Editorials

Editorials... The right of one person expressing his opinion on one subject or another. You may agree or disagree with that person, but it's his right to express his opinion, and it's your right to express yours. That's why we have a Editorial section here at GameSurge, because all opinions are more important than just one.

To submit a editorial to GameSurge, please E-mail Falcon with the article, the subject, and your email address. Our policy is to edit for grammar and spelling, but there will be no additional changes made to the text. We reserve the right to reject any article submitted, but we also always give out the reason, so changes can be made by the author. (We feel it's wrong to make changes to someone else's work. It's a freedom of speech thing...)

Our latest editorial:

• Generation X and Pinball - By Agent 86
  " Being a member of "Generation-X" myself - I'm 20 - its rather heart wrenching to be a member of a group that is considered partly responsible for "killing" something I enjoy - pinball. All over the news you hear things rumblings of how pinball is dying off, how kids have lost interest, how its a game for the older generation but after this past Friday I can't help but start to question all of that."
  
  
• Netcode Rebuttal - by Mannon
  " The new netcode uses Lag Compensation. Lag Compensation (not "control") is not client side prediction of hits. Hits and kills are not awarded this way. The server still retains authority. (Thus the references to Diablo are also erroneous.) What happens is that the sound effects, weapon animation, ammo depletion, bullet hole decals, ect... are handled by the client. Blood can also be switched to client side prediction, but defaults to server control. All of these are essentially cosmetic. As are all the other client side implementations. Those are all just sideshows compared to the main event, though... Lag Compensation."
  
  
• GameSpy Arcade - by Sim
  " GameSpy has released it's latest creation. No, it's not another Planet, it's GameSpy Arcade. This beta version is a user friendly program that "matches people with each other and the PC games they want to play. It supports everything from the hardcore action classics -- like Quake or Half-Life -- to classic, board, sports, or strategy games." It's a big program that not only includes server hookups (as in GameSpy3D), but also tons of chat rooms, instant messaging, and a mini web browser to boot."
  
  
• Diablo Revealed - Raven has written exclusively for GameSurge a article on the features that were missing from the Blizzard game Diablo. Entitled "Diablo Revealed, this opus, spanning 15 pages of text and special screenshots, details the missing quests, some of the graphic elements missing from the final release of the game, and offers proof that Diablo was going to be a very different game than what was actually released. Diablo was the only Blizzard game to be released on time, but maybe they should have worked on it a bit more.
  
  
• Netcode Crack and Debacle. - by Crepidus [WT]
  "Valve made a very bold move with their latest implementation of netcode for half-life 1.1.0.0.  This is a giant step backwards with respect to technological trends. What a debacle, and here is why: *I've tested both as a modem and DSL client. The hit scoring and position prediction are weighted towards the highest common denominator of ping, leaving a Low Ping client with a completely unrealistic experience.* In an attempt to reduce lag and even the playing field for Clients with High Pings, Valve simply “Castrated” the playability of Low Ping Clients."
  
  

Other sections

• Editorials - Our viewers opinions, and where they stand on issues, both gaming and non-gaming.
• shivaSite - The personal section of the Webmaster. Warning: Not for the faint of heart.
• Rants and Ravings - Two AN staff members do a weekly column about games, and other things...
• Zero Hour - Staff member Zero's own column. We are still not sure what he is talking about...

Previous Editorials

• Rants and Raves Week One
  - by Zero and Id - Rant - "Nowadays, when I first walk into the arcades, all I see is a bunch of morons jumping up and down on some dance-pad like there's no tomorrow."
• Rants and Raves Week Two
  - by Zero and Id - Rant - "So let's review what just happened. The PS2 came out; Zero has had a horrible week, and giant robots beating the hell outta each other is cool."
  
• Rants and Raves Week Three
  - by Zero and Id - Rant - "My friend gave me his copy of Shogo: Mobile Armor Division for fifteen bucks. It looked good so I took it off his hands. After opening it up, I was set to spend about thirty minutes playing the game, but I was sucked into a vortex and three hours passed by."
  
