The Importance of Strong Characters (Mass Effect Andromeda)

This should explain the lack of activity just fine.

My jaw dropped at the first trailer of Andromeda. Those amazing looking worlds, the combat, emphasis on exploration,  going back to what worked in Mass Effect 1, Andromeda was shaping up to be the Space Exploration Experience I had been longing for since Phantasy Star Online 2 was cancelled for a western release. I was riding this hype train against my better judgement because it’s the one “AAA” (w/e the fuck that means anymore) series I can get behind. 

At the time of it’s release, I didn’t own any of the current generation consoles, so I had to rely solely on the perception of others to guage the quality of the game. Shows how far I’ve fallen. Frankly, the reception was hideously sketchy at best. Worst game of all time, biggest disappointment of 2017, you name it. The game was crucified by the media and fans alike. But, because I now have a PS4 and literally nothing better to play, I figured “what the hell?” I’ve been through bug-ridden pieces of shit like BorderLands and Inquisition. And hell, the entire mass effect trilogy! If people can turn around and say buggy ass Witcher 3 is game of the year material, this shouldn’t be a problem. And yet I popped this bitch in expecting the worst.

And…. fortunately, I didn’t get that. I just got an… average Mass Effect game. Certainly, there are some legitimate flaws. Jumping mechanics are irresponsive at times, character creation restricts you to ugly faces thanks to SJWs, the game does crash on me, there are too many fetch quests and puzzles, side quests have multiple parts that the game arbitrarily decides to restrict you from doing until you forget they still exist (not making this up) and for an open world game, it certainly does a great job keeping you from actually exploring the damn worlds you go to.

But on the same token…. it’s not enough to make me hate the game. Primarily because a lot of my complaints come strictly from optional material. In Inquisition, you actually had to do side quests to build up some rep or w/e before you can progress, which was total bullshit and  made the game worthless. No such bullshit here. You vould literally just do the main story and be done with it faster than ME2. The game is… alright. First Impressions are important, however,  and it completely fails in that regard.  I quite like the game regardless of it’s (numerous) faults. But it’s really only because I’m more so invested into the series lore, something I assume the rest of the population is not, and could explain the number of greviences people have with Andromeda. Allow me to elaborate.

Mass Effect 1 was a story-driven game

Mass Effect 2 was a character-driven game

Mass Effect 3 was a story-driven game

Now this is gonna have a lot of assumptions, but bare with me. Mass Effect 1 is game that… doesn’t present it’s lore well. Infact, they do a real shitty job of presenting it’s lore. Here’s how the game starts off. You go to new game, make your character, class, and background history. Then the game begins with 3 old geezers all discussing what to do with you. You don’t know what the hell is going on, but… whatever. You get some intro paragraph giving you some public domain storyline that humanity discovered new technology called (insert title). After that, you’re introduced to Joker who talks… pilot jargon… and then suddenly, you’re introduced to Nhilus…. A Turian. You don’t know the hell he is, he’s just there. Joker is suspicious of him, and his co pilot says the counsel is funding this project… whoa! Council!? Project!?

Right off the bat, you’re thrown into a game you know nothing about, and the narrative assumes you do. It’s conceited, just “read my mind”, is what the game says. This is a sure fire way to get people to not give a shit about your lore. After this point, you have the option of gathering information on what’s going on in this game. One could say that this is good as the game doesn’t hold your hand or w/e apologetic talking points they let rip, but information gathering still assumes you have a clue to who you’re working with and what they’re up to. Pressely, for example, is arguing for some reason, and you can ask him why. Or.. you can look at it as background noise for the immersion of being on a ship with other people like tons of other games do. This isn’t a whole you’re given to say “i’m invested!” So most of the time, you’re just winging it through the story, which is simple enough to be mildly interesting. Saren is a Rogue Spectre who betrayed the galaxy in favor of ressurecting a race of machines called Reapers. It’s up to you to track him down and bring him to justice.

