"Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

[Reyturner]

Chris Thursten said it best: https://twitter.com/CThursten/status/571367010115973120

[BusbyBerkeley]

Infuriatingly, TB used damn near that SAME JOKE on his detractors like a week after that. It's like that dude was engineered in a lab to be the smarmiest, most annoying person on the internet.

[Gaizokubanou]

I second Osmosisch and Vainamoinen.  Dumb use of curator (which has issues outside of this) cause at best it's a snarky joke based on his on-going hyper-implementation-critiquing-persona (as seen by the curator page description that's probably the intention), but I still appreciate him calling out threats and harassers but also he should have known better and could have done better.  I mean he recently dropped a version of his video because he got lot of flak for not understanding some intricacy about game's balance.  If he pulled his video to avoid flak, he should certainly pulled the list (which is primarily there to be snarky) to prevent assholes from using it to pile on others.

 

Still, really not comfortable with asking Ninety-Three to stop because while his/her arguing points may be pedantic (I personally don't think so), I definitely don't see them as combative so it feels really uncomfortable asking someone to just stop talking.  But then again, I have previously asked Deadpan and Twig to stop something because I felt they were being combative out of misunderstanding so... not passing judgement, just saying it feels very on edge : /

[Twig]

You're all wrong 120fps or I burn your house to the ground.

[Patrick R]

I thought this whole thing was so weird that I checked out the curation page and ended up getting sucked into Clicker Heroes because it was on there. If only that game was 60 FPS, then it'd have some integrity to it.

[Vainamoinen]

This group expresses no opinions! Except that it was originally made to "protect you from terrible framerates". I'm sure now that the description has changed that all the members of the group will be just as objective?

 

Yes, I see, I see! Protection, I've heard that before! In protect game developers to make the game they really want.

 

All the authority of the police, yet zero moral compass. Bisquit and his minions ruling with an iron fist.

[Ninety-Three]

 

Yes, I see, I see! Protection, I've heard that before! In protect game developers to make the game they really want.

 

All the authority of the police, yet zero moral compass. Bisquit and his minions ruling with an iron fist.

 

Ah yes, the iron-fisted tyranny of a list. With this collection of game names, TB shall rule over the entirety of Steam, all dissenters squashed! An indie dev shall start making a game that runs at 30, but his friend will whisper to him "Oh you don't want to do that. You'll be put on a list."

 

Why does everyone else see this like TB is declaring war on every game and developer that runs at 30, and I'm the only one who sees a fucking list, a Steam tag by other implementation? What does TB's list to do attract so much of your ire that this  Steam function doesn't? Is it just that you hate TB because he's shitty, and so everything he does must be maximally shitty? It can't be because an internet random used the list to find a dev to send nasty emails to, because I guarantee that's been done with the Walking Simulator tag. Is it really that you object to the connotations of "Police" that strongly?

[BusbyBerkeley]

The steam 'community' shit they added is largely obnoxious as fuck for me. I love video games but lord the people who engage with that shit are just the most garbage people and I would rather be able to browse video games for sale without being subjected to dumbfuck memes in the tags and curators and reviews and shit.

 

Anyway, It seems GG is currently after frequent 3MA guest and generally cool dude Rowan Kaiser for calling out TB as a jerk and serial harasser. Good job on showing them you guys aren't bullying pieces of garbage by combing through peoples twitter feeds because they don't like you're man-baby leader.

 

TB has a legion of mouth breathing toadies who will latch on to anything said by him or about him and he doesn't just tell them to stop fucking attacking people in his name. He's shit. Everything he touches is shit. That he gets people worked up about inane garbage like framerates is shit. Fuck that guy.

[BigJKO]

Ah yes, the iron-fisted tyranny of a list. With this collection of game names, TB shall rule over the entirety of Steam, all dissenters squashed! An indie dev shall start making a game that runs at 30, but his friend will whisper to him "Oh you don't want to do that. You'll be put on a list."

