Gamescrap has 7 chronicles

1. The Gamescrap Video Game Trade School Round-Up!
   

   Player Chronicle -- Posted on Jun 03 2008

   
   
   Good evening everyone, I’m Natsume’s S.C.A.T, and I’ll be your host for the first annual Gamescrap Trade School Commercial Round-Up and Little Britches Rodeo. Ever since my S.C.A.T. team disbanded in 1991, it’s been hard for a lowly Cybernetic Attack Veteran such as myself to get into new lines of work. During all of my downtime, I’ve become enamored with daytime TV – call it a guilty pleasure if you’d like. Jerry Springer, Steve Wilkos, Christina’s Court, baby’s daddy tests on Maury, you name it, I’m watching it! Little did I know that this horrible pastime that has caused my gut to almost split my cybernetic armor (which I wear on a daily basis in case the President ever needs me in the event of Cybernetic attack) would land me a job here…hosting this prestigious induction! Today, crappy game site…tomorrow, being a professional opinion giver on VH1’s Best Week Ever. Huzzah!
   
   Anyone who has found themselves calling off of work for a social/sanity day may be familiar with the all-around trashiness of daytime TV – yet you can’t help but feel compelled to watch it, as if it’s some sort of guilty pleasure, kind of like watching anime porn just to see what all of the fuss is about. Not that I’d know such a thing….moving on.
   
   What’s worse than programming that caters itself to the lowest common denominator you ask? Well, it would be the commercials that cater to the unemployed, broke, and desperate with whimsical promises of a better future by going to their accredited chain of trade schools so you can get that prestigious career as a gun repairer guy. Well, at least that what it was in the past. Nowadays if you tune in to Jerry Springer for your daily redneck brawlin’ fix, you’ll find a new breed of commercials. Now that video games have become more “mainstream”, these “accredited” universities have targeted gullible gamers looking to make their break into the industry. A lot of these schools try to inspire, but end up ranging from the ridiculous, to outright laugh-out-loud hilarious in execution. What’s this? You can get paid just to play games on a nice leather couch? Awesome. Just like the Army, they don’t show you the tedious portions of being a game tester at eight bucks an hour such as turning a console on and off a hundred times or whatnot. Still, the uneducated, hung over, unemployed, and socially unacceptable flock to these institutions in hopes of one day getting themselves a double-wide trailer....which, unlike me, they might actually own!
   
   
   
   Anywho, enough of the introduction already! I present to you four commercials that are currently playing on a television near you. Each one more creepy or hilarious than the one before it…depending on how you look at it. It’s kind of like a clown making balloon animals while exposing himself….that kind of creepy. On to the round-up!
   
   Commercial 1: A couple thousand bucks for some game demos and an education? Sign me the hell up!
   
   Video Link: http://youtube.com/watch?v=BA4wUXQzbuk
   
   
   
   DeVry, at least to this Cybernetic Love Machine and part-time accordionist, has always been a poor man’s MIT where the world’s Wal-Mart quotient goes to learn the mystique and mystery of those dusty monoliths under their desks that they all call “modems” so they don’t have to call a tech support guy in New Delhi to tell them what’s going on. In this commercial, we see DeVry trying to entice the masses with free game demos!
   
   
   
   In addition to featuring the most awkward looking primer gray CG model known to man, this commercial spends equal time covering its cryptic curriculum and shilling the crappy video game demos you’ll receive for signing away your life for upwards three grand a semester. Still, this commercial does little in the way of inspiring the unemployed followers of Springer to stand up from their couches, cast off their stained wife beaters of unemployment, and don the hole-riddled and stained Space Jam tee shirt of Trade School College. The bribe is definitely in the demos…none of which are that great in the first place.
   
   Commercial 2: Mission Possible!
   
   http://youtube.com/watch?v=Mrn2ZxueaK8
   
   
   
   Next in our commercial cavalcade, we’ve got the International Academy of something or other. This fine advertisement features a man with the creepiest facial hair this side of Chuck Norris telling you that your dream of playing games for a living is only a phone call away! To add a little bit of sugar coating on the package, creepy facial hair guy holds up what is truly his crowning achievement, the aptly titled game “Mission Possible”.
   
   
   
   Next up is a montage of what game developers do…that is, looking at pictures on a table and drinking coffee while testers slave away in their easy chairs. If there’s anything these commercials do great, it’s over glamorizing the position of the game tester as someone who sits and slaves away at playing games all day and not sitting in a cubicle resetting a damn Xbox 360 two-hundred times over and over again. Let's get it all straight, it's monkey work...for monkies...and maybe apes.
   
