/u/TAKEitTOrCIRCLEJERK blows his top and spills hot buttery rage all over a /r/news thread. (np.reddit.com)
SubredditDrama
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139 comments submitted at 03:29:21 on Dec 6, 2014 by ninjaofpatience
/u/TAKEitTOrCIRCLEJERK blows his top and spills hot buttery rage all over a /r/news thread. (np.reddit.com)
SubredditDrama
60 ups - 0 downs = 60 votes
139 comments submitted at 03:29:21 on Dec 6, 2014 by ninjaofpatience
I like the guy as a mod, but he seems to have an affinity for starting shit storms.
A fun thing to do is to make a comment implying that women attention-whore by making themself the focal point of pictures intended to be about something else. He'll throw a massive rage-filled copypasta at you.
Hah, I actually stole that copypasta from elsewhere. It's instructive but it's also super-old.
Also, just to make my point clear here: there actually is a shit-ton of corruption in gaming journalism. Like, if you're working for IGN and you get free advance systems, free computers, free advance access to games, and free literal cash in your pockets from gaming companies, is it surprising that you'll continue doing whatever got you those things?
To me, though, it's obvious that KiA and the #GamerGate movement has conflated AAA-title, Activision-style literal corruption with random indie journalists befriending random indie devs. There's also a dash of "SJWs are controlling the narrative", which I think is super-ultra overblown and distracts from their main point.
If you want to take RPS to task for accepting cash for reviews, I'll be at your side with a pitchfork and torch. Blaming "SJWs" for this stuff is silly, if this is really about corruption in gaming journalism.
> To me, though, it's obvious that KiA and the #GamerGate movement has conflated AAA-title, Activision-style literal corruption with random indie journalists befriending random indie devs. There's also a dash of "SJWs are controlling the narrative", which I think is super-ultra overblown and distracts from their main point.
It's because a lot of the rise and rise of modern indies is a backlash from the aversion to AAA's doing shitty things. So indies have a flood of attention and money and good press.
Suddenly it turns out all the indies are in each other's beds or pockets and that the parts of the press with the most glowing reviews of indies also happen to hang with them and sleep with them and go on AAA-style press junkets with them.
It probably felt like a betrayal. Indies are smaller and have a face, and the consumers felt like they had a personal stake and a relationship with the indie developers, and then they found them behaving in a very AAA-style manner.
It isn't the same level of corruption, but it's a fuckload more personal.
Huh. This is a really fascinating point. I'm just gonna pepper you with questions, I hope that's OK.
>It's because a lot of the rise and rise of modern indies is a backlash from the aversion to AAA's doing shitty things.
Like what? I don't remember gaming scandals, but that's something that could definitely fly under my radar.
>So indies have a flood of attention and money and good press.
Hmmmm... like, from places like Gamasutra? Or, I guess more to the point, I know that Gone Home and Depression Quest got some press, they've been part of this shitstorm. Is the flood of attention and money THAT huge?
>Suddenly it turns out all the indies are in each other's beds or pockets and that the parts of the press with the most glowing reviews of indies also happen to hang with them and sleep with them and go on AAA-style press junkets with them.
OK but we have to be honest here, too: this is personal, but the money train is elsewhere. I am taking your "it's personal" point. I just feel like indies is such a small piece of the billons-of-dollars game industry. That's why the disproportionate focus on indie devs and indie writers is so strange to me.
>It probably felt like a betrayal. Indies are smaller and have a face, and the consumers felt like they had a personal stake and a relationship with the indie developers, and then they found them behaving in a very AAA-style manner.
>It isn't the same level of corruption, but it's a fuckload more personal.
So how many dollars is a personal relationship worth? That's a fucking interesting question. Thanks for raising it.
> Like what? I don't remember gaming scandals, but that's something that could definitely fly under my radar.
