Jimquisition: I'm Going To Murder Your Children

[animeh1star1a]

It's kinda sad that the first thing i noticed about this episode wasn't the title, but rather the Fern Gully pic on the episode picture xD

 

[jluzar20]

Is it just me, or has Jim's episodes been less and less entertaining and more brow beating over time? Nothing better than being called a "sick fuck" when this was the first I've heard of the Dragon Age lady thing.

Yeah, I know he's not calling me a sick fuck personally, but white knights always leave a bitter taste in my mouth. Especially so when you chastise a crowd in order to speak to a few. Shoulda stuck to the dildo, Jim.

Unfortunately whether we like it or not, this vocal minority is the reason why gaming as an industry is not entirely taken seriously. We can attack the developers as much as we like about their decisions and how they are ruining the industry but there is this vocal minority that can dictate through threat and abuse the way people operate like school yard bullies, it is this sort of attitude that will force us back to this topic again and again.

I'm actually surprised Police forces have not made arrests; as far I was aware death threats are a criminal offence?

Freedom of speech. If no evidence can be produced that someone has both the motivation and means to execute their claim, the comment is disregarded under first amendment protection and is not to be prosecuted as a criminal offense. Internet comments especially are not given much weight since the gap between claims and action is so wide.

Fun fact.

 

[Legion]

The idea that gaming as a hobby might have something to do with this is no different from the people who blame rock music for causing drug addiction and violent media for causing mass shootings.

No, I agree with you there. Like I said, the game culture is by and large a good thing but it's bad that these monsters have taken up residence.

I agree, and it definitely makes gaming a lot more pleasant as a hobby. I stopped going on the Bioware forums because of the sheer amount of bile and hatred on there. Hell, sometimes being on here has been enough to almost put me off getting into gaming discussion and I have never had any personal attacks. The anger people seem to feel over games is honestly quite disturbing. Although this also extends to people discussing anime, films and music, which is what I was getting at really. Nasty people are unfortunately everywhere.

I do think it reflects badly on gamers when our collective response to a person in the industry being harassed is kind of `Well, they had [x opinion] what do they expect?`.

It does concern me how many people seem to genuinely think that is an okay response. Although not many people seem to be discussing that while the internet does have free speech, it is not exempt from the law in regards to making threats or harassment. It is surprising how many people do not seem to understand that just because you are not face to face with somebody that such behaviour doesn't miraculously become acceptable. Granted, it does mean that the threats are significantly more likely to be hollow, but that doesn't change the way the person on the receiving end is going to feel, because for all they know, it could be a genuine threat.

This could have something more to do with internet culture in general, but I don't think it's a coincidence that it happens in gaming so much.

I wouldn't say it is a coincidence that we hear about it so much because we are all gamers and follow gaming news. The same way that if we followed the British media everyday we'd all be convinced that Muslim terrorists are waiting to bomb us at any given moment. When the media becomes saturated with a certain topic it is very difficult not to see it as being everywhere and significantly more common than it is.

Don't get me wrong, there are far too many people who play games with this kind of behaviour, but I don't think there is anything about gaming that "causes" it. I do not think "gamer culture" itself makes such behaviour seem acceptable, because I see such attitudes amongst all kinds of groups. The only groups I don't tend to hear about it from are the ones I have no interest or part of, and I don't think that is a coincidence.

 

[chiefohara]

I suspect Jim fails to provide a reason why the topic was changed because he doesn't have a real reason. He could have easily ignored these threats and talked about his DLC topic as planned, so his attempts to blame this on other people is somewhat immature.

Jim also ignores that Hepler was responsible for writing the story for Dragon Age 2 so she was responsible for many of the things that were wrong with it; specifically the bad story and inconsistent characters. The fact that Jim seems to believe that Hepler was being abused for being creative, rather being than utterly inept and writing terrible stories, just shows that he hasn't bothered to research why people didn't like her. Jim's attempts to deify Hepler to hide his white knighting isn't fooling anyone.