• Rants and Raves Week Four
  - by Zero and Id - Rant - "Personally, after spending a good amount of time with my Playstation this week, I've noticed something that I felt wasn't so obvious before. The Playstation truly is showing its age."
• Psychological Warfare
  - by Zero - Editorial - "Like it or not, humans are not the same as computers. We cannot think as fast, or move as fast. But we are not without our own strengths as well."
• Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 - The Quake of Skating Games?
  - by MystikaL - Editorial - "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater was one of the top selling games of 1999 when it came to consoles. The game is not only still in the top 10 since it's release in September of 1999, but was ranked 1st during October and December."
• The Ultimate Battle:  TF2 vs Quake 3 vs UT
  - Opinion - "These three games are prooving themselves to be heralds to a new age in First Person Shooters.  They are no longer the mindless *bam bam you're dead* type single player matches with dim-witted AI.  These are big, ass-kicking, multiplayer games which will go where no other FPS has gone before, featuring challenging bots, loads of gameplay, and polygons by the bucketful."
• The Truth about Koreans and the Starcraft Ladder
  - by Daklown - Opinion - "In my experience, the rating of my opponent has played more of a role in whether someone d/ced on me than their ethnicity. Simply put, whether Korean or Amercian or whatever... You're more likely to get d/ced on by a lower rated person than a higher rated person."
• Starcraft II- Can Blizzard do it?
  - by the gibb - Opinion - "With labor day weekends' announcement of Warcraft III, Starcraft news sites and message boards were clogged with messages in the couple of days before the announcement, when, on the Blizzard site, it said "The World will Change 9.5.99. Many said it would be Starcraft II, and why not?"
• Shoot 'em up games- do they really cause violence?
  - by the gibb - Opinion - "We all remember it, the horrific incident where two students took the lives of 15, including themselves on that bloody day in Littleton, Colorado. To make it ironic, it occurred on April 20th, Adolf Hitler's birthday."
• The Tycoons
  - by MystikaL - Editorial - "Tycoon, a wealthy and powerful business person. Whether it is a Railroad Tycoon, Roller coaster Tycoon, or Wall Street Tycoon, the developers of the Tycoon series of games have always been on top, proving to be Tycoons themselves."
• Patch Work Games
  - by Facsimile - Opinion - "Patching is a trend that is becoming more and more prevalent. Is it for better or worse? No one is really sure."
• Overclocking and Supercooling, is it all worth it?
  - by UnderwearNinja - Editorial - "Overclocking. Now when I say that, I'm not talking about wearing two watches or having an extra alarm in your room. Nor am I talking about setting your clock ahead 10 minutes to try and fool yourself into always thinking you're a little bit late. What I'm talking about is when the human desire to get more than what you paid for, overrides the risk involved in getting it."
• Online Gaming Today:
  - by Langlier - Editorial - "Online gaming today is at its peaks and also at its lows. Today we can have the most realistic experience and interaction amongst our friends and people we barely know."
• LAN Parties: The Real Way to Play Games
  - Editorial - "Usually when playing, you have a ping under 70, as oppose to net connections where you have around 200-400 ping. This is how games should be played. With silky-smooth connections."
• Status of the Gaming Industry
  - by Bill Gilson - Editorial - "Every January, the President of the United States makes a State of the Union address, bragging how good our nation is compared to 30 years ago, and expressing his opinions on, well, the state of the union. In this editorial, I will address the state of the gaming industry."
• The Future of the Quake Series
  - by Brett "MystikaL" Guarnieri - Opinion - "Now that the third addition to the Quake series has been released, where will id software go next? I am sure that Roman Numerals on id's Quake logo will looked fux0red, so what will they do?"
• Clans and Guilds
  - by Langlier - Opinion - " Are guilds beneficial? Yes if they remember that we need a majority of non-guilded people and that guilds serve a purpose."
• Carriers- and effects of the patches since 1.00
  - by Falcon (with help by shiva) - StarCraft Game Help - "Soon after the release of 1.05 for SC/BW many people cried imbalance over the changes to carriers."
• Imbalance in BW
  - by Cerberus - Editorial - "Imbalance. People have been arguing about it for a long time. Everyone wants it balanced a certain way, some don’t like that way."
• Buy! Buy! Buy!
  - by UnderwareNinja - Editorial - "Then I wanted to play alien vs. predator. Well my Banshee worked ok on my 233 Pentium, but I soon felt inadequate around the computers around me. My computer seemed feeble. I had to have more."
• An Analyzation of Battle.net
  - by the gibb - Editorial - "This editorial is going to be a little different. Instead of ranting on about one part of Bnet, I'm going to analyze the whole kit n' kaboodle."
• AD&D and Baldurs Gate
  - by Terry "DysoN" Martin - Editorial - "Those AD&D fanatics who ever played BioWare’s AD&D based game entitled Baldur’s Gate, for a fact, know that it’s not entirely based on the AD&D rules."
• AD&D and Baldurs Gate - Second Opinion