I'm sure someone could fill you in much better than me - I'm not much of a Day 1 purchaser - but the godawful Sim City release that was basically a broken game, shit like the new Assassins Creed pre-purchasing thing where the game on day 1 didn't work, the Shadows of Mordor game having an embargo on releasing copies to the press and strongarming the media into producing good reviews. That's what comes to mind, but I'm sure others could rattle off a bigger, more fleshed out list.
>Hmmmm... like, from places like Gamasutra? Or, I guess more to the point, I know that Gone Home and Depression Quest got some press, they've been part of this shitstorm. Is the flood of attention and money THAT huge?
Yup, check out the Steam catalogue and note all the green light projects. Some end up being amazing games - Faster Than Light (FTL), or Kerbal Space Program, for instance. Some don't, sure, but it's definitely an avenue for indie developers to get games made and exposure that they otherwise wouldn't.
>OK but we have to be honest here, too: this is personal, but the money train is elsewhere. I am taking your "it's personal" point. I just feel like indies is such a small piece of the billons-of-dollars game industry. That's why the disproportionate focus on indie devs and indie writers is so strange to me.
Sure, but the vitriol is because they're closer to the people involved. If you have Twitter conversations with Phil Fish and chat with the Kerbal Space Program developers on /r/KerbalSpaceProgram and then find out they're doing something that you loathe, you'd feel personally betrayed.
>So how many dollars is a personal relationship worth? That's a fucking interesting question. Thanks for raising it.
No problem!
> If you have Twitter conversations with Phil Fish and chat with the Kerbal Space Program developers on /r/KerbalSpaceProgram[1] and then find out they're doing something that you loathe, you'd feel personally betrayed.
So when you write "something that you loathe", what do you specifically mean? You mean trading reviews for access?
It's weird because they assume that this is a transactional model. That whether you're a dev, writer, producer, journalist, director, or executive, that leaking to/knowing/interacting with/dating/having sex with/sharing an organization with "SJWs" means that there's some kind of taint going on.
> So when you write "something that you loathe", what do you specifically mean? You mean trading reviews for access?
This might vary from person to person, and I don't have as personal an investment in it as some people, but a common one is the perception that journalists are actively hiding their personal connections to the people they're writing about.
If you were to compare it to another quasi-journalism, sports journalism, you'll see a lot of sports journalists are in and around locker-rooms all day and develop close relationships with certain players. So when they're asked to write an article about that player, they'll often say "Well, as we all know, x is a favourite of mine, so I might be a little biased when I say y team should play him more/not cut him/whatever".
The failure to acknowledge close relationships brings the journo into question, and because they haven't explained the boundaries of where their personal and professional relationship with the producer starts and ends, it's understandable there's a backlash against the producer, too.
It brings into question the possibility that the indie developer is manipulating the press, and that may well have happened - the whole Fine Young Cannibals kerfuffle being the obvious example.
As an outside observer who thinks GGers have some valid points in there, that's what stuck out to me - that games journos don't declare their biases, and games developers using their social media profiles and/or media contacts to push an agenda which can damage other developers who don't fall in line.
>the godawful Sim City release
I'm still mad about this :C
I pre-purchased sim-city. The servers were so fucked that even when I checked back in 2 months after launch, the game still wasn't working correctly and was more or less unplayable. Sure they gave me free shitty discount games for my troubles, but I will never stop being salty about Sim City. Fuck that was brutal.
You realize the Five Guys thing didn't actually happen, right?
edit: Holla back, Gators. You guys still trying to deny that "cultural Marxism" is a white nationalist buzzword?
Where did I say it did?
Nathan Grayson's behaviour was questionable enough to warrant Kotaku's subsequent comment, and the failure to disclose when another journalist happened to be living with the creator of the game she was writing on warranted editorial comments to be added to the article.
There was certainly some behaviour which brought journalistic integrity into question. Yes, games journalists blah blah no integrity, but failure to disclose when you have a personal stake in the thing you're writing about is pretty shitty behaviour even for glorified bloggers.
> Suddenly it turns out all the indies are in each other's beds or pockets and that the parts of the press with the most glowing reviews of indies also happen to hang with them and sleep with them and go on AAA-style press junkets with them.