Why does everyone else see this like TB is declaring war on every game and developer that runs at 30, and I'm the only one who sees a fucking list, a Steam tag by other implementation? What does TB's list to do attract so much of your ire that this Steam function doesn't? Is it just that you hate TB because he's shitty, and so everything he does must be maximally shitty? It can't be because an internet random used the list to find a dev to send nasty emails to, because I guarantee that's been done with the Walking Simulator tag. Is it really that you object to the connotations of "Police" that strongly?

Are you fucking kidding me with this? Did you see the guy who made a card game, got threatened and harassed until he changed his game site to specifically mention that it's locked to 30 fps, and yet is still being harassed about it. All because of.. YEP! A list.

This happens every single fucking time TotalBiscuit uses his large asshole of a mouthpiece to get his legion of dipshits riled up about literally *anything*! So yeah, he should've fucking known better and yeah there's a difference between TotalBiscuit curating a (highly broadcast via his social media of choice) list and a regular ol' Steam tags (or any other curated list that isn't curated by TotalBiscuit)

[Gormongous]

Are you fucking kidding me with this? Did you see the guy who made a card game, got threatened and harassed until he changed his game site to specifically mention that it's locked to 30 fps, and yet is still being harassed about it. All because of.. YEP! A list.

This happens every single fucking time TotalBiscuit uses his large asshole of a mouthpiece to get his legion of dipshits riled up about literally *anything*! So yeah, he should've fucking known better and yeah there's a difference between TotalBiscuit curating a (highly broadcast via his social media of choice) list and a regular ol' Steam tags (or any other curated list that isn't curated by TotalBiscuit)

 

Yeah, John Bain has a long and disturbing history of doing perfectly neutral and rational things that just happen to enable random, ignorant, and overwhelming harassment of game devs. Sometimes he apologizes, but sometimes he doesn't apologize, and it's never in a way that avoids blaming the victim for getting hurt by Bain's perfectly neutral and rational thing. It's literally the comic that someone posted a little while ago about a man who's followed around by hornets wherever he goes. It might not be his fault (although honestly, after a certain point, we're assuming that Bain is incredibly ignorant and incapable of learning anything when we keep giving him the benefit of the doubt) but maybe it should be his job not to post something every couple weeks that's able to be weaponized against women, minorities, or developers.

[Twig]

Ah yes, the iron-fisted tyranny of a list. With this collection of game names, TB shall rule over the entirety of Steam, all dissenters squashed! An indie dev shall start making a game that runs at 30, but his friend will whisper to him "Oh you don't want to do that. You'll be put on a list."

Why does everyone else see this like TB is declaring war on every game and developer that runs at 30, and I'm the only one who sees a fucking list, a Steam tag by other implementation? What does TB's list to do attract so much of your ire that this Steam function doesn't? Is it just that you hate TB because he's shitty, and so everything he does must be maximally shitty? It can't be because an internet random used the list to find a dev to send nasty emails to, because I guarantee that's been done with the Walking Simulator tag. Is it really that you object to the connotations of "Police" that strongly?

Because this fuckwad has proven time and time again that he is a massive douchenozzle. He doesn't give a shit about people who aren't himself. He only apologizes (usually without actually legitimately apologizing, and often with victim blaming) to make himself look good, and then he does something new a few weeks later (or sooner) that enables, or implicitly or even in some cases EXPLICITLY encourages his many shithead followers to justify yet another harassment campaign.

Ain't no defending him. He's shit.

[Vainamoinen]

An indie dev shall start making a game that runs at 30, but his friend will whisper to him "Oh you don't want to do that. You'll be put on a list."

 

A gamergate hitlist, correct, and many do exist.

Like this one.

http://deepfreeze.it/journo.php

 

(And, of course, "walking simulator" does the very same crap, it's just a meaningless derogatory tag. Objectively reviewed, all of those games. The baincurated list just gets the traction that comes with his popularity name recognition. An abuse of power, doubtlessly. John Bain thrives on his toxicity, that's obvious.)

