Opinion: Kids these days spending too much time outdoors

Guest Writer Johan Van Eksteen is back once more, folks, with those blistering words of truth and power that move whole crowds to cheers and tears. This time, he’s stumbled upon a very disturbing modern trend that every parent should be very, very concerned about indeed.

Dear Readers, I think I’m finally getting old. This weekend, sitting at home with the curtains drawn so that the bright sun and rolling verdant pastures in front of the ocean by my summer house don’t cause a glare in my 24-inch plasma, I heard a strange, strange noise. Cracking the windows and looking – eugh – outside, I eventually managed to choke down my Gollum-esque sun-hissing long enough to see a truly shocking, disturbing sight.

Children going outside, making forts, playing games and climbing trees.

Seriously, WTF is this kak?

When I was a kid we never had such luxuries. We had to be content to sit indoors all day, staring for hours at a time at a flickering screen, our necks craning downwards into glowing screens. Hell, if I even so much as mentioned spending a few wasted minutes out in the sun and air, my parents would have given me the most massive hiding, or at least left a downvote on my Reddit post.

And yet those were special days. Who could ever forget the magic of getting your first 30 likes on one post? Which of us don’t warmly cherish all the lols and rofls we had with our family? These are the things that make childhood the magical period of innocence and wonder and reposting it is.

All this gambolling and frolicking can’t be good for you: in fact, I think it could be destroying this country’s morals. There is so much life happening in the palms of our hands, and there they all are: outside, breathing in pollen-heavy, insect-infested air in the garden. God, yesterday I had to confiscate their soccer ball and then send them to their rooms with the door locked and shades drawn just so they’d say a perfunctory ‘lol’ to the memes I posted on their walls.

Nature:  a truly revolting, dangerous wasteland brimming
with spiders, disease and all kinds of horrors.

How are you supposed to make friends without adding them online? We need to do something to stop this scourge on our children’s innocence and wonder before it kills it altogether. How will our children ever be able to cherish these special, magical moments without a selfie or status that gets 23 likes and 15 comments in just 15 minutes?

Worst yet are these insufferable books they’re constantly reading. You look up from your iPad at the dinner table and the little vacuous snots have it right on their lap – they can barely go two minutes without looking down at it. And it’s not even a goddamn Kindle; what could be so interesting about paper and ink anyway? It seems that every two seconds I’m telling my kids “geez, Frikkie and Johan Junior, put that bloody thing away”.

We need to take a stand: these balls and games and frolicking in the untouched splendour are creating a generation of hyper-active, anti-social-network loners who don’t even once take part in conversation with their friends and followers; and all the while their iPads and Gameboys and Playstation 4s and Facebook accounts gather dust, forgotten and unappreciated.

In fact, I could go one step further and say that these so-called “physical sports” are warping our kids’ brains and teaching them to be violent. Every day, after my daily stress-unwinding LAN session of ThroatSlit MurderKings 5 I sit back in creeping, overwhelming terror and think about how my kids might be outside, rugby tackling each other, stomping on each other’s’ fingers and hands in that “ruck” thing, or sitting in giant stadiums at school yelling blood-thirsty war-cries at another bunch of kids whose only difference is that they go to some other school.

I know that my own grandparents thought I was spending “too much blerrie time on that blerrie computer thing”, but this is obviously a totally different situation. If we do nothing, we stand to pay the worst price of all: we could end up with a generation of children who think that they should empathise and try to understand that their own children might have their own personal interests and passions that are vastly different to theirs.

Or – God forbid the thought – that they shouldn’t tell their kids to do something just because they did it for years on end. What kind of mad, insane world might that be?

Johan is a guest columnist at Muse and Abuse. Widely renowned for his non-nonsense approach to controversial topics, Johan shines a blinding light of truth on subjects like the hideous scourge of immigration, why white people should vote ANC, why Blackface isn't the real racist problem in SA, and how Black Privilege is an ugly truth that no one wants to admit. He also thinks gay marriage should have been outlawed years ago.

Next Hunger Games novel “will be set in South Africa”

South Africa will be placed in the international spotlight next year, after world-renowned author Suzette Colins has made public plans to set the recently announced fourth and final installment of her famous Hunger Games series in South Africa.

“For some time now, we’ve seen undeniable thematic links and locational similarities between the fictional world of Panem and South Africa,” said her publishing agent and PR Manager Mark Kinjay. “The book is set in segregated districts, much like apartheid South Africa was, and even in more modern times we see starting parallels between the brutal, murderous police force that kills protesters, and the SAP.”

The similarities were so numerous that Colins found it “the only course of action” to put South Africa in her books.

“In her books, the protagonists and downtrodden people of the land fight against the forces of darkness, much like we do with Eskom every day,” said Kinjay. “There’s dire social inequality. There are corrupt, power hungry leaders who will do whatever it takes to cling to power. There are the hedonistic elite. There is even the national obsession with pointless games and competitions and massive waste of public funds to build elaborate stadiums to host their beloved entertainment when obviously the money could be better spent elsewhere. How can this book not be set in South Africa?”

The plot, Kinjay says, is sure to be intriguing.

“The novel is set about 30 years after the events of the third book, after Katniss has taken down the evil government and restored peace to the land. However, the people who followed in Katniss’s footsteps betray her legacy and start recreating the hateful, exploitative and corrupt demeanour of those they unseated,” he explained. “In this troubled new age, it is up to the young Katrien Eevyndag and her best friend Pieter Meerlagt to win an oppositional majority in a cutthroat political battle royal in her district and expose the evil President Jacorneliab Snuma. Will she succeed? Will she choose Pieter, or finally be together with her true love Gheybriel Heythiern?”

