I am leaving Destructoid. It was a hard decision, that I have being struggling for a long time now. It was not a rushed decision, neither a easy one, but this will be my last blog here on Destructoid. After almost a year and more than a hundred blogs it is a very sad day to me to say this. Farewell and Thank you all.

I am leaving because Destructoid in the last few months have changed too much. Or maybe it was always like that and I just perceived it recently. This site is navigating too close in the 'sensationalist tabloid' territory to its own good. Sometimes they just go right there. And I can't be part of this.

Destructoid says it is 'By Gamers, For Gamers.' Well, at least they used to say this when I started here. Today it feels too much like By Jim Sterling, for Clicks. Yes, he is one of the reasons I leaving. I can't support this guy by being one of the 'clicks' here.

The saddest part is that the community, the guys at the c-blogs and forums, are great guys and girls. But I can't support them without supporting Destructoid as a whole. And I can't be part of the problem. If Destructoid wants to be the most popular site instead of the best one, ok. Just count me out.

I will keep blogging, though, as I like to do it. I moved to the 1up site for my blogging. You can keep following PVC there, if you really liked it. But god, I will miss a lot of people.

Elsa, the greatest blogger here, VenusInFur, bbain (my biggest PVC fan), Alisdair, Andy Dixon, Wolfy, manasteel88, Byronic Man (who nows goes as Stephen), Corduroy Turtle, LawofThermalDynamics, Beyamor, pokota, Occams, Lenigod, meteorscrap, scissors, trev, and many others that I am sorry for not citing directly. I will miss all of you.

Send me a pm, if you are interested in my e-mail to keep contact. I would leave it here, but we all know the dangers of letting personal info in the open on the internet. Maybe one day I shall return, if Destructoid changes for better. It was a great time, that will never be forgotten. Thanks for reading my last blog here.

Farewell, thank you for all the 'faps'.

The Man With No Name.

December the 5th, 2011.

PVC stands for Plastic Videogame Comics (I swear!), and it will be posted whenever it is possible. It is done with a camera that is not mine, a free photo editor who allow me to put the balloons and a guy who is as incorrect as possible.


We live in a world where we have to be very aware of what we say and how we say. People today gets offended with an easiness that scares me. When I was traveling to the Scotland Highlands, I visited a small village in the Caledonia Canal, where Loch Ness and Loch Lomond, if I remember correctly, are connected.
The guy who were talking about highlander culture, a nice old chap, asked where I was from. When I told i was from Brazil, he asked if I deal drugs.

What I did?

I laughed as well as everybody there and said no. The guy wasn't trying to offend me or dismiss me. He tried to be funny. I couldn't blame him. Many foreigners have this kind of vision of my country, and they aren't entirely incorrect. My sister, who lives in London, get angry. She is in the UK for ten years now and it is a full citizen. She told me that the guy had no right, even as a joke, to say what he said.

I don't see like that. I think that it was not his fault, neither was done with maliciousness, but more of disinformation. Better yet, more of a real information that is just a small part of what Brazilians are. Yes, we have too much drug dealers and too much problems with them, but that is just part of my country. As it is the Carnaval, samba, beachs, bikinis, forests and natives. My country is way more than those things.

But I didn't get angry. Because getting angry would not change the situation. Creating a fight would not make the Scotch guy understand my country any better. And that is part of the problem with the political correctness we live in.

It is not done in a way to teach and make people closer, but as a war between the offenders and the offended. When was the last time you see a good comedy? It was political correct or incorrect? The incorrect ones tends to be way better to me, since they see more honest, less worried about whom would be offended.

Everything seems to be racist, sexist, intolerant and harmful today. In the name of the 'correctness', we are becoming a bunch of false people, who will not say anything that wasn't carefully thought beforehand. And that is even worse, as we start resenting the other people for being 'easily' offended for the most 'harmless' comments.

What I am trying to say is not that we can't be offended or fight against prejudices and such. But before getting in arms to 'fight the oppressor/offender' we must ask us: It was his/her/it intention to offend? Instead of fighting, can we talk with the other side and show our point?

Think about it.

PVC stands for Plastic Videogame Comics (I swear!), and it will be posted whenever it is possible. It is done with a camera that is not mine, a free photo editor who allow me to put the balloons and a guy who secretly likes dressing games.

If you have played certain games like Skyrim, Mass Effect, Dark Souls and a few others, you have spent at least a few minutes with a Character Creation system. Honestly, sometimes this can be one of the funniest parts in the game.

Some people tries to create the fugliest character possible, like they have in-breed him/her for generations. Those are hilarious to see once, but I would hate to see a fugly character all the time, since the comic effect would wear off fast.

Others tries to recreate themselves, with variable degrees of success. Sometimes the results can be uncanny and disturbing. But again, sometimes it is hard to see someone so like yourself in the screen, especially when your likeness is not exactly fitting to the setting. I can't see me using power armor around.

I usually play with female avatars, so I try to give them a nice look. Other times just a fitting look. My Skyrim character is a female Nord, so she have some war painting and a scar in the left eye. I still classify her as pretty, but tried to make her fitting to her story a bit.

The Character Creation tools sometimes are too hard to use and take a lot of time to get the final results, while other times they don't have enough options. My character hair style in Skyrim is not the one I wanted, but the one closest to it. Yes, I know the helmet would cover it, but it is a creation of my imagination, so I still wanted more options.

Other thing I miss is body modifications, like choosing skinny or fat, tall or small, muscular or slim, and yes, busty and waist size. Almost no game give you body tools. A shame.

And why not all multiplayer games, like Battlefield and MW3 don't let you customize your soldier, aside the occasional camo? I see no reason aside cheapness to don't allow us to customize more freely our characters. Others could allow us to small modifications, like Uncharted allowing us to chose Nathan's clothes when its story don't demand a specific outfit.