   The most confusing part of the commercial comes in at about halfway in where you get a glimpse of this surreal moment:
   
   
   
   The first thing to my battle-addled brain is “how can this happen???”. The whole thing is like looking at a car crash….like a really BAD car crash where you don’t want to stop and stare, but somehow feel compelled to because you just can’t believe what you’re seeing. Now we can all die happy because thanks to IAD and their dino-face kick, we’ve seen it all.
   
   Commercial 3: “Video Game Geek”
   
   
   
   In this clip, we’re introduced to a guy who looks not unlike a child molester talking about how people used to make fun of him for being a “video game geek”. Now if that VW van he has parked outside with a bed in the back sporting an “I bicycle…and I vote!” sticker is any proof, he’s got the last laugh!
   
   Video Link: http://youtube.com/watch?v=MZEYub8s1F4
   
   
   
   Now I’m not much of a pretty man myself, but it’s common knowledge that all of the jocks I went to Cybernetic High School with ended up with promising careers at the local Texas Roadhouse as servers, so I can identify with where this guy is going. Instead of devoting six hours of my day to court shows and another three towards masturbation for the last seventeen years, I could have stuck it to those bullies in school by attending Westwood. Rest assured, they ‘d all get their up-and-comings come twenty year reunion time! Video Game Geek’s smarmy grin reassures me of my own victory.
   
   
   
   Once again, it’s montage time as game developers sit back and relax without the crunch of deadlines or twenty-four hour days of crunch time. Note the game testers in the background all having a smashing time playing as Kate Karate in whatever bastardized fighting game they’ve got going on there. Does anyone else notice that all of these commercials seem to take place inside of a fire station? Maybe that's just the window cleaner I drank for breakfast kicking in...
   
   Commercial 4: Westwood College Super Generic Game Robot NEO Gaiden #4
   
   
   
   
   
   Video Link: http://youtube.com/watch?v=5kEpBYuS3sg
   
   Our fourth commercial comes to us from Westwood College, the school that single-handedly defined the awful trade school commercial in 2005 with this sparkling gem (http://youtube.com/watch?v=g_S2mL_n8-w). This commercial features more of, what I lovingly refer to as "unspecial defects," you could have experiencany of the previous commercials combined. To further prove that they’re the reigning purveyor of cheesetastic commercials, we’re introduced to a sort of low-rent robot as he attempts to run through some unexplainable cave of lonliness. The entire time, he's babbling about how you too can program his useless plastic chassis to do the same thing, which in this case seems to be shooting skeletons...lollol...of all things! Of course, this all happens just before he unceremoniously kills a family of cardboard shooting range targets by blowing the shit out of the ledge beneath them, followed by mindlessly shooting off into oblivion for the duration of the motivational spiel at the end of the commercial…much like an idiot.
   
   
   
   I haven’t seen an abortion of Sci-Fi and occult like this since I saw that midnight showing of Plan 9 from Outer Space last Halloween at the dollar movie theater. Just when you think the worst is over, we’re introduced to Heather, our friendly customer service representative (as made apparent by the apparatus on her head) who tells us with the sweetness that only chocolate-covered babies know of, to call and get started on the path to a new future. Heather, if a late lunch at the local Denny’s is part of the deal, I’ll set out on any path you want me to! I know now where my true future lies…with you, nobody else….just us, our local Wal-Mart, and a cart with a flock of ten children. Destiny, thy name is Heather!
   
   I hope you enjoyed the first Gamescrap Crappy Trade School Commercial Round Up and Little Britches Rodeo. I know I did, since this is the closest thing I’ve had to work since the world went all “Harvest Moon” and forgot about Cybernetic defenders such as myself. Here’s to hoping that Gamescrap invites me back for another round, lest I’m too busy furthering my future or relishing the bags of cameo requests that come in as a result that is.
   
   
   
   

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Gamescrap has 2 comment s on this chronicle.

1. RyuBlitz
   Posted On Jun 04 2008

   As someone who's planning on earning a Master's in game design, I've seen plenty of these things. You'd think they'd learn how to improve the commercials, wouldn't you?
   
   I think I'll stick with programs such as FIEA at the University of Central Florida. A fully-accredited Master's program developed by EA and run by EA's C.O.O. has definitely got a leg up on any of these little "schools".
   
   Also, they've got there own take on these commercials, about halfway into their "inside look" video.
   http://www.fiea.ucf.edu/shield/showpage.php?page_id=1021
   Gotta love Cliche counters...
   
   P.S.: Thanks for posting all of those on your YT account. I can almost feel my IQ drop watching these...

2. Sn1pe Warman
   Posted On Jun 03 2008

   Intresting