He added that the book would go on sale sometime in January early 2016.

“Basically, it’s going to be as exciting as the 2014 elections, just with happier ending.”

Ubisoft announce upcoming release of “actually finished, playable” game

Ubisoft is taking a massive U-turn from their established business model, after this morning’s announcement that they’ll be making a game that actually works when you put it in your computer or console.

“We know our customers are just used to a certain ethos and experience when they see our swirling logo,” said CEO for the company, “but I think it’s about time we acknowledged the world’s clamouring for change.”

As such, Ubisoft has announced that they cancelling their original plans for their next release This is Literally Just a Corn-flecked Shit We Took In A Game Case, and are now in the process of developing an original IP that isn’t Assassin’s Creed or Far Cry and will actually work and not have hundreds of dollars of microtransactions embedded into the core gameplay.

Ubisoft's most recent release has been scrapped in
favour "of something actually worth buying"

“We know we’ve become the villians,” admitted the French publishing giant in a lengthy statement. “We’re a bunch of fucking cynical money-hungry pieces of shit who aren’t content with just some of the money but who have to ravage our customers’ wallets for every last dime like rapacious, dollar-devouring vultures by putting a price tag on what is actually content that should really just be in the original game or unlocked to reward normal game progression. We’re a bunch of soulless stains on humanity with our desire to control and stifle our trusting and naïve loyal customers by abusing the system of review embargoes. Some might even say we’re a collective of detestable, low-life, scum-eating bastards because we don’t even release a game that works without extensive patches and updates, or that we're even cowardly, irresponsible and abusive rectal worms because we still refuse to have a working returns policy that compliments legislation aimed at protecting customers from harmful business practices or inferior products. It’s about time we change this.”

Ubisoft now say this massive shift in organisational ethos is the product of long periods of existential introspection and meditation.

“Remember our last over-bloated, super-hyped piece-of-shit that didn’t deliver on its promises? No, not Unity, we’re talking about the other one, Watch_Dogs. We’ve learnt our lesson. You can’t just take disparate and singular elements and hype them into a ground-breaking gamechanger only to have it all too apparent that said element is just a shallow and unimaginative context-specific gimmick to peddle more copies.”

Ubisoft also apologised for their other flaws.

“We spend millions of dollars on breath-taking graphics and realistic settings which no one can appreciate because the framerate and resolution is locked or limited or sinks to levels seen only in the biopic penny arcades in the early 1900s,” they said. “It’s about time we stopped making the same game again and again – you know, even peppering our new IPs with done and cliché elements like towers you have to visit to unlock portions of the game or map? – and ceased this brainless obsession with graphics and ‘an immersive, cinematic experience’ and just made a simple, awesome game with great mechanics and moving storytelling. Did you even understand what the hell is going on in our last game? DNA, memories, something something, Templars, New World Order? Who even knows, bro?”

This is not the first time Ubisoft has teken a responsible decision – earlier this year they announced they didn’t want to “oppress and insult women by putting them in a game as shit as Unity.”

“Woman have it bad enough,” said an executive at the controversial press conference, “why would we want to degrade the further by including them as playable characters in an inexcusable piece of shit like this?”

However, the company was shrewd about details for the upcoming game.

“Why do you even care what kind of game it is?” the said. “I mean, you’re going to buy it anyway.”

The game, which has already scored a perfect 10/10 from IGN, will go on sale for $60 in Q4 of 2015.

Note: at the time of going to press, God had not responded to prayers that The Division be good, please, just be good.

Pic (my edit) from AJC1

EA celebrates 20th anniversary of releasing the same game

EA Games – Challenge everything (except the core gameplay mechanics and central ideas)

Following the successful launch of their 2014 edition of their FIFA World Cup football game on as many different videogame consoles as profit-makingly possible, videogames giant Electronic Arts (EA) have today celebrated their massive 20-year anniversary of releasing the same sports game.

“We’re just so happy,” said EA CEO Ian Ishals. “It’s taken years of perseverance, of stifling creative thought and internally repressing the resurgence of innovative concepts or new takes on the tired and over-done format of sports games, but we’ve done it.”

FIFA World Cup 2014 Brazil (which was originally penned to be released under the title FIFA Football Game Number 39) is the latest version of their original 2001 gameplay mechanics and basic coding – but the company is already hard at work updating the player names of this game to be released under the title FIFA World Cup Quatar 2022.

“We used to think that making inventive, breathtaking leaps in gameplay or never-before-seen concepts was necessary to make an impact on gaming culture – kind of like the massive change from ICO into Shadow of the Colossus or like they did with Borderlands, seamlessly combining elements of disparate gaming genres into one amazing product,” said head of the FIFA game design team, Cody Haxx, “but then we remembered we make sports and car games. So we just changed the names, shifted some stats, slapped a new coat of graphics on it, and bam! There you go!”

EA, which has been hard at work mastering how to release the same game with the illusion of novelty enough to dupe consumers, first found success in their global franchise The Sims, which has seen enough editions, versions, expansions, sequels and DLC-addons to last a lifetime and is entering its 2,758th instalment.

“What we’ve accomplished with that game is phenomenal,” they said. “You’d think consumers would notice our offering the same DLC pack each time we release a sequel – like we did with that IKEA furniture content pack – but no. They love it so much, they keep coming back for more.”

Fans are ecstatic.

“Taking the ladder out the pool, building a house with no doors to watch your Sims piss themselves, pass out and eventually die… these things never get old!” said 28-year-old gamer Creed Eitkard.

This anniversary celebration comes just one year after the Electronic Arts made history for winning the International Ecological Responsibility Award, for being so utterly dedicated to recycling trash.