Failures of humanity
- March 2nd, 2009
- Posted in Personal . Rant . Sci/Tech/Meta
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As with many of humankind’s finest works, especially in the sci-fi genre, Tabula Rasa was shut down on schedule this past weekend. Even worse, they’d hyped up a big event that was a horrible disaster. Enough lag to be a total show stopper, probably because they had taken all but two of the servers offline already.
I’m not even so big on MMO gaming and it’s not like I’m usually able to justify any kind of gaming to spend that much time playing around… Â This was one game that had it all, everything I was looking for in entertainment and I probably would have happily paid twice as much monthly even if I didn’t even log in every month.
The back-story was great, the direction was great. Visually is was such a pleasure to play. Â The controls, going for the FPS style of play, the way everything worked made it totally a blast. Â Not just for grouping up and running missions or instances but even just to hop in alone from time to time and kill some aliens, to fight the good fight to save the galaxy from those who would subjugate it… And for revenge for what they did to Earth. Â ;-)
Notice of the termination of the game came something (I think) less than 1 year from launch. They didn’t give the game enough time, complaining that they didn’t have the numbers needed & deeming it a failure. Of course! It had pitiful publicity!
I started in beta, man! I went all in for the expensive collectors edition… Paid plenty out in monthly subscriptions. Had to upgrade my machine, burned out a video card & power supply, upgraded those again…Â
So yeah, anyway, there TR went.  The way of Firefly, John Doe, Farscape and others. I look around and I really feel like people in general are losing interest in really good sci-fi (which already had a minimal following after the age of hippies) and I think of an Isaac Asimov quote:
“Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today – but the core of science fiction, its essence has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.”
It’s not just about good writing, quality entertainment, fine acting, social commentary, people yelling “weapons to maximum!”, aliens, special effects, having a moral to the story, some of the most spectacularly hot and adorable women on TV & in Film, epic space-ship battles, nor even lots of explosions. Although being able to get all that and more in any form of entertainment is pretty cool.
Among all the rubble and abused carcases in this uninspired landscape of garbage? Comic book themed stuff. I’m all for it, but it does feel like that stuff is taking over a little bit. I think it’s funny that while killing off Tabula Rasa NCSoft’s comic hero/villain themed games remain, their other fantasy lameness continues… It even seems like geek/nerd cultures are spreading, gaining acceptance and even some understanding. So shouldn’t good sci-fi be exploding?
I doubt I’ll be able to go back to WoW. It is a fairy-crusted, magic-packed, sword carrying, fairy-tale-esque bunch of fantasy that is just old to me but even worse is the gameplay. The actual playability, I’ve just been spoiled… Heck even the graphics don’t interest me.
If I ever want to sit in front of a computer pressing the same sequence of buttons for 5 hours, or until bedtime, someone just put a bullet in my brain.
Seriously folks. You’ve all missed out on something really fantastic – those bastards at NCSoft need to be put out of my misery. The worst part still might be that the trend is growing and what that says about where things are going.
It’s not just losing a great game before it’s time, it’s not just about missing out on what might have happened in a fun TV show. It’s what it says about people and our future.
It sounds like it was a fantastic game and it sucks that it didn’t get a chance to get off the ground really.
As far as the future goes… I think you are being a tad dramatic. Consider this an opportunity to go outside and/or do something creative. To not waste hours upon hours at a keyboard mashing the same keys over and over as I do when playing WoW.
Dramatic is good, except, I guess as it turns out people just don’t get how retarded it is for anyone to want any real sci-fi entertainment anymore. What’ve I got? TV now… and that’s all of like “Lost”. I spend as much of my time as is possible away from computers and TV so when I really want to veg out I want it to be something I can really enjoy. It feels like anyone who, like me, craves for something that doesn’t include hobbits or men in tights we’re just left to rot. Nothing dramatic about the simple reality that’s easiest ignored. I don’t think there’s anything upbeat or smart or anything but disdainful about the things people see fit to make a stink about and the things they choose to trivialize in favor of the group mentality – a part of human psychology that should be considered an illness.
Dramatic would be to compare the entertainment industry to the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgram experiment. But I think as people grow more connected and more submersed in the presence of others, the group mentality applies more than ever and can be the only answer for what most people claim to consider entertaining.
So next time a guy in a lab coat tells you to do what you know will kill someone, follow your instincts… go for it. And think of me.
Are movies still on the table? If so, I have one word for you:
Watchmen
No kidding, does that look great? But it’s still from a comic. I do know there’s the trek movie coming too… It’s actually funny as far as that one goes; from the people who’re making, how they’re making it and what they’re doing with it, it almost falls into the same category as the comic based movies too. (A JJ Abrams reboot, Gah. sucking it up to the lowest common denominator) Though I’m sure I’ll watch them both and be totally entertained & happy about it – they can’t fill my gaping gash… er void…
You just have to recognize that all of these occurences are a single terrifying trend in our decreasingly intellectual culture. I mean, hey, despite all the technological advances we’ve made it’s all being used to better transmit progressively deviant porn (do we have cock-in-a-cock yet?) and allow the proliferation of AOLspeak. Sci-Fi is what inspired bold men to leave the planet before they even had an inkling of using space for the orbital nuclear bombardment of our enemies.
Sci-Fi challenges us with the one thing we grasp even less than the supernatural: the future. Its widespread and possibly eventual abandonment in favour of less metaphysical entertainments is tantamount to spreading the belief that we have no future.
And all this Hollywood rebooting, rehashing, and scrounging every available media source for material just shows they’ve long since run out of original ideas.