Are Video Gamers an Untapped Republican Resource?

200 years ago the Republican Party formed.  At the time The Wigs were split between half pro-slavery and half-no slavery expansion beyond states that had slavery.  The Democrats were a party pro-slavery and wanting expansion of slavery to other states.

So when Abraham Lincoln left The Wigs to join a new Republican Party based on the platform of no slavery it felt as if America had it’s first progressive party.  Abraham Lincoln did in fact free the slaves and joined the British in stopping all slave traders worldwide.

Fast forward 200 years and the Democrats, once slave lovers, are now lead by a black man and are considered the more progressive of the two parties.  Many people have tried to explain what happened, but more are focused on a strategy to win the 2016 election.

The GOP is in hard times.  For the first time in a long time they are reaching out to the black community trying to steal black votes from the Democrats.  The GOP are trying to design something that might appeal to black voters.

But really this might just be a waste of time.  To win back black voters they have to be in office and do things to help the black community, they will never win the blacks over on promises alone.

However an untapped resource the Republicans may have never considered are video gamers.

Video gamers are overwhelmingly the most closet conservative people on the planet.  You would never know because most video gamers are between 18–35 and are in the lowest participating voting age bracket.

But let’s throw out some fun facts as to why Republicans should start courting video gamers.

MMORPG Guilds are a Conservatives Dream

Having spent almost 2 decades playing MMORPGs I can tell you that there is no institution far more Conservative than the MMORPG guild.

At the end of the guild is the guild masters.  Guild masters are either elitists with the initiative to be a guild leader or are people chosen from popular consent.  Both of these ways of forming government are prime conservative fundamentals.

When going to a guild you choose from a group of guilds, you know… like capitalism.  The more guilds you can choose from the better the MMORPG might be.  No MMORPG player would ever accept the idea of there being one guild in the game, or no guilds.  The idea that you can come together in a collective group and form a community is a key fundamental idea of MMORPGs and of conservatism.

The most prominent part of MMORPG players being so hyper conservative is how loot is decided.

A liberal (John Rawls) would ask loot to be decided in terms of who needs it most.  This means that people who have the least output get the most gear.

Conservatives don’t think this way.  Conservatives think that you should earn what you get.  To this extent loot systems in MMORPG guilds often revolve around paying your dues and earning your loot through time commitment.

But of course there are exceptions.  Conservatives are willing to bail out that airline industry that isn’t doing so well for the national interest.  This is similar to how a guild might gear out a tank first because this is in the interest of the guild’s progression.

If an MMORPG players spent as much time handing out political pamphlets as they did farming Republicans could win 70% of the popular vote.

Gamers Are Passionate See SOPA

There is a lot of passion in gaming.

This passion erupted when the whole SOPA debate came around.  The SOPA debate was a funny one and it was one in which I sided with legislatures.

However most gamers were adamant about not letting this pass.  There was mass letters, funding for lobbying organizations, and en masse community blackouts.

Imagine if the Republican Party could channel that power into a political force?

The problem of course is that SOPA was a Republican bill.

It would mean (for Republicans) they would have to tone down anti-Internet stuff and start talking about expanding Internet and working with companies like Google to spread Gigabit Internet nation wide.

In terms of legislation Democrats tend to make more anti-video game legislation than Republicans.  Republicans seem to just talk about it.

If they were to try and make bills and make progress that would bring video gamers on their side it might mean blaming bad parenting for violence instead of video games.  The Republicans have said this in the past, so it’s not a big shift.

Gamers are also (and unfortunately) very susceptible to advertising campaigns.  Many gamers like to self-glorify in what they feel might be an untested higher than average IQ, but the truth is gamers are easier to fool than anyone else.

Gamers fit into one of the small groups of people who will purchase something entirely based on a pitch.  Gamers purchase products that don’t even exist all for the chance that when it does exist, it will be awesome.

Advertising campaigns from the Repubs would be very cutting and effective if they could only dig into the ‘cool’ factor that gamers enjoy.

The Democrats most definitely have the cool factor but unfortunately they do not have a platform and values that are in line with most gamers.

Instead of trying to convert Democrats, the Republicans should look at a new set of voters.  Never before in the history of man has the 18-35 voting block had a reason to vote at all.  Republicans could give them that if they only tried.

