My opinion of cheating in Pokemon

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In Pokemon, cheating is huge. And it’s a very sensitive topic. On one side, you see people saying that it devalues the game, and on the other, you see people making excuses for it because that’s what they do. Being someone who plays Pokemon, I have an opinion of cheating, and it’s not really favorable.

If you hack your games but don’t connect to online competitions or trade online, then this might not apply to you, because what you’re doing doesn’t really have an impact on online competitions or what people get in trades. If you’re ruining the game for anyone, it would only be yourself, but you probably have your own reasons for doing what you do. It’s not like you’re trying to trick anyone into thinking you’re putting a lot of effort forward or using illegitimate means to gain a competitive advantage. Competitive cheaters, on the other hand, are different.

Most people don’t need an explanation of just how obvious it is that when a competitive environment is governed by rules and regulations, when participants circumvent or attempt to defeat those rules in an attempt to gain a competitive advantage for themselves, that’s unfair for those of us who played by the rules. Such cheating isn’t just defiant to the established rules of the competition, it disrespects the efforts of those who play by the rules.

Therefore, when a Pokemon video game competition forbids pokemon or save files that have been obtained or modified with an external device or outside normal gameplay, to enter such pokemon or games with such save files into competitions would be considered cheating. Obvious.

So obvious, in fact, that it can be quite surprising how far cheaters go to insist that they’re not cheating.

Of course, they don’t want to be called cheaters. That’s a very unpleasant-sounding word. It implies what they pretty-much do. So you’ll see some of them try pretty hard to explain why they think that what they’re doing isn’t cheating. Similarly, people who lie don’t like being called liars, even though that’s what they’re going. If they’re outed, they lose the advantage that they’d gain from their cover-up.

In some cases, you might hear something like: “It’s not like I’m giving myself something unobtainable. I’m just saving myself a little time.” Is that so? So then, if you make yourself the finest set of competitive battling pokemon that you could raise Xerox, buy a plane ticket and travel to some place like Vancouver so you can participate in Worlds, then get banned from the competition and are turned away, how much time did you actually save? You could have instead bred and raised a team of six competitively-viable pokemon from eggs in just a few hours each to save yourself from being humiliated in front of a bunch of other Pokemon players that don’t even want to look at a cheater.

Yes, obtaining competitively-viable pokemon is easier in the sixth gen games than it ever has been. It only took me a few hours to hatch a 5IV (except SpA) Torchic with Speed Boost and an Adamant nature. Even if it only takes a few hours, hatching a competitively viable pokemon from an egg is a rewarding experience. In sixth gen, it’s so easy to get wild pokemon with high IVs thanks to things such as Friend Safari in XY or Dexnav in ORAS, and use items like Destiny Knot and Everstone so natures and stats are passed on with breeding. Then there’s the fact that pokemon generated in the sixth gen that are in the Undiscovered egg group have a guaranteed 31 in at least three of it’s IVs, which includes legendary pokemon. If someone still cheats up pokemon for themselves just to have some that are competitively viable, just how lazy are they?

Some cheaters complain that if they have to play fair, then they’d be at a disadvantage compared to players that put more time into the game. That actually sounds like an opportunity to learn a life lesson. If someone puts more time into something, then they’re more likely to be better at it. Professional athletes spend hours most days of the week conditioning themselves so they’d perform well when it comes time to play. A student who studies for an hour every school day is more likely to do better in exams. If you think it would be fun to raise pokemon, you’d spend time doing it. If Pokemon is your favorite game, then why not play it?

Cheating has become so widespread, that some players have felt justified in doing so because there are so many other players that do it. That’s some faulty reasoning. If a player is one of the thousands that might be turned away from a single event for bringing a cheated pokemon, they’ve still been turned away. Some that cheat might be getting away with it because they are using a hacked pokemon that can pass the checks. But that doesn’t make that pokemon legit, it means that the player discovered a way to get around the system.

It might seem like I’m explaining why cheating is wrong to a bunch of kids. I remember seeing numbers representing disqualifications for a single competition by division, and the highest number of disqualifications was for the Masters division, which represents the oldest Pokemon players, with over a thousand disqualifications. It might be that the numbers were skewed more towards the Masters division because there may have been more participants in that division. However, that’s a huge number of grown-ups turned away for cheating that should have known better. Considering that Pokemon has what is easily the biggest eugenics simulator that gaming has to offer, one would think that grown-ups would be more interested in learning the rules so that they don’t come off as unfit.

I posted a couple days ago that stricter hack checks are going to be implemented for Rating Battles and Battle Competitions. It wouldn’t be surprising if the same checks would be in place for Worlds this year. Depending on how strict these checks are, there might be quite a bit of drama from players that are sent home because they were found to have something ineligible in their party.

