On the dreadful consequences of sodomy to a state

Republicans always seem to be shocked and confused when I state I'm not a Republican because I'm not a Socialist. If I wanted to be in a party full of Socialists in denial I'd just join the Democrat party and have such in abundance. I mean, if I'm willing to accept Socialism, then why join a party of tepid Socialists when I can just dive in head first with the Democrats? Because the only difference between the GoP and DNC today, is that the former prefers to acclimate itself to Socialism like some old lady slipping into a cold swimming pool an inch at a time, as opposed to the DNC who waded into the pool well before the GoP, and having long been acclimated now sits at the bottom embracing full blown Marxism.

As I have said for some time The GoP are Fabian Socialists. For those of you ignorant of that appellation, it falls to me yet again to educate you.

Simply put, Fabian Socialists (who might just as appropriately be dubbed "Gramscian" Socialists) prefer the incremental implementation of Marxist principles, as opposed to the rapid and violent implementation of such that occurred under the Soviet and German Socialists in the early twentieth century. Like numerous other pernicious socio-political maladies of Europe it has crossed the sea and infected the United States as well. Some will erroneously conclude that the former is better than the latter, because it abstains from the bloodshed endemic to such, but those lot would be misguided. Because the former results in the same thing as the latter, the only difference being in how it arrives there. Of the two the former is the far more insidious, because rather than comprising a conspicuous front against which to organize opposition, it advances itself through a gradual, if not surreptitious, creep into the collective minds of the populace, consequently being the far more difficult to recognize and defend against.

Whereas the latter might seek to peremptorily impose its will in bounding strides, the former seeks only a modicum of its agenda at a time in an interminable procession, which affords to it a veil of reasonableness it the eyes of the ignorant and facile. It is far more effective to ask people to make perceptibly small concessions than to demand large ones. People are reluctant to jump from A to Z, but often will step from A to B, then to C, and then to D and so on, until they arrive at Z if made to perceive each step as small and isolated from the rest. Thus, whereas the latter might demand the decriminalization of pedophilia from the outset, the former demands first the decriminalization of sodomy, then the establishment of civil unions, then the establishment of "same sex marriage," etc., knowing that people are far more amenable to taking small steps than significant leaps into uncharted socio-political territory. Whereas the latter offends the conscience, and is inclined to animate a powerful counter-revolutionary spirit, the former lulls the conscience and circumvents that spirit.

Simply put, the latter is the socio-political equivalent of tossing the frog into a boiling pot of water, whereas the former is the incremental raising of the temperature. And this is how the left has transformed America. The Democrat party fell first, and became Fabian Socialists many decades ago, and progressed into the hardcore Marxists we see today. And the GoP follows a few decades behind them. (As does America follow a few decades behind Europe in its descent into neo-pagan Socialism.) And this is easily illustrated through the Republican party's evolution on "same sex" marriage.

For years the GoP the was a more traditional holdout and alternative to the DNC on moral issues. But over time, as incrementalism crept its way into the party that began to change, reaching its most conspicuous and recent manifestation in the 2016 presidential election, when a party that had been opposing the Socialist agenda began openly advancing it.

A candidate obviously cannot control who endorses him, but he most certainly can control whom he endorses. And under Donald Trump the GoP lunged farther left than it's ever been on multiple issues from health care to sexual conduct. (The latter hardly being a surprise given the new head of the GoP is a man caught on tape openly admitting to groping womens' vaginas. It's an existential truth that a profligate man will tend to be more tolerant of profligacy in others, vice of the same type in particular, and therefore more amenable to embracing an agenda that seeks the acceptance of such. A man who engages in sexual misconduct will, more often than not, feel an affinity for others that do the same and, rather than opposing them, will become an apologist for them as a means of indirectly absolving himself, knowing the same sophistry that exculpates another will through extension exculpate him as well.)

As I said then, if I am willing to accept these things in a Republican candidate, then I might as well vote Democrat. Because support of homogenital sex acts is the Socialist Democrat platform. Am I to simply ignore that the GoP's platform has become the Socialist Democrat's platform in multiple ways? According to Trump supporters, yes. But to affirm the GoP's acceptance of such, is to take yet another incremental step, which will promptly be followed by another, and then another, ad infinitum.

One might be asking what do same sex relationships have to do with Socialism? If you have to ask that question, you're likely already a practicing Socialist to some (probably significant) degree, because the support of homogenital sex acts is a core pillar of modern Socialism.

And one now often sees the incrementalist agenda on display even in the GoP, through the delusive notion that it's in the interest of preserving our civil society, to accept these changing cultural mores; that it's even our duty as Christians to do so.

As discussed previously on this blog, American liberty is rooted in and dependent upon Christian morality, and thus in order to make Americans not free you must first de-Christianize them. What is the above article arguing, if not that we must accept a society and govenrment, predicated upon something other than Christian values?

