Dear John Carmack

Dear John Carmack,

I just played Rage. The game is beautiful, but it had more bugs than a cheap motel. The texture pop in is attrocious. I’m not seeing any real time shadows. Excuse me for being blunt, but what the hell are you doing? I mean, I was about to completely flip my lid until I saw someone play the console version. All of a sudden the bugs and texture pop in is gone? On a console? So here I am thinking my 260GTX drivers just aren’t cutting the mustard. After all my processor is faster than any PS3s could hope to be and RAM? Forget about it. So I update my drivers. Nope. I install the performance fix. Now my framerate is even worse.

I checked with the good folks over at the internet. Turns out they’re all having this problem. Yeah, funny. You would think that id Software, the people that invented the damn FPS genre, would test their game on a PC. Apparently not. So with rage truly in our hearts, we confronted you. You had this to say.

“We do not see the PC as the leading platform for games. That statement will enrage some people, but it is hard to characterize it otherwise; both console versions will have larger audiences than the PC version.”

You smug little son-of-a…

Okay, hold on. For one, your assesment is short sighted. PC gaming, despite everyones expectations, has been flourishing. In fact the PC gaming audience is expected to surpass console gamers by 2015. And lets talk about the fact that you’re obviously talking about profit margins here. I could say that’s a giant let-down from a company who used to pride themselves on making great games on the cutting edge and saying to hell with profits. Jesus, did you think you were gonna have to shovel the cash off your floor when you released Doom in 1993? No! The game was a demonic, gorey, hellspawn of a game. In 1993. But I digress. The profits you’re making off the console crown are almost negated by Sony and Microsofts immense development and titling fees, not to mention the brutal beaurocratic mess that releasing fixes and patches are.

But it’s worse than that. Something you yourself admit is that the PC is on an order of magnitude more powerful than the current generation of consoles. That means that if you would have developed for it in the first place we’d have a better game. That runs better. That plays better. That looks better. You’re too concerned with short term profits, man. Analyze trends. Have some comsumer loyalty. What does it say when you release a product that you know is sub-par to the audience that made you what you are in the first place? And then price it exactly the same as the version that runs fine? With no warning?

Look John. There are two types of well known gaming companies.

There are the Square-Enixs of the world. Companies that start off great, but slowly degrade over time. They keep rehashing the same idea over and over. Occasionally the fanbase will be screaming in your ear, “THIS IS WHAT WE WANT,” yet they’re so preoccupied with what’s easy that they’ve deafened and blinded themselves with their own ego. These companies, unless they change, go the way of the dinosaur.

Then there are the Valves of the world. They may hit a few bumps in the road, but when they do, they usually do it giving the community what they want. They’re highly customer centric. In fact it’s their business model. “What does the consumer want to play?” They take this to heart. They sacrifice profits for morals. They make us wait, but they deliver. And we pay them back for it exponentially.

You, John, are a Square-Enix. Like the old Squaresoft did with Enix, you signed a deal which put your company under the roof of Bethesda. You buried yourself in meaningless statistics and profits while you ignored your players. You’re slipping. After Doom 3 I was really asking myself how such an average game could have come from a legend like you. Now I think I understand.

Let me end on a positive note, John, because I think we both need it. You for your encouragement, me for my faith in PC gaming. You make great games. You truly do. In all its deformed buginess I would play Rage 10 times before I even touched cheap thrills like Duke Nukem Forever. But there is a difference between a great game and a game of greatness. Wolfenstein was a game of greatness. Doom was a game of greatness. Quake and its sequels are games of unimaginable greatness. In the past you had this spark. This way of raising the bar. We followed the curve, John. We invested like stockbrokers. And then the market crashed. Your house came down. And we lost our investments.

I realize that Doom 3 was an experiment; an offshoot. I know that Rage was your play-thing while you experimented with id-Tech. Please. Please blow me away with Doom 4. On the PC where it belongs. If you can’t… I have no choice. I can’t take stock anymore.