Republicans Need a Younger Face

One of the problems with the Republican Party is its perception, it appears as a party of elderly bigoted people.

The truth is there isn’t a big difference between the Republicans and the Democrats…. that we know.  President Barack Obama as an example campaigned on a very progressive platform, but never lived up to any of his progressive promises.

But what got Barack Obama elected.

Simple.

He was cool.

The same was true of Bill Clinton.

The Democratic Party wins on branding.  Much like how Xbox is the only cool part of Microsoft, presidents are really the only cool part of being a Democrat.

When Barack Obama is on the campaign trail he is tweeting.  Sometimes you can see him looking down at a tablet.  This president has been designed to really attract young voters.

When you look at the last few Republicans you get the opposite, a bunch of older people who appeal to people who remember that there were wars in the past.

Truthfully the Republican Party needs a younger base that can spread the word and revitalize the Republican Party, so why not target gamers?

On top of gamers being so common, they also happen to be the new cool thing as seemingly everyone is proudly calling themselves a nerd or a gamer.

Gamers Have Disposable Income

The video game industry is getting close to being a trillion dollar industry.  It represents the largest chunk of the entertainment industry.

This is due in part to the unique consumer culture of the video game industry.  It is one of the few industries in which people can and do pre-order items.

Yes here’s the thing.  Gamers are very easily sold on ideals, promises, and are easy to forget controversies.  We’re only a few months after the big SimCity launch fiasco and no one who paid for it cares.  The same is true of Diablo 3.

This means you have a player base that is valuable in terms of assets and will be more forgiving of short term scandals and controversies.

SC2 HOTS Brutal Campaign: Mission 6 Enemy Within – With All Achievements and Secondary Objectives

This is one of the easier missions to do in the game, however there are a few things you should get.

The first is make sure to get the 3 zerg hatch over the 2 zerg hatch with jumping.  3 zerg hatch ability is amazing and means you will get 33% more forces early on.

Make sure to get the ability in which banelings will split off into smaller banelings upon hit.  This has some funny impacts on how the AI of the computer works which makes this all insanely easy.

So with this mission you will start off with a larvae, don’t worry this phase is short lived.  The only really semi-challenging part of this is to use a creature to kill sentries, the computer actually micro-manages sentries away from you… so make sure to jump on them first.

After this you will spawn the brood mother.

This unique brood mother will start off with the ability to spawn zerglings.  These zerglings can be transformed into banelings.  With banelings you can kill every single unit you encounter in super fast time.  Since the banelings move faster than brood mother you will not sufficiently slow down.

Banelings will become essential in rooms in which units activate as you can just place the banelings next to the units as they spawn.

For the achievement in which you have to kill the chambers before 20 seconds left the banelings become essential.  Their splash damage will kill a lot of units around as they target down the structures.  Because of the fast spawn time of zerglings this is a surefire way to get this achievement with ease.

Getting the biomass achievement simply means collecting nearly all biomass.  In my video attempt on this I missed one biomass.

This biomass I missed was easily obtained through the Q command.

In order to get the mastery do the same thing (collect biomass) except when you get the Ursadon make sure to consume it immediately, as this counts towards the achievement.

Good luck and good hunting.

Age of Conan Debuts on Steam

In free falling desperation it seems Age of Conan is finally on Steam.  The ailing franchise has been avoiding Steam integration for quite some time… but now it’s official.  Age of Conan will now join Steam’s large catalog of free games.

This change made sense for Funcom.  Although Steam will now be taking a direct cut of their profits they will now have a trusted interface for purchasing micro transactions.

The Steam wallet is one of the most valued parts of the Steam platform.  It allows people to pre-load a pre-paid mastercard on the spot to spend it on various purchases.

Aliens: Colonial Marines

With over 10,000 contributions to the Steam community page you know this game is going to be either really good or really bad, so what is it?  Well… it’s really bad.

The Brief: Alien

Many people who saw the movie “Aliens” might not know they were watching a sequel.  Alien was the original movie and was considered to be the beginning and the end for the space horror genre.  After Alien was Aliens in which more lore and anatomy lessons remove the mystique the original movie had.

Most horror movies sort of become this.  When you look at Freddie, Jason, Chucky, Saw, and Michael you are looking at horrific villains who eventually become dramas and comedies.