But what?

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I’ve been noticing a trend where people append their sentences with “but…”, and that’s how they end their sentence. An example of this phenomenon is as follows:

“I intended to park closer to the store, but…”

When expressed in writing, the substance of the sentence ends with a comma, then the word “but” is appended, followed by an ellipsis.

When a person ends their sentence with “but”, they often look to one side, with their head leaning slightly, as though to leave the remainder of their statement to be inferred solely though their tone. Rather the finish the sentence, the speaker trails off and shifts the burden of interpreting the incomplete thought to the listeners, because the speaker cannot be bothered to properly express the thought that might not have been properly formulated in their mind to begin with. As they do so, they often smugly roll their eyes and stress the word “but” as though using such a lazy template of communication were something that they could take pride in, not respecting you enough to communicate with you as though you were their intellectual equal.

The word “but” has nearly the same meaning as “however”, and is often followed by more information that adds to or may even modify the previous statement. It may also indicate exceptions or perhaps even make contradictions to the preceding proposition. Furthermore, ellipses (…) indicates omissions; statements intentionally left incomplete.

Considering this, when a person ends a sentence with “but…”, they could be leaving out just about anything. Even important information could be omitted. So the example sentence above:

“I intended to park closer to the store, but…”

…Could have omitted the following:

  • “…I was attacked by killer ants from outer space.”
  • “…my car gave out in the middle of the parking lot.”
  • “…there are picketers outside that hate the fact that this company makes money.”
  • “…I was a little concerned with the militant, pedophile rapists that are throwing rocks at our windows.”

Why omit something that, if known, would have likely influenced decisions made by the hearers?

If you’re sick of this kind of corner-cutting in communication, there’s something you can do about it. When someone ends a sentence with “but…”, ask them “…but what?” Have them finish their own sentence. In so doing, you’ll be directing the burden back onto them of formulating their own thoughts in their own minds, where it belongs, and making them properly express that thought in the form of a complete sentence.

It might be that, after several times, they’ll get the point and stop being lazy with their communication. Or they’ll just take their lackadaisical sentence structure to someone who doesn’t mind that they’re not finishing their own sentences. In either case, you win.

If someone were to be just as lazy with other areas of their life, how would it work out for them? Imagine how they might sound confessing to it:

  • “I tied one shoe, but I didn’t tie the other one. Oops. Oh well, I’ll just leave it like that.” *
  • “I know you wanted a turkey sandwich, but I found this ‘Tofurky’ instead. Close enough, right?”
  • “I started the laundry, but then just left the wet shirts in the washer for days. Now they have mildew on them. My bad!”
  • “Yeah, the steak is underdone, but what do you expect when I only cook it in half the time! Aren’t I cute?”
  • “Yeah, I want kids, but I’m still making you pull out before you’re done.”

Like that last point, leaving sentences incomplete by ending them with “but…” is like making someone pull out before they’re done; you’re obviously not concerned with the other party’s satisfaction at all.

* Wow, that sounds stupid. It wouldn’t be surprising if that became a fad in middle schools and high schools.

Does Nintendo have a plan for curbing developer laziness?

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oldnintendoseal

Lately, there has been a lot of speculation about Nintendo’s NX console. This reminds me of the speculation that surrounded one of their previous projects, code-named Revolution, which turned out to be the Wii.

In both instances, Nintendo was having a weak console generation, and there has been speculation as to what kind of innovation they’d come up with next. In Wii’s case, the system didn’t disappoint, except in several notable areas:

  • The processor on the thing didn’t come close to the kind seen in Xbox 360 or PS3, though that didn’t prevent games like Metroid Prime 3 from running well on it,
  • Some people didn’t like the name Wii, and
  • Game developers largely treated the system as a dumping ground for miscellaneous shovelware and shallow, gimmicky experiences.

Recently, SquareEnix suggested possible support for the NX, which might even manifest in the form of a couple entries in the Dragon Quest series. There would be very little to worry about when it comes to SquareEnix. However, not every video game company out there is as committed to producing quality products.

In fact, the epidemic of low-quality shovelware is something that’s pretty widespread across various platforms, PC included. There have been botched releases that should have been relatively straight forward, such as a recent port of a Batman game to PC, or various broken games that game developers aren’t fixing because they already have gamers’ money.

There was a similar situation in the ’80s, just prior to the gaming crash of that time. Game makers were rushing low-quality, licensed products to consumers eager to buy them. One of the most famous of these was E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, famous for having so many unsold copies, that they were buried in huge quantities in a landfill in Arizona. Why were so many licensed games winding up in landfills? Because gamers were becoming jaded with the steady stream of over-hyped, low-quality products.

