Nintendo’s Amiibo might not go so fast now…
Nintendo’s Chickens Come [Once Again] Home to Roost!
The events of the week have left Nintendo spitting chips! Nintendo has made a happy little business out of gating off content in their games subject to the purchase of a specific Amiibo, only to then artificially constrain availability of said Amiibo in order to artificially bolster demand and encourage predatory purchasing – leading to scalpers immediately buying up whole shipments in order to fleece consumers. That was until now. Axiogame’s Amiiqo device is set to begin shipping in the UK today, and looks set to completely obliterate into obsolescence any need for one of Nintendo’s Amiibo, beyond simply acting as a collectible toy. The Amiiqo is capable of holding the data of up to two-hundred Amiibo which players can freely cycle through with buttons. The Amiiqo disc is roughly the same size and shape as the base of an Amiibo, and it allows for users to either dump the backup data from their own Amiibo or import bootleg Amiibo data from the interwebs – this is achieved through an Android app loaded to a NFC capable phone or tablet. The product’s firmware will later be updated to add PC compatibility. This not only makes the Amiiqo a handy way to carry around data from all of one’s Amiibo, but also a potent cheat device for instantly leveling a character in Smash Bros., as users are free to upload and download mature character data to and from the internet. The Amiiqo is retailing at fifty British pounds, or roughly eighty US dollars. Nintendo is not best pleased:
“Nintendo actively monitors threats to its product security and the unauthorized use of its intellectual property. Nintendo will vigorously enforce its intellectual property rights and will work to protect its greatest assets, its beloved characters and products.”
Nintendo is furious and nobody gives a shit: Not gamers, nor game bloggers, and not even Nintendo fanboys apparently – because Nintendo has shit on everyone when it comes to their blue-balled cock-tease Amiibo strategy. Nintendo withheld supply and made gamers jump through unacceptable hoops in order to gain access to Amiibo functionality, and now the market conditions that they nurtured have given rise to a more useful product!
The idea behind Faecal Invective Glossary isn’t necessarily a bad one, but Schafer’s involvement makes it an abortive cause.
Tim Schafer Now Has His Own Crowd-Sourced Funding Platform – This Will End Well!
Because of course he does! Because who better to administer a funding platform than a buffoon who could not manage a banana plantation? Because gamers are all idiots, right? Because asking Tim Schafer to run a funding platform is not at all like asking Denis Dyack to run a daycare centre! Good grief, Tim Schafer has this week unveiled his new crowd-sourced funding platform FIG [Funding Imminently Gone], which he will be co-administering along with Aaron Isaksen [Indiefund], Brian Fargo [inXile Entertainment], and Feargus Urquhart [Obsidian Entertainment]. Numerous blogs have also claimed that a former Double Fine Chief Operating Officer by the name of Justin Bailey numbers among their ranks, but one refuses to believe that he is a real person.
What sets FIG [Fleecing Ignorant Gamers] apart from other funding platforms is that it is a platform dedicated to gaming, and one that has committed to only ever running two funding campaigns concurrently, with only one of them ever belonging to an established studio like Double Fine – meaning that projects do not need to compete with as much background noise. Additionally, FIG [Freelance Incurable Greed] was created with a view to allowing backers a stake in a game’s success. At the moment this feature is restricted to the uber monied investor class of backer, though the FIG [Fraud Implemented Gladly] management team plans to eventually extend this option to mere peasant backers, so that rank and file plebs will be able to share in Tim Schafer’s success the next time he just about breaks even!
“My expectation with Broken Age in the end was just to break even… With Kickstarter, the risk is gone of losing money on it, so you know you’ve broken even if you just make the game to that amount of money. But we made it [for], like, twice as much almost as we got in. Or more. So we will just about make that back.”
The feeble efforts of anti-gamers will not be enough to stop vidya!