Most of us probably have spent time playing around with the Character Creation tools. It is fun, I must admit. Not for a full game, but as a part of the interaction. So I leave with a question: Which character you created you liked most?

PVC stands for Plastic Videogame Comics (I swear!), and it will be posted whenever it is possible. It is done with a camera that is not mine, a free photo editor who allow me to put the balloons and a guy who, yes, have done piracy in the past. Arrr.

It is funny how people defending piracy always find a way to justify it. I am yet to find a single pirate who admits he do it because he is too cheap to buy a legitimate copy. That is the real reason for most people to pirate a game. See, PCs costs money, consoles costs money, internet connections costs money. So, unless you stole all those things, gaming costs money, even if you are not paying for the games.

If you are so poor that you can't afford games, maybe you have other priorities, like food, electricity and water to worry about. Entertainment is the first thing we cut if we are in money troubles. And DRM is not the guilty part about piracy, since even games without it, like Witcher 2 are pirated (more about it later). Neither is price, as even games like the Humble Indie Pack were pirated, despite being as cheap as a single cent. And this one was for charity.

If games are expensive, why not wait for them to drop price, as all of them do? Or buy the cheaper Platinum/Best of/Game of the Year edition? No, mister pirate cannot wait for it, must play it now! And about the demoing it first? How about games that have a demo? The demo is never enough. And how about games without a demo? How to know if it is any good? Playing at a friend's house, reading reviews and You Tube is not enough.

The truth is pirates always have an excuse, and they use great logical fallacies to justify it. When everything fails, they accuse their accusers of being hypocrites because they must have pirated things before. Well, I did my unfair share of piracy when I was an unemployed student, but it was not to demo the game or to fight DRM. It was because I would not reduce the number of games I play to buy new. It was not lack of money, it was me being a cheap asshole.

Now, yes, thievery =/= piracy. But it is illegal and immoral. See, if anyone got one of my blogs and start using it in their sites without paying me, I would be pissed AND losing money. I worked hard to do my blogs to see people enjoying it without my consent.

You can say that not every illegal copy is a lost sale. I agree. But how many are? 1%? 5%? 10%? If companies discover a incredible way that stops piracy, how many pirates will fork the money to buy legitimate copies? How many would really suck it and stop gaming?

Which leads to the second part.

Videogame companies are doing their anti-piracy systems wrong. DRM is a utterly failure who just hurt legitimate buyers without stopping piracy. So I think they should give up on the DRM thing. But they can find a way to fight piracy still.

Why not making a challenge, where people would receive, let's say, 5 million bucks to create a non-intrusive, hassle free anti-piracy system? I bet a lot of the guys who spend their time making cracks to games would spent this time trying to stop piracy. I mean, 5 millions is way worth than playing Batman AC free, right?

Piracy is wrong. Every time you pirate a game it is you saving $60 while the creators of the game, the guys who spend millions to do it receives nothing from this copy. If you haven't the option to pirate a game, would you stop playing games? If your answer is no, then why you pirate games? If the answer is yes, then why you game?

PVC stands for Plastic Videogame Comics (I swear!), and it will be posted whenever it is possible. It is done with a camera that is not mine, a free photo editor who allow me to put the balloons and a guy who thankfully is not your only source of fun.

I will not extend myself here. Monopoly sucks. I live in a country where telephones where a monopoly till 1992. This meant that a phone line was worth thousands despite the service being very shit. Today that we don't have the monopoly anymore the lines and fees are cheaper, the service is better (but still sucks) and if my phone company does not provide me with the minimum service I believe I deserve I can always change to another one.

So, next time you claim how company A is way better than the rest and that should be the only one, remember the thing: free competition is the only incentive a company have to do better! If they are the only one providing this product/service, they have no reason to do better and/or cheaper. Even companies that today we can consider good ones, as soon as they become a monopoly, they very well can became the Empire. They will fuck their consumers. Badly.

So, never, ever desire for a monopoly. Believe me, nothing good will come from it.

PVC stands for Plastic Videogame Comics (I swear!), and it will be posted whenever it is possible. It is done with a ten years old camera, a free photo editor who allow me to put the balloons and a guy who treats all animals with respect.


I am a veterinary by formation. Have visited my fair share of farms and slaughter houses. I can completely guarantee you that most places are NOT torture sites for animals. Most of those places treats animals kindly and take their well fare as much as anyone do. They do their best to make the animals live in comfort and tranquility and to die painless. That is, of course, most places I know.

And yes, there is places where animals are mistreated and we must not tolerate that. The best way, of course, is to not buy products from such precedence and inform people who those people are. But keep in mind, not every farm and slaughter house are horrible, inhumane places.

If you blindly believe PETA, there is no such place and you must go vegan. Oh, and you cannot use leather and keep a pet. Of course, PETA have horrible videos about how horrible are the places who raise animals for commercial purposes. But then, those videos are nit picked to make a shocking impression in the viewers and PETA do their hardest to convince the viewer that those are the rule, not the exception.

I am against some things humans do to animals. I am against hunting when you have the option of acquiring meat from farms, or because of the fur. I am against animal fighting for sport, like cocks and dog rings. I am against people who kills or abandon newly born animals because they don't want them. I am against people who hurts animals for the laughs.

But I don't approve PETA and their terrorist tactics, their misleading campaigns and their bullying attitude. The greatest problem is that it make legitimate organizations trying to warn people against animal abuses seem all a bunch of misinformed lunatics. I am all for ethical treatment of animals. But it does not mean that I need to go vegan. Farms and slaughter houses are not a circle of animal hell. Believe me.

We all must take care of animal well being. But the PETA's way is not the right way.