 

In related news, Rowan Kaiser of IGN/AV Club called out Bain and GOG on twitter, resulting in a long ranting soundcloud "answer" from Bain, which I'll hopefully get to review later today. Jim Sterling has been tweeting in Bain's support.

[BigJKO]

Said SoundCloud moaning also resulted in TB's goon squad dog piling on Rowan. Of course.

[Deadpan]

There's a huge difference between something that emerges bottom-up from the community like the walking simulator tag and something that, because of Valve deleting the 30fps tag like you mentioned, had to be reintroduced top down by a single individual. The former speaks to shitty attitudes that were already present in the community, and popular re: particular games enough that the damage there likely has already been done (even though there's always room for more damage): the fact that enough people tag something walking simulator for it to show up means it's likely that the developers have already been heckled by those folk.

 

A list, by contrast, only needs a single person to add new entries, and this allow its curator to potentially mark 30fps games that have until now flown under the radar of shitheels as a new target for their misguided anger. A tag emerging is evidence of something that's already going on, a list is a way of saying "go after this one next".

 

And TB in particular has a history of using his megaphone in endlessly shitty ways. Sometimes he apologizes for it, sometimes he doesn't, but I've never, ever seen him address these situations in a way that actually tries to minimize harm for the folk he wittingly/unwittingly sent his fanbase after. Maybe he'll say, like he did this time, that he's sorry for the way his idea was used but you have to admit that the idea was still pretty good, and doesn't that ever spell to his fans how some overly sensitive folk ruined a great concept. Ditto for the popular "I'll stop doing this now because people got upset even though I still think it was a cool thing" and especially for "Stop talking about this already, it's in the past now" (his past maybe).

 

But even if this list had simply been sourced from the community like that deepfreeze garbage, I still think it's next to useless so long as it operates on the principle of just tagging any game with framerate caps without any concern for what type of game it is, how and when it was created etc. Because right now that list features Dark Souls, a game where I applied the framerate fix myself, and the Jackbox Party Pack, Banner Saga: Factions, and all the other stuff I mentioned in my last post.

[Smart Jason]

Ah yes, the iron-fisted tyranny of a list. With this collection of game names, TB shall rule over the entirety of Steam, all dissenters squashed! An indie dev shall start making a game that runs at 30, but his friend will whisper to him "Oh you don't want to do that. You'll be put on a list."

 

Why does everyone else see this like TB is declaring war on every game and developer that runs at 30, and I'm the only one who sees a fucking list, a Steam tag by other implementation? What does TB's list to do attract so much of your ire that this  Steam function doesn't? Is it just that you hate TB because he's shitty, and so everything he does must be maximally shitty? It can't be because an internet random used the list to find a dev to send nasty emails to, because I guarantee that's been done with the Walking Simulator tag. Is it really that you object to the connotations of "Police" that strongly?

 

I'm pretty dumbfounded that you were the person to originally post that Kris Straub comic but now you seem so steadfastly convinced that there was no correlation between TotalBiscuit's Curator page and the actions of his fans, which is exactly what the comic is about. You accused me earlier of missing the point when I said he has other avenues for commenting on games because The Framerate Police is a unique service, but really I'd say that that's sort of context-blind. Like other people have pointed out - and like I tried to express by saying he was painting with the broadest brush - the curation page doesn't deal with any relevant factors which his other channels can. If people are actually interested in his opinions on a given game, they can check his Twitter, his YouTube videos, etc. There, there can ostensibly be much more detail, thought, and not a shotgun blast of titles which are objectively bad and therefore anti-consumer. This list is just a cynical attempt to expand his brand on Steam at best and an obliviously simple way to offer his demonstrably toxic followers a concise hit list at worst. There is no good reason for it to exist.

[Vainamoinen]

Listened to the TB response. No surprises.