This is why, in the ’80s and early ’90s, the Nintendo Seal of Quality was such a big deal. That seal was Nintendo’s way of saying “We’ve reviewed this product and determined that it is a functional and enjoyable product that’s worth your money.” In some cases, one might wonder how a game managed to get Nintendo’s Seal of Quality. However, by encouraging game makers to strive to attain this seal on their products, Nintendo encouraged a level of quality in games that, otherwise, gamers had little guarantee of. There were no review sites such as MetaCritic or even GameFAQs back in the ’80s. That assurance of quality meant something to gamers.

Nintendo’s NX console is coming up, and there are probably many shovelware developers out there eagerly waiting to pile on their underwhelming digital refuse. Perhaps something like the Nintendo Seal of Quality would be an effective measure to protect gamers from wasting their hard-earned money on games that hardly work.

For such a thing to be effective, Nintendo would have to be discerning concerning what games are made for their system. They would have to be more stern than just being glad that some third party developer is making games for their system. They’d have to have what it takes to say “No, this product isn’t finished yet. Continue to work on it, and maybe we’ll review it again.” If Nintendo themselves were to once again take a stand to encourage quality in games, gamers would regain respect for Nintendo in a hurry. Because gamers do see that there are a few things wrong in the gaming industry.

Does the gaming industry have issues? Yeah, there are a few:

  • Rushing products to market for the gamers eager to buy it, ready or not,
  • Abusing DLC, in some cases charging money for content already on the game disk,
  • Games that can only be played online,
  • Not repairing buggy and broken games, even with simple updates.

There are more. It seems like some game makers are pushing the limits of what they can get away with. But if they keep it up, gamers might end up becoming much more cynical about something that should be about having fun. Yeah, fun. Did we forget that that’s what playing video games is about?

Would Nintendo stand up for gamers by encouraging quality games from game developers? It wouldn’t be the first time that they did. But it’s certain that they continue to encourage sales of their own game systems by making quality games, themselves. That makes it very easy to be a Nintendo fan. That alone might be the strongest case for buying an NX. Whether third parties put much effort forward on NX games remains to be seen.

There’s a reason why Nintendo has as much respect as they do. They put a lot of effort forward. Satisfied customers tend to become return customers. If another gaming crash occurs, Nintendo would be very likely to survive it, because many gamers trust them.

Is Dusclops terrible? I don’t think so.

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250px-356Dusclops

Have you had a pokemon where what you’ve heard about it is much different from your own personal experience? I have. Dusclops is a pokemon that I’ve played competitively and had so much fun as other players struggled against it.

If you were to go to a community like Smogon, you’d probably hear something like “Don’t use Dusclops. It’s terrible.” But here’s the thing: not only is Dusclops not terrible, it rocks pretty hard. Here is a set that I’ve used:

Snickers
Dusclops
Sassy nature
Ability: Pressure
Item: Eviolite
– Will-O-Wisp
– Night Shade
– Pain Split
– Protect
252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpDef

0005_SNICKERS_Bar

Not going anywhere for a while? It might because Dusclops is walling you so well. Dusclops’ already high defensive stats are brought even higher by the presence of Eviolite, which makes it soak up moves it’s not weak to as though they weren’t a big deal. Most walls are either physically or specially oriented, but Dusclops’ physical and special defense are both really high. A Sassy nature is chosen because once burned by Will-O-Wisp, physical attackers wouldn’t be doing much damage. Night shade is there so Dusclops has something to do when Taunted, and in between racking up passive burn damage with Protect. It’s a little disappointing that Pain Split is it’s only form of recovery, but it still works pretty well against opponents that think they’re nearing a KO.

Now, there are a few concerns that players express when it comes to Dusclops:

“But Dusclops is Knock Off bait.”
Yes, Dusclops is Knock Off bait. That doesn’t mean that Dusclops is unusable. In fact, that could work well in luring in threats with Knock Off. Dusclops even has Protect to scout.

Oh, I just brought Dusclops in, and the other player is bringing in something like Weavile. I’ll just bring in a Pokemon holding a Mega Stone.
Oh, the opponent used Knock Off. How predictable. Now I know which of their pokemon has Knock Off.
So, the opponent’s surprise is lost, and they’re probably going to want to get their Knock Off pokemon out of there, unless they want it clobbered by my mega.

Strategy.