Posted 7 months ago

Today I Just Feel Fucked, America

Huge telecom companies like Comcast are merging, creating a media theocracy that tells you what you’re allowed to watch and surf and what you have to pay for it. The FBI is in the pocket of big business interests like the RIAA and they’re convinced that copying down a few 0s and 1s is somehow felony theft. The government hires private contractors like HBGary to create fake voters to sway public opinion on issues. Soldiers laugh when civilians in Iraq die on tape. The person who exposed that tape has been in federal prison in solitary confinement for years without trial. Hundreds more sit without trial in Guantanamo. Cops walk out of stores with pockets full of unpaid merchandise. Their partners are taught in academy that routing this corruption isn’t looking out for their own. The News of the World is stealing your cell phone voice mail passwords to access your personal information and spy on you. Private security firms want to install back door vulnerabilities into your gaming software so they can monitor your activities remotely. Huge banks like the Bank of America engage in predatory lending practices and forge loan documents to cheat you out of your money. Wall Street bails them out when they get caught. The people that exposed these lending practices are labeled international terrorists. Our state governors spend millions of dollars to pray to a god that doesn’t exist in a Texas stadium instead of fixing these problems. The Dow Jones tanks the next day. Our United States Congress disagrees out of spite. Nobody can find a job. Most Americans don’t have a $1000 emergency fund. The super rich have the lowest taxes they’ve paid in 19 years. The middle class is evaporating. Crime is increasing, in fact we have the highest prison population per capita in the world. We put people in prison for mild drug use when we should be the capitalists that tax them. We let people die in hospitals when we should be the socialists that take care of them. Nobody cares about stem cell research. Nobody cares about the black communities, they only care not to offend them. Nobody cares about the Hispanic communities, they only want to keep them out. Nobody cares about the homeless, they just want to kill their own guilt. Gays can’t marry. Transgender surgeries aren’t covered by insurance. We’d build a nuclear weapon faster than we’d build clean water facilities, or competent cable lines, or public transportation projects like the vactrain, which could travel from California to New York in 20 minutes. We spend billions on Afghanistan and virtually nothing on NASA. Gun owners, prostitutes and ravers are treated like criminals while the real criminals continue to expand their enterprises.

I’m pissed. I’m motherfucking pissed. Fuck you America. How could you call yourself great? How can you possibly be the best country in the world? You’re not. You’re not even close. Fuck you.

Posted 9 months ago — 3 notes

The Paradox of Heaven

A concept I’ve never understood in Christianity, even when I would have claimed to be a part of it, is heaven; that magical perfect place where everyone is happy and nothing ever goes wrong. At least, that is what most people would have you believe. Heaven is bullshit, but let’s pretend for a moment that it isn’t and talk about the logical inconsistencies we can find in what most people would call their picture of heaven.

Almost universally you seem to pick up on the idea that heaven is a place where discord does not exist. Everyone is harmonious. It would serve as a good foothold when trying to weigh this idea that this has not been so in nearly any part of heaven’s fabled history. Due to the very nature of free will, which apparently God sees as something integral to the universe, Lucifer rose up in rebellion against the big kahuna himself almost immediately after being created. This single act resulted in over thirty percent of every soul God created engaging in open war on the omnipotent being. It seems even angels, whose job it is to blow God constantly, seem to think he can at least be defeated. If that isn’t discord, I’m not sure what is. Harmony seems like a very fragile thing indeed if it can be disrupted by one individual. And keep in mind we’re talking about one here. Unless you believe in reincarnation that’s one out of nearly one hundred and six billion born so far. Mrs. God sure was a busy bee wasn’t she?

Let’s forget the grand acts of treason and war though for the sake of argument. Let’s say God steps in from now on to prevent that kind of large scale discord. What about disagreements between people? Indeed, it seems to me those who proclaim they are going to heaven are the most likely to find fault with the opinions of others. I doubt God is going to keep us all on leashes, and even if he did what kind of place would that be to spend eternity. Make no mistake. If heaven is indeed a place where freedom of choice remains intact and we are all allowed to intermingle in the presence of the Almighty, life happens as it always has as a direct result. This degrades heaven to the point where it’s really not a Utopian environment anymore. It’s simply a change of scenery accompanied by a dictatorship.

You might claim that heaven is more defined by the things you will have. Given the fact that this goes against everything Jesus ever taught, it’s surprising how many people believe this anyway. You probably won’t be surrounded by feasts or gold, because surely, even if you have them you have no use for them. Food does not sustain you, and gold cannot buy you resources. Even if food were pleasurable, the act of eating for pleasure is one of the seven deadly sins that would likely get you evicted from heaven anyway. And that’s another thing. If you fuck up do you have to leave? I would remind you that on a long enough timescale, eternity in this case, that you WILL fuck up eventually and God is just waiting to kick your sorry ass to the curb forever and ever.

More yet claim that family is what will sustain us, apart from groveling at the feet of God himself anyway. God’s rules appear to be so strict however, that most of your family likely won’t make it there to begin with.

Heaven is starting to look pretty bleak to a rationalist like me, even when trying to be optimistic about the giant wars and greed in it’s past. But whats the real past time in heaven? Well that one is easy. Worship. The Bible repeatedly tries to slam down the idea that heaven is a place where angels constantly praise God and sing hymns about how big his dick is. Why is this a place where any of us would want to live? I don’t care if he created the universe. I came out of my mom’s vagina. That doesn’t mean I owe her anything or respect her necessarily. That’s something earned. Not something you hold over the heads of your kids with the threat of excruciating torture.

The bottom line is, whether heaven simply doesn’t exist or that it does. I’m not headed there, and good riddance. Have fun on God’s immaculate rod, assholes.

Posted 9 months ago