• these people WANTED me to endorse their charity stream
• I've been harrassed over my cancer as well
• My family has been threatened, so I can't be a "serial harrasser"
• I only used the gamergate tag twice
• I never linked to the five guys video / would never spread such unsubstantiated rumors
• I never had an interest in Zoe Quinn, she's not important, she's nothing major
• I only heard about Quinn in connection with the game jam that went "famously wrong"
• I was called a misogynist bigot after I "barely mentioned this woman's name"
• I only wanted to talk about ethics in game journalism
• I'm annoyed with Anita Sarkeesian because she puts the violence (!) in video games back into focus
• I've been called transphobic on no grounds whatsoever
• OTHER people want to make everything political
• Other people don't know how it is to be scrutinized for every little mistake you make. They have no idea. 
• Anyone famous is harrassed online
• I have two million followers on youtube, bitch
• "gamergate is two sides" that "claim to be against each other"

 

 

I have all the sympathy in the world for John Bain's condition, really. No one should suffer from cancer, absolutely no one. But that doesn't give Bain the right to make video game culture toxic, I'm sorry. I'm not sure what part of "journalist ethics" Bain talked about when he called Leigh Alexander an alcoholic on twitter. I'm not sure how Bain thought himself in any way distant from the gamergate movement when he actively coached them to be less gamergatey via an "anonymous" reddit post. Or promoted a techraptor gamergate hitlist that notably mentioned Dina Abou Karam, certainly one of the most undeserved gamergate targets to date.
 
Sure, "serial harrasser" is harsh. But it doesn't NOT apply, man.
 
The whole four minutes on not even being interested in Zoe Quinn, those I would assess to be deeply untruthful.
 
Here's what gamergate outlet knowyourmeme.com (yes, they are that) has to say on the matter.
 

Also on August 19th, British video game critic TotalBiscuit published a blog post which denounced Quinn if she had abused the DMCA to take down criticism of her product and lamented the cronyism present in the gaming journalism industry. The post was subsequently submitted to /r/gaming, where comments were mass-deleted by a subreddit moderator.

 
Please, this needs to be in the history books. N4G publishes unsubstantiated, harrassing rumors, article's blissfully taken down... and one day later John Bain starts accusing Quinn, adding other unsubstantiated rumors to the already purported unsubstantiated rumors. This pile of fabricated nonsense had, unsurprisingly, a rabble rousing effect on the reddit mobs. Organized harrassment started there which was subsequently deleted. Which TotalBiscuit vocally condemned as censorship, resulting in an even greater rabble rousing effect. Now, seriously, isn't it entirely fair to say that John Bain had purposefully taken ample part in enabling and encouraging the gamergate cultural suicide here?

 

John Bain was a front row agitator in this, I'm sad to say.
 
Here's Bain, back in November, talking at length about "uninteresting" Zoe Quinn and the oh so important alleged breach of journalist ethics (taken from under a youtube video that shows an Ashly Burch interview regarding gamergate). Note his total lack of research, the unashamed characterisation of gamergate as an insult revenge fantasy, the repeated mentioning of Zoe Quinn's name (her stalker remains blissfully anonymous here) and indeed Bain's spreading of unsubstantiated rumors.
 