SPJ Airplay: Solidarity in the Face of Terror
It is a well known fact that Social Justice Warriors are literally worse than ISIS [Incessantly Sexualising Innocent Software]. As such, it likely came as very little surprise to Lusireaders that they chose to shut down last weekend’s SPJ Airplay discussion of game media ethics by calling in a series of bomb threats – just like a terrorist would. Hilariously, this underhanded ploy only appears to have strengthened the position of gamers. In the immediate aftermath Kotaku and Polygon’s silence on the biggest gaming story of the week led to SPJ Airplay’s Michael Koretzky publically calling out both blogs in no uncertain terms, concluding that:
“What those sites didn’t write about GamerGate taints everything they have written.”
While all this was happening Rise Miami News was actually covering the event, but did so in the unwittingly biased way that was discussed at length during the Airplay event. Surprisingly, when they were called out for this bias they did not merely close ranks, but rather engaged with gamers, and decided to open up their site as a platform for gamer discussion, soliciting articles from both gamers and their anti-gamer critics. One such article appears to have struck a chord with pro-gamer developers. Gamers quite naturally have the sympathies of most developers, seeing as we are generally the ones fighting for their freedom of expression in the medium, yet they have understandably been a bit reticent in their willingness to stand up and be counted, owning to the fact that anti-gamers live for the opportunity to professionally ruin someone. In this instance however Rise Miami News tweets prompted three AAA developers to publicly declare their support for gamers. These based developers consisted of Michael Lawson [who worked on The Sims], Jason ‘Jay’ Truman [who worked on the Operation Flashpoint series], and Alexa Roth [a network developer who previously worked for Xbox and EA, before going to work for Rockstar North].
@RiseMiamiNews: Rise View: With #GamerGate, courage starts with your real name. #SPJAirplay
http://risemiaminews.com/2015/08/on-gamergate-courage-starts-with-your-real-name/ …
@MLawsonIsATwit:@RiseMiamiNews I worked on a billion dollar making franchise The Sims, and I support GamerGate.
@OHStillHere:@RiseMiamiNews My name is Jay Truman. I was game designer on multi-million dollar franchise Operation: Flashpoint, and I support #gamergate
@AlexarothUK:Ehh why not? @RiseMiamiNews Hello, I worked on the Xbox One and at Electronic Arts, now at RockStar, and I support #GamerGate
Right now the lies of the social justice fraudsters have worn so thin and their antics have become so outrageous that game developers are becoming increasingly confident in voicing their opinion. Of course Lawson, Truman, and Roth are still outliers in this respect, yet it seems to be happening much more frequently of late. And this is on top of Jesse Hopkins [Mount & Blade composer] and Dean Cain [TVs Superman!!] throwing gamers their support at the beginning of the month. All things considered, it is beginning to look like the tide is coming in for anti-gamers, and none of the cunts can swim!
Maybe SJWs just need some lewd sexual terrorism?
Anime Spotlight: Shimoneta: A Boring World Where the Concept of Dirty Jokes Doesn’t Exist
Apparently anime actually can be lewd enough to offend the Japanese public. This week Japan’s media watchdog, the Broadcasting Ethics and Program Improvement Organization (BPO), was apparently inundated with complaints about the late-night anime, Shimoneta. Complaints seem to be centered around the fact that the show replaces rude words and innuendo with sound effects which nonetheless aptly convey their meaning. It is apparent also that Westerners are not the only culture who has to worry about Politically Correct killjoys, or at least that is this author’s interpretation of the show’s premise.
Shimoneta is set in future Japan where the authorities have prohibited profanity and lewd materials. To enforce this every citizen is made to wear a ‘Peace Maker’, a device which analyses every spoken word and gesture for illicit meaning. The protagonist of the show, Tanukichi Okuma, is a new pupil at the country’s leading ‘public morals school’, an establishment he is attending in an effort to hook up with the student council president [take a shot], Anna Nishikinomiya. Hijinks do however ensue when a perverted terrorist named ‘Blue Snow’ kidnaps Tanukichi and forces him to disseminate pornographic material throughout the city. Along the way this ragtag group of sexual terrorists also recruits Kosuri Onigashira, a girl they allow to join on account of her hairstyle resembling the tip of a penis. With a premise like this how could Shimoneta not be awesome? The show is Simulcast on Funimation, and began its run back in July, with seven episodes currently available.