“But Dusclops doesn’t have reliable recovery.”
Dusclops’ Pain Split isn’t very good, but Dusclops benefits very well from a Wish used by Sylveon. Dusclops can even switch in easily to benefit from Wish, as long as the player doesn’t allow it’s HP to get so low, that it’s hard to switch it in. It takes foresight on the part of the player to get that to work out. Again, strategy.

“But Dusclops doesn’t work well when statused, especially with Toxic.”
Something like Toxic can make stalling backfire, but the same goes for just about any pokemon that walls. Remember how I mentioned Sylveon? It also has access to Heal Bell. Or you can have Chansey use Aromatherapy. This is the kind of team support that’s often used in competitive play, so status conditions aren’t usually much of a problem as long as the team’s healer can get out there and do it’s job, which is pretty easy to do.

“But Dusclops is slow.”
And? There isn’t much expectation that pokemon that wall go first in a turn. Unless Trick Room is up, the opponent is likely going to attack first. I know that a lot of players out there like their walls to be something that they just send out and then they shut their brains off as they watch their pokemon soak up attacks, but sometimes a person might want to use a little strategic thinking to determine that it might be a good time to get Dusclops out of there so it can later safely come in on Wish support. It might seem like Dusclops needs a lot of help from Sylveon, but Dusclops worked great for me before adding Sylveon to my team.

“But Dusclops is shut down when Taunted.”
That’s true, but here’s the thing: Dusclops can be switched out to get around it. Dusclops doesn’t need to set up to do what it does, so it’s not hurt much by the minor inconvenience of switching out of an unfavorable situation to let a teammate take over. Much of competitive pokemon does involve prediction and strategic switching. I know it sounds like I’m using the word “strategy” a lot, but that’s something that makes certain pokemon very effective.

Dusclops is the kind of pokemon that Mega Mewtwo Y wants to get a critical hit on. If Dusclops doesn’t seem to be working on your team, that might not be Dusclops’ fault. Dusclops might not be invincible, but a pokemon doesn’t need to be high on Smogon’s viability charts to be usable. Perhaps the reason so many players are having a problem with this thing is that they aren’t very well prepared for it. Or maybe they’re seriously underestimating it.

13 Hours: Michael Bay makes movie about Benghazi attack

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I share the surprise of the person in the following video: Hollywood is making a movie that I’m interested in.

I’ve already voiced my opinion on the matter of the Benghazi attack in Libya. While the media largely avoids conversation about this, keeping people in the dark, what makes this matter so interesting is that it reveals so much about Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and the liberal life culture in general.

To spell it out: American citizens have been thrown under the bus. It happened once when an attack occurred in Benghazi that the Obama administration had received a tip-off about over a week before it occurred, and it happened once again when they falsely blamed an American citizen exercising his protected free speech, having him sent to prison for a crime that he did not commit.

While the movie looks like it will be very interesting, it’s kind of sad to think that what it may take to get Americans to take notice of a matter that is in some way relevant to every one of them is a movie that brings the matter into their entertainment. But if that’s what it takes, then what it takes is coming to theaters. Of course, a person doesn’t have to wait for the movie to come to theaters to understand what’s going on. If you’re reading this on a device connected to the internet, it’s easy to learn a few things about the Obama administration that they don’t want you to find out.

What’s more, what you stand to learn is one of the reasons why America should not want Hillary Clinton to become president of the United States. Another reason is her use of a personal email account to conduct state business instead of a state-issued email account. If you don’t understand what’s wrong with that, you’re probably already sharing a lot of personal things about yourself using the internet.

One would have to be pretty naive to think that, once president of the United States, Hillary’s willingness to destroy the lives of American citizens to further her own political agenda will change. At this point, it’s already established behavior, and the act of voting her into office would be in effect rewarding her for it.

If you wanted to learn about it from a movie, then that movie is coming.

Is a college education still useful? Yes.

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One thing I’ve been hearing is the sentiment that a college education isn’t worth it. It’s often expressed by pundits who notice the state of the job market, think that an education isn’t going as far as it used to, and they assume that it isn’t worthwhile to pursue a college education. I disagree with that perception, which I suspect has done a lot of damage in recent times. A person can hear it, assume that there’s nothing in it for them to take their education any further, and they end up underemployed in spite of their intelligence.

There are numerous cases in which college graduates are working difficult, low-skill, low-pay jobs. The media notices cases like this, reports them as evidence of how the job market is doing, and pundits notice these stories in turn and they blog about what they see as one of the greatest problems with society.

Yeah, there are plenty of Starbucks employees out there with college degrees, but there’s an aspect to this matter that I think goes largely unnoticed: It matters what you go to college for, not just that you went to college.

Perhaps many book store employees and Walmart cart pushers have college degrees, but how many people are asking them what they majored in?