It's simply false to believe that the de-Christianizing of society requires making everyone an atheist. Advancing other religions, or essentially any other ethos period, also serves this purpose. Socialism is perhaps more than anything, at its core, the pursuit of the abolition of private property, and many other religions like it do not codify respect for private property as does Judaism and Christianity in the Decalogue. (This why you consistently see leftists supporting every religion but Christianity domestically, and siding with the Islamic hordes that seek to annihilate the state of Israel abroad. These two belief systems represent the greatest, if not only, obstacle to global Socialism.) If a person cannot be completely de-Christianized, then simply convincing them that the laws of God are not applicable, is an equally effective alternative. The antinomian adhering to a simplistic vitiation of Christianity, who believes that Christianity is merely about "loving" people, is no impediment to the abolition of private property (or any other vice) whatsoever.

"Athenian fathers would pray that their sons would be handsome and attractive, with the full knowledge that they would then attract the attention of men and 'be the objects of fights because of erotic passions.'" - Love among the Ruins: The Erotics of Democracy in Classical Athens.

It has been stated before, and cannot be emphasized enough, that the acceptance of sexual misconduct, e.g., sodomy and transvestism, is not a "progression." It's a regression. These behaviors were common in ancient pagan civilizations, and in some became so pervasive, it resulted in their destruction from disease or conquest. The Bible explicitly mentions them in reference to Egypt and Canaan for example, when commanding the Hebrews not to adopt their customs.

"After the doings of the land of Egypt, wherein ye dwelt, shall ye not do: and after the doings of the land of Canaan, whither I bring you, shall ye not do: neither shall ye walk in their ordinances. [....] Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination. [...] Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgments, and shall not commit any of these abominations; neither any of your own nation, nor any stranger that sojourneth among you." - Lev 18: 3, 22, & 26.  

"The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God." - Deu 22:5. 

Sodomy was likewise common in ancient Greece and Rome. The Roman Emperor Nero, who bitterly hated Christianity and brutally repressed the early church, had what today would be considered a "transgender" wife; a boy he favored, had castrated, dressed as a woman, and even called by a woman's name. Thus we are living in a perverse dichotomy in America, in which we move ever forward technologically, but backward culturally and morally. In the latter instance we have regressed by millennia. And it has been my long standing contention that our society would have already perished, due to the latter, if not for the former. Advances in modern medicine have allowed us to mitigate, to a significant degree, the damage pervasive vice would have otherwise wrought, and to thus far escape the fate of the ancient pagan states. But medicine has its limits. The boundless audacity of neo-pagan Socialists has made it abundantly clear, through devising ever more daring and inventive ways to butcher the human body, that it intends to find those limits and continue beyond them with all the tools "modern" medicine places at their disposal.

Some will have argued at this point that the above Biblical proscription is from Leviticus, and therefore no longer applicable, as the "law" is no longer applicable. And even were that true, which it's not, the disposition of Leviticus is affirmed in the New Testament, which unequivocally establishes as condign the judgment mandated in the Old Testament.

"For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet." - Rom 1:26 & 27.

So, regardless of what imaginary "dispensation" in which you believe yourself to be living, there is no Biblical basis for the acceptance of sodomy or transvestism. Indeed, if you have accepted these things, far from being a good Christian you have already renounced God. The "grace" of God does not permit these things, and the Bible explicitly condemns the incrementalist agenda.

"For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord." - Jde 1:4.

You either accept that God does not change (Mal 3:6, Jas 1:7, Heb 13:8) , and that these practices are "abomination" because "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether" (Psa 19:9), or you cease to be a Christian as a result of adopting a pagan sexual ethos. The latter, as the Bible and history plainly illustrate, is the death knell of a civilization.

"If we reflect on the dreadful consequences of sodomy to a state, and on the extent to which this abominable vice may be secretly carried on and spread, we cannot, on the principles of sound policy, consider the punishment as too severe. For if it once begins to prevail, not only will boys be easily corrupted by adults, but also by other boys; nor will it ever cease; more especially as it must thus soon lose all its shamefulness and infamy, and become fashionable, and the national taste; and then depopulation and national weakness, for which all remedies are ineffectual, must inevitably follow; not perhaps in the very first generation, but certainly in the course of the third or fourth. It is, moreover, a substitute for marriage [...] and, as such, it will be resorted to by the man, who does not choose to maintain a wife and a family. [...] In this way, it diminishes the number of marriages; and when that takes place from such a cause, (we need only call to mind the state of Rome, in this point, under the emperors,) it becomes impossible to reintroduce them into fashion. [...] It is farther to be observed, that it is always accompanied with an increasing aversion to the female sex, which generally ends in absolute impotence. But its direful consequences are not confined to one sex: for the other sex, as they must, for the most part, either remain unmarried, or be betrayed into marriages where their natural desires are not duly gratified, soon learn to avenge themselves by the practice of unnatural lusts [...] and thus they, in their turn, conceive an abhorrence of their husbands, and become perfectly profligate; and the consequence is, what we also see in the case of Rome under the emperors, a still greater paucity of marriages, and, of course, a still greater depopulation of the country. To these evils may be added yet another, viz. that the constitutions of those men, who submit to this degradation, are, if not always, yet very often, totally destroyed, though in a different way from what is the result of whoredom. Whoever, therefore, wishes to ruin a nation, has only to get this vice introduced; for it is extremely difficult to extirpate it, where it has once taken root, because it can be propagated with much more secrecy than whoredom, which generally betrays itself by children; and when we perceive that it has once got a footing in any country, however powerful and flourishing, we may venture, as politicians, to predict, that the foundation of its future decline is laid, and that, after some hundred years, it will no longer be the same populous and powerful country it is at present." - John David Michaelis, Commentaries on the Laws of Moses, Vol. IV.