Nathan Grayson didn't sleep with Zoe Quinn now?
The part that you are missing is that from their perspective the collusion and too-close relationships are just as bad or worse than paid reviews.
Here's why. The reason why paid reviews are bad isn't because money changes hands. It's because the payment reduces the level of trust that the reader has in the critic or journalist's ability or willingness to be objective and tell the truth. And collusion has that same effect.
Hell, it's 2014. We've come to almost expect the incentives from big studios so the reader takes it into account. And generally even the most mercenary of reviewers will balk at outright recommendation of a shit game that will get them labelled a shill and lose all credibility.
But reccommending a shit game because your friends made it? Or pushing a specific agenda and point of view that is irrelevant and/or antagonistic to the people reading the review? That hasn't yet been called out as inappropriate and undesirable behavior. And it should be. It really should be.
Yeah, I see where they're coming from there. It's not an unreasonable complaint, it's just devoid of context, IMO.
I think this kind of stuff is always going to happen. Hell, it's part of the concept of "journalism" - you find good stories, you get access, you see who's willing to tell you what and how you can report it to the masses.
Think about political journalism. All the "best" political journalists of all time had an enormous amount of access to politicians, bureaucrats, consultants, and big business. They took that information, they processed it, and they tried to give their readers insight into the shape and feel of the landscape.
So translated to gaming journalism, neither the literal cash-for-review access nor the dev-meets-journo types of "corruption" are very surprising, right? People are people, money is money, power is power, access is access. Hell, because all these institutions are private and not public, you don't even have to worry about breaking laws.
My frustration is that 99% of this corruption is coming from moneyed/institutional/influential groups, but 50% of the discussion around pro-GG folks is about Social Justice Warriors. It's super fucking disproportionate. If this is actually about Ethics In Gaming Journalism, you need to start looking at the journo shops that get early access to games that are being produced by the largest companies.
To hell with all your Literally People. Drop that. That's the smallest of small potatoes and the disproportionate focus on it makes you look petty. You want ethics? Quit reading, en masse, any site that gets early access. Because access ain't cheap.
I really don't see why ideological reviews are a bad thing. That sort of thing is just regular criticism for any other art forn.
I would say they can say what they want about the game based on personal beliefs as long as say they make that known but still giving it an objective review. I think that can help people, especially parents know if they should buy a game for their kids.
> but still giving it an objective review
There is no such thing.
They aren't a bad thing, however it is also okay to criticize the reviewer for failing to properly review the game if they neglect talking about the majority of the game in favor of talking about a political perspective and merely using small aspects of the game as reference.
If you're no longer judging the game as a game, but rather judging it as a political tool, then you're going to get called out on it. This is why Jack Thompson was laughed out of the conversation on games, because he refused to look at them AS games. These reviewers are sliding into the same practice, and it's not welcome.
What's wrong is that these people aren't defending the art in their criticism. The critiques are made to create controversy or FEED off it. They aren't constructive or introspective. Criticism is welcome in the gaming community, when it is for the good of games and gamers. When it is just to tear down art, tear down artists, enthusiasts, destroy cultures, it's called out. If their perspective blinds them to the actual product as a game, we need to draw attention to that.
Especially if they state their perspective as authoritarian incontrovertible fact, and ignore the subject matter in order to do so.
> Or pushing a specific agenda and point of view that is irrelevant and/or antagonistic to the people reading the review? That hasn't yet been called out as inappropriate and undesirable behavior. And it should be. It really should be.
Sorry I agree with where you were going but not the last sentence. Reviewing a game from a feminist viewpoint is up to the reviewer. Just because the gamers don't like talk about feminism does not make that unethical and this is one of the biggest misconceptions GG has about "ethical reviews". Just because you do not agree with " a specific agenda in a review" does not mean it is unethical. It means you disagree.
>It means you disagree.
Which is, you know, a good thing. I like reading film/TV reviews from people who disagree with me (if they're eloquent and well-argued), it broadens my understanding of the work and forces me to view it from a different perspective. Gamergaters seem to have an issue with doing that.
