Ronald Emick III

ENG 486

Professor Fickle

3/21/17

The Mass Effect Theory

 

Literature and film have often been used to discuss controversial issues, and even influence the public’s opinion on the matters, pushing a society’s culture towards radical ideas and away from old ones. Video games have been doing the very same thing, and the Mass Effect trilogy is a perfect example of this. Each of the games has generated controversy around the charged topics that they discuss, and it’s up to the player to decide how to handle the situations. During my last play through of the games, I took time to think about just how many issues from the real world that have been re-framed within Mass Effect’s universe, and it is staggering. I found myself making moral decisions on the justification of genocide (in multiple differing situations), AI and its relationship to organic life, heterosexual/homosexual relationships, human and alien relationships, elitism, racism, sexism, speciesism, gender fluidity, genetic modification, and ultimately the death of life as the galaxy knows it. And I left twice as many smaller issues out of that list. All of this packed into three games of fast paced third person shooting across the galaxy to save it from destruction via Reapers (more on them later). I will discuss several of these issues as they appear in the games, and their implications in the real world, as well as why Mass Effect is the perfect game space for the discussion of these big issues.

The Mass Effect universe is a violent place, with one form or another of conflict always taking place. Throughout the course of the series, genocide is a recurring topic, and the narrative forces the main character, Commander Shepard, into deciding whether it is justified in differing situations. During a mission in the first Mass Effect game, Shepard must decide whether to kill the last remaining queen, and only hope for the Rachni species. The complication here is that five hundred years’ prior, the Rachni had waged galactic war, and nearly annihilated all the other spacefaring races. So, the moral question becomes “do you kill the last hope of an entire species for mistakes that are still felt five hundred years later, or do you give them a chance to redeem themselves, despite a violent history?

The second game in the series presents the issue of Genocide multiple times, in the form of both the Krogan and the Geth. The Krogan were the race that saved the galaxy from the Rachni all those years ago, but their warlike culture (and massive birth rates, considering in a single birth, there can be a thousand children) led other races to fear that they would turn around and destroy the other races. In response to these fears, to keep the Krogan population in check, two races (the Salarians and Turians) designed a genetic modification (known as the genophage) that altered the viable birth rates of the Krogan, so that only a few in their millions of births survive. The Salarians see this as a simple adjustment of fertility, but most of the other races, the foremost being the Krogan, see this act as a form of genocide. Mass Effect 2 has you team up with one of the scientists who help modify the genophage, which naturally leads Shepard into a heated debate over whether this act was justified or not. The third game then puts the player into the position of deciding to cure the Krogan of the genophage, or letting them continue to have the genophage. Again, Bioware is asking the player whether this form of genocide is justifiable or not.

Lastly is the issue of the Geth, a race of machines that had been designed by Quarians, but their AI became too complicated and they began asking questions about the nature of themselves (for example, “Does this unit have a soul?”). They are the main antagonist faction during the first game, ensuring that the player has major grievances with their kind when entering the second and third games. However, things change when you discover that they were the victim in their conflict with the Quarians, and manipulated by outside forces in the first game. When the player makes it to the third game, they are asked to decide between sacrificing the Quarians or the Geth in the interest of gaining the other one for an alliance. Yet again, the question is being asked, is genocide ever justifiable, even if it is an AI race that you have understood as a bad guy for a significant portion of your experiences in this universe?

Mass Effect works to not only push the player to make hard decisions in regards to warfare, but also works to push the player into having relationships with other characters. But these aren’t your standard “man and woman” relationships. Those certainly are there, but they are in the minority. A player has the option to romance the same sex, and even alien races. Each character that can be romanced has their own sexuality, some being straight, some homosexual, and some bisexual. This implies that “Mass Effect’s stance on gender and sexuality is not always straightforward, [and] is clear that the concept of race [and sexuality] becomes meaningless in the future” (Zekany 71)

. This attitude even extends beyond romance, and into forming friendships and attachments to things that would have been deemed unacceptable in the first game. Despite AI being the main antagonist throughout the games (namely the Reapers), “The player depends upon one [Artificial Intelligence] … and may even form an emotional attachment to it” (Geraci 744). These relationships and interactions with characters often result in changes to main story line, including party banter, or even endings being changed. A great example of this is in Mass Effect 2, Shepard can go on “loyalty” missions that each of his companions have, and depending on how the missions play out, Shepard will secure the character’s loyalty. Doing so will make it more likely that the player will succeed at the final mission. This suggests that these relationships are vital to the player’s experience, seeing as how if a player doesn’t secure every character’s loyalty, it is likely that one or even the whole team will die.