It is a common thing to hear self-professed conservatives lament the abject effeminacy and impotency of "millennials," against which all their contrived remedies are ineffectual, but quite uncommon to ever hear them acknowledge or take any responsibility for what caused it; their acceptance of sodomy. "Safe spaces" are the natural consequence of embracing the feminizing practice of sodomy, which as Michaelis describes, will ultimately creep into every facet of life robbing a nation of its vigor. 

It is also common for people to argue there's been no deleterious consequence to the acceptance of sodomy, completely oblivious to the fact that essentially everything Michaelis describes (over two hundred years ago) above has come to pass. When sodomy was decriminalized in western civilization, it soon not only ceased to be shameful but became fashionable, and is now even seen as preferable to the traditional Judeo-Christian nuclear family. Society rapidly transitioned from one in which sodomy was ubiquitously condemned, to one in which opposition to sodomy is anathematized. 

Consequently marriage rates, and therefore birth rates, are in declension throughout western civilization. It is an existential maxim that any society that promotes stagnation as equal to, or even superior to fecundity, has by rebelling against the Biblical edict to "be fruitful and multiply" fashioned its own noose. The Socialists of the United States and the west in general, having been irrevocably hobbled by a pernicious extinctionism pervading every rank of society, seeks ever more benefits subsidized by the public treasury while producing ever fewer taxpayers to fund it.

Supporters of homogenital sex acts will give passionate (and invariably hopelessly obtuse) defenses of their misguided sentiments. This is not a matter of passion. It's a matter of math and physiology. Those nations which reduce procreation to an ancillary concern, whilst actively promoting their own demise through disease ridden behaviors and self-imposed mass genocide, are doomed to extinction. When the laws of men come into contention with the laws of nature, though mans' genius may forestall it for a time, the latter will eventually always prevail.

And in efforts to compensate for this declining virility the United States has, much like the Romans in their folly (to which Michaelis repeatedly alludes), resorted to the mass importation of foreigners of dubious loyalty into the Republic, and even those with none at all, serving only to further facilitate and accelerate their own demise. Across the Atlantic it's Islam engorging itself upon the impotent husk of de-Christianized Europe, which having generally embraced its own demise through "multiculturalism," offers resistance of the most tepid sort if any at all. America is not far behind. Within a few decades we could suffer staggering demographic changes, as these contingents of society having superior birth rates eclipse us, and assuming the majority of stations within government, begin promptly wielding those stations to achieve for themselves greater prominence and to accelerate our declension further still. And in this they will not only not be opposed, but ardently supported domestically by a large contingent of perfidious guilt mongers, born of apostasy, moral apathy, and dead to all patriotic sentiment.

Michaelis' assertion that "once (sodomy) begins to prevail, not only will boys be easily corrupted by adults, but also by other boys," has likewise been vindicated. It's now common to see television and film shows that depict boys being sexually corrupted by men and other boys.

And before you resign yourself to the misconception that this is merely the motif of fictional cinematic works, my friend Ryan Sorba produced a video in which he caught numerous "homosexuals" admitting to being molested as boys, by men or other boys, and/or having molested others themselves, unequivocally evincing that in this instance fiction mirrors reality as much as vice versa.

I would post Ryan's video for you, but it has been repeatedly taken down, due to leftist demands that his content be censored.

The physiological evidence against homogenital sex acts is a priori and incontrovertible. The proof that "same sex" attraction is a psychological disorder, is indisputably evinced by the fact that regardless of to whom a person claims to be attracted, their body is by default physiologically heterosexual. The testicles of the "gay" man produce sperm cells that coalesce with the female egg cell, achieved exclusively through vaginal intercourse, just as those of the heterosexual man. Which is why I have long said that "homosexuals" are hardware (body) with faulty software (psyche). No matter to what a person is attracted (psychologically), their body is inherently heterosexual, and designed to achieve procreation with the opposite gender. Notions like "gender identity" and "orientation" are neo-pagan Socialist derived myths. Again, in order for "sexual orientation" to have any physiological validity a person would have to be able to procreate with someone of the same gender. Something we obviously cannot do. In order to circumvent this fact one would have to discard natural physiological parameters altogether, so naturally, that precisely what leftists have done.