So it's important to really know the history behind it. The catalyst was a long post by an ex of an indie developer called Zoe Quinn. In this post, it alleged a conflict of interest between a Kotaku journalist and the developer. [uPDATE: I WAS MISINFORMED. IN HIS POST, ZOES EX DID NOT IN FACT CLAIM THAT GRAYSON HAD REVIEWED HER GAME POSITIVELY. THIS CLAIM APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN MANUFACTURED SOMEWHERE DOWN THE LINE AND REPEATED ENOUGH TIMES THAT PEOPLE BELIEVE IT, HOWEVER AFTER READING THE SOURCE MATERIAL AND ARCHIVED TO ENSURE IT WASN'T EDITED AFTERWARDS, I FOUND NO MENTION OF THIS AT ALL] This information turned out to be inaccurate to a point, it alleged that the journalist (Nathan Grayson) had written a positive review of the game while in a romantic relationship with the developer. This is not true, however what is true is that Grayson wrote an article using Quinn as a source on March 31st of this year, regarding a game jam, in which he promoted her game. In "early April", the two began a romantic relationship. Editor in Chief at Kotaku Stephen Totilo claims he does not see a problem with this, since the romantic relationship began after the article was written, however many people including myself disagree, since it is unlikely that the relationship suddenly sprang out of nowhere and that a friendship was in place prior to this. I and many supporting Gamergate believe this should have been disclosed or that Grayson should have recused himself from writing this article. Kotaku disagrees. However, while this and many other examples of corruption and nepotism are core to what keeps Gamergate moving along, it wasn't even called Gamergate back then, it was called Quinnspiracy or later, Burgers and fries. These two names were abandoned because people wanted to disassociate with Zoe Quinn and any trolling and harassment that had gone on and focus on ethical issues. After 10+ articles were released in the course of one day, claiming "gamers are dead" and using hurtful and incendiary language to condemn the identity of many innocent people, #Gamergate exploded, after the term was coined by actor Adam Baldwin. It was a consumer backlash against anti-consumer articles. Many people felt angry and alienated by them and in my opinion rightfully so.

 

Many things bear repeating in connection to this kind of utter history falsification. One of them is that Bain seems to rely on Gjoni's word regarding the positive coverage of Depression Quest without reading those articles himself. Another is that the "infamous" Game Jam factually "went wrong" because Quinn and others vocally resisted the detrimental influence of sponsor Pepsi. In other words, a clear cut anti corruption effort is being characterised everywhere as evidence of corruption. Thanks, Bain!

 

I'm personally tired of gamergate ideologues like John Bain claiming that, because of the movement being "leaderless", there would be no one to blame for the daily harrassment. I blame the ones who create that toxic culture regardless whether they consider themselves "being part" of gamergate or not. I blame John Bain, Milo Yiannopoulos, Christina Hoff Sommers, Roosh V and all his reaxxion scriberlings, key harrasser Eron Gjoni, Ralph from the retort, the Honey Badgers, Sargon of Akkad with his all his fantastic, yet disproven conspiracy theories and the clownery of Davis Aurini and Jordan Owen. These people are driving gamergate ideology, their words are important to gamergate supporters.

 

And that accusation is quite easy to make looking at their histories, websites, retweets and followers.

 

 

 

GOG opens the announcement of the Biscuit selection with "Love him or hate him, TotalBiscuit is a force to be reckoned with." Certainly, I reckon with TotalBiscuit and his two million followers! But I neither love nor hate the guy. Like Jim Sterling, I "don't consider him the devil". But the harm he's done is very visible. What GOG now needs to do is to quickly have another sale featuring Anita Sarkeesian or, better yet, Leigh Alexander (who would certainly put back the o in GOG). Because right now, they're sitting in the pile of shit that John Bain is unfortunately dragging along with his royal ass.

[Synnah]

I'm someone who does actually care about framerates, and I think the difference between 30fps and 60fps, in terms of your ability to react and make decisions on the fly, can be huge (And I feel like playing Audiosurf at 144fps gives me an advantage over playing it at 60fps). But obviously context is important, and saying 60fps is 'objectively better' is nonsense! Fighting games and first-person shooters both benefit greatly from 60fps+, whereas an RPG or anything turn-based doesn't. Even with reaction-based games that are locked to 30fps, the only real downside is that they might be a little bit harder. But you generally assume that they were designed around that fact! When I played VVVVVV, for example, I remember thinking a few of the screens would have been easier if the game were running at 60fps, but I beat them anyway, because I got better.

