ONE MAN'S LIES?

It is funny.

For e very long time I have looked for an example of the amount of lying and cheating that has been encouraged in the UK for some time now. That is not to say that it does not happen in other countries. That would be the job or jobs or person or people of those countries.

One of the other things I am into among many things is computers and computer gaming, though not every genre of game. Though that could change of I could ever bring myself to try those of other genres?

I like role-playing games, sorry only 3D ones, of late. But what I was always into was astronomy and science fiction so … anything based on that would be a dead cert.

I am always looking for titles that are going to be released in the near or distant future and what is currently being worked on. This works for both games and movies and actually includes hardware too. After all my Single Honours Degree is in Applied Computing.

Now I had been out of gaming for a fair old while until recently.

During that time things were going on that I had not realised were happening and where you used to get demos of games as well as software on a cover CD or DVD on a magazine all that had subsequently disappeared. Something I found both a surprise and somewhat … worrying.

As I started to get back into gaming to the levels I had some years previous I started to note some people being somewhat … let us say disgruntled for all though some have been way over the top, with games released. On many occasions I would see why they were upset. I could also see a trend starting to become more commonplace.

At the same time I noted something about Android phones and mobile games on the Play Store and this was something called 'In Game Transactions' sometimes called 'micro-transactions' and nicknamed by one and all as 'Pay To Win'. When I saw this I thought 'What the feck?!' and passed this off as just some group of coders in some foreign land that were no different to those that go online, pretend to be someone they are not and scam money out of people. They just do this in a completely different way but it amounts to the same thing.

After awhile I started to read some really worrying things. That the major publishers, like Electronic Arts and others which anyone with a brain does not like and suspicious of anyway, started to say things like “micro-transactions are inevitable and are the future” or something to that extent. I immediately thought “Uh-oh. No! More like it you just want ever more money as selling what should be in the game original later on as Downloadable Content and effectively charging over £100 for a game is not enough cash for you!” I also think and strongly believe will prove to be a powder keg that will build up and explode at some point. Well I already said that some people have been way over the top? Yeah well there has been a death threat or two already.

I stated earlier in the post that I had seen that in the UK it had become encouraged over a long time to be dishonest? To cheat? To lie? Everyone I know now sees this. Well what I did not realise and still did not even though I have seen lots of rants on YouTube about it is that one of the things I was interested in, was keeping one eye on and … well, sort of looking forward to was one brilliant example. It also did not occur to me that this … let's say group was in fact British. English to be precise.

The company I am talking about is Hello Games, the product is a game called No Man's Sky and this was promoted as a space combat, slash trading game along the lines of Elite. Except it had 18 quintillion planets. Oh crap.

Funnily enough when I saw the first screenshots of the game I did not look at it twice and did not like the look of it or the graphics. I did, however, start to take more notice because everyone was raving about this game. “This game?” I thought to myself “This game with the crap looking graphics, loud colours and unrealistic animals?!” I wondered if there was something I missed?

I then watched a couple of interviews with the lead coder of this game whose name is Sean Murray of Hello Games which is based in Guildford. Suddenly I was a little surprised and a little intrigued.

I mostly forgot about it for awhile when one day and on YouTube I came across some videos posted by a guy called Gabe Olivero playing the game. I watched with interest from one episode to the other and before long wanted to buy it and play it. But then after awhile I noticed that there were things that did not seem to be occurring. There were things that you were supposed to be able to do that just was not happening. But then I thought well maybe with 18 quintillion planets you have to play this game for weeks before you start seeing anything of the stuff they told you about and showed you?

Only I watched more and more waiting for things they told you about to happen … but they didn't and then there was that infamous news about two people standing on the same planet looking at the same lake, planets in the sky but could not see each other. Oh dear.

That sounded pretty bad and turned out to be only the beginning!

More and more things came out that were not in the game proper and people started compiling lists and then they started compiling video clips from interviews. Oh dear. When it was mentioned to Sean Murray online that two people could not see each other he was just as vague as he was in interviews over certain questions about No Man's Sky. In the interviews he always answered in a way that made it sound like he did not want to spoil things for the players. Oh dear. Oh dear God.

Before long the number of angry or disappointed players were growing exponentially and like nothing I had ever seen. More videos were being drawn up up the lies and bullshit about the game stated right up to its release.

The list goes on and would take too much time to do this justice. If you wish to see more details on this I suggest you simply do a search on No Man's Sky and/or Sean Murray on YouTube or Google and you will be absolutely spoiled for choice. No kidding.

The funny thing was that in the interviews his vagueness I found to be a little suspicious. Years ago when I found a British software company that did something awesome I would admire them and even want to work for them in some capacity. One name I can think of is Digital Image Design who seemed to disappear while I was out of gaming. He seemed like a nice and interesting guy but …. there was just something about his vagueness that did not sit quite right.

The American tech journalists did not see it and they queued up around the block to interview him and just about every big name in the video game and entertainment industry queued up to shower No Man's Sky with awards … and there were countless. Something got lost in translation over in America I think?

Funnily enough no one has mentioned about how all these award givers? Wait, what? All these professional bodies showered this game and the studio with awards and it was hailed as 'game changing' 'revolutionary' and even 'most anticipated game' … oh well OK that last one might have something in it, but … what?

So let me get this straight? A bunch of bodies with many members paid salaries simply believe whatever bullshit they are told and hand out awards? Really?!