It’s no secret at this point that it’s much harder to find a job with a degree in English or Philosophy than with a degree in Automotive or Engineering. Automotive and Engineering degrees are in demand because they involve a person learning skills that are relevant to those hiring.

When a person graduates from college, their degree indicates that they’ve sufficiently been prepared to perform a job as a professional. In many cases, college courses are intensive, fast-paced, and intellectually-involved to the point that when a person obtains a degree, it indicates that the person takes what they went to school for seriously. There’s very little risk in hiring such a person.

However, a college degree is more useful if it indicates skills that are in demand. There are many automotive repair shops that want to hire a person with a degree in automotive technology. What is a person prepared for when they major in English or Philosophy? Not much, really. Usually, the best they can hope for is to end up teaching English or Philosophy at a university.

Should colleges be blamed for offering degrees that aren’t very useful? Not really. The colleges that offer degrees that don’t reflect in-demand skills are providing a service that customers (students) are willing to pay for. The more serious problem is that students are investing piles of money into educational choices that aren’t likely to pay out very well.

There are many reasons why they do this. Perhaps they’re going for a college degree just to say that they have one. Perhaps their parents are pressuring them to attend college, and they, out of laziness, go for something that requires little effort. Perhaps they’re simply unaware of just how few opportunities await someone with an English or Philosophy degree. Or perhaps they are aware of how difficult the job market is for one with the degrees they’re pursuing, and they’re determined to teach these subjects for a living.

One problem, I think, is that people are largely intimidated by math. People often see math as being something difficult for ordinary people to figure out, and they leave it for the people they see as smart to worry about. One of the most frequently-heard complaints about math is that it’s hard to see how the more complex-looking math would be applied in life.

But here’s the thing: if someone doesn’t use the math they learned in high school in their job, their job probably doesn’t pay very well. One thing that automotive specialists, doctors, and engineers have in common is that each of them uses some relatively advanced math nearly any day that they work. Most people would probably prefer that people in such positions be well-practiced in math. People in these trades typically get paid very well, and this is because there aren’t very many people out there that have learned the skills that they have. It’s often the math that intimidates people.

College educations can still be very much worth it, but results can vary greatly depending on what a person goes to college for. The challenging things to learn often pay off the best. Don’t allow certain people to discourage you from bettering yourself. Even a person who goes to school for English or Philosophy can succeed. It helps to be realistic when it comes to your goals.

The N-Box: Nintendo planning it’s own “Loot Crate”-like service

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Surprisingly, Nintendo is getting into the business of offering a subscription-based goodie service similar to Loot Crate, a service that ships a box of goodies to subscribers on a monthly basis.

To get an idea of what Loot Crate is about, go to YouTube and search for “Loot Crate unboxing”. Many such videos feature people pulling items out of these boxes, enjoying the surprise that comes with opening one of these things. Watching one while expecting a Loot Crate in the mail might spoil the surprise, however.

I think the appeal of Loot Crate is for people who know that they’d want a bunch of pop-culture stuff to fill up an otherwise empty bookshelf with conversation pieces, but they aren’t sure what it is they want to buy, but they wouldn’t mind paying someone to determine for them just what it is they get. A lot of it is just toys that would probably sit on a bookshelf, be looked at from time-to-time, but otherwise not really be a big deal. Loot Crates usually come with a T-shirt, and sometimes some posters, which could come in handy for covering ugly bodies and ugly walls. Each month, Loot Crate shipments have a different theme, such as cyborgs.

As weird as some Loot Crate items may be, Loot Crate seems to be generally a good value. Sure, some of the items seem like excess inventory that’s been sitting in warehouses, and a service like Loot Crate may just be a way to sell it off, but about $14 a month isn’t a lot to ask for some of the stuff that you get. Even if some of it is meh. Like shoelaces, pins, decals… You might have had times that you’ve been to Gamestop, saw a mint tin with a design that you liked, but then saw the price tag and decided that you didn’t want to spend something like $4.99 for something like that. One might even feel inclined to hold off on impulse purchases, allowing Loot Crate to supply them with miscellaneous stuff.

So, Nintendo is getting into that with their upcoming monthly N-Box. I like that. For those who like Nintendo, this might still mostly be stuff that a person typically wouldn’t find a use for, but in themes that would be easy for them to appreciate.

There’s already a lot of speculation concerning possible contents, perhaps the most attention-getting would be exclusive Amiibo figures. There are people that are fanatical about those things. Including exclusive Amiibo figures would generate some guaranteed sales for Nintendo (and inspire more fights between determined collectors). Perhaps also they could include some accessories such as custom styluses and perhaps also some plushes.