It should be immediately apparent that this has ramifications far beyond mere sexual activity and relationships. If the purpose and function of the reproductive organs may be arbitrarily defined by the person to whom they're attached, what's to stop them from doing so with any other organ? What is to stop someone from saying their liver circulates blood through the body? What is to stop a patient, who identifies his kidney as a uterus, from demanding his physician treat him accordingly? And given that medicine has already conceded that sexuality and self-identity are not immutably rooted in, and wed to physiology in regard to sodomy and "transgenderism" - both of which are demonstrably insalubrious behaviors - upon what consistent intellectual grounds may they refuse the patient's demands in such a scenario if (when) it arises?

Though the benighted and myopic have failed to discern this eventuality, the precedent for it has been set, mitigated only by mans' creativity or lack thereof. And having discarded the premise of transcendent human physiology, by accepting homogenital sex acts, its supporters have obliterated any intellectual opposition to, and paved the way for, whatever new abominations may come. Today it's men castrating themselves that they might pretend to be women. Tomorrow, God only knows. 

Even without Michaelis' detailed articulation of the consequences of embracing pagan vice, however, the evidence of its pernicious socio-political ramifications are all around us. Truly, one must be blind not to discern them.

The above is but one of now seemingly countless examples of the assiduous assault on Christian liberty. America was colonized, and the United States established, with the specific intent of allowing virtually unfettered religious freedom, and to prevent precisely what happened to these two people from ever occurring. But a benighted amnesiac populace, utterly estranged to their Judeo-Christian roots, is oblivious to that truth. To them this is not the resurgence of the same pagan tyranny that brutally repressed the early Church two millennia ago. That truth has been purged from their collective consciousness. They are cognizant of only the events of their own lifetimes. And based upon that diminutive frame of reference reality becomes distorted. In the eyes of the historically ignorant the bakers are the oppressors, vestigial remnants of a Christian culture of intolerance. They must be punished for infringing upon the non-existent right to homogenital sex acts claimed by their "homosexual" victims. That Judeo-Christian intolerance was a response to millennia of intolerance, repression, and genocide at the hands of sodomy practicing pagans is lost on them. 

As Christianity declines throughout western civilization, the same depravity innate to the ancient pagan world has reemerged and flourished in proportion, along with the pagan tyranny of which it's a component. The "same sex" movement has consistently been the spearhead against legitimate Constitutional liberties like religion and speech, both of which have receded in proportion to the advancement of the same sex agenda, and are now in the nascent stages of being criminalized. The apostates of America in 2017, are leaving us with a country in which the Christian not only doesn't have the protection of the United States Constitution, but not even those afforded by the Edict of Milan in 313 A.D. And this will only continue to worsen as our incremental slide into neo-pagan Socialism persists. 

I for one will not accept Socialism no matter what euphemistic appellation is applied to it. I will not embrace in a Republican what I spent eight years rebuking in a Democrat. I will call Socialism, Socialism, whether it be advanced by Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, or Donald Trump. God did not send the Apostles out into the world to prostrate his laws to pagan rulers. And make no mistake about it, thanks to the dereliction of the church, we were living under pagan rule once again. Indeed, our society is in some ways arguably worse than the pagan toilets of antiquity, seeking to maim the bodies of even its children (at ever younger ages) through "gender reassignment."

"Young people who take these hormones will need lifelong monitoring for dangerous side effects, including cancer, liver damage, diabetes, stroke, and heart attack."

So depraved has modern America become, that in all its "progressive" wisdom," it's willing to accept subjecting its children to cancer, stroke, heart attacks; afflictions that normally impact children the least. All because "feelings" now take precedence over logic (or even sanity) in America. The Doctors have been de-Christianized too; apostasy being the only explanation for any physician who would perpetrate such butchery upon a child.

Anyone who considers this "progress" is a moron (or a demon). We're living in a kakistocratic dystopian nightmare pulled straight from the pages of a horror novel. One which, given the pervading moral lethargy induced by the left, few can are or willing to acknowledge. Everyone's just watching as spectators, like eunuchs in some orgy laden harem, as ever greater spectacles of depravity unfold one after another. It's enough to gag a maggot. But "progressive" America long ago lost its gag reflex through assiduous exposure to filth and perfidy. They've had excrement held under their noses for so long at this point the smell no longer offends them. 

Ultimately, if we are to restore our Christian liberties, we must first restore our Christian aversion to vice. Those things which offend God must come to offend us once again also. Because the Biblical penalty for failing to share God's aversions is abundantly clear.  

Why modern video games suck

I had originally intended to post this quite some time ago. I got distracted with other things, however, and it just sat as a draft collecting digital dust. Since then there's been an explosion of controversy surrounding EA and Battlefront 2. There's now wide scale outrage and acknowledgement of the fact video gaming has for some time being subtly converted into interactive gambling. Indeed, EA dispensed with subtlety altogether with BF2. There's now a slew of great videos on Youtube castigating this practice.

It's wonderful.

