Press Start!: Suck Your D**k For A Diablo 3 Beta Invite.
Man, I have to write myself a new edition of Press Start. Harumph! I haven’t written one in a few weeks. Out of a lack of a time, out of a lack of interest. Combine those two and you can almost hear Hegel groan under the power of his dialectic! Shazam! Synthesize. Out of the opposite of those two comes! New column! Press Start! Five things that caught my eye in gaming this week.
The joke! Of course! I’ve been too busy to really come across anything. I mean fuck man, I have an unopened copy of Gears of War 3 sitting in my car. I haven’t even brought that shit in yet. Since Tuesday. I am not elite. I am not select. Definitely not worthy of considering spelling my name using numbers and the what-not.
So let’s go exploring the internet together!
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#1) Diablo 3 Beta Invites Went Out.
Listen here pig-pleasurers of the world. There is one thing that happened in the game world that I am aware of this week. I know of it, for my lack of invitation to participate in it has scarred my ass cheeks a mighty flaming red. A deep red that is befitting of the Dark Lord. Diablo. For all the fields tilled on the internets, for all my groans of labor, and groans in general. Blizzard rewards me not.
There are people playing the Diablo 3 beta right now. The invites went out this week. The pictures are there. Taunting me. The video available. Giving me the finger that is in the middle. Oh, you’re in the beta? Know that my jealousy of you burns with the white-hot heat of a thousand burning asshole Fajita craps.
Curse you.
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#2) Wii On An Android Tablet With 360 Controller.
Ah! I actually do remember seeing this earlier in the week. I wasn’t really impressed by it. That’s how spoiled we are within the geeky subcultures of modernity. Such wizardry of coding and finesse and idea-hood no longer inspire anything other than an “Oh yeah!” I mean, Jesus Christ. Look at this.
It’s a Wii running on an Android Tablet, using 360 controller.
I feel like there should be props handed out. High-fives exchanged. Instead I’m just like “Yet another person mercilessly superior to me in ingenuity and intellect has come up with something great”. For it truly is neat. But it is a hack within a wave of hacks. A tweak in a sea of tweaks.
An orgy of conflicting hardware allegiances that involves neither moans nor lube.
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#3) EA CEO Wants To Eat The Soul of Zynga.
In some metaphysical sphere, where corporations have corporeal forms, you can only imagine EA. A vast blinding blackness, constantly engulfing the (meta)physical surroundings around it. Engaged in an endless desire to consume, to dominate. Its tendrils flicker, impaling its enemies. Yearning to conquer. Its only thought is “Consume” and its only emotion is hatred for those who dare consume as much as it.
That explains why the EA CEO John Riccitiello is taking aim at Zynga. Zynga is known for making all those annoying games on Facebook that it seems like everyone makes fun of but in reality apparently everyone but me is fucking playing. Oh yeah man. Farmville! Till the fucking land! Speaking at a speaking at a US Chamber of Commerce where undoubtedly he began by buying off two or three Capitol Hill Senata-whores and making them blow one another in a bathroom stall for campaign funds, Riccitiello then stated that the next thing his Vast Black Infernal Machine will engulf will be social gaming.
The Sims Social! He proclaimed. It has 53 million users. In three years! He proclaimed. They’ll have 3 billion in revenue. And yet! Reality interjected. Even with EA’s 100 million users, they’re still less than half of Zynga’s might.
The Endless Black Gulf groans, jealous and yearning to conquer.
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#4) Comcast and Version Using Xbox 360 As Cable Box.
This is some futuristic shit that soon shall be mundane. You ever notice the saddeningly thin membrane that distances the “awesome futuristic shit” from the “passe technology of yesteryear”? No sooner does something that we’ve been screaming at the wind for arrive, than we assimilate it and go onto tech-lusting for the newest piece of gadgetry. Something else to rub against our loins and marvel as its shininess. Its almost begging desire for us to fetishsize it.
Such is the price of progress.
Soon! Soon friends. Soon we’ll be able to use our Xbox 360 as a cable box for either Comcast or Fios. That’s the rumor. And by talking with various friends in made-up places, I’ve come to confirm that such an act will soon pass. It seems silly, but the idea that a piece of gaming hardware will soon be integrated into a cable network seems cool to me. Something out of a 1990’s AT&T ad that was probably promised me.
“Someday! in the future, your Nintendo machine and your cable box will be the same!”
I must have nodded my prepubescent head, saying yes. Yes. Yes this is the future I wanted. Now it’s arriving!
Though I have to say I’m awaiting the day the fat pipes of the internet finally wrap around the throats of those fucking Corporo-fascist cable companies and wring the life out of them. I want to pick and choose my cable channels like a buffet line, and fuck Xfinity. I’ll choose to sign up for them at $5 a pop or something a month and them stream them through my desktop/laptop/iPhone/iPad/Nook/Android Tablet as I see fit.
As I said, no sooner do we get do we look for the next fetishistic goal. That is mine.
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#5) Mugshot Required To Sell Used Games.
Here’s a fucking law for you! Apparently some Freedom Haters in Madison, Wisconsin have devised a way to prevent thieves and robbers from yanking games and then selling them to the local unsuspecting GameStop. The proposed ordinance would require every person who wants to sell used games to provide a photo when they do so. This is some shit man. I have a hard enough time stealing fucking video games. Then getting the fake license. Then ducking the cops. Then driving across state lines to hock off all the copies of Uncharted of War: Skyward Sword that I’ve nicked.
Now I have to worry about submitting a personal picture? Free market my ass! Am I not entitled to the sweat of my brow? Eh! Ask Andrew Ryan or something!
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Alright, I have nothing. Thanks for accompanying me on my frantic refreshing of every video game website I know in a gallop to put together a list. What caught your (more informed, hopefully less delusional) eyes this week? Hit me.