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July 16th, 2003 - Adventures in Engineering — LiveJournal
The wanderings of a modern ronin.

Ben Cantrick
  Date: 2003-07-16 22:06
  Subject:   The GTA phillia continues...
This is an interview of Lazlow, the DJ from GTA3 and GTA:VC. He declares commercial radio soulless, bashes Microsoft and praises Linux and open source! The guy is a hell of a lot more tech-savvy than I ever expected any radio personality to be.

Q: How do you feel about the gameplay in regards to it being "toned down" because of its intense graphic nature? Do you feel it's necessary?

A: I've always been confused by the debate over video games. People constantly point to popular media and blame it for the problems of a select few. Rock bands have been dragged into court and accused of making kids commit crimes! It's like that old Bobcat Goldthwait bit "My kid listened to a Black Sabbath record and committed suicide. Well maybe your heroin addiction and recent divorce may have something to do with it."

On the Technofile I try to bring historical perspective to current issues, because I don't feel that happens enough today. The same witch hunt that goes on with video games happened with comic books. I spoke with Stan Lee of Marvel comics last year about this. When I brought it up he rolled his eyes like "oh brutha I could go on for days." These guys were dragged before Congress; just like rock bands were later on, to defend themselves. You can go to Wal- Mart and buy a shotgun, but they force record companies to bleep out profanity in CDs? If you're in a dark alley, who are you afraid of, the kid with a video game or the one with the shotgun?

Yeah, there are magazines, music, websites and games that parents should keep their kids from seeing until they are older. But that's a parent's responsibility. The argument that SOME parents aren't going to control their kids, so let's outlaw media is asinine. Their logic is we can't outlaw bad parents, so let's go after video games and comic books. We live in a culture that is so consumption oriented, parents feel they have to work like crazy to afford that SUV, big screen TV, 300 channels of cable, and then expect society to raise their kids while they're at work. The rest of the world thinks we're lunatics by the way. Travel around Europe and talk to a few people. They watch the same movies and play the same video games we do, but they don't try to ban them, and strangely don't have metal detectors in schools.
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Ben Cantrick
  Date: 2003-07-16 23:11
  Subject:   Bullet-time Bunraku Ping-Pong.
"Bullet-time Bunraku Ping-Pong" (3.5 meg video clip) would make a pretty good name for a rock n roll band...
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