The evidence suggests that there certainly are a whole host of controversial issues discussed within these games, but why would the Mass Effect universe be a space that works so well for presenting these issues and then discussing them? I believe this for a couple different reasons. First, it is the design of the game to allow the player to make their own choices and make their own moral judgments about the issues. Another way to put this, as stated by Jenifer Martin, “players are seen to experience self-expression and agency through the narrative structures and design strategies of the game” (Martin 344). The game simply presents you with the issues and the opposing sides of the argument, then drops the player into a situation where they must make a judgement. As applied to the issue of sexuality, “I [the player] was faced with dialogue choices that allowed me to enact my sexual orientation [or that of my choosing]” (Kuling 44). The key words here are “choice” and “self-expression”. These games act as portals through which a player can make their judgments about these issues, and then see their decisions take shape in the form of consequences (for example if Shepard fails to secure the loyalty of a group member, and then they die during the last mission because of this). The game even goes as far as letting the player choose in what order they want to experience these events (except for certain key missions). This is shown through the galaxy map, “a map nominally located on the bridge of the space ship Normandy… used to travel to different locations and start or continue missions” (Punday 94). {[Insert Pic]} If certain missions are played after others, then the way that they play out is different, sometimes having dire ramifications on the final mission or even subsequent games. My second reason for seeing this game as the perfect space for these discussions is the fact that this game is a science fiction game set in a “speculative future”. This game makes its on timeline that links to the real world, and speculates how the future would unfold in a “what if” scenario. This allows for the game designers to take issues from our current time-period, and rework them in the context of the Mass Effect universe. This reason, however, is critical to the discussion of why I am even writing about this.

These games work hard to create a space the breeds and hosts controversial issues, and allows players to discuss them in an isolated environment, free from the judgments of anyone other than what the game provides. Through the discussion of these issues the player is allowed to create their own “ideal future”, where what they think of as right, becomes reality. This “utopia creation” allows a person to explore their viewpoints, and since the world of Mass Effect is very imperfect, their decisions are likely going to result in further imperfection. It essentially acts as a moral choice simulator and results generator. The creation of a true alternate space, while still being tied to the real world in a proposed future, that discusses these issues. This “distancing” of the issues through time allows for the discussion of these issues, without becoming so politically and emotionally charged. This allows for true exploration of the subject.

Additionally, Mass Effect shows a change in the way that culture shifts through literature. In books and movies (and certain games that feature completely linear story lines), viewpoints are expressed by characters other than the readers, and these viewpoints affect those who read it and have differing opinions. It gives exposure to outside opinions. However, this affect is only limited to those who have differing opinions. Mass Effect is unique from other things because it allows the player to make moral judgments and then see the results, the impacts, the consequences of these decisions. It allows a player to see both sides to an argument, where in one play through they choose one option then the next they choose the other. This means that literature can literally show what the players (instead of the characters) think and what judgments they would make about these issues.

This space of experimentation within Mass Effect is a place that few video games can successfully create, but without this form of narrative, video games will always be limited to the same linear style of storytelling, found in books and movies. The interesting thing is that Mass Effect is often referred to as a “cinematic” experience, and yet the way in which it allows the player such agency is the exact opposite of a “cinematic” experience. With Mass Effect Andromeda slated to come out in days, and boasting a story line about expansionism and creating new colonies in a new galaxy, the discussion of how these games interact with modern life and the issues of the times is critical, and ultimately a welcome thing where open discussion is so hard to have.

 

 

Works Cited

Bioware. Mass Effect Companions. Digital image. Arstechnica. Arstechnica, Mar. 2013. Web. 20 Mar. 2017.

 

Conlin, Dan. Races Geth. Digital image. N7 Follower. Mass Effect Follower, 17 Feb. 2015. Web. 20 Mar. 2017.

 

Cullen, Simon. Mass Effect 2 Party. Digital image. The Aculeus. Blogspot, 27 Feb. 2013. Web. 20 Mar. 2017.