So here’s the brief.  Alien tells the story of Ripley.  Ripley is a female construction worker who is sent off to a planet with a team of marines to mine.  After one of her co-workers is attacked by a being that attaches itself to the face, the crew goes into lockdown mode.

Bishop, an evil android warns them that removing the being might kill the host.  The alien deploys eggs inside the body of te host and transforms into a full fledged alien killing machine.  Ripley is successful in killing the alien and Bishop shows intentions that the Waylund Corporation wanted this alien.

I wonder what’s behind Door #1

Ripley throws herself into cryo sleep and when she returns she is recruited immediately by Waylund Corporation to join a marine squad in wiping out the Alien threat.  It is also asked that she capture one if possible.  Bishop is now a good android and saves the day.  Ripley is forced to do battle with a alien queen.  She uses a construction loader to beat the alien queen.  Before launching off into a cryo chamber again the queen leaves an egg on the pod…. leading us to believe there will be an Aliens 3.

The third movie saw multiple re-writes, multiple directors, multiple producers, and multiple actors and casts.  The end result was the worst movie of the series.  The alien pod hatches and injects itself into a crew member, Ripley.  Bishop shows up claiming to not be an android and in fact developed the Bishop line of robots.  They tell Ripley they need the prototype in order to study it.  Of course it’s all an evil ruse.  Ripley throws herself off of an edge to a pile of molten lava, killing her and the being inside her.

Aliens 3 was so bad they created an unofficial remake of it called Alien Resurrection.  In Alien Resurrection a clone is made of Ripley because apparently she had some alien DNA in her before she died.  The end result is that she is born with an alien inside of her.  The aliens move to protect their young and attack the humans head on.  Ripley once again kills herself in order to kill the alien baby so that no one from the corporation can have it.  This movie is often excluded from the general lore of the Aliens world because of how awful it was.

An unofficial prequel was released in which it is explained that a supreme race of near extinct beings created the races of the universe.  However seeing their mistake they created a xeno race as a biological weapon to take them out.

In the other unofficial Alien vs Predator universe the aliens are a race the predators use as a sport.  However the aliens prove to be too much for the predator as he is forced to recruit help from the humans to stop this massive infestation.

Synopsis

The game single player and multiplayer has a leveling system that is connected.  In each you gain levels and will unlock new weapons and new weapon modifications.  There are about 12 modifications per weapon with four different categories.

So the single player campaign tells the story of a group of marines who come in post Aliens 3.  They are looking for survivors of an ambush and have no idea what is in store for them.  Little do they know the Waylund Corporation has sent their own elite forces in to destroy any evidence of wrong doing.  The colonial marines are now fighting a three front war against the Waylund Corporation and an unknown alien.

The Loader is mixed into the game for popular support.

The game is split off into levels.  Each level represents a fairly narrow corridor in which there are small little doo dads and nicknacks to find if someone chooses to go off the beaten path for a second.  This evidently means everyone will go off of every single off beaten path  they can and utterly ruin the flow of the game.

You can also play co-op…. but I chose not to.

Each level can be replayed for a new high score.  The current high score system only seems to account for high scores among your friends.  Among my 9 friends who own this I have the high scores on every mission because I played the game through on hardest difficulty.

The hardest difficulty is not that hard.  Everything is near one-shottable.  The only thing that really seems to change is how fast your health will regenerate.  On the hardest difficulty it just does not seem to regenerate.  It doesn’t matter too much because in the event of your untimely death you will re-emerge at a checkpoint to start over again.

In terms of gameplay mechanics it is a shooter.  It’s hard to really change up the shooter dynamic.  To give it some flavour they added a motion detector that you can choose to check to try and spot Xenos and humans.  Your main weapon also has a secondary ability which can be shotgun, grenade launcher, or firebomb launcher.

Pistols are seemingly your being completely empty of ammo weapon.  They do little to no damage and are often only used when you get pinned by an alien to try and fend them off.

The multiplayer in the game is split off into four different categories.  Survival has you survive xeno attacks as long as you can.  Team deathmatch has xenos and marines killing each other for points.  Extermination has you capturing checkpoints endlessly.  And the other multiplayer gameplay mode called “Escape” I didn’t try.

Each team will get to play as xenos and human every single round.

