Good Morning,
I hope this Wednesday finds all of you well – happy, healthy, and enjoying the arrival of the spring weather. I wanted to address some of the recent events in the news – both from the national scene and from my neck of the woods up here in West Central Wisconsin.
This past weekend in the Village of Cameron, Wisconsin, two police officers lost their lives in a shoot out with an individual they had pulled over on suspicion of a stolen vehicle. Details are still coming in, but on a human level the police officers were loved by the people around them and they will be deeply missed both by their families and the communities where they lived and worked.
On Monday, a bank employee went into the branch where he worked and opened fire killing five people and wounding eight others before he was killed in an exchange of fire with the police responding to the call. The shooter purchased the rifle used in the shooting legally, and according to a report in the New York Times, was rumored to be suicidal. Yet another tragedy in an unending list of victims of mass shootings.
We bathe ourselves in violence every day; in television shows, in movies, in video games, in many popular sports (Martial Arts, MMA, Boxing, Football, Wrestling). Violence is big business not just in entertainment also in the military industrial complex, the firearms industry, and field sports such as hunting.
Mental health (or Illness) has for too long been a punchline to a joke that everyone knows but not enough people take head on. Questioning a man’s masculinity is immediate once they come forward and admit they need treatment or are suffering from depression or suicidal ideation. People suffering from mental illness are stigmatized, placed on an island, and are better off seen but not heard.
There are solutions to both the issues of mental health and violence and their complex relationship, but no one cares or wants to hear them. We need a change of approach, but our society refuses to come to any table in any venue to discuss them in a rational manner. There are too many camps and loud voices shouting they have the “one size fits all solution”.
From now on, TwoCowsGaming will be using a new approach to our stream.
TwoCowsGaming will no longer stream hyper-realistic first person shooters such as Call of Duty, Battlefield, or Sniper Elite. There are dozens of others, but you get the idea. We will also no longer stream Fortnite, The Finals, Deadrop, or similar games despite their near future or fantastic nature. We are not sure we’re even going to play such titles any more. We do not enjoy the way they affect our emotional state with respect to anger, anxiety, depression, and frustration. If we do play them, it will be in our spare time away from the stream. There may be a time we return to some of the above titles, but at this time, they are no longer part of the rotation.
TwoCowsGaming will instead focus on playing RPGs, Tactical RPGs, sports titles such as Madden NFL 23 along with a variety of racing games. 4x Simulations such as Civilization, Galactic Civilizations, or Stellaris may find themselves in rotation as well. Though these games can be frustrating, they don’t have the same negative impact on our psyche that other, more violent games have.
Thank you in advance for your support as we transition to this new format. We love you as our fans and hope to continue building our relationships moving forward. The future of TwoCowsGaming is bright because of you.
Regards,
Johncow
2cowsgaming.com 