...I'm the Super-Admin of the entire Internet? Okay, this I can roll with.
First off, I would re-route a few Amazon deliveries to Yahtzee and all the team behind The Escapist. They all deserve a few gifts, with all the fantastic work they've put in for us over the years.
Second, Simon Travaglia gets a promotion. For too long, the Bastard Operator from Hell has ruled over his little network in the building. No, he gets a promotion to my office.
...Oh, wait. Crap. That means the BOFH is Assistant Super-Admin of the entire Internet. I sense trouble...
Third, I have to agree with everyone else. I wouldn't ban the meme specifically, just... trim it slightly. "Arrow to the Knee", not funny anymore. Any any other meme that has been used to the point where I want to cause excruciating pain to the person using it, shouldn't be used anymore. Annoy me at your own peril...
And finally... I'd enjoy my time as Admin, because surely there's gonna be people wanting to assassinate me, I am uber-powerful, so I'm bound to accumulate enemies. Enjoy while it lasts, cause it probably won't last long! (Unless they plan the assassination online, where... *sigh* You get the drift...)
Deviantart and FurAffinity will be purged from the web. Anyone who defends them will be purged as well. That is all. Why? Because abuse of power is fun.
Oh, indeed, it's the same reason I have to do the complete opposite; take them under my royal wing, am I ever given the throne. I wouldn't ban or purge anyone opposing of my fur-regime, but I'd kindle it like wildfire, allowing, nay, demanding it to balloon across the internet. I think it'd be even worse for some, actually. I'll call this doctrine the "Enjoy the dragon-jewels, citizens!". If a site wishes a sanctuary from my flood, I will demand monthly tributes to my throneroom.
Furthermore, the site that donates the most towards the construction of my symbols of office (Throne, crown, sceptre), will be given my personal protection and made the internet's main site, second to none but to the King (moi). I will also appoint a large number of barons and grand viziers, so I can enjoy their power struggles when I'm bored.
...Honestly, the more I think of it, the more I'm glad that this will never happen. It wouldn't be a good sight, the inevitable revolution.
Wow, I'm really glad no-one is the admin of the entire Internet. But anyway, it's hypothetical question answering time! First off, does anyone know I control the internet? Because if they do, I'd probably do nothing, as any action on my part would result in me being murdered within the week. But If I'm anonymous... well, probably still not much, I think the one of the Internet's strengths is how little it's regulated, but I'd probably fuck up websites like the WBC's and such.
-Scat (why would you f*ck shit, that's gross)
-Pedophilia
-Furbashing
-Fanboyism
-Friendship = Magic denial
-Enjoyment of Star Wars
-Enjoyment of Homestuck
-Discussion of Firefly
-Badmouthing decent fancharacters
-Censorship (problem, SOPA?)
-Mention of "the Sonic cycle"
-Unsuccessful trolling
-Religous fundamentalism
Freedoms:
-Piracy (yar har, fiddle-dee-dee...)
-Age restrictions removed from Furaffinity, etc.
-Successful trolling
I've been gaming since the NES days and I also miss the days when games were released with less bugs. But I don't think it'd necessarily be better to go back to those days. Bigger games mean bugs are more likely to slip through, and without the internet, even if they focused more on bug testing, some game breaking glitches may last forever, and a game may never recover.
Just look at Skyward Sword's infamous glitch. Nintendo didn't know what to do as they've never had a patch system for their games on the Wii (just patches for the Wii itself) so they needed to make a dedicated channel in order to patch the individual save files instead of the game itself. In other words, the bug still exists, you just need to use a work around save file fixer. Without the internet, we wouldn't even have that.
Games would have to go back to the older days of less complexity. I love a good old game as much as the next guy (Chrono Trigger is, by far, my favorite game, even though I played it for the first time in 2007) but I love games like Skyrim, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and the Halos. Without the internet, those games could not exist. Well... Halo 1 could. Guess that's something.
This ended up being a bit long, so, to condense space, I'm going to put it in a spoiler box.
Wow, I'm surprised that "The Big N" let a Zelda game ship with a huge bug such as that! And what also surprised me was that Skyward Sword seems (it may not be, but from hearing the Zero Punctuation review) to be taking inspiration from an old Dreamcast title called "Skies of Arcadia", which also got ported to the GameCube. The part about islands in the sky is what did it for me, as SoA took place entirely on floating islands in cloudy skies. Gameplay wise, SoA was a turn-based JRPG, so there isn't that much of a resemblance, but setting wise, it sounds similar.
But you're right about complexity. I was reading an article in one of my gaming magazines that the problem with games these days is that, back around 2000 for the PS1, it cost about $1,000,000 to make a game and, therefore, publishers weren't taking that big of risks and could fund more interesting, innovative projects, since a loss wouldn't have been that big. These days, it's no problem for a game to cost $10,000,000, making the idea of taking a loss too risky. Hence, Call of Duty clones. Worst part is that it's like that for the movie, television and music industry.
