Bitch, if I wanted non-stop sports I’d get into better shape, learn the damn rules and play them. Don’t make my video game console, my opposite-of-sports Mecca, into a damn 24-hour sports outlet.

I don’t give a damn about sports. At all. A lot of gamers don’t. It’s kind of a thing. So why shove that much of it in our faces?

Okay, Microsoft, are you serious? Are you - for real - this really, honestly, seriously out of touch with your customers? I have to pay you to buy used games? The main complaint of the used game industry is that the money doesn’t go to the developers… well you sure solved that! Taking a fee for yourselves to just be able to play used games on your console is really the kind of thing us gamers can get behind.

So my friend brings a game over to my house - FEE TIME! For the weekend, we want to play head to head over here. FEE TIME! Borrow a game to see if it’s worth buying (side note: if they weren’t slowly edging game demos out, this would matter less, but no, they want us to buy, not care)? FEE TIME! WE NEED THAT CASH!

Wonder if that is why Microsoft’s stock went down .66% today, while Sony’s went up 9%. Probably.

Sorry guys, I get that we made enough of a stink to get you to compromise on Always On DRM, but you didn’t back far enough away from it. You had to come up with SOMETHING to force down people’s throats that would hinder the Xbox experience and make an extra buck.

Used games are often the gateway to new game sales. If I had never bought BioShock used, I would not have bought BioShock Infinite as a pre-order sale. Because I didn’t know of BioShock when it first came out. I tried it because it looked kind of cool and for $12, what was there to lose? I pre-ordered the BioShock Infinite Songbird Edition as soon as you were able to because I enjoyed the game so much.

To sum it up, the score is this Xbox One, PlayStation Four.

I really don’t want to say I agree with anyone who says video games cause violence in people. They cause a bit of an adrenaline rush and probably make people feel a bit more primal for an hour or so after being done, but any rational person is never going to become violent due to a game. That’s just stupid.

Have you ever played something that would be utterly sick in real life and shrugged it off like it was nothing? I know I have. Yet when I see even minor things in real life, blood, needles, things people deal with… that scares the hell out of me. I feel horrible for people getting a shot. It’s just vaguely unpleasant and I wish it was unnecessary. If I were to see a real act of horrific violence, I wouldn’t sleep for months.

That said, it’s not rational people who do the shit we have to deal with as a society nowadays. One could say freedom is actually the problem, that people are free to not take mental health screenings, free to not take mental health treatment, free to indulge habits that aggravate diagnosed mental illnesses.

Will I ever advocate a lack of freedom? Certainly not. I believe in it too much. But our greatest achievement as a nation is probably also our greatest weakness at times. This is the scary part about every individual making their own choices and being responsible for them: a lot of people don’t have the capacity.

I do wish there were some way for people to have free physical and mental preventative care. This nation would be in much better shape, happier people, spending less of their paychecks on being alive, workers working better, companies making more money. Trickle-up economics. But to make it mandatory would be a huge problem.

At the same time, it’s the only way we’d find a lot of this nation’s mental illness. And that mental illness is what causes violence, especially when exposed to things that trigger it. There are so many different afflictions that people go through, things that if you knew of ahead of time, you would feel sorry for the same person who may be considered an evil killer later in their life. Except it’d never happen. There would be things that slipped through, no doubt, but percentages would go way down.

I could literally go around and around with this for hours. It is obviously wrong to force people into any kind of medical anything. But you can also not argue that it’s the only weapon against something like this (having a fight with a medium - like video games - is just ridiculous). Obviously preventative mental or physical care will never be a requirement, but what if it was at least free?

If anything video game-related is going to cause violence, it’s Always-On DRM.