Loot Crate does monthly themes; such a thing would be easy for Nintendo to do. Perhaps one month they could do a Mario themed box, and another a Pokemon themed box. They could do boxes to promote their new IPs, such as Splatoon. It’s easy to imagine them also doing a Luigi themed box, which would makes some fans happy (the ones that think it wasn’t enough that Nintendo declared a “Year of Luigi”).

For collectors, something like this might be a dream come true. Contents exclusive to early N-Boxes could end up becoming collectors items, especially if exclusive Amiibo figures are included.

Right now, the pricing of the service is unknown. But currently, the service has only been announced for the UK. I’d like to see Nintendo make this available to the United States.

Stricter hack checks coming for Pokemon, what it might mean for those who don’t hack pokemon

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A news story just posted on Serebii.net indicates that the Pokemon Global Link is going to implement stricter checks to determine whether pokemon used by players have been hacked. According to the story, if you are caught with a modified save file or modified pokemon, you could be banned from Rating Battles and Battle Competitions.

If I could make a suggestion, I would like for the Global Trade Station (GTS) to be included in these stricter hack checks. For players that don’t use hacks, hacked pokemon are often acquired from the GTS, often accidentally on the part of the non-hacking players from players that hack them. In fact, that can bring up another problem.

It is possible for players to use hacked pokemon while unaware that they’re using them. Again, non-hacking players may be unaware that a pokemon that they’ve received from the GTS may be hacked. Ordinary players may not know what makes a hacked pokemon, or perhaps the hacked pokemon has been hacked in such a way that even experienced players wouldn’t be able to tell it was hacked with close inspection, but whatever filter used by the Global Link could detect it. It would be pretty sad if someone who doesn’t hack pokemon were somehow penalized because they unwittingly used a pokemon that’s been hacked.

While applying stricter checks may keep hackers out of Rating Battles and Online Competitions, it would be nice if they’d also apply to the GTS to keep hacked pokemon away from players that just aren’t interested in them. While using the GTS, I’ve gotten some pokemon that have obviously been hacked. Among these are a Celebi and an Arceus that resemble legit event pokemon, except they’re missing ribbons that they’re supposed to have (unless there’s some way to remove ribbons from pokemon that I’m not aware of). While it’s nice to have rare pokemon, when they’re not the real deal, it’s not as satisfactory to have them. I’ve also gotten a shiny Latios and a shiny Latias from GTS, with competitively viable natures and perfect IVs. Some might say that’s a strong sign they were hacked, but it’s hard to confirm it for sure.

This might open old wounds to bring up, but official pokemon hack checkers haven’t been flawless. For example, was Nintendo not aware that it was possible for players to obtain a shiny Jirachi from the Pokemon Colosseum Bonus Disk? Yet, shiny Jirachi was banned from being transferred from gen 5 games to gen 6 games through Poke Transfer.

Considering this, one could see how ordinary players that don’t hack may be concerned. They could be penalized through no fault of their own. Looking at how the GTS has historically been managed is another cause for concern: it seems as though the GTS is set up in such a way that it can run somewhat stably without much need for moderation, if any. In this condition, the otherwise automated system is influenced by the users themselves, who may, at their discretion, respect the desires of those who put pokemon up for trade or devise means to circumvent restrictions.

Long story short, I like that stricter hack checks are being implemented, but I’d like to see such a thing apply to the GTS. What’s more, I’d like to see some care implemented in how punishments for violations are enforced. I don’t want to see players blocked who simply weren’t aware that the pokemon they brought with them were hacked. I’d also like to see the filters consistent with what’s actually been made available. If those who make the Pokemon games could use a little help, it might not be a bad idea to refer to Serebii’s event database. It’s pretty comprehensive.

And while I’m making suggestions, I wouldn’t mind seeing the restrictions against trading pokemon with certain ribbons lifted. The ribbons in question might be part of what make the pokemon special, but they shouldn’t prevent a player from doing what they’d otherwise do with pokemon, and it would make it much easier for players to obtain certain pokemon who haven’t been to certain events.

How these stricter checks will affect hackers, and for that matter, those who don’t hack, remains to be seen. Perhaps they will change the game for the better, but if mistakes are made, they might just upset the fans more than before they’d be implemented.

Nintendo president offed by Freemasons (says conspiracy nutcases)

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It doesn’t take long using social media to find some pretty spurious takes on recent news. This includes some conspiracy theories, which are pretty much intellectual junk food. As vexing as it may be, some conspiracy theories can really take off.

There’s a new one that’s going around, and if you’ve read the title of this entry, your palm might already be on your face. There are conspiracy theorists going around on social media saying that the recently deceased president of Nintendo has been offed by Freemasons.