 

Geraci, Robert M. “Video Games And The Transhuman Inclination.” Zygon® 47.4 (2012): 735-56. Academic Search Premier [EBSCO]. Web. 20 Mar. 2017.

 

Kaiser, Rowan. Garrus and Tali. Digital image. Unwinnable. Unwinnable, 14 Apr. 2014. Web. 20 Mar. 2017.

 

Kuling, Peter. “Outing Ourselves in Outer Space: Canadian Identity Performances in BioWare’s Mass Effect Trilogy.” Canadian Theatre Review 159 (2014): 43-47. Project MUSE [Johns Hopkins UP]. Web. 20 Mar. 2017.

 

Martin, J. “Game On: The Challenges and Benefits of Video Games.” Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 32.5 (2012): 343-44. Academic Search Premier [EBSCO]. Web. 20 Mar. 2017.

 

Mass Effect 2 & Mass Effect 3. Prod. Bioware. Mass Effect: Complete Tali Romance. DanaDuchy, 28 July 2014. Web. 20 Mar. 2017.

 

Mass Effect 2. Bioware. January 26, 2010. Video Game

 

Mass Effect 2. Prod. Bioware. Mass Effect 2 – A Discussion with Mordin on Genophage. ArchiBarrel1991, 25 Feb. 2013. Web. 20 Mar. 2017.

 

Mass Effect 2. Prod. Bioware. Mass Effect 2: Garrus Loyalty Quest – Saving Sidonis. Shepardcousland, 28 Jan. 2010. Web. 20 Mar. 2017.

 

Mass Effect 3. Bioware. March 6, 2012. Video Game.

 

Mass Effect 3. Prod. Bioware. Mass Effect 3 – Letting the Geth Die. J.C.’s Channel, 28 Apr. 2012. Web. 20 Mar. 2017.

 

Mass Effect Andromeda. Bioware. March 21, 2017. Video Game.

 

Mass Effect. Bioware. November 16, 2007. Video Game

 

Mass Effect. Prod. Bioware. Mass Effect Paragon & Renegade Rachni Queen SPOILER. Kl1n3, 19 Dec. 2007. Web. 20 Mar. 2017.

 

Noveria Rachni Queen. Digital image. Mass Effect Wikia. Wikia.com, n.d. Web. 20 Mar. 2017.

 

Priority Tuchanka. Digital image. Mass Effect Wikia. Wikia.com, n.d. Web. 20 Mar. 2017.

 

Punday, Daniel. “Space across Narrative Media: Towards an Archaeology of Narratology.” Narrative 25.1 (2017): 92-112. Academic Search Premier [EBSCO]. Web. 20 Mar. 2017.

 

Zekany, E. “”A Horrible Interspecies Awkwardness Thing”: (Non)Human Desire in the Mass Effect Universe.” Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 36.1 (2015): 67-77. Academic Search Premier [EBSCO]. Web. 20 Mar. 2017.

 

3/14/17 an hour of game-play over the course of the day, using my phone on U of O campus. The game is no longer fun to me. It feels like I am working to squeeze out enough time in-game for this post, which I suppose is an indicator that Niantic’s game has serious work to do. This also proves my prediction correct, that it wont hold my attention long, and I maintain that it wont until they introduce the traditional battle system. As it is, this game barely resembles the original Pokemon games, which is a shame, because this game has so much potential, as we saw during the “golden months”. During that time, a game as flawed as this brought hundreds of thousands of people together, crossing racial, gender, sexuality, politics and class. Everyone had something in common, and this game was the binding agent. Imagine what it could do, if Niantics goals were to serve the consumers, and produce a game that is as fun as possible, and honors the game that we fell in love with, grew up with, and sometimes got so frustrated with that we wanted to snap our brick of a Gameboy Color. Right now, the game is designed to make progressing incredibly difficult for anyone unwilling to make micro-payments, keep people from using their own imagination to progress, and force they players through hours of grinding (work) in order to get to the gym battles, which don’t reward the player enough for the work that has been put in. Niantic should study World of Warcraft and take notes on the work versus reward structure, because WoW has dominated the MMORPG stage for over a decade, and continues to do so because of its intelligent design of catering to the player’s need to have fun, and the companies need to make money off of the players.