 

TotalBiscuit claims that his list is completely objective and passes no judgement, but that's entirely the problem, because there's so much stuff on there where the framerate is essentially meaningless, and his followers are using it as a weapon. And that's the trouble with Bain; he never takes responsibility for the fact that he has a large number of toxic followers that clearly don't get whatever small nuance his actions have, and when he does things like this he's unleashing them on people. The fact that Guild of Dungeoneering is the game that they took issue with, of all games, is telling; it's a card game where figures move around a map, who the fuck cares if it runs at 30fps? But TotalBiscuit posting this big list of games 'without comment or judgement' is like the GamerGaters who went around frantically investigating people for corruption, saying 'If you haven't done anything wrong, you've got nothing to worry about'; Just the fact that that information is being presented means that someone is going to use it in a shitty way, and TotalBiscuit is making no attempt to educate people in order to stop that from happening.

[ratamero]

And they don't understand (or choose not to) that the information you choose to present and the way it is framed have very non-objective subtexts. It's like being an eternal 16-year old, where you've just discovered logic, you believe you're cleverer than everyone else and you take every argument as confrontational. 

[Griddlelol]

And they don't understand (or choose not to) that the information you choose to present and the way it is framed have very non-objective subtexts. It's like being an eternal 16-year old, where you've just discovered logic, you believe you're cleverer than everyone else and you take every argument as confrontational. 

 

Like calling it The Framerate Police.

[SuperBiasedMan]

And don't forget, the basic idea of what TB is saying is that these games are dysfunctional for lacking a feature that he thinks they objectively need. It all ties back to the entitlement of the not a game argument. These are people that don't just expect games to mold to their ideas of a game, they intend to actively pursue it. He legitimately does see this as a protective measure for consumers against dodgy games and thinks that not implementing a higher framerate is merely a case of lazy devs and there is no justification for it.

[Bjorn]

I'm someone who does actually care about framerates, and I think the difference between 30fps and 60fps, in terms of your ability to react and make decisions on the fly, can be huge (And I feel like playing Audiosurf at 144fps gives me an advantage over playing it at 60fps). But obviously context is important, and saying 60fps is 'objectively better' is nonsense! Fighting games and first-person shooters both benefit greatly from 60fps+, whereas an RPG or anything turn-based doesn't. Even with reaction-based games that are locked to 30fps, the only real downside is that they might be a little bit harder. But you generally assume that they were designed around that fact! When I played VVVVVV, for example, I remember thinking a few of the screens would have been easier if the game were running at 60fps, but I beat them anyway, because I got better.

 

Confirmed, TB is a baby who likes easy baby games because he needs them to run at 60FPS. 

[miffy495]

I just realized that this shit has been going on for nearly a year now. It still feels fresher than that, for some reason, so I didn't notice. What the fuck? How can people have maintained this level of toxicity for a full fucking year?

[twmac]

Listened to the TB response. No surprises.

• these people WANTED me to endorse their charity stream
• I've been harrassed over my cancer as well
• My family has been threatened, so I can't be a "serial harrasser"
• I only used the gamergate tag twice
• I never linked to the five guys video / would never spread such unsubstantiated rumors
• I never had an interest in Zoe Quinn, she's not important, she's nothing major
• I only heard about Quinn in connection with the game jam that went "famously wrong"
• I was called a misogynist bigot after I "barely mentioned this woman's name"
• I only wanted to talk about ethics in game journalism
• I'm annoyed with Anita Sarkeesian because she puts the violence (!) in video games back into focus
• I've been called transphobic on no grounds whatsoever
• OTHER people want to make everything political
• Other people don't know how it is to be scrutinized for every little mistake you make. They have no idea. 
• Anyone famous is harrassed online
• I have two million followers on youtube, bitch
• "gamergate is two sides" that "claim to be against each other"

 

Do you have a link to this? I am a little worried that a friend of mine might have been on one his podcasts during one of these defences as the violence comment is something he mentioned to me while I was in Montreal.

[slime]

All 6 parts of this are pretty good:

 

[Vainamoinen]

Do you have a link to this? I am a little worried that a friend of mine might have been on one his podcasts during one of these defences as the violence comment is something he mentioned to me while I was in Montreal.

Sure. Please note that I'm largely paraphrasing up there (but accurately)

https://soundcloud.com/totalbiscuit/enough