Sex, Pistols

About a month ago, a new PC game showed up on Steam, as part of their Greenlight program that allows customers to vote on the next games to be offered on the site. The same day, Steam took it down, later citing inappropriate content. On the game’s page, Steam left a message saying that: “the item has been banned for either violating the Steam Terms of Service or the Terms of Service for Greenlight.” It must have had some pretty questionable contact to be removed from a server that also sells Grand Theft Auto.

Before I get into the details of this particular game, I want to point out some of the most popular games that have been sold through Steam or comparable services: Left 4 Dead, Doom 3, multiple iterations of the Call of Duty series, and most infamously, Grand Theft Auto IV. Most of these are well-known, even outside the gaming world, but it doesn’t take a lot of scrutiny to figure out that they are structured around violence: most of them include references to war, death, and violence in their titles. Now, to be fair, some of the “greatest hits” in the gaming world are games like Portal and Minecraft, which involve no violence and focus instead on puzzles, creativity, world building, and other engaging and positive activities. The gaming industry, like the film industry, has a rating system intended to keep young children from games with inappropriate content, so violent games are rated M, for 17 and older, but that doesn’t stop many “underage” teens from playing these bloody and brutal games.

So what was the incredibly offensive content that caused a terms of service violation and got this game removed from Steam’s Greenlight page? It must be worse than the mechanism in Grand Theft Auto – or GTA – in which you can have sex with prostitutes and then kill them. This behavior is not only possible, but is encouraged by the gameplay mechanics, because having sex with a prostitute raises your health. The drawback, according to the wikia page for GTA, is that it costs money – a problem easily remedied by killing the hooker and taking her money. The sex acts, while not shown in great detail, are also not skipped over (NSFW). This is not objectionable to Steam.
And it definitely must be worse than the scoring system in Manhunt, which encourages you to carry out grisly and sadistic murders. In that game, your score is dependent on how gruesome the executions are (Disturbing images abound), and you are rated from a low “unimpressive” to a high “extremely competent.”

In fact, it is an erotic game called Seduce Me, which focuses on building relationships – yes, sexual ones – with characters in the game. The sex appears to be all consensual, and from what little I have seen of it (the game has yet to come out, but the developer has gameplay clips up as a preview), your actions in the game have consequences. So while I can’t make pronouncements about the detail of its content, I can say that from what the developer released, it seems rather, well, harmless.

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Choice for the Choiceless

It’s that time again. Political ads frame segments of your favorite television show. Signs pop up in yards, inspiring rage or camaraderie. Bumper stickers become ubiquitous. I have only been eligible to vote in one election in my short life and have only been tuned in to three, but already I’m growing battle-weary. And I sense this same fatigue among many of my generation. We often hear that the youth vote is in the tank for Obama. But what we don’t hear a lot is that the youth vote isn’t as excited as it was four years ago. In fact, a Gallup poll this summer reported that only 58 percent of the 18-29 demographic plans to vote this year.

This is our future that is being debated. This is our country, our leaders, our government. And yet, there is a sense of helplessness.

I watched two debates this week: the first presidential debate and “The Rumble 2012.” The presidential debate was first, and within five minutes I was already yelling at the screen and fiercely regretting my decision. And I was not just shouting at Romney (full disclosure, I’m one of those youth voters who will be ticking the box for Obama this year, though my reasoning behind that is more complicated than one might expect which we’ll get to later). I was shouting and shaking my fist because both candidates were up there delivering false or exaggerated sound bites rather than honestly addressing the real problems that are facing our country. Romney was proclaimed the winner, and fact checkers everywhere revealed the gross exaggerations and blatant lies that won him the debate. They also revealed a smaller though not insubstantial number of lies and gross exaggerations from Obama.

”The Rumble” was an online, live-streamed debate between Jon Stewart of The Daily Show and Bill O’Reilly of The O’Reilly Factor. Although it was less formal than the presidential debates, and largely intended for entertainment rather than substance, it brought up a number of interesting and complex issues. What intrigued me the most were the audience questions that were read in the final segment of the debate. Many of these questions addressed the issue of trust. Why should we vote for Obama over Romney? Or Romney over Obama? How can we trust either presidential candidate? They both lie. They are both vying for the job of commander in chief of the largest military in the world, leader of arguably the only remaining superpower, the position called “most powerful man in the world,” and “leader of the free world.” High stakes lead to high risks. How can we believe that either candidate or either party can be trusted with our future?

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Photography: "Fallen"

"Fallen."
El fuente del angel caído in Parque Retiro in Madrid.  Available for purchase on FineArt America.

Photography: "Vigil"

"Vigil"

Available on FineArt America

Photography: "Universal Laws"

Available for purchase at FineArt America.

As the Singularity Approaches

Science lately is blurring the line between biology and technology. Harvard has made two startlingly large advances recently: they managed to use DNA to store 700 terabytes of data, and they have created synthetic (read: cyborg) flesh. DNA is essentially the original computer code: it stores complex information in different arrangements of four different molecules, called A, G, C, and T for simplicity. Scientists assigned zeroes and ones to these letters to simulate binary code, the language on which computers run. Using this makeshift binary code, they were able to store 700 terabytes in just one gram of DNA (for comparison, the first 4 terabyte hard drive for computers was just manufactured in 2011, and the average MacBook Pro has less than one terabyte of hard drive space).

Along with this new DNA-as-disk-drive ability, Harvard also melded electronics with living cells to create honest-to-God cyborg flesh. The human body reacts to electrical impulses fired by the brain, something loosely replicated by these part-biological, part-technological tissue cultures. While the half-organic tissue can’t yet react to the electrical impulses, the technology allows for close monitoring of the tissue. The short term implications are earlier warning for medical conditions caused by inflammation, monitoring pre-cancerous cells, or even tracking drug absorption and measuring the effectiveness of medications. The long-term implications are on a much grander scale.

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How We Remember

They say the 9-11 attacks of 2001 were our generation’s Pearl Harbor or Kennedy assassination. It seems that everyone over 18 has a story about where they were that day, when their world changed so abruptly.  I was in eight grade, and I remember teachers interrupting my science class to whisper to each other.  It wasn’t until third period history, at 9:45, after the planes had hit, that they told us what happened.  We watched the news all through class that morning, and we saw the towers fall. It was the first time I’d ever heard the name “Osama bin Laden.”  It’s hard to believe, now, that there was a time before bin Laden, and before the War on Terror.