I doubt Hepler's departure will discourage those with talent from writing for games, mainly because those with talent tend to be praised rather than scorned. It's only the utterly inept and entitled writers who expect everyone to love their stories, no matter how badly written these stories are, who get condemned by the majority of gamers. Here's hoping that gamers continue to criticise inept writers that produce bad stories, which ruin popular franchises.

Finally it's funny how Jim is always harping on about how developers should be able to make the games they want but keeps condemning people for giving honest opinions about just how bad these games are.

Who gives a fuck whether people like her or not or why.

The Episode was about entitled shits threatening her children, no one is entitled to do that. Funny how you ignore that elephant in the room

 

[Lightknight]

This is the internet. If you read youtube comments far enough your children will always be threatened and your kittens have already been roasted in a pie 100 times over while their soft kitten fur has been formed into the most eloquent of socks for the enlightened despot on the go. Joking aside, I'm more than a little shocked that people are still surprised by the crazy things people say online.

I get that these internet f-wads (greater internet f-wad theory, of course) go too far. I mean, you can't go lower than threatening the lives of children. But such is the nature of the beast that is relative anonymity + an audience and a general lack of repercussion. If you're going to read the youtube comments then that's what you're going to see and you shouldn't be shocked when things go south fast.

My only hope is that these people weren't as anonymous as they led themselves to believe. I'd like to see the poeple who step over the line to the point of threatening little children get caught and then actually get held accountable for their actions in a way that tells others that no one is as anonymous as they think. We do have rights (it seems) to privacy in a general sense, but we don't have a right to anonymity when we interact socially in ways that break the law.

 

[Elyxard]

It boggles the mind how death threats can be the default expression of hatred for any individual. Who the hell raised you in such a way where that kind of language is even in your vocabulary?

It is very frustrating. I liked Fez, and deliberately bombarding Phil Fish out of the industry is of no help to anyone. Our gaming experiences are weaker without these visionaries, even if you don't like the individuals themselves. Now we're out of future games because of some jerks who wanted to harass an easy target. We've lost a lot of people in the industry due to harassment, and that's disgusting. I don't want the gaming scene to be reduced down to the dude-bro asshole demographic once everyone else flees the industry.

I don't know what we can do about it though. How can we shame these individuals who hide behind anonymity? They're a slight minority, and probably not watching these videos in the first place, but they're poisonous enough to still cause great damage.

It was really weird to me that Hepler got a lot of the blame though. She wasn't the one who decided to change the combat and have the game released in under a year of development as far as I know. If there was any problem with the writing, I would blame those who decided that an unfinished product was okay to release.

 

[Zombie_Moogle]

I'm with you here Jim. I don't care what someone thinks a person did to them, threatening that person's kids is just completely unacceptable and I think it does paint a very dark picture of the current game culture.

How? How does this represent me and other gamers? And yeah I am gonna take it personally. You're gonna slag off a group to which I proudly belong so fuck it, might as well have a pop at someone who can take it. Go on. How does this run off on me or anyone other than the assholes personally responsible?

Did you know that crazy One Direction fans stalk the mothers of the band just in case the boys ever visit their parents and send real death threats to real people for the crime of going out with a member of a boyband that they happen to love?

Does that paint a very dark picture of current gamer culture of music culture, or does it rather just make individual crazy bitches look crazy?

Yes. Yes it does reflect on gamers, because we should be better

We should be better because we are. We're not rabid acolytes of the flavor-of-the-month pop musician. We're not fundamentalists of ancient, backwards politics. We're the culture of the most advanced & promising art form in the known universe

Act like it

 

[Erttheking]

I suspect Jim fails to provide a reason why the topic was changed because he doesn't have a real reason. He could have easily ignored these threats and talked about his DLC topic as planned, so his attempts to blame this on other people is somewhat immature.

Jim also ignores that Hepler was responsible for writing the story for Dragon Age 2 so she was responsible for many of the things that were wrong with it; specifically the bad story and inconsistent characters. The fact that Jim seems to believe that Hepler was being abused for being creative, rather being than utterly inept and writing terrible stories, just shows that he hasn't bothered to research why people didn't like her. Jim's attempts to deify Hepler to hide his white knighting isn't fooling anyone.

