with my sword. I can’t really say much else because I’m afraid the internet might not be ready for what my brain churns out during a nightly sleep session.
Video Hiatus
After doing a good job of releasing one video per week for almost two months I’ve found myself needing to take a break. I have stuff that I need to put out, but it’ll require further polishing and analysis before getting to a point of release… unless some miracle happens where I find something to upload, such as cat porn. :morty: I’ll be sure to continue making regular posts, would have done one yesterday but was stuck in bed for most of the day. :rick:
Oh, forgot to add there might be a chance of me streaming. :v: