Politics, the Third Rail of Video Games

I thought I could escape politics for just an hour by going onto GB today...guess I was wrong.

@NorseDudeTR said:

Takes balls to write a piece like this on a video game website. Enjoyed reading it!

How does it take balls? It barely even discusses actual politics. This is complete softball territory.

@lazerbot: exactly, it's endless and even pedagogical. About political feelings, I'd like it more if citizens didn't have political feelings like: "I'm unhappy with the way you spend my taxes, you should not do X" (biased), but something more simple: "I'm unhappy with how high taxes are" (liberal) or "I'm unhappy because I expect to get X from my taxes" (socialist).

And to make it unbiased, people should be happy with any one of the two, I mean, lowering their taxes should make them happy even if they are socialist and giving them free services they want should make them happy even if they are liberal, because in the end people are not liberal nor socialist, all that they want is to get the most out of their money. They see how much do they pay with taxes and how much do they get, the more they get (as far as it is what they want) or the less they pay (so that they can pay by themselves for whatever they want) the happier they are.

Political feelings are just a way to approach this, people think it will be more likely they will get what they want in one way or another depending on those political feelings. But in the end the only thing that matters is how happy they are, and that depends mostly (if not exclusively) on what they get and how hard it is to get.

I'm not sure if I'm being clear here.

Now's your chance to choose between a giant douche and a terd sandwich

@TadThuggish said:

@drakesfortune said:

Oh wow you mean the entertainment industry is making liberal leaning political games and forcing conservatives o play them. I challenge Giant Bomb to find a conservative leaning game and have one of he liberals at Giant Bomb, ie anyone working at Giant Bomb, to play that. Vote Romney, or you keep the hateful, racist left in the White House. The real racists, the dividers, like Obama are right before your eyes. Republicans are talking about fixing the issues we face as a country, and Obama is running a campaign of hater tearing Romney, accusing him of murder by cancer, then denied they had anything to do with it, only to proven wrong. Obama has lied, he has failed on every level. You have to be nuts to vote for more failure.

what

If you can point me towards a right-leaning video game, I'd be happy to play it and tell you what I think.

@jsnyder82 said:

@PulledaBrad said:

@Puddlesworth: Seriously, tell me how having a valid government ID to vote is racist. Please, I'd really like to know the logic that this way of thinking stems from. Are you saying that having proof that you are a US citizen to vote in an election for US leadership is racist somehow? Or is it the fact that the only ones that focus solely on race happen to be liberals "we need to get out the black/hispanic/whatthefuckever vote!" Its disgusting to me that the opposing party tries to denigrate the other party with terms like "racist" and "bigot" with no real backing other than some uninformed emotional reaction. So yes, again, please enlighten me to the reasoning behind keeping illegal aliens from voting.

These new voter ID laws affect low income, minority, and elderly voters. And a substantial chunk of these people vote Democratic. These laws require the purchase of an ID, which can cost upwards of $30. And to a low-income family or an elderly person on a fixed income, that can be quite a lot of money. Which may disenfranchise these people from voting at all.

Compound this with the fact that there are so few cases of voter fraud reported (how many people are really going to take the time to try and vote as somebody else just for an extra vote?), and it doesn't really take a genius to see that these laws are being set up to give Republicans the edge. Because the more people who vote, the better chances Democrats have of winning. I'm not calling them racist, but they are trying to cheat their way to a victory in this election.

Keep in mind that most states do require some form of identification anyway. They just never had to be government issued.

There are ways to satisfy both sides. Georgia offers free ID cards with weekend hours for pick up. They also have public transportation to the pick up locations. No excuses.

I hope everyone who is doing the typical political thing in this thread at least voted (or is voting) for someone today. If not the president but the numerous state and local laws likely to be on your ballots as well.

@rebgav: the game you are looking for is cald Zivilication

I know this won't be seen by many. being buried pretty far down in the comments, but if you like these kinds of games, I recommend these:

http://www.icivics.org/games

http://www.argumentchampion.com/

The quality level on iCivics is somewhat uneven, but I really liked Do I Have a Right?

