Pop Culture
Society
Philosophy
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- Written by SW Hammond
Overall, the game began to feel like a chore, but I wasn’t disappointed with it—my favorite sequences involving spacemen and sea-monsters.
I like narrative driven games, they’re my favorite. No matter the genre—books, movies, games, tv shows—to me, the story is all that matters. I can overlook mistakes, budget limitations, and mediocre acting if a story is compelling enough. That’s where I’d put The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, the story was just compelling enough.
The game is only a couple of bucks through the Playstation Store, I think you can also pick it up on Steam and whatnot. Overall, it’s rather basic. You just walk around and discover the story. There’s no objective other than playing detective and trying to figure out what happened to some missing kid. On the surface that sounds easy enough—but you literally start off in the woods with no guidance, direction, or clear objective. Things kind of start happening to you, but you have no idea what you’re supposed to do about them.
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- Written by SW Hammond
Should you ever find yourself in a position of influence, you’ll be required to pay the toll of compliance.
I am part of the first generation. I was dial-up internet chatting with friends and strangers over ICQ and AIM in junior high. I have created an account on just about every major social networking site since the phenomenon’s inception. I’ve gambled on sites that have long since dissolved and disappeared. I’ve been a user on sites that are only popular in other countries. I have used my own name. I have used fake names. I have lurked, trolled, whored, geeked, gamed, and just about everything else one can do online. I have a long history of internet use—with almost two decades of it occurring before privacy ever became a notion or concern.
Prior to Trump, my generation—the first generation of social media users—could have never been elected into office. There’s too much dirt on us—sticky digital fingerprints all over the trash, photos, videos and every ignorant thing teenagers and twenty-something morons think, do, and say online. For the first time in human history, all the nonsense of growing up and discovering life—experiencing all of the good and bad in the world—has been digitally documented and preserved forever. Moreover, we didn’t know that prior to going in—neither did the adults—and we surely didn’t consent with an understanding of the consequences.
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Steep
, the extreme winter sports game, had so much potential but falls flat where it counts—creating any sort of connection between the rider and mountain.
Free this month with your Playstation Plus Membership.
I used to be really into snowboarding games. I had tons of fun with 1080 on N64 and spent way too many hours with friends playing Shaun Palmer’s Pro Snowboarder on the PS2. In fact, my roommates and I developed a drinking game based on Palmer’s “Horse” — the winner of the round earning the privilege to drink, where the loser was only allowed to sit back and watch the sweet nectar dribble down the winner’s chin. Of course, there’s also the Tony Hawk games, but my favorite of the “X” sports was always surfing—Transworld beating out Kelly Slater by just a pinch.
With that, Steep was a promising concept. Take a massive open-world and allow the player to endlessly explore a mountain region through a variety of mediums—snowboards, skis, wingsuits, and paragliding. A big part of the game’s objective is to scout out and discover new locations and earn helicopter drops so you can hurl your character off of a new cliff or down a new mountain face. Pretty sweet.
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The answers I’ve arrived at could have never been told to me—as I cannot tell them to you—they were achieved through realization by advancing my perspective.
I’m going to try to make this as pithy as I can—an almost insurmountable task as I spent a great deal of the 474 pages of my novel, The Final Book: Gods, covering the subject—and it’s only the first book of the trilogy.
I was raised loosely under the notion of dualism. I am a product of American society, American education, and the little bit of values our culture has are continually shaping my past. However, I’m not sure I ever “believed” any of it. I’ve always been curious of why, and constantly receiving inadequate answers—whether it be from priests, scientists, or professors—has made me skeptical. That is why I have taken up philosophy—and while the trade has given me many tools, it is still difficult to find answers.
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No matter your political stance, newspapers are organizations of sensationalism, partisanship, editorial opinion, and payola. Journalists must abandon these institutions to rebuild credibility.
I caused some hurt feelings on Twitter the other day. While filling out my ballot for the midterm elections, I took to the internet to help make sense of convoluted wording of the propositions. First off, that’s saying something about the voting process. I have a degree in philosophy and found it easier to understand Spinoza than the different amendments and propositions that I was voting for.
To gain clarity, I went to Google and began searching. Naturally, my local newspapers—namely The Denver Post and Colorado Springs Gazette—continued to pop up in the results. Once clicking on them, I quickly found that all of the important information about candidates and the propositions was gated behind a paywall. These sites required that I buy a subscription to view this content.
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