Up, close and personal

Imagen tomada del magnífico blog de Raul Salazar Un respeto a las canas. ¡No os lo perdais!

Two weeks ago, I bought 5 Xbox games (NEW) from Amazon UK. 3 of them are already here. All in all, I paid for the whole 5 (post costs included) what I would have paid for 1 game and a half in Spain. I usually buy 2 to 5 books every couple of months from Book Depository (no post costs). I usually pay half of what I would have paid here. Just an example: any Discworld novel (TP) is around 7 EUR. Just ask in your bookstore for the same. And don't get me started with hard cover books! I used to go to the movies twice a week when I was studying at the university. I watched everything I found remotely interesting then. Of course, now the ticket is around 7 EUR (more if you go IMAX), so I only go to see flicks I'm really interested into, that have lots of FX and just if I'm going with friends. I also used to buy a couple of CDs each month, and they were around 6-8 EUR in Madrid (NEW). A few years later they magically became 20-24 EUR each. Needless to say, I don't do that anymore. I do buy music at concerts or from people playing in the streets, though. And, guess what? they are still 6-8 EUR from them.

Now, on the other side, I work as an engineer, i.e. I have to use electronic equipment, PCs, etc on a daily basis. Each time I use an USB, HDD, CD, DVD, etc, I'm paying a tax to the so-called society of "creators" just to do my job. Even printers have this tax and I'm sure they are not charging paper just because they still can't. Why? Because I COULD BE using that stuff to store multimedia copyrighted content. Not because I HAVE, but because I COULD BE. I don't know if you people know about the base of our law system: presumption of innocence. Well, the SS (Sinde and SGAE) are assuming just the contrary, that everybody is guilty unless proven so. Not only they charge us for this, but they also think they are morally so above us that they feel they can insult every person using the Internet (Internauts as a whole) by calling us thieves. I've got some serious concerns about this. First, why are we thieves if we are paying in advance for anything we are (or are not) downloading? Not to mention that we have probably the most expensive Internet service in the whole world (thanks, Internet providers, speaking of thieves ...). Second, why does this tax go to spanish "creators" (most of them haven't created anything for years, just take the SGAE president, for example) if it is a proven fact that most downloaded material is american or english? And what is a spanish creator? Someone who speaks spanish? Because some very loud "creators" don't even pay taxes in Spain -like Alejandro Sanz-.
In fact, why pay for spanish movies twice, if most of the costs of producing it are taken from our taxes? A few exceptions aside, I DON'T like spanish movies, so can I just NOT pay for them to be produced? Third, why has a person with clear and proven ties to SGAE been chosen for the ministry of culture? There is a thing called incompatibility in laws that easily leads to corruption (prevaricación, para los hispano-parlantes). In fact, what do we know about culture since Sinde is head of the ministry except for SGAE and illegal downloads? Is there no culture in Spain at all except that?

My guess is that the current government owed it big to SGAE for support in the elections and gave them whatever they wanted, even a ministry to one of their members so they can do what they want. Do you know, for example, that if the tax they impose on electronical equipment and such is not over a threshold they have freedom to get the rest of the money from somewhere else? And if any of you is thinking, "ok, I don't use electronic equipment", don't forget that each time you have a drink at a coffee shop or a pub, or you listen to a tune at the dentist waiting room or whatever, you are indirectly paying, because those people have to pay the tax and they will charge YOU their costs. They charge everything, from music in funerals to charity concerts. They have gone as far as to sneak into weddings and other ceremonies to check if they were playing music.

I simply do not want to know what they may have promised to the different political factions in the country to make the Sinde law succeed (we will also pay for that, mind you). It takes a socialist government to remove a basic freedom (like writing in your web whatever you want) and not only get away with it, but also laugh at and criminalize anyone opposing you.

Guess what? I'll keep buying my stuff from other countries via the Internet and let these "creators" work for their food. Too bad the government -and specially the SGAE government- will take from my taxes anything they need to pay these guys whatever they estimate they deserve. In the movies, when a group of guys walked from one shop to the next asking money for "protection", they called it mafia. In Spain, we call it SGAE.

After re-reading the title, most of you could probably be waiting for something else, but, nope, this is exactly about games. Board games I played this weekend until we couldn't stand awake anymore (that's 6am to you, buddies) while the guys who could not join the board played Left for Dead 2 in team (we managed to end it in a run and everthing :D)

NOTE: We are NOT the people in the videos. Not that we are not freaky enough to tape it, only we did not think of it soon enough ;P



The first one was one of my faves: Galactica. It is obviously based on the TV series, shortly after the pilot, and you can start playing as one of the main characters or as a cylon in disguise. There are many tests you have to deal with, like lack of food, cylon attacks, low moral ... and everyone has to contribute to the trial with cards from their hands; only cylons in disguise may contribute negatively, mind you. For the first time, I got to be the skinjob and did pretty well my job :D In the end, I got all humans in prison or infirmary before revealing myself and Galactica surrounded by ships and crowding with centurions. After I burst the presidential ship, their moral went down to the sink and we won. It's good to be bad! The best part was that I based my whole strategy on the other's paranoia, just like in the series :D



A second game was Pandemia. In this case, it is a collaborative game, were players conform a team including doctors, scientists, engineers and managers that have to fight four different plagues before they outbreak in the unsuspecting world. This game is strange. Initially, it seems quite complex. After five minutes, you realize it is easy. And only after you've lost like 5 times you realize that it is indeed complex, but not because of the game rules, just because it is really easy to lose even when you think you've got everything under control. A really nice game and it's got an advantage: you won't end in a hand to hand combat with all the other players :D



The final choice was Last Night on Earth, a survival zombie game where part of the players play the zombies and the rest need to end one out of five missions in the game. The zombies just want dinner, but they get 4 nifty cards they can use against you, like "lights out", "oh, the horror", "I just forgot the keys in..." and such. Humans are faster, but they only get one card per location (not turn) and if they don't get a weapon, they might as well be wearing sauce. Oh, and if you get infested ... you'll become a very fast zombie in the next turn. Gross! In this case, I was very happy running around the board with the bad guys on my track until I arrived to a location with a male human player and the zombies used their "Last night on Earth" card on me. Go figure. I lost my last three turns and they won. No hard feelings, I had just blasted a few hundreds of them before in the XBox :)

When one does not have much time for PS2 or XBox, there's always NDS to fool around and, in this case, I just finished Bleach: the Third Phantom. Amazingly, they did not fall in the classic fight game trap, where each title is basically the same the previous was, except with (maybe) more playable characters, different backgrounds and new combos. In this case, they went for a "Valkirie profile" kind of game, where you get a story and strategy. And the story (by Kubo) is even linked to the main stream! In fact, I found it more appealing than the current episodes, which have fallen in the usual "get your ass kicked-train to get more power-beat the enemy to pulp-find someone more powerful" routine that every fight anime seems to eventually fall into at some point. At least, characters do interact (some of them, quite a lot, mind you :P) We get a lot of secondary characters (and not only the most popular ones according to who-knows-what poll in Japan) And you still have time to beat up Arrancar, Espada and whatnots. I did play as the girl, BTW.


Now, if only I could get the time to finish Fall Out 3! It's hard to be the local paladin, side-missions never seem to stop :P