Being seen as villain, forever a villain I am.

4th of August, 2011, I will never forget about this day. This is the day where I saw one of the most vicious forms of humanity. When a person wants you to be the bad guy, he/she will find every way possible to make it so. What happened on that day was just a small chapter of my 2 years in National Service. But this one small chapter made my heart chill for eternity. This chapter taught me that for the 2 years, my morality principle is nothing but a mere weakness and once identified as a bad person, people would try everything to make you the villain.

I had been accused of theft. This may sounds like a menial thing but the interrogation made it otherwise. To be frank, everything was just a misunderstanding to start with but it is unfortunate that the interrogator does not see that point. Or should I say the interrogator did not want to see that point. To imagined that the interrogator shares the same rank as me. He had always been mocking me and had treated non-existence for the past 1.5 years. On that day, he was out there to prove to everyone that I am the worst villain in Blazer Battery of 21SA.

The ironic thing about the accusation was that his watch was already found. So why bear so much grudges with me? I did see the watch but I did not take it. So what if I am the 'last person' who saw it? Probably, I am not the last person who saw it because it had been 10 fucking hours since I left the mess and had not enter it. Someone else might had seen it and put it in a safer spot. But the fuck up part about the accusation was he threatened me to confess to on something I never done. The first sentence that comes in my mind to reply his threat is, "Why don't you go fuck yourself?" Okay, I had been rambling so much on this paragraph. So some of you might ask, how did the incident goes anyway?

This was the day where my battery had a cohesion to 'somewhat' celebrate personal who are ORD-ing next day. I actually see this 'celebration' as Hongmen Banquet but this is another side story to it. So I walked to the entrance of 'The Colosseum' in Iluma and I saw the interrogator was staring at me. I could tell that he got something to question me and this can't be good. He face look so darn pissed. So he asked.

"I asked everyone and everyone had confirmed that you are the last person who had seen my watch. So tell me, why didn't you tell me that?"

"I do not know that you are looking for that watch." I replied.

In reality, he had treated me as non-existence and hence I do the same to him by ignoring him in the mess two days ago. But the truth still apply, I did not know that he is looking for that watch. On the side note, I did not actually remember this sort of minor things in my life. I mean, come on, it is just a watch and it is not mine. I had upheld my morality to leave it alone until the owner finds it. Sure, others might not think the same but when we talk about responsibility, the interrogator is at fault for leaving his stuff behind.

"Don't lie to me. I was looking for the watch 2 days ago and you were watching me searching for it." He just repeated his first question in another word so I reply him in another word. "Erm. What? So you are actually looking for that watch?"

"Yes, so why in the first place you did not tell me that you have seen my watch?" This was still the very first question and I am not even a criminal to begin with. I thought that in order to break this ‘while(1) loop’, the keyword was to remind him that his watch is already found by someone else. Hence the reminder "Why are you asking so much about it? Your watch is already found. You should give it a rest"

"Give it a rest? Peter Mark had been caught red-handed for stealing PSP. Should the whole battery give it a rest now?" Yes, finally the loop had been break. But the next question really did not have any sort of link. I saw this question as he was accusing me as a thief so I reconfirmed it. "You are accusing me for stealing now"

"Yes. I am warning you. Don't think that I am afraid to punch you. I give you one last chance, did you steal my watch?" I was shocked! He had threatened me to confess on something I never thought of doing. This was the worst kind of threat ever. I interpret this threat as, "You better be the bad guy I wanted you to be or else!" I really felt that I should taunt him with, "Why don't you go fuck yourself." However I said this to him instead, "What I told you is the truth, no matter how hard you are going to punch me, my answer will remain the same."

So I just realize one thing. For these 2 years, my morality was a weakness more than strength. I upheld my morality for not to take revenge of them in anyway. Sure, I might bitch about them now but never did I reveal their name. It is not because I am afraid of them. It was just because if I seek revenge, this will go on forever. But my 'let bygone be bygone' attitude was seen as an attitude of not treating things seriously. I was seen as I did not take revenge because I couldn't.

In a way, I had the chance of taking revenge of them. I can just be a miserable psychopath and kill them off anyway without caring about others. After all it was just my life and how I am going to play with it. But I chose to just leave them alone, ignoring them and even apologize to them if I did offend them in someway. I just want to put an end to this nonsense. However, they refused my peace offer. All they wanted was to see me in my bitter end. They think I did all these because of guilt and felt they had the rights to humiliate me over and over again. To their eyes, I am just a villain, a hypocrite and a son of a bitch. I am nothing more than a criminal and a prison of war at their disposal. Even so, when a police caught a suspect, it does not make any sense for the police to torture the suspect no matter how much the evidences are point toward him or her. It is up to the judge to decide if the suspect is guilty or not.