If you want more than that, talk to people, basically. That’s if you actually care about them enough to give them the time of day. But interaction was the only way to learn anything that went on in Mass Effect. I still didn’t know what Garrus was supposed to be, was annoyed by Ashley, didn’t care about Kaiden, Tali, or Liara….. but then there’s Wrex. This guy was the game’s saving grace. See, he’s essentially dissillussioned with his people’s struggle with their nature. Krogan are an instinctively violent people, obsessed only with their pride as warriors. Something Wrex is tired of dealing with. At the same time, his race was forcefully sterilized. That bit is probably the only reason I gave a damn about the Krogan. That’s fucked up. It was also helped by the fact that at a certain point in the game, Saren tries to make a cure for the Genophage (the sterility plague) which puts Wrex on edge. You either have to calm him down or put him down.  Ofcourse,  I spare him. Can’t blame a guy for giving a damn. Subsequent playthroughs, I talked more to Garrus and learned about the rather shakey relationship between humans and Turians, the first contact war, and even why Saren hates humanity in the first place, as well as Turians being involved with the Krogan sterility plague, their militant ways, admiration for their military might. Talked to Tali and learned about the Quarians and their connection to the Geth, main enemies of the first game, and pretty much explains why Quarians aren’t exactly favored. After a while, you begin to see how all of these races are connected/related to one another.

These characters acted as gateways to their cultures and histories. That way, you could gain actual insights to the Mass Effect world without having to read anything in those codex entries. It was a natural and effective way to acclimate people into the world’s lore. It also helped that these were all outcasts. Outsiders disillusioned with their respective worlds and can evaluate them without any bias. Mass Effect 1 was, essentially, an info dump. You could relate to the characters and their respective species… through your crew mates. For the most part, you learn the history of how the current world came to be.

 But as it is, if you ignore them, no harm. The main story progresses just fine without their input… sans Wrex. The character’s reasons for joining you are all motivated by a unified desire to take down Saren, either by coincidence or circumstance.

Mass Effect 2 fucked this up.

So what happened here, the game drops the focus on the story and centers itself around the characters. 

The whole feeling of the game is dramatically changed from a subtle-yet-deep source of intrigue… to a noisy, in-your-face, expendables style of experience. Instead of a band of outcasts disillusioned with their ways of life who come together for a common goal, you now have a band of infamous pros. People who are often proud of their talents and cultural achievements, to the point of nauseam. 

The difference between 2 and 1 is that… you don’t have the luxury of ignoring your crew! Thank you stupicide mission requiring I put in all this time and effort in helping the poor fucks in their little endeavors if I actually want to survive the game. The story of this game isn’t as involving or interesting, some new race of aliens called collectors are abducting humans, and you are tasked with assembling a team of the best of the best to deal with them. So the game’s plot completely revolves around your crew. And frankly, none of them have anything to do with the collectors, they just have a lot of personal baggage to sort out. And info about their history or cultures? nothing new Aside from Thane Krios. Just some supplimental data for what you got in the first game.

The difference is people are fucking enamored with Mass Effect 2, and hold it as the bar for quality of the series. Maybe it’s natural, the first game was pretty niche, and ME2 was more “approachable” in terms of introduction, presentation and what not. You didn’t have to do a whole lot to figure out what was going on in this game. And the characters are more appealing than the previous crewmembers you had before, no matter how superficial the appeal is. And a lot of that is probably due to how they were introduced. ME1-Garrus, you find him arguing with someone, and blah, meeting over. Tali, she blows up some Salarians and then agrees to give you info. Wrex, he just argues with people, and that’s the extent of his introduction. Liara was a damsel in distress. Not a whole lot of reason to get invested in your crew members. But as the goal of Mass Effect 2 is simply recruiting the best of the best, the introductions are much more grandiose. You gather information from people who suggest the guy you’re picking up is “badass and scary” in some way, and then you meet those people and see them kick ass, usually with some grandiose music to go along with it. Jack’s introduction is probably the best example of this. A prisoner freed from a large cryo chamber who then proceeds to destroy 2 giant mechs. It creates a certain level of awe and intrigue for the characters. what peeps see inbthem beyond that point is… questionable. 

Mordin being “funny” despite his glee at sterilizing an entire species (yes, I know he feels guilt about it) Garrus going from a cop who wants to met out justice without red tape to some quippy dudebro this side of Tony Stark (yes, I hate how Garrus developed. Sue me), Miranda in tights despite being a vicious cunt, and Jack whom I continue failing to see the appeal of. 

Unfortunately, this turned everyone’s expectations of this series from a science fiction adventure into a game about building relationships. And as thirsty as a lot of these fucks are, i’d go so far as to say they only care about having sex with anyone with legs.