3/12/17 an hour and a half of playing around Autzen stadium on my phone. There are five gyms located around Autzen stadium, and nine poke-stops, and with a single lap around the stadium being about a mile in length, I was able to just make circuits around the stadium, hitting all of the same poke-stops over and over, catching a whole bunch of Pokemon that don’t normally appear around Eugene, because the stadium technically counts as a different climate (Stadium/landmark/arena as opposed to just wetland). This allowed me to work on catching fighting and fairy types. I was getting sick of seeing so many grass and water types so it was nice to get a little variety. Also, interestingly, near the soccer field I have found the fire types regularly spawn (particularly Ponytas). Either way this method has allowed me to gather a good amount of candy for otherwise difficult Pokemon around Eugene, while at the same time increasing my stock of poke-balls and potions (which I had run down on my previous play session in gyms). Also I found out that if I am on my skateboard, that Pokemon go doesn’t register me as moving fast enough to count as a car, so i glided on my board along the river path for several miles and hatched quite a few of my eggs, which was good, seeing as I had an overstock of 2 kilometer eggs. Finding out these loopholes has gotten me thinking about how no matter how many restrictions and obstacles that a producer places on a game like Pokemon Go, people will find ways to subvert the system. Another example of this would be the people who tape their phones to ceiling fans, and that counts as enough motion to record distance. This ingenuity is part of what drive innovation in gaming, and it is a shame that Niantic is trying to stifle that in their clientèle.

3/10/17 Two and a half hours, playing on my phone on and around U of O campus. Today I made it my goal to take as many gyms as possible, by any means necessary. My team consisted of a Jolteon, Hitmonlee, Vaporeon, Kingler, Exeggutor, and a Clefable, with a Flareon, Pinsir, and Starmie all ready for swap outs as necessary. Over the course of my play, I was able to take a couple of gyms between my house and on campus, but once on campus, I found that the gyms had insanely powerful Pokemon that I couldn’t contend with (cp’s of 2500+, where my max level is a cp of 1134). But it was an extremely beautiful day out, so it wasn’t too hard to find someone else who was playing Pokemon Go. I got lucky and they turned out to be team Valor as well, so we worked together to take down a couple of the “easier” gyms on campus. The dynamic of being able to meet someone on the street and instantly having a connection with them is amazing, and honestly I’m surprised that I was able to make that happen, despite the decline of Pokemon Go over the past months. By the time I made it home, I had placed five of my Pokemon into gyms, which allowed me to collect 50 poke-coins from my store rewards (a huge boost for me, as it gets me 1/3 of the way to an egg incubator. The magic of the game that I have previously mentioned has been lost on the new Pokemon Go certainly can be found, but it requires a good amount of effort on the part of the player. I cant tell how I actually feel about this, because on one hand it is up to the player to work for the rewards of a game (for example grinding out levels in WoW in order to be able to participate in the amazing PvP or dungeon diving), but then on the other hand, I feel like it should be the goal of the producers to preserve that magic in the game and not undercut it at every corner and make it the players job to preserve it. As it is, I don’t think this game will ever be able to hold my attention long until they reintroduce the traditional Pokemon battle system, because this frantic tapping nonsense that they have now has absolutely no strategy to it, and frankly, I might contract carpal tunnel from it.

3/9/17 Over the course of the day: 1 hour of game play on the U of O campus. Today consisted of mostly grinding out candy and experience points, since my schedule didn’t allow for me to take time to hunt down gyms or other players to help tackle the high level gyms. As a result, I don’t have much to discuss other some irritations that I have found, that are fairly minor, but enough to be a problem with the game. First, the game has no setting to allow it to run in the background and record your distance walked while the screen is off. It requires the app to be open and the screen on the whole time, which sucks my battery like a siphon to a gas tank. The only way that I have found to counter act this is carrying a mobile charging port, but that is cumbersome and still requires the screen to be on, which is problematic if i want it in my pocket. Alternatively, I cannot even open another app and toy with that, because Pokemon Go doesn’t register that as me playing. Also if i am using an app like Pandora at the same time, Pokemon Go automatically turns that volume way down, even if the sounds and music from the Pokemon game are muted. This seems minor, but for someone like me who uses music nearly everywhere, it is a severe issue with the game. Both of these issues point toward the game feeling extremely disenchanted to me, since it is clear that these decisions were made to maximize profits for Niantic and The Pokemon Company. I understand that their goal is to make money, but this goal is getting in the way of the experience of using the game. Hopefully when I go out this weekend to tackle some gyms, that will counteract these irritating features.