Aside from being laughable, this conspiracy theory is also disgusting. The guy has only been dead for a few days, and a bunch of people with a tenuous grip on reality are attempting to use the tragedy to bring attention to themselves.

The position of the conspiracy theorists is that Satoru Iwata, during his presidency of Nintendo, enacted several contradictory policy changes that weren’t in line with the agenda of the Freemasons, who supposedly are exerting their influence on the video game industry. That sigh of disgust probably came from you.

There are several points that these conspiracy theorists bring up that they actually think support their position, and here is one example:

  • The Japanese name of Atari, founded by Freemasons, means “to hit the target”, indicating their goal of wanting to control the Japanese game industry.

One thing that can be learned about Freemasons from Google searches and poking around on “truth seeker” Geocities pages is that they like hiding their agenda in plain sight, typically by using symbology that’s been highly-publicized in films and books. If they’re that confident that their plans will succeed, then why has Atari, their supposed key player in the game industry, had so many commercial failures since the video game crash of the ’80s? Are we to really accept that a company that’s so sophisticated that it can carry out a hit on the president of a multi-national tech company (which happens to be an industry leader) is simultaneously so inept that it cannot produce a commercial success of it’s own?

These guys are already off to a pretty bad start, but there’s more:

  • Atari’s goal was to keep the Japanese people lazy and stupid, and Satoru Iwata resisted this.

Then they failed. Japan is easily one of the most industrious nations in the world today, with an economy second in strength only to the United States. Anyone who thinks that the typical Japanese man only sits around playing video games and reading manga are in for a surprise when they visit a place like Saitama for the first time. And again, are we really supposed to accept that Atari can carry out a hit on one of the most influential men in the tech industry, when it would be far more conductive to their supposed mission to address and overcome their commercial failures? One would think that if a company’s mission is to keep people addicted to video games, they’d be less about trying to bring attention to themselves by assassinating people known all over the world and more about knowing how to make a decent video game. Because at this rate, it would be far too easy for some overweight Loose Change enthusiast living thousands of miles away to expose their entire operation by using their Twitter account.

Another one:

  • Nintendo initially refused to reduce the price of the Nintendo 3DS, but then cut the price by 40% about 6 months after it’s release.

Satoru Iwata then cut his own executive pay in an effort to maintain Nintendo’s stock value, and the 3DS would go on to become one of Nintendo’s fastest-selling and successful gaming systems. Do I even have to explain why the position of conspiracy theorists on this matter are logically inconsistent? If you want a video game company to be highly successful, why would you have a problem with someone who makes moves that are highly beneficial to that company? Iwata was president of Nintendo when the Wii and Nintendo DS hit the market, and those were among the best selling game consoles ever. They each sold over a hundred million units. Iwata obviously wan’t attempting to sabotage the game industry.

  • Nintendo stated that their software production outside of Japan went up, when it has actually been going down.

And apparently being wrong about something justifies calling for a hit on a company president.

There’s more, but I think I made my point. Conspiracy theorists are ridiculous, and so is the idea that Nintendo’s president was killed by Freemasons working for Atari. As opposed to cancer, which we still don’t have a cure for (though they probably have quite a few conspiracy theories about that).

Conspiracy theories don’t take a lot of mental energy. It typically involves a person spending hours reading other people’s ideas, then thinking themselves enlightened and having figured things out for themselves. To demonstrate how easy it is to imagine up a new conspiracy theory, here’s a new one: The government and the Illuminati have been propagating conspiracy theories for decades to occupy people of substandard intelligence. How’s that for a paradox conspiracy theory?

If more people would have instead expended into medical science the kind of energy that they’re putting into circulating stupid conspiracy theories, we might have actually developed a cure for cancer by now.

Webcomic Review: Boss Rush Society

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giga kay

It seems like there’s someone out there that has me beat when it comes to confidence. There is someone out there who likes what he likes, and is not at all ashamed of saying so. That person is TokenDuelist, the author of the webcomic Boss Rush Society. TokenDuelist posts to his DeviantArt account with furry lesbian art, MLP characters (at least one work of which being lesbian art), Pokemon fan art of a ten-year-old with huge breasts, and a bare-breasted woman pawing at a blurred-out banana. That he is a male should be evident considering the nature of the DeviantArt material described. He also posted a picture of himself using the same DeviantArt account. That’s some confidence, there.

As mentioned already, he is the author of a webcomic, and that’s what’s primarily getting the attention in this review.