Mass Effect 3 was, to everyone, supposed to be a payoff for all those relationships built with the ME2 crew. However, ME3 returned to being a story-driven game, so character relationships and development no longer mattered. Yes, Mass Effect 2 ruined the series.

So when you get to Andromeda, the series was handed over to people who don’t really understand or cared how Mass Effect 2 worked, and focused on capturing the zeitgeist of the first game, one that a lot of people don’t really enjoy. Most of your crewmembers join to help end an alien threat and help colonize a new world, so a lot of their personal stories are tied to the main story, much like ME1, and even their loyalty missions aren’t too far removed from the plot. It’s all about world-building and being a massive info dump. And character introductions are also, once again, kept simple and soft. Vetra simply introduces herself as a Mary Sue, Pee Bee awkwardly jumps on top of you in a suggestive way, Drack kills some dog… thing and then leaves, Jaal calms down an angry mob and convinces his governor to give you an audience with an army leader… nothing to really make you care about the characters, so people would write them off as “boring expies of the ME1 crew”. Their personal stories don’t really offer much in the way of complex and deep, either. Jaal is the only real “gateway character” for Andromeda as he is a new species. Everyone else is “I came to Andromeda because the Milky Way sucks”. That’s how everyone’s first convo starts! So thanks to a bad first impression, everyone gets the idea that these characters have no depth and are thus not worth building a connection to. And for many people, that is a deal killer in Mass Effect. 

I’m willing to bet that a lot of Mass Effect fans care nothing for series lore and are strictly concerned with building relationships with the crew. It’s interesting to me to see how all of these species, sick and tired of the usual BS involved with the original trilogy, and see how they develop in a new world. Instead of having to appease a bureaucratic citadel council, they have a mass exodus to a clean slate. Which is unfortunate as they want to make a new council anyway (the angara are fucked). It’s also interesting, seeing as the Andromeda Initiative is made up of the last of everyone’s species, see how long they could last without the prospect of returning home. Seeing how they interact with the Angara. Instead it’s “A new galaxy, why are there Turians and Asari here!?” Could possibly be they want sexual access to new alien races and not tread old territory. 😛

But I think a big problem with these characters is that they have no major conflicts within themselves that you could even help ease. Drack doesn’t like Spendor, but neither does anyone else, so everyone pitches in to take him down. Pee bee just wants to jack off to ruins… so she does. Nothing really major that impacts them in any significant way. You could at least guilt trip Mordin out of his bigotry over the Krogan by showing him the damage he’s done to them…. “culturally: as he is a lover of culture. Or re-affirm his beliefs that fucking over the Krogan was beneficial in the long run. The fact that you could even impact their lives in some way is… intoxicating to people. You don’t really feel as though you have much input in the affairs of the Andromeda crew. You simply make decisions they may or may not approve of. Though… maybe Pee Bee is the closest in this regard as she doesn’t know if she cares about people more or less than material possessions. Still, very much like ME1.

I think presentation has a lot to do with the disastrous reception for Andromeda, really. Both ME1 and this game are favored less than 2 & 3 combined, both that bleed explosions and grandiose introductions, music, etc. Andromeda tries to be softer in its approach to reel you in, and that doesn’t work. Especially if no one can get passed the facial animations (an issue that only really exists with Addison and the default Ryders). People want that grandiosity. 

Still, I think the game is worth a try at the very least. Comparing it to Inquisition is at best a smear campaign. And dammit, stop playing with the default fucking characters! If female Ryder’s face is that bad, you have the option to give the bitch plastic surgery before you start the damn game! That’s kinda the point of Mass Effect, to be your own character. But then that would negate your primary talking point against this game, I know.

Nintendo is officially the Disney of gaming.

Cause there’s no accounting for taste.

Pay to make your own peripheral devices! It’s more expensive than PlayStation controllers, but you just don’t appreciate your inner child! Because it’s friggin cardboard!!!

I have never seen anything so stupid in my life, and I’m almost certain this will sell because it’s Nintendo. But I just want to know when people will just… stop and think about what does and doesn’t work with games. That fishing rod looks like it could easily break via rotating that reel, you could wear out the insides. And it doesn’t like it would be comfortable as cardboard doesn’t actually conform to your hands.

This is simply a tech demo for the joycons. To “express the value of the technology” as Iwata would say. And it’s another middle finger from Nintendo.  One moment you think “Nintendo is actually trying to be cool again” and then you see this special snowflake shit right here. If Nintendo really believes that technology sells videogames based off of ROB, then how do Nintards justify the “All about gameplay” talking points!? To Nintendo, it’s all about HARDWARE! It hasn’t even been a good 2 years and we’re getting stupid shit like this.