@Bourbon_Warrior said:

@PulledaBrad said:

@Bourbon_Warrior said:

@PulledaBrad said:

@Bourbon_Warrior: FFS. It wasn't just the regs on Wall Street. Its the mindset of the US citizens. We all want to live beyond our means. A couple with a combined income of 60k trying to buy a house worth 300k is commonplace, and its no wonder that after the interest rates went up, they couldnt afford the mortgage note along with living on credit and trying to make the monthly minimum wilst also trying to pay for a brand new car payment. Its that that fucked this economy. Its whats fucking Washington as we speak. Spending more than we take in. How anyone can, at this point and time say "Yep time for Gov't subsidized healtcare!" and be oblivious to the follow up question of "How you gonna pay for it?" or deflecting with "Gay rights!" is out of their mind. The way I see it, the most important thing to be focusing on is the economy. The answer dosen't lie in taxing the "rich" more. That wont cover it. Its cutting spending and giving powers that the Fed has taken away from the states back to said states. The "equal rights" business can wait till we have some solvency and not depending on China when we need to fund another dead beat social program.

Yes but this was the banks lowering their regulations so anyone could pretty much get a house way out of their affordability that caused this. You could pay for healthcare without spending so much on war, pretty simple its how every other country does it. Every US citizen not just tax payers have spent 8000$ on the wars in the middle east since 2002, probably more once\if America ever pays off China and their interest rates.

Problem there is scale. Most European countries and Canada have a smaller population than that of the US. With gov't subsidized healthcare peoiple would treat the ER as their family doctor and they burden it would put on the taxpayer is untenable. And 8k over 10 years? Im ok with that seeing as our debt has us somewhere around 218k per person. LIVE BEYOND THE MEANS!

Thats crazy, US was in surplus in 2001, W. Bush really ruined the country.

Wow you literally have no clue what you're talking about at all.

@SathingtonWaltz said:

@Bourbon_Warrior said:

@PulledaBrad said:

@Bourbon_Warrior said:

@PulledaBrad said:

@Bourbon_Warrior: FFS. It wasn't just the regs on Wall Street. Its the mindset of the US citizens. We all want to live beyond our means. A couple with a combined income of 60k trying to buy a house worth 300k is commonplace, and its no wonder that after the interest rates went up, they couldnt afford the mortgage note along with living on credit and trying to make the monthly minimum wilst also trying to pay for a brand new car payment. Its that that fucked this economy. Its whats fucking Washington as we speak. Spending more than we take in. How anyone can, at this point and time say "Yep time for Gov't subsidized healtcare!" and be oblivious to the follow up question of "How you gonna pay for it?" or deflecting with "Gay rights!" is out of their mind. The way I see it, the most important thing to be focusing on is the economy. The answer dosen't lie in taxing the "rich" more. That wont cover it. Its cutting spending and giving powers that the Fed has taken away from the states back to said states. The "equal rights" business can wait till we have some solvency and not depending on China when we need to fund another dead beat social program.

Yes but this was the banks lowering their regulations so anyone could pretty much get a house way out of their affordability that caused this. You could pay for healthcare without spending so much on war, pretty simple its how every other country does it. Every US citizen not just tax payers have spent 8000$ on the wars in the middle east since 2002, probably more once\if America ever pays off China and their interest rates.

Problem there is scale. Most European countries and Canada have a smaller population than that of the US. With gov't subsidized healthcare peoiple would treat the ER as their family doctor and they burden it would put on the taxpayer is untenable. And 8k over 10 years? Im ok with that seeing as our debt has us somewhere around 218k per person. LIVE BEYOND THE MEANS!

Thats crazy, US was in surplus in 2001, W. Bush really ruined the country.

Wow you literally have no clue what you're talking about at all.

Some supporting evidence? Ok sure! But be careful it has numbers and graphs and not some Jon Stewart soundbite you can parrot back.

http://www.craigsteiner.us/articles/16

Seriously? This kind of crap actually exists? Man they really will make games out of anything! LOL!

As a poli sci major I rather enjoy these dumb games. Put a good I think ~20 hours in The Political Machine. Y'all should try that one if it's on sale, it's dumb fun.

Awesome read, as always, Patrick.

My kind of political game:

1)Press X to drone strike and murder an entire Pakistani family. Hold X to fly over and just terrorize innocent citizens without releasing missiles.

2)Press Y to detain American citizen without trial. Make sure you open your inventory and activate the NDAA device beforehand.

3)Press Z to violate constitution with impunity. Press R1+Z to violate international law and defy the UN (double points).

4)Press W to assassinate Julian Assange. Must posses invisibility cloak to enable this quest.

5)Press E to bomb defenceless country that poses no threat. To minimize backlash, convince public that such country has nuclear missile capability.

