Recent content by mjp19xx

I know of at least one study where children played Rayman: Raving Rabbids and other children played a more explicitly violent game (Unfortunately, I forgot what the explicitly violent game was), and both groups displayed increased aggression at practically the same levels. I also agree that...

I am, in fact, questioning that very "all or nothing" approach. I also never said that we should ban children and adolescents from consuming violent media. I simply said that they probably shouldn't consume it, and if they are going to consume it, their parents should have to obtain it for them...

I would ironically shoot war. Despite several earlier assertions that resource scarcity is the main cause of war, I must disagree. Nationalism (religious fundamentalism is a form of nationalism) has been the primary cause of war. Certainly this was the case in the twentieth century. War is more...

I love video games. I am even writing an English literature thesis on interactivity's affect on storytelling, but Leland Yee is right. There are mounds of studies that clearly show that violent media increase aggression, and we are not just talking short-term. The long-term effects are, in fact...

Bravo! I am quite a fan of terrible and/or poorly thought out tattoos,but this is a new one for me. At least getting Xes through some of the faces at a later date will likely be cheap.

This article is an example of either simple failed logic or a misunderstanding of what new means. New is not synonymous with better or even good. The word new offers no insight into the quality of something other than temporal placement, and an indication of difference from what has come before...

This article is heavily skewed in Blizzard's favor. Sadly you should read the article on Joystiq, if you want any sort of objectivity. Blizzard definitely wants money. I bet every company out there would love to have media outlets pay them to advertise their products.

This article is absolutely right. If you want to beat used game sales, you have to cut down the profit potential. I have bought a lot of games that were heavily discounted on Steam that I would have never purchased at their retail price. I didn't pay much, but the developers and publishers made...

I would love to purchase new games, and I do sometimes purchase games on release day. However, I do not purchase new copies of games that are more than a couple of months old due to the fact that publishers lower the new prices at a rate that is much too slow. You would think that they would...

Does it even matter. If you are a hardcore gamer Nintendo does not really make much of anything for you, and I am pretty sure they don't really want you when they can practically print money with casual gamers.

Jan Jansen from Baldur's Gate II. I love that crazy gnome. He always tells ridiculous stories that you know could not possibly be true. He also tends to invent very dangerous and questionably useful things.

I did point out that not all JRPGs have random battles. I have to agree with your second point to a certain extent. They should not be considered RPGs. I might even play them more if there was not so much boring repetitive filler in them. I will spare some of those that have a nice action...

I used to be really into JRPGs, but even then I always hated random battles. I now almost exclusively play western style RPGs where this is not an issue. The Japanese do luckily seem to be coming around, but that won't change the fact that JRPGs are very linear and essentially contain no real...

Bioshock does not need a sequal. The first game was great. This game has soulless first person shooter written all over it. They seem to be pushing this "cool you get to be a big daddy" crap instead of pushing story and atmosphere. You would be hard pressed to find someone who loved Bioshock...

I honestly have to say that we have not seen a mainstream music movement that was not just garbage since grunge in the early nineties. The fifties gave birth to rock & roll. The sixties gave us a golden age of modern music with the British Invasion, Motown, the bluesy rock of Cream, Hendrix, The...