As for me, several weeks ago I called several of my representatives, and even went by the offices of a couple nearby. It was my goal to inform them of the rapid increase of this practice, and to learn what the regulations regarding gambling were exactly. What is the criteria for something being gambling? Much to my disappointment, none of the people to whom I spoke could answer that question, or even who regulated gambling. Furthermore, some of them made it rather clear they couldn't be less interested in the issue. Which is precisely why more needs to be done by those who love video games

Not so long ago I made a post about this on the Destiny forums, in which I used the analogy of buying a new car that ended up having none of what's considered basic features, and the dealership charging you additional fees for things like seat belts and anti-lock brakes to be installed.

"I implore you, contact your representatives. Soliciting real money for games of chance, i.e., random rewards, is gambling and should be designated as such. 

You can find your representatives here."

I was promptly harassed by the insipid trolls who made this sort of exploitation possible. It's frankly amazing how stupid much of the gaming consumer base is. To say they failed to grasp the analogy is an understatement.

"The purpose of my analogy, which anyone with a functioning cerebral cortex would immediately recognize, was to illustrate how game developers are increasingly releasing a compartmentalized product, with diminutive content and features up front, in order to fleece the consumer for as much money as possible. Instead of games being released as complete products, they're being deliberately preemptively partitioned, and incrementally dispensed with an additional fee every time a new increment is allotted. 

You're all obviously either too stupid to realize, or too young to remember, there was a time when you got 100% of a product for your money. Now, by contrast, morons like you are perfectly content to pay full price for 20% of a product, and pay again every time another 20% is subsequently released."

Apparently, based upon videos I've seen subsequent to speaking to my representatives, the U.S. government doesn't consider loot boxes gambling based upon semantical nonsense. Video games are soliciting real money for games of chance. That's gambling. Game's like World of Warcraft are predicated almost entirely upon soliciting real money for random rewards. The ESRB apparently holds that loot boxes are not gambling because you're guaranteed to receive something in return. (But who's surprised by their disposition, given that they're apparently a puppet entity of the game makers.) So basically if I charged you $10, for a 1% chance to win $100 and a 99% chance to win a turd on a plate, that's not gambling; because you're guaranteed to get something.

Far from getting anything in return for your money, you don't even own your characters, anything your characters wears, has, or uses in the game, or even the game itself anymore. (More and more developers are switching to digital download only. So it's now common to not even have a physical copy of the game you've supposedly "bought.") It's a standard feature of virtually all online gaming ToS agreements now that essentially anything you get in the game, and even your entire account, can be suspended or permanently banned at the game makers discretion. More and more games are also requiring you to have an internet connection to play even the offline aspects of the game. Developers as such can literally, if they wanted, lock you out of a game you paid $60 for completely, even the offline portion of it, if they want.

So what am I getting in return for my money exactly? What is this tangible reward I'm receiving from a slot machine "loot box" in a video game? Not only is it of no tangible value in the real world, the rewards they provide are consistently of little or no value even in the game's world/economy. But hey, it's not gambling because you're guaranteed to receive virtual shit every time you roll the dice, which has even less value than real shit. They're right though, I suppose, in a sense. Video games are not casinos. They're actually worse than casinos. At least the casino can't CONFISCATE YOUR WINNINGS at any point and for whatever arbitrary reason they deem appropriate. They can declare you persona non grata, but if you won a million dollars last month, they can't take that away from you.

There's a lot of specious excuse making from fanboys, to the effect of developers being victims of publishers themselves also, and implying if not arguing outright the former should be absolved as such. But that's bs too. The developers could, and would speak out against it, if they were opposed to the incorporation of these egregiously predatory mechanics. But they don't, because they're not. I have no sympathy for the excuse that they have no choice because they're "between a rock and a hard place." Why? Because that's the position in which they consistently put their players. Their predatory practices are routinely excused, by themselves, with the assertion that everything for which they charge can be earned through game play for free. Except they deliberately make earning these things in game, as seen with Battlefront, a product of incredibly tedious grinds or incredibly unforgiving RNG, solely for the purpose of manipulating players into buying them instead. They basically do everything possible to induce the player to spend money without outright making it compulsory, and then have the audacity to claim it can technically be gotten for free so it's okay. That they've implemented virtually every trammel to the latter outcome imaginable, to induce the former, is consistently omitted.

Imagine I'm selling bottled water in the desert for 50$ a bottle. And when you complain about the price, I point and tell you "You can get it for free from a river 50 miles that way." And when you look out over the horizon, you see I've erected impediments across the landscape in that direction that span the visible horizon. I own all of the land between here and there. Razor wire fences abound. In one area you see land mine fields, and in another roaming hungry lions. All placed there by me. But hey, I'm not "forcing" you spend money. It can be gotten for free. Right? You're just "lazy," and want "instant gratification." (Actual defenses of these practices I've seen over the years from fanboy assholes.)