6)Press U to ouput propaganda on FoxNews, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, etc. Press L2 to monitor internets.

now I would play this kind of game.

@Pulledabrad You sent me to a conservatives website I got my info from Wikipedia, its not secret America has borrowed 3 trillion plus from China for war on terror alone at crazy interest, I can never see the USA paying it off. Lets be honest America is a shitty country, no free healthcare, terrible public schools, overcharging university's, sends most of its manufacturing jobs to China and will forever be in debt. None of these candidates will help thT

@bunnymud said:

@Bourbon_Warrior said:

@McGhee said:

I think you got a better choice than Bush\Kerry

@jony2shoes said:

What the fuck kind of idiot votes for Romney? Jesus christ.

A Racist or someone that treats their political party like a sports team.

I voted for Romney. Explain how I'm a racist? Because I didn't vote for the "Black guy"?

Liberals LOVE LOVE LOVE to throw the "racist" word around, but I do not think they know what it means.

Should I vote for my country or should I vote for "Revenge"?

no your not racist. you voted for Romney because you have no idea what is going on in the world or your country.

@Dark_Lord_Spam said:

Hooray, I've arrived in time to catch very superficial errors in grammar!

“The game's political stance certainly seemed to be more opposed to the GOP than I would have liked, but there were many critics that rang true. [...]”

to

“The game's political stance certainly seemed to be more opposed to the GOP than I would have liked, but there were many critics [sic] that rang true. [...]”

(surely, he meant "critiques"?)

and

It appears Silverman was mostly successful, insomuch as a liberal can with a conservative.

to

It appears Silverman was mostly successful, insomuch as a liberal can be with a conservative.

At least I think that's what you meant, @patrickklepek.

I disagree with you, and I would very much like to see you make a case as to why second is ungrammatical if you don't mind.

The first isn't an issue of grammar, so I'm not sure why you claim it is, but I'm just interested in your rational of the second item. I've used the PENN Treebank POS tag set to analyse the sentence. You can parse the sentence yourself here http://text-processing.com/demo/tag/ which is a demo of the Natural Language Processing Toolkit, a Python program. Focusing on just the clause in question:

insomuch/JJ as/IN a/DT liberal/NN can/MD be/VB with/IN a/DT conservative/JJ

This is not 100% correct, but it needs only minimal fixing. First conservative/JJ should be conservative/NN, no doubt about that. Secondly, the POS of [insomuch] is not /JJ but that is immaterial, we only need to recognize [as] as a subordinating conjunction, so that

a/DT liberal/NN can/MD be/VB with/IN a/DT conservative/JJ

is a non-initial conjunct of a coordinate structure. This is what makes it eligible for certain types of elipsis, mainly gapping (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gapping). The Penn POS tag identifies the verb in question, [be], as a base verb. Which means it is a finite verb. Now wikipedia has all the statements that I need so I'll cite with wikipedia URL's, but you're welcome to refute with any source and I'll take a look at it:

[quote] ellipsis refers to the omission from a clause of one or more words that would otherwise be required by the remaining elements. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipsis_(linguistics) [/quote]

[quote] gapping is a type of ellipsis that occurs in the non-initial conjuncts of coordinate structures. Gapping usually elides minimally a finite verb and further any non-finite verbs that are present. This material is gapped from the non-initial conjuncts of a coordinate structure. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gapping[/quote]

In other words, the logic above explains why [be] can be elided and the result is not an ungrammatical construction. Intuitively, it doesn't even seem ungrammatical. I'm sure I don't have to spell it out any further than this point. But as it seems,

It appears Silverman was mostly successful, insomuch as a liberal can with a conservative.

is absolutely 100% correct. And I have a thorough rational and so far you do not. Care to explain yourself?

@gakushya said:

Intuitively, it doesn't even seem ungrammatical.

On the contrary, had my intuition not indicated a fallacy in grammar, I wouldn't have included it in my post.

@gakushya said:

@Dark_Lord_Spam said:

Hooray, I've arrived in time to catch very superficial errors in grammar!

“The game's political stance certainly seemed to be more opposed to the GOP than I would have liked, but there were many critics that rang true. [...]”

to

“The game's political stance certainly seemed to be more opposed to the GOP than I would have liked, but there were many critics [sic] that rang true. [...]”

