Apparently I've comboed enough here to get the highest rank, making me stylish.

Wow, this blog was a lot shorther than I expected, so I have nothing siginificant to type about. Erm, well I've been doing more work in college but that's nothing new since I think I've talked about that for the previous three or four entries or something like that. In fact, what the hell have I been doing with my life that's worth noting as new? Welp, nothing much I guess.

In fact, one could say that I'm pretty bored at the moment, considering all the monotony surrounding me.

OH, well I guess I could complain that it's even more of a slap in the face that the Soapbox got removed from the front page now that Gamespot's writers have taken up the editorial writing, most likely because of summer gaming news slump or something like that. I never really understood why they essentially killed this feature, but it's even more of a mystery that this site's writers are creating Op-Eds of mid-to-low quality, some even making me wonder why I haven't been hired by this place as a paid contributor yet.

No seriously, I have a little background from some pro bono game journalism on other places and it looks like what they write is nothing but complaining/advocating with no real analysis to speak of (the nature of Op-Eds, but hey it can get annoying if you grandstand too much without getting some facts in), and mostly on the same topics repeatedly. Also, the definition of "art" in regard to video games is something I've been more often than not opposed to due to their general application that "OH YOU SHOULDN'T CHANGE ANYTHING CUZ VIDEO GAMES SHOULDN'T HAVE INCREASED MALLEABILITY IN COMPARISON TO OTHER ART FORMS" and things like that. Really, they need to stop treating video games the same as movies and music because, after all, that does well for the legal definition of video games, but not the artistic.

To calirfy: the definition of "art" is very different in law than it is in the artistic community. In law, the definition alludes to something that has some sort of value to society, which video games certainly do by way of being able to tell a narrative through interactive means, as well as perpetuate and enrich cultures such as sports and racing, games of which tend to lack narrative on the same depth as action/adventure games and the like; while video games in the artistic community is more concerned with looking on how the form can be manipulated and used to convey a message, and an affective one at that. Stories that fall short on delivery or are about meatheads chainsawing things are viewed as lesser quality as a piece of art than a game with an intricate narrative.

And now this is the part where Mass Effect 3 has to be shoehorned in.

Mass Effect, being a role-playing series in general, is under more scrutiny than, say, Madden 2013 because of the concept of character development being central to the game's overall experience, which then by extension leads into the application of events and their relation to such development (a guy getting shot creates a lot of heavy drama, etc.). This means that the ending, because it has apparently fallen flat in variety and answering plot inquiries, degrades the state of the game as art, thus leading to the conclusion that, through the malleability of the medium, the ending should be changed to increase its artistic value, but then there's debate about business.

Honestly, the right thing for EA to do is to make alternate endings that have been demanded as free DLC if the change should be purely artistic. Then again, this is a company and they need profits so really, the limit should be one dollar for the new endings, given that the amount of people who bought the game would equal a recoup in losses of labor for creating a cinematic.

So, that's basically what SHOULD happen, but then hey when has my advice every been stringently followed in the video game industry?

Also, making this an editorial because only two or three people ever regularly contribute on the thing anyway.

(also because this is about Gamespot and how they view video games as art I guess)