There's something about those old games. Maybe it's partly nostalgia or something, but I find myself attracted to old games like Myst. Could never figure out that game, but about 20 years later, it's still a mesmerizing game. The cold loneliness and music are something few games can replicate (LIMBO is the closest, but there may be others) and, in my opinion, the game is further beautified by those old, pre-rendered environments. An old game I love is Deja Vu for the NES. It's a game I could never figure out as a young boy, but I always found myself intrigued by it and those old midi tunes.
That and The Sims 1 and SimCity 3000. By The Sims 3, EA figured out that they could sell people a $50 game with a bare minimum of stuff and say it wasn't necessary because of the texture editor for furniture/clothes/etc. and sell everything else in $30 expansion packs. Also, the music was kind of shit. What happened to the classical/jazz combo of the Sims 1? <:'-[ ... Sigh.
ZeroMachine said:
But worse than all that is the fact that the current market DEPENDS on multiplayer. It's what brought gaming to the forefront of society and made it an acceptable hobby and passion. WoW, the CoDs, Halo 2 and, to a lesser extent, the Halos after it all contributed to the popularity of the medium BIG TIME not because of excellent stories (though I do love the Halo stories and I enjoy the CoD action movie stories/the Lore in WoW) but because of their multiplayer.
Hmmm, I never thought about multiplayer games really bringing videogames to a better light, but you are right. However, we must not also forget the single-player games that did the same, like Half-Life 2 and BioShock. However, I will hand it to you that the multiplayer ones have brought more attention to gaming like Counter-Strike in the western world and StarCraft in South Korea, both helping create professional gaming.
As for the market depending on multiplayer ... I'm reminded of the Jimquisition episode on how Skyrim proved the industry wrong about that. Regardless, I have no problem with multiplayer games, or games with multiplayer and singleplayer (I'm not like Yahtzee and skip the multiplayer of a game, even if it's the most important part of the game. *cough* Battlefield 3 *cough*). As long as the single player is good, then I'm fine with it. But I hate when devs add in an arbitrary multiplayer (The Old Republic, because if you're going to make an MMO, there should be less single-player and more playing with other people. At least, that's what it seems like to me.) or singleplayer (Battlefield 3, Heroes of Stalingrad) section arbitrarily ... which, surprisingly (not), sucks. If you're going to make the two, at least make sure they are both good.
ZeroMachine said:
Multiplayer can exist in a non-internet state, obviously, but it wouldn't be nearly as popular, and a massive amount of companies would simply disappear.
Absolutely! Without the internet, without a doubt, the games we would have would be A LOT different. (Although we might have had Half-Life 2: Episode Three by now XD ) we wouldn't have gotten Minecraft (imagine how different Minecraft would have been if published by EA or Activision? *shudders*) or this great little freeware game called "Passage", made by the same guy who made "Sleep is Death". That game ... wow. It's so poignant without words and yet, in doing so, unlike "The Graveyard", manages to do without coming off as being "artsy".
ZeroMachine said:
You arguments about the movie and music industries, though... yeah. Totally right. Especially about the music one. I'd say that's what you'd call "acceptable losses" in the interim between the loss of the internet and getting things back in order, at least in their case.
The problem is that, for the movie and music industry, the internet is a double-edged sword. While it has increased piracy and has helped to leak movies and things like that before release, it has done some good things. Just to use personal examples, thanks to the internet, I was able to discover Rick Wakeman and YES (good band), find out that Roger Waters was going to be performing "The Wall" here in town later this year and, using the internet, was able to simply select a seat and purchase it ... and, another great thing, if you don't know the name of a song, but you know some of the words, you can find it by lyrics.
On the movie side, it was because of the Downfall parodies that I bought the movie (it was good, too) and because of some YouTube channel of a guy talking about horror movies, I discovered "The Man They Could Not Hang" (Good up until the end, when they had to inject petty morality into an otherwise great movie) and, thanks to NetFlix, discovered shows like Dexter and South Park (didn't watch them until recently) and a great indie film called "Wristcutters: A Love Story". Find that movie. It's such a great movie with great atmosphere (cold and sterile, but in a good way) ... one that you can't find in movies these days. It's almost sad it didn't end up in theaters while Avatar, which, while not terrible, certainly wasn't worth $400+ Million and a second theater release. -_- And also, IMDB is a great website to find out who was in what.
The best part about music on the internet, though, is, when you have a song stuck in your head that you particularly don't like, you can just listen to once to get it out without having to buy it. (Here's looking at you, Moves Like Jagger.)
ZeroMachine said:
RE: 4chan, though I'll leave the specific idea of 4chan out of it ...
-Hunt down, remove and prosecute all child pornography
-Remove all piracy
-remove all viruses and the like
-remove the ability for people to attack, take control of or use for the theft of information any website without the permission of the sites owner and all affected persons.
-Scat (why would you f*ck shit, that's gross)
-Pedophilia
-Furbashing
-Fanboyism
-Friendship = Magic denial
-Enjoyment of Star Wars
-Enjoyment of Homestuck
-Discussion of Firefly
-Badmouthing decent fancharacters
-Censorship (problem, SOPA?)
-Mention of "the Sonic cycle"
-Unsuccessful trolling
-Religous fundamentalism
Freedoms:
-Piracy (yar har, fiddle-dee-dee...)