One of the best reviews on this game is done by someone in America called Angry Joe … he has some bloody hilarious moments. One that had me roaring was a review of the film Resident Evil Afterlife, I think it was, where he is smiling and excited and it cuts to the bad guy doing his 3D movie thing and flinging his sunglasses at the camera lens. It then cuts to this Angry Joe still smiling when a pair of sunglasses hits him in the face. He stumbles for a moment, shows confusion on his face before showing anger and suddenly yells at the camera “WHAAT THE FUUUCK?!” I roared with laughter and left a comment. Comments are not something I often do. Far far too many idiots in the world. I do, however, answer to comments made on my channels and blogs. It IS the right and polite thing to do. Even if they are idiots … they get the response they duly deserve.

Oddly enough since the first mention of having his mind blown about how many people are playing his game and two people being on the same planet blew his mind, without actually answering why they could not see each other, Sean Murray seems to have vanished?

This is still rumbling on but even more bizarrely is that despite the amount of lies and deceptions numbering in the dozens over the game, literally, if anyone complains about the game even a little these … well, marauders spill out of their closets and attack anyone that says anything bad or questions the game?!

It really has to be seen and read to be believed. I do not know if they are a bunch of eight year olds that are fanatic. Or a bunch of adults with the minds of eight year olds or some other mental condition that simply cannot stay quiet while others are negative about a game they like?

Stupid. Utterly stupid. Do you know what happens from now on?

Developers not genuine and publishers will say that OK, lying about two or three dozen things being in a game we cannot do any more … but now that this has been done and we see people still defend the game we can easily go up to a dozen lies and scripted scenes and pretend their actual gameplay and we can get away with it!

Government pull the same trick and even here in the UK. It works like this …

OK we want to add 'x' amount of money to some taxes, because we know jack about governing or money and consistently screw things up while doing absolutely nothing to justify our job titles. Sooo what we will do is we will tell them it is twice or thrice what 'x' is and when they blow up we will tell them we will scale it back to what we want! Everyone is happy!

As I have always talked about 'Us' & 'Them' with us being anyone not extremely wealthy and them that are. Well usually by examples only include British people but on this occasion I am going to include someone else, who in this instance I believe to be Japanese? An ex-boss of Sony, I mean why would you even get involved being an ex-boss, turned around and stated that everyone that wanted a refund for No Man's Sky was either a 'thief' or 'stealing'?!

This is a fucking prime example of something I have alluded to over and over and over … again. It is now apparent it seems to be a global problem.

So companies and company bosses, big ones or small ones with big ones behind them, can lie, cheat, scheme and promise things that they have no intention of delivering and rake in millions, tens of millions, hundreds of billions but … someone calls you on your scamming and want there $60 US or £40 GB back and they are criminals?!

All of this time, all these years I have been talking about all this corruption within both public organisations and private ones and right under my nose one was brewing up while getting ready to boil over? Madness.

This is a good way if drawing into your subject those that are interested in others. If you can find something that would would not normally talk about and find a link or an alternate example of what you are trying to say … you can get a whole new audience in. Of course I hope they find it beneficial of course. I hope that they look around and see that I have lots of examples of these terrible attitudes and over 100GB of secretly recorded audio proving it all, from the horse's mouths so to speak. Well … literally actually, lol.

Two Police Forces, four local councils or more, the NHS, the DWP … the list goes on and on and then some.

If I could live long enough I would wish that I did so that not only did it all get found out but also where it all started from? Many I have spoken to believe the UK side of things to stem from an organisation called Serco? There 'About Us' page does seem to boast about running, or ruining lol, the UK? Was it them or did they get it form someone else? Who knows?

Hopefully someone will one day that can actually do something about it?

In the meantime we have in the entertainment industry one of the biggest rip-offs based on misinformation and lies that there could ever be and by some stretch. It just so happens to be a UK company backed by a Japanese one.

Was this Sean Murray's idea? Everyone seems to be stating that it is.

Or was it something Sony cooked up when they came along?

I bought four Japanese, count them, shitty Nikon cameras that were faulty out of the box, sold as new but refurbished products that … were … well, not refurbished.

Did someone pay all those bodies to give out all those awards? Was it Sony?

Like I said, who knows?

EDIT: My God, I completely forgot!

Amidst all this kerfuffle with No Man's Sky was the fact that Sony was running around on YouTube abusing laws to suit it's own selfish needs by raising the dreaded and very stupid broken YouTube copyright claims. I have had this soo many times in the early stages of uploading videos purely because 20 seconds of a song, or something equally stupid/greedy, was playing in the background when I decided to suddenly film a video or something, or my short term memory problems stopped going mental and I remembered something I had intended to film for several days.

This is another classic example of the fact that laws are fine ... butt if your poor the law does not get enforced and if your wealthy you can render them ineffective. I cannot speak for other countries but that is certainly the way it is in the UK. Has been for a fair old while and until Jimmy Savile got found out, ... umm long after he had died, no one realised how bad it was.

I do not know when this would all end but I sincerely hope it does.

Also to stop it you need to have something pretty drastic in place and you need to have the gonads to carry out your convictions ... literally!

Or in other words these people at the top need to be seen by all others to be spending time in prison as if it was anyone else in the lower sections of society ... well, they would end up in prison. It should not nor never be the case that how fame or wealth affects the punishment of a crime.

A crime is a crime, regardless of how much power, fame or money you have.