(surely, he meant "critiques"?)

and

It appears Silverman was mostly successful, insomuch as a liberal can with a conservative.

to

It appears Silverman was mostly successful, insomuch as a liberal can be with a conservative.

At least I think that's what you meant, @patrickklepek.

I disagree with you, and I would very much like to see you make a case as to why second is ungrammatical if you don't mind.

The first isn't an issue of grammar, so I'm not sure why you claim it is, but I'm just interested in your rational of the second item. I've used the PENN Treebank POS tag set to analyse the sentence. You can parse the sentence yourself here http://text-processing.com/demo/tag/ which is a demo of the Natural Language Processing Toolkit, a Python program. Focusing on just the clause in question:

insomuch/JJ as/IN a/DT liberal/NN can/MD be/VB with/IN a/DT conservative/JJ

This is not 100% correct, but it needs only minimal fixing. First conservative/JJ should be conservative/NN, no doubt about that. Secondly, the POS of [insomuch] is not /JJ but that is immaterial, we only need to recognize [as] as a subordinating conjunction, so that

a/DT liberal/NN can/MD be/VB with/IN a/DT conservative/JJ

is a non-initial conjunct of a coordinate structure. This is what makes it eligible for certain types of elipsis, mainly gapping (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gapping). The Penn POS tag identifies the verb in question, [be], as a base verb. Which means it is a finite verb. Now wikipedia has all the statements that I need so I'll cite with wikipedia URL's, but you're welcome to refute with any source and I'll take a look at it:

[quote] ellipsis refers to the omission from a clause of one or more words that would otherwise be required by the remaining elements. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipsis_(linguistics) [/quote]

[quote] gapping is a type of ellipsis that occurs in the non-initial conjuncts of coordinate structures. Gapping usually elides minimally a finite verb and further any non-finite verbs that are present. This material is gapped from the non-initial conjuncts of a coordinate structure. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gapping[/quote]

In other words, the logic above explains why [be] can be elided and the result is not an ungrammatical construction.

From what I can tell, the neither Wikipedia article mentions the application of gapping in the case of two non-identical verbs. You could make the case that because "was" is an alternate tense of "be" the function is the same, but after some brief Googling I've found nothing to support such an argument.

@MariachiMacabre said:

@FengShuiGod

@MariachiMacabre said:

@FengShuiGod

"and concludes with the choice between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney on November 6."

Oh thanks, I didn't know there were only two candidates running for office.

Yeah because Roseanne Barr is sure to come out ahead. It's pretty obvious those two are the only ones with any hope of winning.

According to that logic Patrick should have said, "concludes with the election day victory of Barack Obama on November 6." If you want to go by who has any hope of winning then mentioning anyone other than Obama is pointless. But it's not. And it's not a simple choice between two candidates which are very much the same, or at least it doesn't have to be. Pretending there are only two candidates doesn't help anyone and furthers the woeful inadequacy of political discourse. There are plenty of legitimate third party candidates like Gary Johnson, Rocky Anderson, Buddy Roemer, and Jill Stein. But if you are content, no insist, on speaking only of the man who will win, the man who signed the NDAA into law, the man who brags about who drills more oil, the man who authorizes the killing of American citizens, the man who pioneered a kill list with no oversight, the man who allowed banks to get too bigger to fail, the man who nominated Geithner, the man who hardly talked about any substantive issue during the campaign, then yes, Nov. 6th and every election day for the rest of eternity will conclude with the non-choice between two very similar candidates bought by and therefore subservient to corporate money. I didn't know you liked your consent so manufactured. I hope it's not too bitter.

None of that explains your useless outburst. Should Patrick really be required to list every Presidential candidate to legitimize his article for you? Because that's kind of a needless and sad thing to get angry at him about. Nothing about my comment says I'm content with the current political system in the USA. Quite frankly, I find the fact that Jill Stein and Gary Johnson weren't allowed to participate in the debates pretty fucking gross, but attacking Patrick for not listing all of the candidates sure to get <3% of the vote is just ridiculous.

Uh, no. He could have just said, "and finally concludes on election day, Nov. 6th." He doesn't have to list every presidential candidate, I'm not that PC, but pretending like there are only two legitimate and deterministic choices continues the fallacy and bias of the standard media narrative that is out there. Or something.

this thread is totally dinosaurs

@Dark_Lord_Spam said:

From what I can tell, the neither Wikipedia article mentions the application of gapping in the case of two non-identical verbs. You could make the case that because "was" is an alternate tense of "be" the function is the same, but after some brief Googling I've found nothing to support such an argument.