Exactly. And now we have hit the crux of the issue. Many gamergaters and to some extent gamers, believe that games should always be apolitical. They forget that the plots and themes of games especially AAA titles are not apolitical, not in the slightest and that reviewing games as more than toys is the only way to mature the medium to be take seriously. Every form of media went through that stage.
Games like gone home and depression quest that stretch the definition and perception of what can be called a game are exactly what we need in order to diversify games and not get stuck in this rehashed model AAA wormhole where we get Assassins creed: bugs and glitches and then have to pay for DLC apology content.
In that sense, demanding reviewers not review political elements of games politically is utterly childish and frankly regressive and highly conservative in motive.
It's interesting how Ebert is idolized on reddit (and by me too), even though he was a very outspoken critic of certain movies because of their portrayal of women. I'd wager that's because most redditors just don't know that about him.
Nah, they know about him. It's just that games are viewed as toys rather than narrative mediums by a large group so they don't see how political opinions should factor into it. It's immaturity/ignorance and stubborness to an extent.
> We've come to almost expect the incentives from big studios so the reader takes it into account.
It's okay because they've always done it! And somehow I know that everyone knows about it and takes it into consideration.
>Or pushing a specific agenda and point of view that is irrelevant and/or antagonistic to the people reading the review?
Then don't fucking read it because you don't care about the same things they do. There's nothing unethical about having a god damned opinion about something other people don't care abuot.
How can he come in here and tell people how to act, when he is behaving in there exactly how he scolds people for behaving in here?
It's hypocritical, but he enforces the rules around here, more or less, and is a volunteer. I don't really think his starting shit elsewhere should affect that much.
I am biased, see username.
So, you're saying that basically...he does it for free?...and he takes his job very seriously?
He does a good job here, and he does it free. That's all we can ask of him, his actions outside of here are irrelevant to his position here.
I don't shame people for arguing on the internet. That is a constant, that will always happen. There's no scolding.
There are a couple narrow rules for this subreddit, itself, but the arguments we link to are value-neutral, from the mods' angle.
>Grow the fuck up, child.
What would happen to my comment if I said that in a SRD thread?
I'd remove it. /r/news doesn't share rules with SRD though.
The thing is, when you say something like that (even in /r/news or another sub), people will find it hypocritical and will/try to use that against you.
>Your comment will likely be removed if it: is unnecessarily rude or provocative.
Not that different. It's not really a problem if you don't feel like you have to follow other subreddits' guidelines, but you might as well admit it.
You're right, I didn't read the rules properly. That's my fault. Sorry to their mod team: /u/douglasmacarthur, /u/Kylde, /u/AyeMatey, /u/CandyManCan, /u/Elderthedog, /u/LuckyBdx4, /u/NickWasHere09, /u/ani625, /u/pomosexuality, /u/IKingJeremy, and /u/AutoModerator
As the moderator and high chancellor of the heavily trafficked /r/addamsfamily, I think that was a classy move on your part. Cheers.
I've offended AutoModerator many times in the past. We have a more-or-less agreement at this point, though. I can say whatever I want to him and he's allowed to fuck my wife.
He's an awful mod.
Why exactly? I've never really seen him over-do anything. I know he has a rep as a SRSer but I've talked to him on IRC and he didn't strike me as that snarky SRS type.
This was me bored at work, kind of being an asshole. I'm sorry, I shouldn't've caused drama.
Thank you for the compliment though :)
Dat sweet double contraction
hey, welcome back, I haven't seen you around! How are you, BB?
I sometimes still browse reddit for the big drama happenings (like ZQ or Olafpass), but the new job is just too demanding to still actively comment or be on IRC :(
nah, tits is a good person. I disagree with him. But he's a good mod and person.
Agreed man. Did you know he killed my dog once?
MODZ R HITLER. UPSARKEESIANS TO THE LEFT!!!
/u/TAKEitTOrCIRCLEJERK