THE LOWS
Tyler Wilde: An endless train of bullshit
As expected, the FCC has voted to kill Net Neutrality regulations in the US. The fight isn't over, but we're a step closer to letting internet service providers pick and choose what data they prioritize. The telecom companies claim they won't abuse this power. Uh huh. Then why do they spend so much on Congress? Clearly, this is them getting a return on their investment. Insult to injury: The internet was originally built with public funds. Not only has it been sold back to us, they now mock us for wanting basic regulation and justify it by claiming regulation hurts the sick. It's all bullshit.
Austin Wood: Keep that chin up
The FCC's unsurprising vote to kill Net Neutrality has me feeling down as well, but it's not nearly as disconcerting as the people who seem to have given up on the legislation. We've known for weeks that they were going to axe it, but far too many believe that that's it, the fight's over. Which is not the attitude to have in the most critical moment in Net Neutrality's history.
The FCC is not the final stop. Now Net Neutrality moves to Congress and the courts, which are filled with legislators eager to call the FCC out on all the bullshit Tyler so kindly linked to. There's still fight left in the hundreds of millions of Americans who don't want telecom companies policing their online activities, and there's still time to make your voice heard.
Chris Livingston: Hello, Photo
I know there are a lot of things to be talking about with PUBG's exit from Early Access next week, but is it weird I'm most excited for the replay feature? It's essentially a photo mode, which are always great to have in games: pause the action (in this case, the recorded action of a previous match), fly the camera around the game world in 3D space, and frame up some nice pictures. It's one of my favorite things to do in game for reasons I can't really explain. The version now on the test server is still pretty awkward to use, but I'm hoping they'll add more features like filters and a way to hide all the UI elements, and maybe some editing tools, to see what kind of screenshots and machinima people can produce.
Tom Senior: Cursed
I was hoping Destiny 2’s first expansion would help me to fall back in love with Destiny again, but it’s not happening. As the song goes—the broken laser cannon was kind of funny, but also kind of sad; the dreams in which I’m frying are the best I’ve ever had. But how did a staple exotic of the entire expansion get into the game in such a messed up state? The offending weapon was nerfed into the earth pending a future rebalancing, but that won’t stop me from using it to roast vex in PvE.
Actually, my beef with the game has nothing to do with lasers—I will always love lasers—no, it’s because I found myself scrabbling around Mercury for materials again, trying to unlock one of CoO’s many special legendary weapons. Then I did the public event a bunch of times in a row, and then felt so bored I might never play Destiny 2 again. Thing is, it’s a good public event with a really fun mechanism for activating its heroic variant. It involves using jump pads to rocket back and forth across the map, which is great when it doesn’t kill you. But I hit a wall (literally and figuratively) after a while, and drifted away from the game thinking ‘is this it?’
James Davenport: I Cry
This week I got to play more Far Cry 5 and during my demo I discovered a farm carrying my last name. I wondered if it could be related to the open letter I wrote to Ubisoft asking to put my dad in the game, so I investigated. What I found was—well, it wasn’t great (for me at least, let my shame and suffering bring some light into your life). For the record, I think bovine are beautiful creatures, but I do not endorse making love to them.
Samuel Roberts: Space dollars
I'm up and down with GTA Online's microtransactions. On one hand, I like that you always know what you're buying in the game, and you're never obliged to own anything more than what you'd like to have in your garage, unless you want to get involved with the different business expansions. Really, you have to fight off your urge to collect everything unless you're going to play it every day, and just buy the helicopter or jeep that makes you happy.
But on the other hand, you can now install an orbital cannon in your shiny new GTA facility for $900,000 in-game, then spend another 500k or 750k to kill an enemy with it, depending on whether you want to fire manually or automatically. Doing that would be incredibly indulgent—and it doesn't even look that exciting to use.