I'm so fed up with this crap; this virtual coercion that's never acknowledge as such. These developers have no qualms about subjecting us to profoundly unpleasant gaming experiences, designed to put us between a rock and hard place, to induce us to make a decision that benefits them. Anyone who doesn't think this is the result of significant contemplation, and outright research, on the part of developers is profoundly naive. Developers have given more than one interview, in which they openly concede they give significant thought into the mindset and motivations of the player, and seek to design a game around such. So at the very least they're complicit. But I'm supposed to be sympathetic to them because being at odds with their publisher might make them uncomfortable? Go to hell. They didn't stand up for me or speak out when I was being put in the unpleasant position of having to choose between grinding for countless hours or spending money that took countless hours to make. So I'm returning the favor. They weren't my advocate so I shan't be theirs. 

Which brings me to "grinding." There seems to be a pervasive misconception among present day gamers that grinding is content. Grinding is not content. Grinding is a means of increasing the longevity of content; it's a means of achieving a maximum profit to content ratio. Period. It allows developers to generate exponentially more revenue from exponentially less content. And the fact this needs to be explained to people repeatedly is a serious problem, as it blatantly conveys that they're unable of discerning this obvious truth for themselves.

Simply put, it's because of these lemmings that modern gaming sucks and continues to degrade into ever greater spectacles of creativity bereft grind fests. Rather than producers having to get off their creative asses, and "take risks," they've discovered that most people are perfectly content to play the same content over, and over, and over, for only incrementally better rewards, or worse, no rewards of substance at all. CoD was a prime example of this. I used to get all kinds of grief from other players for not doing the prestige grind. As I told them I'm not playing the same content 50 times over, for nothing more than a different graphic by my name. (Perhaps the worst thing about this was it was a regressive model, that actually required you to go backwards by losing everything you'd acquired up to that point, only to end up tangibly no better off than when you started.) That's not new content; it's the same content. And millions of mouth breathers actually did it. And that's apparently when a huge light bulb went off for Activision, regarding how obtuse and facile their consumer base actually is, and it's only been getting increasingly worse since then.

Gamers at this point have been so conditioned to accept this paradigm few of them question it anymore. Worse, they consistently demand as a solution to perceived problems, the very thing that produced those problems in the first place. If there's a lack of content in Destiny 2, for example, then Bungie needs to make actual new content as opposed to siphoning every last bit of revenue generation out of ever more diminutive slices of content through grind augmentation. This is precisely why I can't play WoW anymore (for more than a month or so), or as I started calling it long ago, World of Chorecraft. It's such a grind nightmare now it's insane. The grinding in WoW today literally never ends and consequently all the fun's gone. Far from giving you a sense of something toward which to strive, it gives you a sense that much of what the game has to offer, as anyone operating under the constraints of a mere mortal's schedule, is simply (likely forever) unobtainable (so why bother). It now feels like having another job. It's an endless collage of grinding, combined with daily and weekly quotas, etc., to stay relevant.

I used to love that game and now, after over a decade of play off and on, I have this deep seated resentment for it. It's just a massive con to rob people of life and wealth veiled behind a facade of "entertainment." It takes and takes in perpetuity and gives less and less back in return. There is no artistic or game play risk taking any longer. It's the same rehashed crap over and over. But it still makes them a ton of money, so they just keep recoloring it, changing the number by your name, and slapping a different label on it and people pay again and again. This is hardly exclusive to WoW. As already stated it's a staple of WoW, GTA 5 Online, etc., and has essentially become systemic. 

I was always willing to accept randomization to a marginal degree, to sustain the looter genre, but it's gone so overboard at this point as to defy any justification. The division of a game into mutually exclusive PVE and PVP aspects serves the same purpose. I'm not sure how people still haven't figured that out yet. The imbalance issues that exist between PVE and PVP in games like Destiny is a direct byproduct of splitting them apart and scaling them disparately. Yet it's common to see Destiny players demanding more bifurcation, the very thing that causes the problem, as the solution.

This is again something WoW did over a decade ago, and it caused all the same problems in that game. And it was done for the same reason in WoW as Destiny; to augment grinding which in turn augments profit. If armor has PVE/PVP exclusive stats then you now have to grind twice as long to acquire two sets of armor if you'd like to participate in both aspects of the game. This excessive randomization, hyper-itemization of weapons and armor, and segregation through items obtained in one aspect of the game suffering diminished viability in the other, allows the developers to compartmentalize their games ever more, introduce new content ever less frequently, and generate ever more revenue from less creativity and product.

As a result of such mechanics, WoW was operating under an incredibly exclusive model, that was a huge impediment to people who mostly played one aspect of the game, taking part or even making excursions into the other. If you joined a raid and only had PVP gear it was a guaranteed kick once it was noticed by someone. Conversely, no serious PVP group would take someone in raid gear because of the significant disadvantages posed by not having gear with PVP stats. It was absolute garbage the sole purpose of which was to increase Activision's profit margin. But as with Destiny the throngs of idiots in that game supported and defended it. One thing I learned long ago is that there's always a shit eating contingent of the player base, that will not only swallow whatever ill conceived excrement the developers put out, but will gratefully pay for the privilege.