3/7/17 Over the course of the day: 1-1 1/2 hours of game play on U of O campus, using my phone. So after being gone from Pokemon go for so long, I needed to rediscover how to play, but also what Pokemon I had. My main attraction to the game near the end of the “golden months” was dropping them in gyms and making poke-coins that way. So after taking stock and finding which Pokemon needed candy to evolve (mostly Eevees), I decided that I would grind out some levels and catch every Pokemon I came across. This unfortunately led me to discover a new piece of the game. Originally, the game would spit poke-balls at you like they were pennies, but now it seems that it is much harder to gain poke-balls, and  all of the stops provide far fewer poke-balls. This was extremely frustrating for me, since I really am not good at throwing the poke-balls accurately, so I usually end up wasting lost of poke-balls on each Pokemon that i catch. Also I found that the distribution of Pokemon on the map had changed.  originally, the Pokemon would simply spawn randomly, so random wandering was encouraged, since no matter where you went, you had an equal chance of finding the more rare Pokemon. Now, however, the Pokemon tend to spawn around the poke-stops and gyms, and less randomly across the map, encouraging players to move from stop to stop to catch Pokemon and constantly restock their low supply of poke-balls. This caused me to alter all of my routes around campus to hit as many poke-stops as possible in order to catch more Pokemon, but also gain more poke-balls. This is interesting to me because the game is actually altering my behavior, meaning that this gamification of my life is effective, especially because my location and routes (along with other information)is being constantly sent to Niantic. Playing this game has got me wanting to get back into taking gyms, so in a few days I plan to find other people from team Valor to help me take town some gyms.

This is a retrospective post recounting my experience with Pokemon go in the initial months of its release. Despite the intense hype surrounding the release of the game, I had originally been skeptical of the game. It seemed to me that the massive hype leading up to the game would result in a wave of disappointment as the game couldn’t live up to what people had expected of it. Pokemon had such a huge impact on the childhoods of most of my generation, that in order for Pokemon Go to fill those shoes seemed impossible to me. With that in mind, I downloaded the app a week after its release to let whatever bugs that initially came with the app to get addressed. With the game I was pretty frustrated at first, because the system was extremely inconsistent on how good of a connection to the internet that a person needed in order to sign in. Sometimes I could sign in on merely 3G, but other times I would have trouble signing in with full WiFi connection. Despite these issues, however, the experience was not hurt because of the community that was playing the game (which was nearly everyone between the ages eight and forty five). During those first few months of the game, anyone could walk up to nearly anybody else on their phones and find that they had a common interest in catching Pokemon. It was easy to find people to play with and to tackle gyms together, because everyone wanted to. The game had a certain magic to it, that everyone tapped into, but found that the magic was lost after several updates which ruined the ability to track Pokemon and feel like a real Pokemon trainer who can track down the Pokemon that they want to catch. The game become disenchanted, because Niantic was more interested in protecting it’s revenues than the game experience of the users. These actions led a significant portion of their player base to quit. I didn’t quit because of the loss of a tracking system, but instead because it wasn’t the same as the game that I grew up with. I wasn’t able to trade Pokemon or battle in the standard turn based format. Returning to the game feels strange, with the many changes that they have made. Heres hoping that they introduce the real battle system eventually.

2/25/17, two hour long session at my home desktop. Today I created a new character, in the interest to see how people treat me when I am playing as a female character, but not behaving any differently from my undead male. In an effort to make the illusion even more effective, I chose the priest class (since it was one of the most common classes played by women), and named the character “Jaedrose” in an effort to give her a more feminine appearance to other players. Initially my game play was no different from my experience as an undead (other than there being far more players around. It seems that the blood elves are much more popular right now than the undead). But I found that the longer I played, the more people I found approaching me, asking if they wanted to play with me. It wasn’t exactly saying they wanted my help or that they wanted to help me, but I didn’t encounter any of this as my undead male. I turned everyone down (since everything was so low level that party play didn’t really matter), but that didn’t stop people from continuing to ask or try to chat with me. At one point I had two people trying to private chat with me at the same time, and it was pretty freaking irritating. I was able to play long enough to get away from the starting area and do a few quests outside of there, where I did some party play with a male blood elf paladin (which by the way, paired with a priest is scary powerful). He didn’t seem to coddle me and we worked together to finish quests faster, which was nice. I couldn’t help feeling that he wouldn’t have offered to play if I had been my undead character though. I wonder if this gendered experience is universal or if i just had a bad run. In particular I wonder if playing PvP, I would receive different kinds of praise or criticism as my undead male as opposed to my blood elf female.