-Age restrictions removed from Furaffinity, etc.
-Successful trolling
If you are going to ban discussion of firefly, religious fundametalism, badmouthing characters you like or enjoying franchises that you don't, won't you then also have to ban yourself for censorship? Or is censorship only a problem when it happens to things you agree with?
I really don't have the time to go over and answer all of your post (though for the record I did read it, and I've looked up that game "Passage") but as for this last part, I was more talking about your specific mindset of "not caring about the details". As in, "I'll talk about the way you were talking about 4chan rather than the fact that you were talking about 4chan".
Can still actually answer, though. Anonymity, discussion, sharing, creativity, debate. It's honestly a LOT like here, just... waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay less strict. I personally prefer it here, but way back when I used to go on, there actually were some interesting discussions hidden between the buckets of memes.
I would make sure everybody knew that I was aware of what they were doing on the internet and that I am very disappointed in them that I have the power to stop them whenever I wanted (not that I would in most cases, but they don't know that). I hope them thinking that their internet usage is dependant upon the whims of a random guy would counteract G.I.F.T. but I doubt it would.
I'd make envoking Godwin's law against the rules. Everywhere.
I was going to suggest a rule restricting MLP stuff, but some of the avatars on here have grown on me and I don't want those few caught in the crossfire. Sure I see a lot more MLP stuff than I want to, but the few good things to come out of it make it tolerable. Edit: So for now, I am going to tolerate the crap out of you bronies to see how you like.
I would start building a hit list. Take down EA, take down various other evil companies 1-1000, and then probably begin extorting money from evil companies 1-1000 to let them run their websites for monthly payments of more money than I can imagine.
I have a VERY long list of reasons why I want Steam to choke away and die. Mostly because I don't like the idea of DRM being handled by a third party. If a company wants to force an online software to be installed on your computer to install/run a game, it should be designed by the developer or publisher themself, not by a third party.
I know that not all games require Steam, but they are numerous enough to be an issue.
Also, I have a REALLY annoying buddy of mine who wont shut up about Steam sales. He even tries to convince me to buy games I already own through Steam.
So for a while, I've been wishing that it would all just go away.
I can see how some would be opposed to third-party DRM, but the way I see it, it sure beats the hell out of Origin and Ubisoft's.
As for the sales, I bought the Grand Theft Auto Pack for 12 bucks over the winter sale. You can't really beat that. And that what Steam does great: Selling shit loads of games for cheap. And it works. Now, yes, to have someone incessantly tell you about it, like Navi from that one N64 Zelda game (I was never a Nintendo guy), that would be irritating.
But if you ever do end up with super admin powers, just make it where we can still fully access our games, okay? ;-)
1. Find out if I am getting paid for my admin services to the entire internet. If I am, I will be more dedicated and fair at my admin duties. If I am not, extortion ho!
2. I would merge every single forum on the internet into a giant mega forum with categories similar to what the lovely Escapist has set up. There would be off topic, religion, science, gaming, random, etc. However, there would be two sub categories for every category: moderated, and unmoderated. Moderated categories are regular categories where you can't troll, can't be a douchebag, and basically have civil conversation. The unmoderated categories would be the unfiltered internet. What categories you post on are entirely up to you.
3. I would assign a group of 1000 people to work for me part time that would be my personel filter. They would monitor other people on the internet and decide whether they deserve to be on the internet or not. They would present their findings to me, I would check into it myself, and decide whether to ban them from the internet or not.
Not much on the internets would change, trolls and douchebags would still exist on the internet, but attention whores and legitimately bad people would only be able to open one page on the internets, <url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0>this one.
Insulting a pirate who steals stuff ... just because he can? Or because ... what? That's dignity! There is no reason to pirate stuff. None at all. Especially since you don't seem to offer any kind of excuse for doing so.
SneeringCanuck said:
3. You think that people won't find a way to get past any internet censor? Really? Do you have any idea how many times they've tried and failed?
That doesn't mean they one day can't. Actually, to be honest, I hope they just shut down the internet one day. I hasn't really done the world that much good, except help free-loading pirates (lets face it, that's what pirates are. Not meant to be insulting, just stating a basic fact) do their thing EASIER (there was piracy before, but it became easier in the digital age) and let people be idiots without fear of someone punching them in the face.
Firstly, people can make money off giving things like music away for free. Of course it doesn't work for every media but it can be done. Take Pretty Lights for example.
Secondly, the internet has done the world SO MUCH GOOD. SO MUCH.
Without the internet we would be so far behind where we are now. I don't know how this is not obvious.
Without the internet our rate of knowledge expansion would drop like a rock.
How did we manage 25 years ago with no internet, i do wonder...god forbid we must read books or engage in face to face conversation with human beings. the thought of it... horrifying!!
We managed slower. Much slower. I'm not talking about day to day life, I'm talking about the ability to collaborate on a grand scale, for scientists all over the world to peer review works with ease. For uni students to have access to peer reviewed studies at the drop of a hat.
Get rid of the sarcasm and come back with a better opinion.
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