And for what? The "deep" and moving story? Destiny is proof you don't even have to provide that to sell a fecal sandwich to MMO players. The solid mechanics? Halo: Combat Evolved was sixteen years ago. Solid mechanics and gun play are no longer a rarity, and Bungie no longer excels over the competition, nor is even an innovator in this regard. Destiny 2 was egregiously bereft of innovation, and a blatant re-skin, the likes of which has perhaps only been surpassed by Call of Duty's annual releases (all of which, Destiny, WoW, and CoD, coincidentally have the same publisher). You see the same paradigm described above. More profit from less effort, through titles increasingly laden with revenue augmentation mechanics, e.g., RNG, grinding, microtransactions, etc.

This will only continue to get worse as long as people continue to blame publishers or developers exclusively. The reality is the consumer is just as much, if not more, to blame. Bungie didn't innovate with Destiny 2 because it didn't have to innovate. When you're going to make hundreds of millions if not billions, regardless of whether you put in a great deal of effort or only a little, the former becomes highly disincentivized. And this is only compounded by the stigma that typically promptly develops around the former in such an environment. If people in a community are rewarded with huge profit for a minimal investment of effort, then making great effort is necessarily rendered foolish. A culture forms in which those who work hard are viewed as suckers and indolence becomes chic if not prudent. (Which is basically Socialism, but people scoffed years ago when I said video games were becoming "virtual Socialism," as polity crept into gaming as it has every other facet of life.) It's only natural that other developers, seeing how much reward another studio got for so little effort, would seek to emulate them. No one wants to be a sucker.

Neither Battlefront nor Overwatch are where this began. Such are only the most recent and conspicuous manifestations of this trend. This began many years ago, with games like WoW, in which a subscription fee was charged for randomized loot drops. That was gambling too. (It cannot be emphasized enough that the same thing that happens when you open a loot box in Battlefront 2, happens when you loot a boss in WoW, or Destiny, etc. The slot machine loot model is in WoW is so God awful stingy, the developers eventually implemented loot coins that allow the player to pull the lever on the slot machine for a second at loot from a boss kill, 3 times a week.) It was merely in its nascent stages, much less conspicuous, and therefore largely unrecognized as such. But that model paved the way to what we see today. It was the first step in a procession of steps, in which the acceptance of each preceding step established the justification for the next, slightly bolder encroachment, ultimately culminating in what we saw in Battlefront 2. It's a lamentable reality, however, that those too myopic to discern the emergence of a trend in its early stages, are often also too obtuse to recognize when its culmination arrives, or if they do, only recognize its most egregious manifestations (causing them to treat the symptoms as opposed to the source). By then it's often too late to rectify the problem as, over time through the preceding steps, it's become pervasive and entrenched.

Basically, the gaming community should have rebelled against randomized rewards long ago with games like WoW. But they didn't, and now that those companies have made billions of dollars off of that model, they will ardently resist relinquishing it nigh to the point of their dissolution. It's been raining money in torrents for them for years and years. They're accustomed to it at this point and will plainly engage in abject deception and manipulation to maintain that paradigm. And this is nowhere better illustrated than EA's response to the Battlefront backlash.

"The intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different heroes." 

I hold a particular repugnance for someone that not only lies to my face but believes I'm too stupid to recognize blatant guile. The "intent" was to maximize profits. Period. That was always the intent, and always the sole intent, of the mechanics they implemented. This a damned video game. Not a four year degree program, not boot camp graduation, not welcoming your newborn child into the world, etc. If we as a society have degraded to the point that we derive "a sense of pride and accomplishment" from unlocking a cartoon character, or getting a cosmetic item for such from a slot machine in a virtual world, then we have far bigger problems on our hands than loot boxes in video games.

EA doesn't give a damn about our sense of anything. This rhetoric is exactly the same in substance as that dispensed by any soulless bureaucrat in government (politicians), i.e., portraying something they're doing for their benefit as being done for our benefit. This has always been what I find most insulting about all of this. The manner in which they have no qualms about lying to our faces to defend their unethical exploitation of their patrons. They're like drug dealers, overtly seeking to devise ever more creative and effective ways of turning us all into junkies hopelessly addicted to their product, and have the audacity to say they're doing it for our sake. They're so hopelessly corrupt at this point, they're trying to portray turning people, even kids, into gambling addicts as an effort to instill "pride."

The utter lack of integrity these developers and publishers have, and condescending disdain for those who make everything they do possible, is nauseating. They are beholden to us, not vice versa. They owe us their loyalty, not vice versa. But they behave as if the complete opposite is the case. And I'm sick of it. And spare me the argument the developers are victims themselves. I've seen multiple developers give interviews and dispense the same lies for the same purpose.

This is not exclusive to EA or DICE. Bungie, Blizzard, Rockstar, etc., have all made similar farcically specious declarations about how it's meant to make the game more "fun," to provide a more "rewarding experience," etc., and it was no less bullshit when they said it. They made such statements for the same reason as EA. Telling the truth, that it's designed purely to fleece the consumer base as much as possible, isn't marketable. So they lie to our faces! Publishers, developers, spokespeople; all of them! It's meant to maintain torpor in the consumer base, and in the event protest occurs, lull them back into such. Nothing more.