2/23/17, hour long session at my home desktop. Instead of grinding levels out during this session, I decided to simply spend an hour walking around the Undercity and see what kind of interesting things happened. For the first 15 minutes, I was mainly unimpressed, with just people of varying levels walking around the place on their own respective businesses. It was fun to see all of the different looks and impressive outfits that the highest levels would have, the main commonality being extremely over done. The only event that was really worth mentioning was one moment where there was a rush of people all coming to the Undercity. It seemed like a even mix of levels, so I just assumed that it was the equivalent of a rush hour in the World of Warcraft, but it turned out to be an entire guild playing together. There were around twenty of them (all in groups of 2-4) and they all were working together on high level quests to power level the lowest leveled members to a place where they can help with raids or PvP. They invited me to join, but I politely declined, explaining that I enjoyed the grind, which they understood. They let me know that I could join and be a part of their activities any time if I just message one of them, since someone was almost always on line. The dynamics of that group just blew me away, and I loved the level of respect that they had for others. This is another piece of evidence for the community being much less toxic compared to what it had been. One other thing of note happened during this session, which was at the end, when I decided to take my character to Brill, where all of my quests were based at the time, and when I got there, a level seventy three priest challenged me to a duel. I decided to go for it. At the very least i’d get a good story out of it. So I came out with everything I had, and did a whopping one damage per spell, but he didn’t attack, and let me just grind away my mana to do insignificant damage to him. After a couple of minutes of this, a small crowd had gathered to watch the poor level 11 warlock throw marshmallow spells at a level 73 priest. Some cheered for me and some told me to just give it up, but I kept at it. After at least fifteen minutes, I had only moved his health bar by a couple of slivers, and the crowd was still shouting various encouraging or rude things. The duel continued for around fifteen total minutes, before the priest decided to end the fight by forfeiting. He then logged out after saying, “you have shown courage and a stubborn will. I approve. Check your mail.” I did so, and found that he had sent me fifty gold pieces. So now I am set for a good while as far as money goes. I think I’ll use it to level my professions, but this event is an interesting example of a person who is role-playing (engaging in the social aspect of a game) and not focusing on the achievement anymore. I cant wait to get to the level where it is possible to choose what kind of experience I want to have.

2/22/17, hour and a half long session at home on my desktop. Today I hit level ten and was able to change specializations for my warlock. This is another game system that has been changed since I last played. Originally, a class would commit to a single specialization, and then never be able to change. Now a class can change whenever they want, as long as they are not in combat. This is an interesting dynamic that I wish had been around during my time playing a human paladin. This gives players the functionality to preform multiple different roles while dungeoning (for example, in a single dungeon, a paladin would be able to play all three roles; tank, healer and damage). I decided to focus on the demonology strain for the time being (summoning monsters to protect me), and then try the others later. An interesting moment occurred during my game play, regarding player gender identification. I had been grinding through several quests, working with another player (a male level eight monk), and we ended up discussing how much the game had changed (they had been playing since before the cataclysm update but not as early as I had started). It was during this discussion that I discovered that the player was a woman. It was a bit of a surprise to me, seeings as she was playing as a male undead monk. I asked her why she wanted to play as a male undead and she told me that she didn’t want to be treated unfairly by other players, like she had while playing as a female blood elf. She told me about how players would frequently do her favors or went out of their way to be overly nice and help her, assuming that she didn’t know how to play the game, even at the high levels. What she said bothered her even more was at high levels as a female, people just assumed you were a male playing a female character, because “girls don’t play WoW that long”. As a male undead, she found that people don’t treat her negatively or positively. The male undead is treated as more or less androgynous or simply masculine and no one really cares. People help you if you need help or if you ask, based on your personality and not your gender, which she said was far more important to her. She simply was looking for a “fair” playing experience. This made me want to start a female night elf character to see how people treat me, and discover if there really is a difference. I might do that for my last blog entry.