ReD's Corner : Ranting, Haiti, iPads and Gymnasts... - Article

ReD's Corner : Ranting, Haiti, iPads and Gymnasts...
Whilst looking for inspiration for my bi-weekly column this week I was reminded how this ReD’s Corner thing all started: A series of random, rambling, rants each week manacled together to form something vaguely resembling a column. It was also suggested that I should write this week’s piece about why 15 year old gymnasts should not be padding out their leotards.

You’ll be pleased to know (at least all of you bar Vanner perhaps) I went with the former idea and so I present you a series of rants, rather than just the singular variety here on TEK9 this month.

We start with the iPad. Yes I know its not a bloody games console or a laptop/netbook/PC/windows based machine (delete as applicable) but it DOES play games, or rather it will. Every announcement in recent years by Steve Jobs is held in high regard, people wait with baited breath to see what the next nerd piece of hardware costing obscene amounts of folding stuff (that’s money to those of you outside the UK) they will have to part with to join the ranks of the cool kids this year. 2010 was no different although its been circulating for a while that it would be some form of iTablet (which surely is a much better name than iPad).

It is, despite what will no doubt be a superbly produced piece of hardware, something of an odd decision by Apple. Sure, the current generation of iPods and iPhones are superb, just ask any of the geeks (like me) who constantly thrust what it can do via the latest app store download in to ones face, but is this a step to far? I think it might be you know, especially as it wont come with any form of Windows on it and thinking about what people use their tiny netbooks for in the main (surfing the net, facebook, twitter, word, excel etc). Sure, some of those things have apps and it would be great to see cover flow in action on a bigger screen and you can still surf the net, play facebook poker and tweet away to your hearts content, but can it really replace a physical keyboard for the more mundane of roles like “work”?

Picture of Apple Inc.

Of course, we don’t really care about those things, it’s the games us lot are interested in and more and more often games or a slightly altered, cut down version are now being primed for release on Apple’s iPod/iPhone format and with this addition that is sure to increase, but can you really see yourself playing Modern Warfare 2 on the iPad? Ok bad choice of games, of course you wouldn’t, but what about a game you love? What about games like Cod4, Counter Strike and Quake Live? There is about as much chance of seeing those games make it to the platform (in a playable sense) as Gordon Brown winning the next election. My prediction for what one friend told me is a “glorified giant iPod”? Initial high interest followed by 3 iterations before it works properly. It won’t be replacing my laptop to write my columns on any time soon.

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Rant two this week is about the scumbags who insist on replying to Haiti quake appeal posts with things like “cba” or “who gives a shit” or worse still “I don’t help black people”. Now, its all very well having an opinion on this subject of a negative variety and I can partly understand that stance, especially when we still have plenty of starving children, malnourished parents, people living in poverty and millions without jobs across Europe, let alone on another continent, but is there any need to start spouting off racist uninformed dribble on a gaming site about it? There is not.

When we got together at Heaven Media and asked the inevitable question after such a disaster of this magnitude, we didn’t think “How can we use this to get more publicity?” we honestly asked if there was anything, something that our communities could and would like to do to raise money. Sure a few thousands pounds wont go far, but it’s the intent and the message which are important. We, as gamers are saying in our own little way that we want to help and on any level that should not be treated with the disdain and abuse I saw across our sites last week.

Picture of the IFRC/Eric Quintero

Ultimately, some may already have given to a good cause, one of their choice and that’s fantastic, no one would give you a hard time for doing that rather than giving to our little cause, but to simply sit there in your bedroom, remove any compassion from your mind about the situation and bury your head in the sand is farcical.

I don’t want to preach about giving money to a cause, it’s a very personal choice after all, but the tone and the level of SOME of the posts disgusted me and my colleagues here at Heaven Media.

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My final rant isn’t a rant as such, in fact the complete opposite, because whilst I am happy to give people a hard time for posting rubbish on the sites, it is also great to see people stepping up and doing something for their game or community and that seems to be happening in COD4 again.

I have mentioned many times before that only you guys can really help yourselves, no one is going to do it for you and there have been other articles, opinion pieces and columns about the same thing in the last few weeks, both here and at Cadred. We always seem to have only a very small crowd actually doing anything, but in recent days and weeks I have seen an increase in those willing to help the COD scene and that should be mentioned here.

There has been a lot more activity, more tournaments, more cash and the teams are starting to restructure, reorganise and plan for the months ahead. We have also seen a sizable interest in the CIC7 tournament with excellent numbers signing up (partly due to good work from the community) and its reward is much higher prize money, higher even than most of the tournaments that ran last year. I-series is also returning to COD4 and hopefully that’s just the start of the repairing of the fractured scene.

There are plans for a new league to help all levels of the community, not just the top end and I will be working hard to ensure that works out. We still need more people to post news, run tournaments, admin games, provide reports, spread the word on forums, discuss the pro’s and con’s of issues that need to be solved and to keep COD at the forefront of peoples minds when it comes to selecting tournaments for it.

Now, if you don’t mind, I am off for a 2,000 mile round trip drive to Spain which I am sure will provide plenty of things for ReDeYe to rant about when it comes round to next months column.