The sad truth is we're living in a time in which developers/publishers are deliberately designing, and putting players through an unpleasant gaming experience, so that they may charge them a fee to circumvent or more hastily progress through that experience. No one finds working for a reward, more enjoyable, than having and using that reward. And the plain objective of developers is to make the acquisition of the reward so odious, as to induce the player to pay an additional fee to truncate or skip that ordeal altogether.

GTA Online has become a superb example of this. The entire online experience of that game revolves around generating money in order to buy perpetually more expensive rewards. This is done through the purchase of businesses that, while generating revenue for you, also cause you to incur cost for their operation. Thus, making it a simulation of real life. Ultimately you spend much, or all of your time in game making money, so you can then spend that money on things you need, like, or want just like real life. You go to work everyday to make money to pay your bills, and the come home and log into GTA Online, and work to make money to pay your bills. Someone at Rockstar actually thought "Paying Bills: The Video Game" was a good idea. And make no mistake. It is work to maintain these businesses, as it requires incessant "resupplying" through tedious missions, or the purchase of supplies which, naturally, results in the elimination of about 75-80% of your profit. But you must work (make money) somehow, or you will slowly be bankrupted, as these businesses cost you money to maintain. (Having 3 resulted in me being charged about $20,000 every 45 minutes or so.)

That in itself is bad enough. But this is further compounded by the fact Rockstar, as previously described, has placed significant obstacles in the players way to impede their progress. In order to do any of the missions associated with these businesses, you're required to play in public sessions, in which the game informs every other player of your actions and incentivizes them to thwart your efforts. If you're stealing supplies to avoid the profit annihilating cost of buying them, other players are alerted to your actions and rewarded for stopping you by destroying your supplies. If you're selling a finished product they're likewise alerted and rewarded for destroying your shipment.

This results in GTA online feeling very comparable to the Dark Zone in The Division; a PVP free for all. Only it's much worse. In that game other players could kill you and take your loot, resulting in the loss of typically anywhere from a 5 to 30 minutes of game play. But in GTA Online, other players can destroy the result of anywhere from 5-10 hours of work and/or time spent in game, rendering all of that time and effort for naught. As such the system for advancing in the game without spending real money is inherently, in and of itself, a massive gamble for the player. And the goal of this model is obvious. Rockstar sells in game currency for real world money. If they make the acquisition of in game currency odious enough, you will be much more inclined to mitigate or circumvent that ordeal, by paying them an additional fee for a "Shark" card. In other words, the game is designed around providing such a shitty and insufferable experience to the player, that the player will pay money to skip it, and/or circumvent the seemingly insurmountable obstacles in their path to the perceptibly "fun" part of the game.

This model serves multiple functions, the foremost of which is allowing the developer/publisher to dispense the disingenuous claim players aren't "forced" to spend money, while simultaneously serving to induce that outcome. Because you may own a business you are technically able to get everything without spending real money; it's technically possible and therefore not a "lie" in the strictest sense. But the tedium of the process and the incentivized sabotage of other players is meant to stop you from doing so. It's designed to that the player will eventually, at some point, get fed up with massive amounts of their time being wasted, and choose to spend money for a guaranteed outcome instead of leaving progress to chance.

There's also the fact that the prices for items in the game are egregiously inflated, and have only become more so over time, and the value of shark cards has not changed to accommodate that increasing inflation at all. The most expensive or sought after items in the game today are perhaps on average 2 to 3 times more expensive than when it was first released. But the sum of a purchased shark card has remained static, meaning that should you choose to spend real money for in game currency today, you will get less for your money than you did when the game first released. Which is of course, like everything else, by design; none of it by chance.

Rockstar largely gets a free pass for this, in no small part because (to be fair) they make amazing virtual worlds. The virtual world they created in GTA 5 is much more nuanced and immersive than that of The Division. And players are inclined to be less cognizant, and more forgiving of these practices, in a better game from a developer they like or associate with making "good" games. But that kind of lack of objectivity does us all a disservice. 

Personally, I'm really tired of this model and every game I play revolving around grinding for insane amounts of time to (typically) get an incrementally more powerful version of the same rewards. I want new armor from new dungeons/raids. I want developers to actually provide new, meaningful experiences, instead of releasing feature and content bereft husks of a game, because they preemptively partitioned and are withholding massive portions of it to be implemented later, purely to solicit another fee every time they do so. Consequently I am ever more looking to single player gaming experiences, which actually provide new, substantial, and creatively unique content, as opposed to MMOs which are increasingly just grinding in a group with other suckers.

Modern gaming has become a joke. It's ever more becoming micro-transactions and online gambling masquerading as a "video game." (Which the excessive grinding model only serves to validate and perpetuate.) And I'm fearful that's never going to stop, and only get worse, because most modern gamers apparently can't get enough of being screwed by lazy developers engaging in abject spectacles of corporate greed.