  - by Terry "DysoN" Martin - Editorial - "Note:  the purpose of this editorial is to attempt to answer most of questions regarding the previous editorial, AD&D and Baldur’s Gate."
• Violence in Games
  - Article - "As the violence continues to grow, so will the attention of the ESRB's involvement of rating systems, rules, and regulations with the publications, production, and other uses for and with games."
• Abandonwarez
  - by Langlier - Article - "I think people need to relive their gaming roots every so often.  Sure with games like Quake 3 the old classics just don't add up anymore.  Who wants to go drop 15 bucks on an old p.o.s. game anyway?"
• Surviving the Competition
  - by Various - Editorial - Various tips by people who have been through the trenchs.
• Violence: Are Computer Games to Blame
  - by Vorlon - Editorial - "When horrors like the Columbine High massacre erupt, the instinctive human tendency is to seek reasons for the madness. If it was an honest desire to understand the true causes and prevent such tragedies, at least some ray of good would emerge from the dark void of wanton evil."
• Multi-Player Gaming and Ultima Online
  - by BlackSun - Rant - "I'm sure that Origin would argue that maintaining a service as huge as this, with a data base holding all the users characters throughout the world costs money to maintain. I understand such a production doesn't come without expenses, but I don't see Blizzard asking for more money after the customers initial game purchase."
• How to buy Video Games
  - by BlackSun - Editorial - "I almost never buy any games that are real bombs, and that the few times I have bought crappy games was because I made my purchases impulsively and without my usual regiment of research before hand."
• A Visit with Harry Williams
  - by Russ Jensen - Editorial - Recollections of a visit with Pinball pioneer and Williams Electronics Founder, Harry Williams.
• un dead
  - by - HonestJon - Opinion - "Well, with more and more info about the Nintendo Dophin and Song Playstation2 leaking along nicely, and Sega's Dreamcast making a big bang, this is the best time as ever to consider throwing away your closest and most trusted pal for the last 2 or 3 years and get another young new sexy toy."
• Escape
  - by Gordoni Valducci - Short Story - "Lenny and Ralph sat at the mess-table, discussing the day’s events. “Damn cannon training is a bitch man, I swear Lenny, they better give me my damn tank soon so I can get into the damn field instead of this damn training, dammit!”. “Yeah I knows what ya mean Ralph, as soon as my Vulture training is done I wanna get the fuck outa this damn camp, and I don’t care how big and advanced it is, it blows!”."
• Be my Dog
  - by Butterball - Rant - "Not that this is gaming related, but Isn't it funny how some people are so sensitive to the funniest things?. For example, lets take sexism. Some people may even think the beauty of birth is sexism since the man gets to give off billions of sperms and the women only gives off one egg."
• Big Breasts and Little Brains
  - by Lollirot - Rant - "I'm sure that many of you have seen the movie "Forrest Gump" and are familiar with the line, "You can tell a lot about a person by their shoes...," well, in this case, we can tell a lot about a person by their writing. If someone has to resort to watching a video game's characters instead of a real female, they are truly pathetic."
• Long Way Down
  - by HonestJon - Editorial - "Say someone had too much free time, liked video games, and they know a thing or two about computers. So he (or she? hahahah) put up a page about a game. Simple. Now and then people dropped in... lots of updates in the first few weeks... peeps continue to come. There are some hits, but not alot."
• Show Me the Goods
  - by Butterball - Rant - "I bet Lara Croft in Tombraider had at least some effect on how the game became such a success. I've been a gamer most my life, and I can be sure that most teenage gamers want a good lookin babe on the cover of any game."
• The New Phase
  - by Butterball - Editorial - " However if the Dreamcast is to survive in Japan, it better have a bunch of damn good RPG's. The Dreamcast having polygon rocking power should be expected to have kick ass graphics, high quality FMV, long stories, and great game play right?"
• 3 Minute Crush
  - by HonestJon - Rant/Story - Unique blend of a Life story and How an old game has such SPARK for a little while.
• Wake Up and Smell The Coffee!!!!
  - by Id - Editorial - Hey, if you want to see a pretty good explanation of why often people don't consider Nintendo #1 with N64, then you should read this awesome rant on his view.
• It's Blowing Me Away
  - by HonestJon - Rant - "RPG's are for losers. No really? Especially those extra long and boring ones that just keep on repeating and repeating. Walk, battle, talk; walk, battle, talk; more walk, more battle, more talk. Wow. It's blowing me away just thinking about it. The whole concept of RPG's is so exciting."
• Alive and Kicking
  - by HonestJon - Editorial/Rant - More of an editorial, but partially a rant, on how the state of gaming, really seems to be lacking something.
• Internet Idiots
  - by Lollirot - Rant - Addresses the general male attitude toward women on the internet.
• Grow Up
  - by Lollirot - Editorial - Written by a female gamer about the disrespect females get.
• Hypocrite
  - by Lollirot - Editorial - The Response to the attention getting GROW UP!!!.