Titanfall 2 is pretty damn good!

Explains the lack of activity. I’ve been playing this shit for a while, and I’m like “this is really good! Why can’t we ever get decently lengthed campaigns anymore?” Course we can easily say EA, these bastards have been on a literal war march all last year, destroying every gamebthey could find. Mass Effect, Need for Speed, Star Wars, and apparently this game too. Or did it come out 2016?

You gotta wonder what EA’s long term goals are. The way they run shit, it’s like they’re acting as gate keepers for the industry at large. Buying out studios only to outright sabotage their products, and then shut them down after bad reception, or bastardize them in the future. Cause it seems like the smaller start up studios that actually have potential, unlike the moronic indies, always seem to be targets for EA’s predation. Like a barrier to keep them from actually competing with the industry clubs. Westerners don’t want competition,  otherwise they’d actually have to put in some effort to justify their outrageous prices. Not to mention how EA has the same business model of Disney and classic DC comics whereby they absorb everything they touch, like a gluttonous boar with 5 tapeworms. Releasing Titanfall 2 around the same time as Battlefield,  something as popular as COD, that was sabotage. Probably to lower their value as a company before purchasing them.

We can’t keep saying profit is their reason for corruption. These bastards have all the money in the world. They’re emboldened and enabled by some other goal.

The Last Word, The End Goal

The DC/DBZ fan at work has finally been broken! Apparently something went wrong with Pokemon Ultra Sun/Moon to the point that he finds it to be a waste of time! Bwahahahaha! Eventually, all Nintards break down and transition into an age of enlightenment! Happy New year indeed! He’s even playing that new Metroid! Nintards don’t like Metroid. 

Anywho, he’s been keeping up with everything Sonic Forces (thank you, personal fan character I showed off) and… unfortunately he’s come across the youtuber, Christopher Toro. A person I wouldn’t recommend watching unless you have an impervious constitution. He created a video last year (:P) about Sonic Forces doing well, and possibly doing better than Sonic Mania. And he was legitimately terrified at the mere thought. Just laid out every reason why it was wrong for Forces to do better than Mania, mostly due to perceived quality. And DC fan goes with the logical inquiry. 

“Why does he care? A Sonic game selling well! Isn’t that what matters?”

“You’d think that, but no. He just wants to be right about his assertions.”

People are often in constant search of validation in their lives, whether it be praise for good work, affections of the opposite sex, or simply being proven right about a particular subject or proclamation. On the internet, that is the most people hope for. As i’ve said in the past, internet people, by the nature of their circumstance, are often a mal-adjusted people caught up in an endless cycle of seeking validation. They often learn facts about the gaming industry for the sake of argument alone. They love to debate. They will often post videos where they professionally play videogames where they “own” people in call of duty, Street Fighter, Pokemon and the like yo receive praise from their peers. They will often use Jargon to show that “Hey, I am a part of this unique and elite culture! Look at me with intrigue!” 

Gamers online don’t really care about the health of videogames. That topic is only fuel for discussion and debates. It gives them something to do, something to talk about. An opportunity to debate things and hopefully gain the validation they seek by proving themselves right and the other side wrong. It is ego gratification at it’s worst. 

And that is the crux of Sonic fandom’s “Mania–Forces” war. For literally a decade, Sonic fans were at each other’s throats about how to fix the Sonic Franchise. Going back to their roots was a constant talking point. Having a consistent vision was another. Catering less or more to children was another. Damn whether or not the game was any good. What mattered was overall reception. Sonic Mania and Sonic Forces was the culmination of the boiling point the fans were reaching. The ultimate proof of which side had the better way to improve the Sonic franchise. Would it be gameplay roots or content with effort?

The Roots side saw this as a war that needed to be fought 90s console war style, and sought to do a smear campaign on every critical detail, down to, again, the Character creation system. As well, considering how universal the internet praise was for Mania and completely the opposite for Forces, this created a huge sense of validation for the roots side, who were enabled to take all kinds of pot shots against Forces. 