The Xenos are a bit odd.  They can scale up and down pillars but seemingly are awkward to control going up ceilings and around corners.  It really takes the mood away when you find an unclimbable piece of terrain block you and an easy kill.

Strengths

• Awesome Looking Xenos
• Fun Multiplayer
• No BS Gameplay Mechanics

The aliens in this game just look absolutely superb.  I don’t know if I can blame Gearbox or the Unreal Engine 3 for this fact.  When you look at an alien they look just like the mechanical automatons from the movie.

If it’s worth anything to anyone, the multiplayer in the game is actually fun.  It’s really addictive trying to flank humans as a xenos and then gunning down xenos as a human.  It’s a welcome change from the traditional shooter which ends up being who can wave around their submachine gun enough to get a random headshot.

Xenos have a special thermal sense in multiplayer

My biggest gripe with shooters these days is how little they have evolved.  In the days of Quake and Doom you would just get behind cover yourself, like a grown up.  Most games took an approach where there was a cover button and you’d shoot from cover.  It started with third person shooters but then it seemingly creaped it’s way into first person shooters.  There’s none of that with Aliens: Colonial Marines.  It seemingly treats you like an adult and attempts to create a realistic battle field.

Weaknesses

• Host Has Left
• Sound Quality Bad
• Bad AI
• Bugs

I was playing my first game and we were winning.  Then suddenly a message popped up on the screen.  “The Host Has Left The Game.”  Really?  Since the host leaves the game we all have to stop playing?  It seems that the system was imported from Borderlands and simply does not fit.  I’ll never complain about CoD’s selecting a new host process ever again.  This is simply awful.  On top of that the host is randomly selected so it’s not like you can even know you are going to ruin people’s lives by leaving a game early.

The sound quality in the game is some of the worst I’ve experienced.  There is a mechanic in which when you are close to someone you can hear them and when they’re far away you hear them on the radio.  The voices seemingly just cut out all the time when over the radio.  It also doesn’t help having this low grade fuzz from time to time.

I killed all of these.. I swears it

Speaking of sound quality.  Mic is default permanently on.  The end result is assholes will loop their speakers into their microphones and you get to hear that awesome fuzzy distorted background noise permanently.  It gets to be hard on the ears and will give you head aches.

Aside from the multiplayer concerns the single player doesn’t get much better.  The AI in the game is pretty terrible.  There’s just so many odd things.  As an example the enemies will only attack in a certain area.  So if you move past that area they’ll never attack you.  However if you and your AI ally pass that area you are forced to go back to that point in which all of them will swarm on you… but seemingly ignore your ally who isn’t giving you any help ever.  It’s just as bad with human opponents who seem to spawn with random weapon and armor choices.  You might be doing fine when suddenly a shotgun baring human will spawn in front of you and one shot you… thanks game!

As of February 17th, 2013 there is no multiplayer community.

The allies aren’t that great either.  Rarely do they ever kill anything and they seem to just run around in random locations as if someone forgot to program a default place for them to get cover.  It also doesn’t help when the aliens seemingly just dart at you and completely ignore the other four marines in their way.

The game is seemingly not polished.  Aliens can move through solid objects which provides an opportunity for being insta-gibbed.  As well in the loader battle it becomes really hard only because your opponent always walks through you… which just doesn’t work in a boxing match.  The whole game is loaded with funky odd bugs that makes you wonder whether or not they even played their own game.

Concluding Thoughts

Don’t get me wrong, there are worst games out there.  I always hate when people take a crappy indie casual game and declare it the game of the year… and then they take a game like this and give it a very low score.

The game is average.

Not fantastic.

Not bad.

It’s average.  The campaign is on average longer than most campaigns in first person shooters.  The multiplayer is average… in the sense that Call of Duty is an average shooter.

The crime of this game is that it isn’t better than Modern Warfare… it’s only equal to it.

For that reason I’ll never recommend this game to anyone.  It has too many bugs and the campaign will be a very infuriating experience.

Get Borderlands 2 instead.

Edit Log:
February 17th: Added new game insights a week after launch.  Added gameplay video.

TERA Goes Free to Play

And another of TheGameGuru.ME’s 2013 predictions comes true.  TERA is going free to play next month.

Even the promo doesn’t look good.  “The features that thousands of people play every day…”

Thousands?  That’s not good.