I doubt Hepler's departure will discourage those with talent from writing for games, mainly because those with talent tend to be praised rather than scorned. It's only the utterly inept and entitled writers who expect everyone to love their stories, no matter how badly written these stories are, who get condemned by the majority of gamers. Here's hoping that gamers continue to criticise inept writers that produce bad stories, which ruin popular franchises.

Finally it's funny how Jim is always harping on about how developers should be able to make the games they want but keeps condemning people for giving honest opinions about just how bad these games are.

Yeah, I don't buy that at all. There's a difference between saying "I'm sorry, this game was really bad, you need to do better" and "I'm going to murder your children because this game was bad." There is a massive, god damn difference between the two. I have no idea where you got the idea that Jim was trying to get people to stop criticizing games, when he was focusing on death threats.

 

[WildFire15]

Jim, I agree with you 100%. I hate being in the minority who keeps losing out on game experiences I could enjoy because of a collection of whiny little bastards with no comprehension of what they're saying or doing. These people are ruining gaming by being the very thing that EA and the like want to cater for with the same old annually released rubbish.

Why can't I have City of Heroes? Because it's not like WoW, apparently. Why couldn't Halo stick closer to Halo: Reach game play style with a chance to explore both sides of the Human/Covenant war? Because it's not all Master Chief plenty of people cried.

Lets not forget that these people don't just exist within gaming, but it seems this is where they're at their most vocal and powerful. By all means we have the right to complain and point out flaws, but fucking hell, screaming 'you're shit, you should die and I'll kill you myself' is not fucking criticism!

 

[IamLEAM1983]

Please don't generalize, I know society does, but you don't need to.

Yeah, sorry about that. I never explicitly mean to generalize an issue, but I guess I suck at formulating my opinions.

Let's just hope the concerned people grow up. Although, judging by your embedded video, some of 'em probably won't ever change. It's disheartening - and it's one of the reasons why I never play co-op shooters like Left 4 Dead or Payday with pubbers.

Co-operation implies that a certain amount of trust exists between the involved parties, and it's easier to trust someone whom you've known from the tail end of elementary all the way through to your first professional tribulations.

 

[Smurf McSmurfington]

Well, congratulations, vocal minority, you've done it again.

 

[ChrowX]

The Episode was about entitled shits threatening her children, no one is entitled to do that. Funny how you ignore that elephant in the room

It started that way, but it's hard to say that was the conclusion Jim came to by the end of it. Partway through it spirals into pointing the finger at gamers for accepting call of duty brown'n'grey FPS clones because we're apparently scaring off all of the creative, brilliant, paragons of game creation.

Dragon Age 2 wasn't particularly good for a lot of reasons. Hepler's criticism started when she complained about having to play videogames to experience the story. No, this doesn't make the death threats and wishing bodily harm on children okay. No one is saying that. No sane person believes that. Sociopathic, hormone addled, poorly raised children may try to justify that, but the point is that, in some specific cases, there is some REASON amongst all the hate. Hepler was criticized quite fairly for the poor quality of her work and her design philosophy. Just because someone said they want her dead, doesn't make her an angel who was martyred for the sins of *ENTITLED* gamers.

 

[Grabehn]

At the risk of exposing myself to an amount of stupid far above permissible exposure limits - is there a link to the original story? I'm wondering what exactly this writer said to provoke this, or if her only crime was having been a video game writer. And let me be perfectly clear, I'm just wanting to know more about this incident, there is absolutely nothing she might have said to justify this kind of treatment. Honestly, the regularity of these kinds of stories has gotten to the point that I'm kind of ashamed to video game as a hobby.

I think that she's the lead writer or something of Bioware so she's basically the one that "Made Dragon Age 2 suck". But I read something about a 6 year old interview in which she said she didn't enjoy combat in game. http://metro.co.uk/2013/08/16/bioware-writer-quits-after-death-threats-to-family-3925970/ might help, even though I just read about it. I never pay too much attention to this kind of issue since I already think a there's a lot of retarded people out there.