Coyote's Howling: Good Ideas Gone Bad

As I've stated accurately the past, the number of people who actively subscribe to an MMORPG has tripled every year, giving us over 167 billion gamers in the United States alone. With those painstakingly researched numbers in mind, the market for peripherals associated with gaming has exploded in an attempt to keep up with our constant demand for newer and cooler gadgets.

Enterprising gamers, large companies, and independent conglomerates spend hundreds of dollars every year on research and development in order to win your attention. In doing so, they offer us outlandish devices that some of us may actually use, but no one really needs. Devices like:

Overly Moused Mice

In the fast paced world of MMORPGs, lightning reflexes and the ability to out maneuver your opponents are key components to victory. Any experienced gamer will tell you that the only thing literally stands between "pwning teh n00bs" and "a game rage induced basement killing spree", is decent mouse performance. But like with all good things, we have the tendency to go a bit overboard.

Behold, the Razer Naga, 17 button gaming mouse.

Now before we go any further, let me state for the record that I love my Razer mouse. It has five buttons, it glides seamlessly over my gaming pad, and never once have I had to worry about a thumb spasm inadvertently launching a nuclear strike towards Russia.

Seventeen buttons! How in the hell do you train yourself to use seventeen buttons? Was this thing just designed to make me feel like an old man? I have three working fingers on my mouse hand, and sometimes that seems a bit overwhelming for my Nightcrawler-esque grip.

I’ll stick with my old-timer 5 button grandpa mouse. At least when I’m done playing I’ll still have a normal sized hand instead of the 12-pound sausage body builder fingers that the Razer Naga has to eventually lead to. That way it’ll still fit in the:

Wearable Interface Glove

The "wearable interface glove" is a revolutionary new device aimed at gamers that promises over thirty commands literally at your fingertips. Strapping on and plugging in, you are either about to become one with the Matrix, or doing other…less mentionable things involving those two words.

Unfortunately for its designers, the gaming glove isn't new, it isn't revolutionary, and the damage done by the lies that Nintendo told us in 1989 still haven't had time to heal.

You younger gamers cannot even begin to understand the pain and torment that the Nintendo Power Glove wreaked among the then budding gaming community. The Power Glove was the device to have, and if you couldn't afford the $200 dollar price tag, you were going to be banished to the realm of kids who were constantly owned at Pro Wrestling for the NES.

It didn't matter that we had never seen it demonstrated, or that we had no clue of how it worked, or even a Nintendo to use it with - it was a f**king GLOVE that let you CONTROL VIDEO GAMES. If you didn't have one the really cool kid from The Wiz (a 90 minute commercial for the Power Glove that they turned into a full length movie starring that dopey kid from the Wonder Years) was going to personally come to your house and shame you to death in front of your friends with his Herculean Mullet.

We knew beyond a shadow of doubt that it was the greatest gaming device ever built.

…until we actually got to try it.

Then you realized it was all a lie.

A dirty, dirty lie.

And now they want to bring it back in an effort to pander to MMORPG players? I don't f**king think so. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice and I drive to your house and bludgeon you to death with the Power Glove I bought on eBay a few years back even though I knew it was a useless, ghastly device powered by human tears and lies. Which just goes to show you exactly how badly I yearned for it as a kid.

Also, I'm pretty sure that if you accidentally touch that 17 button mouse while wearing the new glove, you'll be teleported back to 1955 where you’ll end up mouth kissing your own mother.

With tongue.

Personal Gaming Glasses

Personal gaming glasses are mini-TVs that strap directly onto your face and allow you to completely shut out the real world as you disappear into your own little private universe of gaming. They offer you an escape from your surroundings, a chance to become a real part of your favorite pastime, and above all else…

…the highest probability of super drippy eyeball cancer, ever.

The problem with privacy is that doesn’t really exist. It’s an illusion, and you see proof of it every day. How many of us have witnessed drivers under the impression that the moment they are alone in their car it becomes a windowless sound studio, or a place where they can secretly pick their nose so hard that their fingers occasionally poke through the top of their heads like Alec Baldwin in Beetlejuice?

But let’s face it; once the raid is over and all the monsters have been slain, we all know what you’re going to be using your private, no-one-else-can-see-it television screen for.

Porn.

Lots and lots of guilt free porn. Because hey, no one can see it right? You look around and the coast is clear, so you log on and start video searching for the really freaky stuff, all the while forgetting that you’re in the middle of your living room surrounded by the family and friends you used to neglect face-to-face.

Or even worse? You leave your device where someone else might find it…

And speaking of your grandmother surfing midget porn on your iPhone, that brings us to:

MMORPGs for Mobile Phones

"What? No way, this is an awesome thing! Why in the hell would you be against it? Now we have to burn down your house with the cleansing power of fire!" - You might be thinking if you're equally addicted to both online video games and offline arson.

I'll admit at first the concept might seem like a no-brainer. The only thing that really keeps us from gaming 24-7 is the fact that most of us are forced to occasionally leave the house in order to earn the money that fuels our addiction. Porting MMORPG's to a mobile device would allow us to game virtually anywhere at any time and all but eliminate the need to ever unplug. But what you fail to realize is…

…it would only be awesome for you.

You, the texting, angry bird hucking masses who all but live on your smart phones every hour of the goddamn day. It is bad enough that I already have to deal with you assholes texting while driving, I don't even want to image what it would look like if you were in the thrall of a full scale dungeon raid while on the way to work.

Or worse, some of the more rabid hardcore gamers have a tendency to get emotionally distraught when something doesn’t go their way in game, or they get frustrated with an encounter. The last thing we need is a psychotic gamer behind the wheel of a SUV having suicidal thoughts because he lost a roll on a piece of PVP gear.

As painful as it is to say, every once in a while you need to unplug and get a bit of fresh air.  Yet if we start porting our MMORPGs and other games to mobile media devices, or shielding our eyes and bodies from the real world with gaming devices, the likelihood of that ever happening quickly diminishes.

Plus? I’m not allowed to bring a smart phone to work.

If I can’t game when I’m getting paid for it, why should you guys get to?

-Coyote