Gamers

The world can only exist with a properly working internet service.

Just another day at the Telstra internet help desk in Mumabi

The World of Warcraft that is; and Facebook and Twitter and all the other cyber realities that require an efficient communications network.

So obviously most online gamers and Facebook fiends were salivating at the speeds promised by the Federal Government’s National Broadband Network. It was heralded as bringing Australia into the “modern age” of telecommunications with internet speeds faster than Usain Bolt driving a Ferrari.

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  • St. Michael says:

    05:56pm | 17/12/12

    I can speak for iiNet.  In short, a shitload better service than Tree, Telstruck, and SubOptimal put together.  Yes, you do have waiting times, and the Indian call centre thing is there, but they actually seem to know what they’re doing, which is always nice.  Never had a significant problem… Read more »

  • Andrew says:

    05:28pm | 17/12/12

    Gotta say Brad, had a ditto experience to your’s with Telstra, combined with phone drop outs, having to re-tell the story to Some Indian call centre folk on innumerable times over one whole day I dedicated to setting up broadband 2 years ago. And it took a further 3 weeks… Read more »

 

Welcome to this week’s I Call Bullshit, a column that looks at all kinds of myths and mistruths, at falsehoods, fiction and fabrications. This week we look at whether gamers are breaching international conventions when they loot, pillage, or kill.

Virtual animal rights abuse. Pic: Supplied

I’m no war criminal. Not even a virtual one. That’s because I’ve never played a violent video game – or indeed any video game since Donkey Kong. The original version.

But if the Red Cross has their way, it raises the question of whether I could be up on some kind of charge for (ahem) enjoying The Human Centipede.

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  • Kheiron says:

    04:50pm | 23/12/11

    I always released my prisoners. I figured it was more demoralizing to the enemy to have their soldiers sent home with a spanking instead of ‘dying for the cause’. With the way I fought the battle, though, there weren’t a hell of a lot of survivors… As for the FPS… Read more »

  • LC says:

    06:55pm | 09/12/11

    A study started in the late 70’s and continuing to this day have been showing a steady downward trend in all violent crime across the first world. Of course, newspapers are continuing to report these crimes, and are reporting more trivial events then they used to, for example, a minor… Read more »

 

A moral panic is facing the City of Churches - a bar and lounge has opened in the CBD and its patrons are that most frightening subset of youth culture – the Gamer.

The den of inequity. Pic: Ben Hall

The opening of the Pimp Pad Gamers Bar and Lounge next to Eynesbury Senior College, smack-bang in the centre of down-town Adelaide, has provoked the far too oft-heard wowsers clarion call ‘won’t somebody think of the children’ to be trumpeted by long-time Adelaide City Councillor, Ann Moran.

The fun police troopers are heeding the call and assembling their forces to clamp down hard on the Gamers venue, staunchly opposing its liquor license. Fuelled by Councillor Moran’s claims that an adult entertainment venue next door to a senior high school will act as a ‘honey trap for kids’. Portrayals of violent and sex-crazed patrons in a venue of sleaze and strippers’ poles abound.

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  • Jason Todd says:

    04:32pm | 28/09/11

    Ah yes, the flip side of the coin. Either an antisocial nerd or a spree killer on the knife edge of sanity. I love that one. I believe this issue is mostly a beat up anyway and that Councillor Moran is tilting at windmills. Read more »

  • LC says:

    02:52pm | 28/09/11

    Not a single one of the wowsers thought about the other alcohol serving clubs in the area and demand that they be shut down? Not one of them? Seriously? That’s laughable. In fact,  it’s unadulterated hypocrisy, nothing less. What makes this particular one a special, unique snowflake? And here I… Read more »

 

Well, it was years in the making.

Harden the f(*&(*k up, Australia, says Chopper (AKA Heath Franklin).

It has taken countless meetings, public submissions, reports, and years of debate, but on the incredibly long-overdue introduction of an R18+ category into the national classification system for video games, the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General (SCAG, to you and me) has finally decided to take action…

… and they’ve decided to wait a little longer to make a decision.

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  • LC says:

    12:50pm | 04/02/11

    Agreed, Ironside. People, please be rational about it and debate this properly like sensible adults. Don’t give the anti-gaming zealots stuff to point to as “evidence”. Read more »

  • LC says:

    03:35pm | 03/01/11

    @michael j Funny coming from a guy claiming to spend 20 hours a day in a gym. Read more »

 

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