Okay that's a good point. I'm not sure if gapped verbs have to be strictly identical, nor how strict the relationship of "identical" is. It makes sense that it would have to be identical. At least for the gapping process. But you're arguing that the elided [be] results in an ungrammatical construction. Could you explain why this is ungrammatical then? I'm trying to find an elliptical process where this [be] can be legally omitted, but my failure to do so doesn't prove that you are right.

@thabigred said:

As a poli sci major I rather enjoy these dumb games. Put a good I think ~20 hours in The Political Machine. Y'all should try that one if it's on sale, it's dumb fun.

Same, the game helped distract me from this terrible entry level job market lol...

I guess I'm one of the few who actually likes seeing social commentary in my games.

@TadThuggish said:

@drakesfortune said:

Oh wow you mean the entertainment industry is making liberal leaning political games and forcing conservatives o play them. I challenge Giant Bomb to find a conservative leaning game and have one of he liberals at Giant Bomb, ie anyone working at Giant Bomb, to play that. Vote Romney, or you keep the hateful, racist left in the White House. The real racists, the dividers, like Obama are right before your eyes. Republicans are talking about fixing the issues we face as a country, and Obama is running a campaign of hater tearing Romney, accusing him of murder by cancer, then denied they had anything to do with it, only to proven wrong. Obama has lied, he has failed on every level. You have to be nuts to vote for more failure.

what

@drakesfortune:

The GB guys seem pretty politically averse, especially Jeff and Alex.

And from living in the SF Bay Area, my experience is that the business/marketing departments tend to skew libertarian or right-wing while game designers and PR types self-identify as more liberal. No entire industry is dominated by one singular ideology.

@rebgav said:

I think that it would be interesting to see a "Football Manager" style political management game which has broader scope and relies on pure math and statistics to influence its outcomes and flavor rather than embracing personal biases. It could be fun to guide a political party through decades or centuries of social change, managing the various campaigns and candidates and dealing with the shifting balance of power.

I find that The Political Machine just doesn't have any substance to the gameplay so I get tired of it quite quickly, you see all of its tricks in a couple of hours (perhaps less) after which I have no real compulsion to keep playing. Haven't tried Strategery but it sounds perhaps more limited in scope than TPM and more reliant on humor and presentation? I'd like to see some political games which are games or sims first, rather than amateurish commentary wrapped around simplistic mechanics - there's certainly a place for those games, it would just be nice if there was something with more depth and commitment to the simulation.

a game that relies on pure math and statistics? that's why I play Matlab! lolz

@gakushya said:

@bunnymud said:

@Bourbon_Warrior said:

@McGhee said:

I think you got a better choice than Bush\Kerry

@jony2shoes said:

What the fuck kind of idiot votes for Romney? Jesus christ.

A Racist or someone that treats their political party like a sports team.

I voted for Romney. Explain how I'm a racist? Because I didn't vote for the "Black guy"?

Liberals LOVE LOVE LOVE to throw the "racist" word around, but I do not think they know what it means.

Should I vote for my country or should I vote for "Revenge"?

no your not racist. you voted for Romney because you have no idea what is going on in the world or your country.

Record numbers of people going on food stamps. Minority unemployment(not to mention unemployment in general) skyrocketing, throwing away hundreds of millions of dollars on failed green tech that also happened to be HUGE donors, no budget from congress since the democrats took over, destroying millions of jobs and dividing this country like no one has ever done before.

What color is your sky or will you plead Bush Jr. Derangement Syndrome? But make no mistake, I will shrug and "Get mine" since now it seems the people that vote for a living were louder than those that work for a living.

@bunnymud: LOL sore loser much, we should be investing in green technology, every house should have a solar panel on their roof.

@bunnymud: well at least you are aware of which of your grievances are legitimate. to be honest i thought you were just gunna throw some scripture at me and call it a victory. i don't know if your being sincere, some people support the GOP or Romney because they honest to gawd don't know anything about politics or america, which is not a bad thing in itself. but you should be sceptical to the nth degree when people start telling you want to think.

@gakushya said:

@Dark_Lord_Spam said:

From what I can tell, the neither Wikipedia article mentions the application of gapping in the case of two non-identical verbs. You could make the case that because "was" is an alternate tense of "be" the function is the same, but after some brief Googling I've found nothing to support such an argument.