Christopher Toro’s tirade against Forces’ s alleged success (on Switch) is revealing. It’s that fear of invalidation coming from the possible success of a product. It’s also sad that this is what the human race has devolved to, but eh. The Mania-Forces war is a battle of ideas rather than quality. An idea is tied down to one’s ego regardless of validity. There’s emotional/psychological investment into the idea. We don’t want our ideas to be wrong, which is why many people stubbornly cling to them despite proof of the opposite ideas ringing true. I still believe Sonic games would be better served by western developers despite massive proof of how vehemently toxic the western game industry really is. Nintards believe that 2D gaming is dead despite the success of NSMBW and… hell, Cuphead! Gamers still believe indies can save gaming despite how similar their habits are to the actual industry. It goes without saying that we hate to admit if we are wrong on an idea, which increases one’s hostility and stubbornness. The idea is too precious to us even if it’s just a little idea that impacts very little if anything at all.

Oh shit, DBFZ comes out this month!

Back to work (Random Thoughts)

We all needed to enjoy our vacations. Alright, so because of all the shit that went down, ive had a lot on my mind. But mostly,  I just wanted to enjoy my time off. Though i’ve had plenty of discussions regarding these issues (Net Neutrality) and other shit. So I don’t think I’ll have a lot of time to make coherent thoughts in several different posts. So here goes:

1). Rogue Stormers and why Indies are idiots.

Rogue Stormers is a “Rogue-like” RPG made by . Now for those who don’t know what a Rogue-like is, it’s essentially the Arcade Centric RPG. You start at level 1 and work your way through a single dungeon with many floors, constantly fighting waves of increasingly difficult enemies. Gameplay varies game to game. The difference is once you die, that’s it. You lose all of your levels, your skills, and your inventory, and you start back at square one. And you do it all over again. Now to me, this sounds like familiar territory because I grew up without traditional save systems, but to you young whipper snappers, that is daunting as hell! But it’s ok. Rogue-like games aren’t meant to be finished. It’s mostly about seeing how far you can get into a game before you eventually fail. And you will fail no matter the effort. Almost sounds like that Dark Souls mess, actually. 

But if you didn’t know that, then I hope i’ve enlightened you…. because the doorknobs who made this shit just assumes you know what that means. 

On the back of the box, you’ll see only 3 features. One of which is “Rogue-like” action. Common sense would think “what’s Rogue? Is that an old game?”. That’s not a typo either, they would just think “What is Rogue?” Rogue-like doesn’t make any sense as a name of a genre. 100% of the population isn’t going to know what the hell “Rogue-Like” is because it describes nothing. Much like RPGs and Metroidvania. The problem is in the western world, we put too much effort into ascribing things into readily identifiable categories. It’s this drive to define things in our own terms that has perverted our perception of what expectations a game should live up to. 

Mario, Zelda, Mega Man. These were all considered as action games, mainly because they all exhibited. Games were not developed in accordance to a specific genre, but to replicate alternative realities. Pong is replicating Tennis or Ping Pong. Galaga replicates galactic dog fights. Pac Man replicates an eating disorder. The reason games were “magical” back then and not now was because they tried to take certain aspects of the world and put into a simple context to be enjoyed by mass consumption. 

But from the late 90s and onward, action games were considered “too broad”. So now they were put into the categories such as “Platformer” or “Action/Adventure”. Suddenly, every game was tied down to specific, set in stone elements that could be found equally amongst other games. Suddenly, games had this strict adherence to genre conventions. Some would argue that this had more to do with advanced technology making those replications easier, but if the brain dead indies are anyonebto go by, this is a result of the Miyamoto curse

IE “all games must focus on gameplay!  Everything else is not important.”

Rogue Stormers epitomizes this curse as the game is nothing but gameplay nonsense. Music is non-existent, the world is a copy-pasted nightmare, and the art is horrendous. But it’s a Rogue-Like (or just a game that replicates games made before save systems) so it’s not important. What has happened is that games have become avatars/Expressions for the genres, and not wholly unique experiences. You cannot sell people on gameplay! 

Some would also argue that indies have become blind to self-indulgence. Some would also argue that indies are too busy replicating other games (all the 8bit platformers and cash-ins on FNAF). If anything, the indies are no better than the video game industry. And this is a tragedy in itself. Many people looked to indy developers as some shining beacon of hope for their gaming addiction. Others wanted them simply to be an external middle-finger to the industry. And yet here they stand falling prey to the same exact fallacies.

2). Using internet to control access to content. 