Life is all about making choices. It was just your choice to see whether or not someone is good or bad. For this case, I am seen as a villain. Everything I did, be it good or bad will always leaves a negative impression. If I do something good, I will have ulterior motive. If I do something bad, of course I do bad things, I am a villain. Likewise if a person is seen as a hero, for whatever things he did, people will say he did it for a good cause. Someone just killed like a bunch of soldiers who were serving under a totalitarian rule. He does that for a good cause as totalitarianism is evil! But come to think about it. In which moral aspect that tells you that killing is good?

For the past 2 years in National Service. I am being seen as a hideous villain who can't do anything right. I am clumsy in fixing vehicles and my ideas never put emotion into consideration. But just because I am hideous does not make my heart a ugly one. Just because I am clumsy in fixing vehicles does not makes me stupid in general. Just because my ideas never put emotion into consideration does not mean I never care about others overall.

One should not judge a book by its cover. Likewise, one should not judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree. Albert Einstein had this very famous quote. If you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will forever think it’s stupid. To put it simply, if you only judge a person on one task he/she cannot do well, he/she will think he/she is stupid. So in National Service, don't be surprised by the fact that some people can't do things right. They did not choose their vocation, SAF did. Likewise, never to judge a person's intellect just by the way he/she speaks or by his/her education grade. Judge a person's overall.

A Lament over a Dead Game Series, C&C: Tiberium

16th of March, 2010, the official release date of Command and Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight (C&C4). It's already been over a year after the release of C&C4, the last and probably the worst Command and Conquer Tiberium series ever made by Electronic Arts Los Angeles (EALA). Sad to say, the original EALA team was disbanded before the release of C&C4. Thus, there won't be any patch for the rest of the Command and Conquer series published before the release of C&C4.

I saw this coming after playing the close-beta of C&C4. I was so disgusted by the gameplay. It was completely different from Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium War and I will not classify it under Real-Time Strategy (RTS) like Electronic Arts (EA) does. What EA did is just making use of a famous title to sell their new idea, a cheap marketing strategy that betray the trust of the fans and possibly even violate the true purpose of game designing as the only thing that EA is thinking about is making more money instead of making games that are enjoyable.

Once again, EA had betrayed the trust of Command and Conquer fans around the world and made billions out of them and I sympathizes those loyal fans that trusted EA blindly without seeing a clear picture of what’s going on. There were two major features of a RTS that were removed in C&C4, resource gathering and the need of building a base. Even in old RTS like Dune II and Warcraft, they have implemented resource gathering as a need to build up an army to overwhelm your opponent and building and organizing your base formation is an important asset of a RTS. The focal point of a RTS should be build up your base, collect resources, build up an army and decimate your opponent’s base. Not having a ‘crawler’ unit going around spamming units that doesn’t need resources and capturing checkpoints to build up a counter in order to win. These are the golden rules made by the first generation of RTS but yet they are broken by C&C4.

Probably some fans might argue that it shouldn't be about the genre that makes a game 'Command and Conquer'. They are right. At times, it's not really about the genre of the game that makes a game worthy of a title. It is also about the story. Command and Conquer: Renegade is a First-Person Shooter developed by Westwood Studio, like other Command and Conquer Series, it holds the title 'Command and Conquer' but it is definitely not a RTS as I already said that it is a First-Person Shooter. However, it features an in depth side-story of the First Tiberium War that is concluded with GDI manage to stop Nod's Project ReGenesis. The ending is simple, but at least we get a sense of what happen in the end. Unfortunately in C&C4, EA has rushed the game so much that they screw up the ending. Most of the fans were expecting an epic ending on GDI finally being able to destroy Nod for good or Nod having an epic scene of 'ascension'. However, both GDI and Nod ending feature a white screen with Kane getting into a pencil-drawn Scrin portal that has a poor portal animation. The difference between the 2 endings is minimal and hardly classified as epic. Both ending just conclude Kane has 'ascended', so what's the point of playing through the campaigns of GDI and Nod when they get the same conclusion.

Whenever EA released a new 'Command and Conquer', they will ditch the previous one. A very good example I can use here is Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3. Even before Command and Conquer 4 is release, EA have stop patching the game. It's already been 2 years and Red Alert 3 is still at 1.12. Remember, Red Alert 3 is just one Command and Conquer Series before C&C4. This just simply shows that they don't care about their fans and all they wanted is to proceed to publish the next money-making game. They don't care if the game they made is a good game.

A great series was killed by the tyranny of EA due to the lack of understanding what the fans truly want but just uses the reputation of the series to earn more money and disappoint their fans again and again. Unfortunately EA is always successful in using this cheap marketing strategy and kept making its profit from that. A game designer should not make use of the game purely to make money but use the game to bring entertainment for people. This should have been the culture of the game industry that gaming film should uphold. They might not be able to make too much profit from doing so but they should not succumb to greed. I hope Blizzard do not become another EA.