Okay that's a good point. I'm not sure if gapped verbs have to be strictly identical, nor how strict the relationship of "identical" is. It makes sense that it would have to be identical. At least for the gapping process. But you're arguing that the elided [be] results in an ungrammatical construction. Could you explain why this is ungrammatical then? I'm trying to find an elliptical process where this [be] can be legally omitted, but my failure to do so doesn't prove that you are right.

My now-cursory knowledge of elliptical construction indicates to me that in order for the ellipsis to be applicable, some clause must provide enough contextual evidence that some portion of another, dependent clause is not necessary for full comprehension of meaning. Thus:

Charles fed Angus, and Angus fed Charles.

is valid, but

Charles fed Angus, and Angus loved Charles.

is clearly not, because we have no way of inferring the intended verb. In the case of Patrick's quote,

It appears Silverman was mostly successful, insomuch as a liberal can [...] with a conservative.

the first clause does not not provide enough context for us to naturally derive a verb for the second (non-definite terms like "naturally" serve us well here because so much of this is still theory). So something like

It appears Silverman was mostly successful, insomuch as a liberal can argue with a conservative.

is, grammatically speaking, just as valid as

It appears Silverman was mostly successful, insomuch as a liberal can be with a conservative.

even though their respective meanings are diametrically opposed. If Patrick doesn't specify a verb, the only way for us to understand his intended meaning is to exit the constituent, observe the piece as a whole, and make an educated guess. Which is what I did.

no way!!!!!!

steve borsuk

@Dark_Lord_Spam said:

If Patrick doesn't specify a verb, the only way for us to understand his intended meaning is to exit the constituent, observe the piece as a whole, and make an educated guess. Which is what I did.

Okay, but we don't have to constrain ourselves to coordinate clauses. Ellipses can take place in environments other than conjuncts. Like "In the attic." as an answer ellipsis to "Where is Bob hiding?" Intuitively I feel that the elided verb is easily inferenced, though I guess you're right in that it couldn't be from the other clause. Why couldn't the verb be reconstructed from context eg one or more clauses previous in the discourse, as answer ellipses are?

@Dark_Lord_Spam said:

If Patrick doesn't specify a verb, the only way for us to understand his intended meaning is to exit the constituent, observe the piece as a whole, and make an educated guess. Which is what I did.

Okay, but we don't have to constrain ourselves to coordinate clauses. Ellipses can take place in environments other than conjuncts. Like "In the attic." as an answer ellipsis to "Where is Bob hiding?" Intuitively I feel that the elided verb is easily inferenced, though I guess you're right in that it couldn't be from the other clause. Why couldn't the verb be reconstructed from context eg one or more clauses previous in the discourse, as answer ellipses are?

@Bourbon_Warrior: I'm not sore. But throwing HUNDREDS of millions of dollars into shitty companies in the way of payola is not the way you promote green tech. And all those solar panels you speak of are made in China. More payola back to obamas masters.Now take a look at wind farms. All the liberals in congress gush about them but oh no, don't you DARE build them near my mansion. You think this regime is serious about green tech? Welp, if that helps you sleep at night.

And I can tell by your responses that you are trying to prod me on, but I can also tell that you are very young and again, not an American. So, in the end, you are as water on a ducks back.

P.S. I just feel bad for the load of bullshit obama inherited from the previous guy.

@Dark_Lord_Spam Okay, well I have no idea what sort of constituent configurations admit a dependency relation. But that is probably because haven't studied syntax yet. So, I'll concede and admit that you are right and that it is ungrammatical. I can't demonstrate otherwise. Although I do have to wonder why you don't refrain from indulging yourself in correcting people's grammatical errors. Personally, I think it's officious and obtrusive, but I guess if you actually know why something is ungrammatical then you do have a legitimate point to make, even if doing so is likely at your own expense. A Grammar Nazi that knows his grammar. Well, by all means then, I suppose.

@gakushya: I'll admit it's probably obnoxious to the majority of observers, but I always work from the standpoint that I enjoy being corrected because it expands my base of knowledge. In case it was bothersome to Patrick, I tried to go out of my way to be non-antagonistic in the initial post. Anyhow, thanks for the mental exercise.

I'm not sure what you are getting at, but this article is over two years old. If you have a point to make, please find a more current and relevant article to do it on, start your own topic, or reach out to the Giant Bomb staff via PM, email, Twitter, Tumblr, or smoke signal. Anything but this.