Okay, so I'm not accustomed to starting a blog post with 'WTF?' but, seriously, WTF?

I don't watch a lot of TV, only in the morning to get news and weather, but during my 20-minutes or so of Channel 7, I not only saw two different advertisements for Mother's Day game bundles that included either a Wii console with Wii Fit or a DSi with Brain Training, but also a few of Nintendo's own ads, which, as many of you know, feature polished-looking happy families having fun in their living room (I mean really, no one's family is THAT happy).

And then, to top it off, Sunrise is running a Mother's Day comp sponsored by Nintendo (among others) where one of the prizes is...*drum roll*...a Wii and Wii Fit.

Either Ninty is saying Australian middle-aged women are fat, or they're seriously pinning a lot of hope of this year's Mother's Day sales. It will be interesting to see if the campaign works or not.

I recently had the pleasure of chatting to Seth Rogen (Knocked Up, Superbad, Pineapple Express) during the Sydney leg of his promotional tour for the upcoming animated film, Monsters vs Aliens. Besides lending his voice to one of the main characters in the film, Rogen also voiced characters in the video game and, as it turns out, he's an avid gamer himself.

Rogen says he plays games all the time as a way to shut off his brain from the outside world and also, not surprisingly, 'because they're just damn fun'.

Among his favourites: Street Fighter IV, Call of Duty: World at War, and Spielberg's Boom Blox (which he often gets beaten at by his girlfriend).

Rogen also talked about penning screenplays with the Judd Apatow crew, his recent Vanity Fair shoot, improvising in front of the camera and writing and starring in an upcoming episode of The Simpsons.

Yeah!

So, I wrote this story about piracy.

And I was totally surprised by some of the comments on this story. I mean, fair enough, nobody is a saint. But I was accused of writing a biased article, a one-sided view of the issue. But what other side is there? Do people really expect me to write a story that defends video game piracy?

Apparently, some do. They accused me of not seeing things from the 'pirates' point of view'. Maybe, once upon a time, I would have agreed that there is another side to this whole issue. But not after talking to half a dozen developers who confessed how pirates more or less single-handedly brought down their businesses. Or how they're too afraid to speak out about how damaging game piracy is, lest they anger gamers who, predictably, will react by pirating even more games.

And all this talk of the games industry making more money than the film and music industry. Sure, but what percentage of that money goes to these developers? The ones who make the games? The ones who suffer when their games are pirated? The ones who, at the end of the day, will lose their jobs?

Nobody pays any attention to that. Nobody even thinks about that. To them, the games industry is just one giant entity; an entity with too much money. Anyone who pirates is therefore a hero. An underdog. A guerilla fighting for the rights and freedoms of those who deserve it.

But let's get one thing straight. The games industry is not the film industry. And it's not the music industry. Games are not made by million-dollar studios serviced by hundreds of people. They're not made via a pre-conceived formula, thrown together any which way in order to make the Christmas rush. Games are made by people, albeit small groups of people, labouring day and night to put their talents to good use. If you pirate games instead of paying for them, these are people who will feel the effects. And where's the heroism in that?