Boss Rush Society stars Lucas (a.k.a. Giga), a young man who enters a battle tournament, but shows up late, and the tournament starts without him. When he does show up, there’s only one contestant remaining, and he’s permitted entry, leaving him only having one weakened and tired opponent to trounce before being crowned the winner of the tournament. Which, predictably enough, he does. Isn’t that every layabout’s fantasy? Getting the prize just for showing up and saying his ABCs.

The art style can be likened to a combination of manga and the work of Phil and Kaja Foglio (but not in a good way). There is an obvious problem with proportions, and that is particularly evident in the first panel of this page, where the claw game is taller than the woman standing in front of it, but the woman is much taller than the arcade machines right next to them. There are other, similar problems, but I think you’d see them if you were to read the comic for yourself.

Also, almost all the female characters have huge breasts, except for one, which was probably a character that we weren’t supposed to like. Again, it’s obvious that the author of this comic is male. He has this thing for huge, swollen, gravity-defying breasts. What the obsession is with oversized breasts, I don’t understand. When they get too big, they sag and can actually be pretty gross.

Usually, small expressions of sexual immaturity can be ignored as a quirk in some webcomics, but that’s really hard to do when it’s used as a punch line in the very first issue. An example of this can be seen on this page, where one of the characters, apparently the main character’s girlfriend, shrugs off that she could have seen the main character almost nude. After he throws her out of the room, she starts pounding on the door. Not only does Giga get an easy tournament victory that he didn’t deserve, he also has a nymphomaniac girlfriend. What a guy.

There are a couple reasons why tournament battles are a recurring concept in so many shounen manga: the arranged battling environment allows for matches that otherwise might not easily occur in the flow of the narrative, and it’s very easy to write for. However, the concept is hindered in Boss Rush Society by several problems:

  • Too much meta humor. The main character actually stalls during his only tournament match to explain his weakness to spikes using video game logic. Yeah, you probably already figured this out, but Boss Rush Society has a video game theme. Not only did Giga show up late to the tournament and only have to face one tired opponent, he called for a time-out as a stall tactic to charge his energy. Perhaps for his next match, he can take on crippled girl scouts.
  • Too much exposition. One of the elementary rules of a visual medium is “show, don’t tell”. The first few pages established nicely that the backbone of the plot would involve tournament battles, so one would assume that any other dialogue would serve to set the stage for the next tournament battle. An excuse can be made for this for character development, but that leads to another problem:
  • The characters are seriously annoying. Every single character in Boss Rush Society is needlessly grating. Because of this, I wanted to see every character lose every match, regardless of which side they’re on. TokenDuelist needs to get the memo: you only portray a character as annoying when you want them to be perceived as annoying, such as when you don’t want your audience to like them. There isn’t a single character in Boss Rush Society that comes off as likable, the main character least of all. The single action of taking advantage of a weakened opponent for an easy tournament victory is more morally reprehensible than anything that the “bad guys” are ever shown to do.

Boss Rush Society is an excellent example of what can go wrong when someone who is not Japanese and plays lots of video games and watches lots of anime attempts to draw a manga of their own. Japanese manga and anime artists are better at it for a reason: they typically go to an art school where they do lots of practice drawing manga and anime before going on to become professionals. At that point, they can work shifts as long as 16 hours animating, get paid about as much as fast food employees, and some of them don’t even have homes because they’re allowed to sleep at their desks. It’s usually by about this point that many of them realize that they’ve made a mistake. Weeaboo artists typically aren’t aware of what being a manga/anime artist is like, otherwise, they’d probably stop trying so hard to be one.

Just when I thought I couldn’t take much more, I’ve read the entire series. As of now, there’s less than two dozen pages. One might think that this is because TokenDuelist is just getting started, but his archives indicate that this isn’t the case. He only releases his webcomic one page at a time, with updates as far as several months apart. TokenDuelist had nearly two years since the inception of his webcomic to carefully craft it’s 23 pages into a masterpiece, but it seems like he waived this so he can draw lots of furries on DeviantArt, and what we got instead was Boss Rush Society.

Worse yet, the spaced-out timing of releases for pages of Boss Rush Society suggests that, for each page, he carefully considered it’s content, and deliberately decided that they were worthwhile additions to his series. There is a reason why most suicides are quick: otherwise, a person might realize that what they are doing is a bad idea, and not go through with it. TokenDuelist gives himself as many as two months at a time to review the content of each page before making the conscious decision to add it to his webcomic.

Like I said before, TokenDuelist is confident. So confident that he actually links to his webcomic on message boards. Obviously, he thinks his webcomic is great, otherwise, he wouldn’t have such confidence.

I think it’s about time to give Boss Rush Society it’s score, which is a Robbie Rotten out of ten:

robbie rotten out of ten

Which is somewhere around a 2.3.