Oh gods why did we do that?
So, we heard that the NBC comedy The Mysteries of Laura, a weird sort of comedy-slash-cop-show about a detective who is also a mother, would be running an episode that featured a killer who plays online games. The episode in question is S1E4 “The Mystery of the Sex Scandal.”
The folks who write prime time TV drama shows rarely do a good job of portraying actual gamer culture or gaming in general so we did not go into this expecting much. Of course, it’s a comedy so perhaps it could resonate with some actual subcultural research?
Of course not.
The online gaming portion of the show only actually opens up slightly over half-way through the entire episode and it’s barely there.
It starts out with a lame, tired stereotype of a bunch of male geek gamers all drooling over a woman as she walks past a video game store. The woman in question is one of the tough-as-nails detectives in the series (note: she is not the main character, Laura, but a different detective.)
As it turns out, one of the employees at the store is involved in the case, he runs, and gets taken into the police station for questioning. This is when the drivel starts reaching flash-flood levels.
The presentation of the online gaming comes along when one of the detectives makes her “gamer cred” by saying things nobody would ever say in real life. What follows is basic terrible tech-speak that’s actually not sensible.
Below is a transcript of the relevant part of the scene where the captured gamer talks about a guy on the MMO who has “god mode” named Overlord who blackmailed him into turning off the camera.
Gamer: So, I was playing Scepter of Shield online. And I saw this guy playing in God mode.
Detective: Impossible. Scepter has the strongest encryption of any game.
Gamer: That’s what I thought. But this guy had flight, invisibility…
Detective: So you’re saying he modified the source code?
What? First, we don’t know if anyone would argue that any game has the “strongest encryption” of any game. Secondly, why wouldn’t someone assume that the person with “god mode” actually had admin privileges—or, equally plausible, was just a hacker? Has anyone ever been in an argument about how someone’s leet hax worked in a game ever mentioned modifying source code in casual conversation?
Of course, said detective is actually a hardcore gamer and admonishes her partner not to tell anyone. Because, after all, being a gamer is embarrassing.
What’s really embarrassing is that next up is the “hacking” scene and that also doesn’t make much sense either.
Detective #2: So, once we trace his signal, we have an exact address?
Detective: Normally, yes. But he’s got a massive firewall. There’s no way we’re breaking in.
Massive firewall. What? (For anyone not in the know: firewalls do not hide your IP address.) It’s about time that someone mentions a TOR or maybe that a proxy server is being used instead.
In order to get around the “massive firewall” the detectives come up with a plan to entice Overlord to hack them. To do this, the gamer detective gets online with a superior character and—we don’t know what she did there’s just a cut between her logging in and her saying she got his attention (and her partner asleep on the table). He responds by talking to her, and she baits him into hacking her computer to turn on her webcam.
By the way, her level 40 Paladin is named “Foxy99”.
He hacks them, turns on her webcam…you can guess the rest of the story from here.
Fortunately, the online gaming portion is blissfully short. It appears in only two segments (between commercials) and then doesn’t rear its ugly head again.
There. If you’re not into this odd form of comedy-cop-drama then we just saved you 44 minutes of dumbfounded, slack-jawed torment; if you are into this show, the gods have mercy on your soul when you get to the online gaming portion.
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