I think it needs to be reiterated. I do not have internet where I currently live. As such, it is impossible for me to enjoy the full extent of my current video game consoles. PlayStation 4, for some goddamn reason, requires a PSN account before you can back up your save files. Essentially holding your save data for ransom. This is unfortunately expected from a corporation who gets their dick sucked for 3 console generations. Some games, like Doom from what I hear, requires a specific online patch to be downloaded and installed before you can even play the game (I have not confirmed this, so do not quote me), and a big FU to my nuts is Overwatch needs internet just to be played. But what I think was most damning…. was Redout.

I don’t talk about them much, but I love racing games. And this looked really good. A futuristic racing game akin to F-Zero (Yes, I know I just complained about it) that just looked so clean! And it didn’t internet for multiplayer so that’s a big plus…. except

Now what does this kiss ass mean? Well… when you first start the game, you have access to all cars.. and 2 tracks. One would assume that “Ok, they’re unlocked in Career mode”. However…. in order to play career, you…. need… internet. Imagine my dismay upon this realization. I was stuck with the content that was already there. I’m assuming this was some sort of antipiracy measure, but the stubbornness of gamers would negate this nonsense. There’s a lesson that the industry needs to take to heart.

Believe it or not, even without internet, people would still play games. So something like this is a slap in the face. Internet used to be supplemental to videogames. Online multiplayer and (yes, even) DLC were merely there to enhance the experience. But as with all industries, those involved tend to get some rather shady ideas of how to handle these supplements. On-disc DLC was the most egregious offender. Currently, microtransactions are coming under fire as well as loot boxes. But the fact that something like this isn’t getting attention frankly…. it’s troubling. The internet is being used by the industry to control how you access content in your games. And they expect top dollar for every purchase. 

This is what happens when you consistently give corporations a free pass on everything they do. They start pulling shit like locking your ability to unlock anything unless you make an account. And not just that, console manufacturers all are demanding a fee to use their network services. So you would effectively have to pay more money just to unlock content on your disc. This might as well be unintentional racketeering. The industry has become so corrupt that it’s holding out for more money even after the initial full price purchase. I think back to all the would be defenders of DLC practices and think them all fools. Their unwarranted praise for such practices gave way for the exploitation we have now.

Ironically, this might be an unintended positive effect of Net Neutrality’s repeal as it’ll be far too expensive to keep using the internet as a barrier to entry for extra content, and those Devilish advocates would be forced out of their comfort zones to see what is happening to videogames. The now called….. “couch multiplayer” (some dudebro term, im sure) would be back in style…. or the industry would stubbornly cling to the upper class and lock out everyone else. A pack of corporations who see EA as the example to follow regardless of public outcry. 

3). Review Tech on Ajit Pai

Speaking of net neutrality, ReviewTechUSA came out responding to a group called anonymous who managed to get Ajit Pai’s personal information and put it out for the world to see. Frankly, he is upset at the idea as it could help Pai’s case than hurt it. Congress could use that as probable cause to support the repeal because someone needs to be able to block information like that from getting in the wrong hands. Not to mention, Pai’s family has nothing to do with the repeal, so putting their lives in danger is ethically wrong on many levels.

I must respectfully disagree. At this moment, Ajit Pai and the FCC are certainly guilty of identity theft of millions of Americans considering that an Attorney General is trying to investigate comment fraud including Identity theft of DEAD PEOPLE…. to falsly support a repeal that no one outside of politicians and lobbyists want….. and they are outright blocking the investigation. 

If you actually tried to comment on the FCC site, you’d know there’s a lot of personal info you’d have to give out. And if these organizations have your personal info, then perhaps some equally tech savvy people could come along, hack the website, gather all that info, and bam. You just put 2 million lives in danger just to vote on taking down a protection because those same people could release that info and say “THESE ARE THE TRAITORS OF AMERICA! FIND AND KILL THEM ALL!”

Hyperbolic? Yes. Possible? Absolutely. You don’t underestimate anything in this world if your life depended on it. And quite frankly, as you stated, when civilized opposition fails, then uncivilized opposition is inevitable. This particular argument essentially goes in favor of saying that the lives of the few outweigh the lives of many. Of whom the few care not about the many anyway.

Also, since America is becoming a multicultural China, this is exactly how they punished treason! Kill off the traitor, and extinguish their bloodline. Harsh and irrational, but it gets the point across. 

As for Net Neutrality itself, well… fingers crossed, I guess.