I’m an old geek that has been into gaming since the 70s and when I look over what has happened the the subculture it’s with a bit of horror and dread. During gamer gate I my reaction was “Yes, there is a lot to say about ethics in game journalism but you guys are assholes that just seem to hate girls.”
I guess I always knew how toxic the place was since I would avoid any online games with anybody but a few core friends that I knew were not dicks.
When get down to it gaming is a a fandom and right now most fandoms seem to be having similar but different problems to various degrees. Just look at how toxic Steven Universe fandom has gotten where people have harassed an artist to almost suicide for drawing Rose Quartz wrong the wrong way.
Right now furry fandom has a driving trollies and Nazi problem that community is trying very hard to get rid of. It may be more the case that all these subcultures have some kind of thug problem possibly due to the way social networking gives people megaphones.
I wish there was an easy fix and I doubt just smacking these people up the head while shouting “Stop being dicks!” isn’t going to help.
I’d go further: it’s an outright lie. There are two categories of indie games which will receive that kind of hate from Jim.
The first is Unity Asset Flips. These aren’t games, these aren’t made by developers. What they are is essentially a scam. You use (usually) unity, because unity has what’s called an “asset store”. Essentially if you make a model or some code or whatever, unity allows you to list it in their story, people can buy it, and you get money for it. It’s good for when, say, you’re making an outdoor game and you don’t want your artist’s time wasted on 5 different kinds of rock. What these games do is simply buy several assets off of the store, typically a couple guns, a crate or two, maybe 1-3 zombie models, and a couple of levels off of the unity store, drop all those things into a level with no changes, and list it on steam greenlight. They then make use of various greenlight services to buy their way through greenlight. When you’re on the front page of Steam you’re guaranteed at least a few sales, so usually you make your money back plus a little bit of extra. The really clever ones then simply create a new developer account and list the same game again indefinitely.
The other kind of indie developer that Jim shits on is the shitheads, the ones who will outright attack whatever community they have if they perceive any slight at all about it. For a good example of this, see Total Biscuit’s video on one such developer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfgoDDh4kE0 . One of Jim’s favorite whipping boys in this sense is Mighty No 9 and the other “the creator is back!!!1!” kickstarter games.
Mostly Jim just hates on big companies though, specifically Konami and Nintendo; the man somehow managed to think that Breath of the Wild was only average.
Edited: accidentally linked to the review of gary’s incident, not TB talking about what happened due to his review.
I know that Jimquisition is patreon supported, and shits on early access frequently. But I’m not familiar enough with the patreon supported game critique youtube community to really identify the “culprit”/
THIS. I left Warcraft, podcasting, blogging, the whole nine because of this. I was tired of the gas lighting and hypocritical in fighting over the most inane and stupid things within A VIDEO GAME.
He is an atheist scientist youtuber that got some fame debunking creationists but then got into the whole anti-sjw bandwagon and had some weird hate-boner for Anetia Sarcasean. He isn’t a gamer but went on an anti-sjw crusade and I expect given the larger attention he got from that in the form of views probably drove him into a bad feedback loop.
He has calmed down a bit on gamer gate topics and is now settlement into debunking stuff like solar roadways and the hyperloop.
Seeing Thunderf00t’s fall was kinda sad tbh. Well, the entire “rationalist” side of youtube in general. It used to be pretty interesting. I think Amazing Atheist with his ranty style may be to blame for the start of that downfall.
No, it was pretty good, IIRC… he gave it a 7/10 on his whacky scoring scale which puts 5/10 in the middle of the road (who ever heard of that?) But yeah, I think that failnaut dude is trying to pull a fast one by singling Sterling out like that…
I do enjoy a science video debunking the odd flat earther or creationist on occasion but yeah that you tube community decent into madness was painful and cringy.
Riight, I forgot that the Sterling Scale is actually a proper bell curve centered on the center. Shame that metacritic and friends don’t take that into account.
Agree, Stirling is that me of the few industry professionals who targets the problems in the gaming community too - YTers and streamers pushing g2a or other scams, large companies screwing the smaller developers they hire, and asset flippers/scammers on Steam are his main targets. The reason he is on Patreon was because he was being targeted by shady devs that copyright claimed everything he produced so he couldn’t have his videos generate revenue anymore.
While Randall is 100% correct, the immediate attack singling out Jim Sterling is both expected and unfortunate.
I suspect that if we complain about “gamer culture” in general, we are engaged in nutpicking from the few most egregious examples. It risks the same kind of dishonesty as some loud YouTuber decrying “teh femenazi agenda” or “what SJWs really believe” based upon a few bad examples which statistical evidence would suggest are not representative of the whole. So without due diligence, we would be agreeing to let issues be framed by these often ill-informed or disingenuous people, simply because they are loud and demanding attention.
+1 for Jim Sterling being one of only forces resembling consumer advocacy for video games right now.
I’m going to say, “Yes”, because I, also, am an older gamer who doesn’t know what he is.
I suspect the toxic part of the gamer culture is a minority-young kids who haven’t grown up. I’ve met some good people online. I used to belong to a group called ‘Honorable Players’ in Brood War, that formed because we didn’t like the young punks. But the toxic kids are certainly very annoying.
Of course it’s not representative of the whole. But the high profile incidents and organization of the worst actors can’t be ignored, and when coupled with the toxic cultures of some online games, youtube channels, and subreddits, it becomes more difficult to write off as “just a few bad apples”.
I’m a gamer, and I don’t want to be grouped with the worst elements of the culture, but I do believe that there is a heavy concentration of toxicity that seems to feed on itself.
I am often willing to put up with less than stellar games as long as there’s an interesting hook. Could be just good game mechanics, good combat, the story and characters, etc. Or even just sheer ambition and cool ideas. I hate to see developers shy away from talking about the stuff they make because of toxic gamer culture but i fully believe it. I myself actively avoid a lot of online games because of toxic people and will only jump in if i have friends i can play with.
I wish things were different because i really love to see stuff from developers.
