TG As An Industry - Past, Present, Future - The Something Awful Forums

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG As An Industry - Past, Present, Future

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Kickstarter is the kind of store where you put down some money and say "I really like this" and hopefully in about six months you get the thing you bought, but if you don't there's nothing you can really do about it.

So like, it's a store, but a really lovely store.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2013 07:38

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 18:13

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Yea I'm not going to be shocked at all when I see the first 'hey we need money to make this passion project RPG/boardgame/whatever, also no way can we ship internationally, sorry duders.'

# ¿ Jul 11, 2013 07:33

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Yea I'm not sure where all these hysterical crazies demanding we gather every copy of Sword Rape The Game Where You Literally Rape A Lady With A Sword This Is A Real Thing That Happens and burn it. People are just saying it's disgusting and terrible.

# ¿ Aug 7, 2013 08:04

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

edit: Oh poo poo he actually did it nevermind.

# ¿ Aug 9, 2013 22:08

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

I don't see how it's harsh for two people to choose to not work with one person. Both sides in this have been very professional, there's clearly no hard feelings from either, it's the creepy, terrible, 'fans' causing the problems.

There've been no demands for boycotts or shaming or whatever, and as much as I love Mikan's work he's not Big RPG blackballing him.

Also let's be super clear here. Stealing a candy bar is a super minor thing that basically everyone has done. Helping design a childish 'dark and mature' book full of racist and misogynistic garbage isn't. No one is claiming this is his baby project, but he's a part of it, and Mikan doesn't want that project associated with his by any link at all.

# ¿ Aug 9, 2013 22:37

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

jivjov posted:

A lot of the disagreement was me taking a much more...involved definition of 'association'. I was looking at it from a "who actually created the sword-rape content and who is just doing layout work" whereas the Inverse World folks were using a much more general "he worked on a thing that we don't like". From my end of things, I see it as harsh that a guy who did not write one single word of Oldest Cruelest Sword is being judged by said content. However, if the the goal is "I want as many degrees of separation between that project and ours" then it's perfectly reasonable from that context.

I understand that consequences exist, but the way I saw it "you no longer get to write a stretch goal that X number of backers were to receive" seemed disproportionate to the act of "did layout". Were I in charge of inverse World, I probably would have gone with
including a small disclaimer that Inverse World and all authors and contributors thereof are not affiliated with and do not support Misery Index et all, and perhaps refraining from working with that layout guy in the future.

I still don't think you understand that 'association' isn't just 'literally the head dude'. Like, the 'degree of separation' Mikan wants is 'all' and laying out the book is a pretty involved process.

# ¿ Aug 9, 2013 23:16

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

dwarf74 posted:

He was already there on account of being a lovely designer who loves wizards a bit too much.

Randomly, he's the reason there's no 2-handed hammers in 3.x.

As someone who plays Dwarfs a lot, this is enough to make me hate him.

Also I love 'well if we take our racist thing out, that's less natives in the media', like yea, I bet all the natives will be CRUSHED that their naked woo woo dancing bullshit 'setting' is removed.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2015 21:26

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Leperflesh posted:

The response seems to be that they're going to re-write the material, and this time, consult experts, though? I mean, Cook's sandbagging was despicable and describing the petition as libel is hyperbole, but in terms of the product itself, isn't it actually a good thing that they're going to remove the racist poo poo and replace it with, hopefully, something a lot better?

I don't have a dog in this race, I never owned the product in question and don't have an interest in it. But this seems like a good thing:

Obviously if the new version is better I think it'd be dumb to keep making GBS threads on it but until then I got no faith in him when he's pouting and huffing his way through the rewrite.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2015 21:30

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Rulebook Heavily posted:

Soooo a man decided to look at Thunder Plains for real, get real people opinions on it and oh yes discovered that it has a statistic that says that only 15% of the racist caricature people on the Thunder Plains are fully sentient beings. The lowest among all the Recursions in the game, including the one full of intelligent crows.

https://storify.com/MCSerf/a-critical-look-at-the-thunder-plains

I don't think this rabbit hole ends anymore.

All I can imagine thanks to this nonsense is that the 'one full of intelligent crows' is full of those minstrel show crows from Dumbo.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2015 05:11

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

fosborb posted:

So Night Witches should be redesigned from the ground up because the exploration of sexism (and queerness) baked into its mechanics is not presented as optional?

Been a bit since I read that stuff but if I remember right the point is overcoming the sexism and bigotry of the world around you.

Basically like KittyEmpress said, there's the much more common 'lol -2 STR for women because biotruths right?' sexism that just serves to punish you for making a female character, or there's the kind where sexism is the 'bad guy' and the point of the game is that if you play a female character you're bucking stereotypes and showing people how wrong they are despite pushback from the outside. So basically you either remind people of how poo poo the world can be because ha gently caress em right, or you do it so people can have a power fantasy over being the badass lady/minority/whatever who breaks barriers. Most games do the first, and that's not cool.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2015 00:41

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

dwarf74 posted:

What sucks is how often dudes doing the first like to pretend it's really the second. "The -4 strength is your struggle! Overcome your female weakness and show how badass you are despite being a girl!"

Yea basically the rule is 'if the thing you're overcoming is how stupid and lovely society is by proving how wrong they are, you're in the clear.' Making the thing you're 'overcoming' is 'no see because you literally are inferior to me, it's part of the laws of nature here' is dumb because what's she supposed to do then, show that hey sometimes a buff lady can be kinda the same as a dude.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2015 01:20

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Yea I love Warhammer Fantasy RPG and it's Bretonnia book was a great way to do knights of the round table crossed with french middle ages crossed with 'gently caress it we're here to stab Orcs in the face right?'

I loved the 'punishmet' for being a lady knight was a quest, like straight up just 'ok you've shamed yourself by impersonating a man and doing cool knight poo poo...go do more cool knight poo poo and hunt down Skaven and Orcs and poo poo...you monster.'

# ¿ Mar 23, 2015 19:37

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

GenCon should come to Houston and also mail me free passes.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2015 05:19

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Jedit posted:

No, because they're not imposing their religious freedom laws specifically to make it legal to discriminate against gays and most of them have at least some legal protections for the LGBAT community. Apparently Arkansas is trying to enact an RFRA-equivalent for the same reasons as Indiana, and if that goes through I'm sure people will boycott Arkansas, but a strong show of opposition for the Indiana law may dissuade them.

This is the core issue. People, on the whole, don't have an issue with religious freedom, the issue is twisting it and adding in 'also religious freedom means that we can discriminate because we think that's how God rolls right?' Indiana, as far as I know, is the only one with that extra flavor on it.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2015 23:25

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Yea there's literally nothing Gen Con can do in the short term, they have contracts until 2020 with (likely) tons of different people. Aside from being mad illegal it's also just a dick move to randomly decide 'yo this doesn't count BYE'. This isn't Jimmy's RPG Shop where worst case he has to run out his lease, they have tons of moving parts that involve the community around them that they have in writing because, ya know, professionals. Boycotting them does literally nothing, they've already said 'yea as soon as we can we're out if this law stays, we 100% denounce this lovely law'. They already agree 'yep, this is hosed', no reason to gently caress over the devs and all who are hoping for sales during that (or deprive yourself of a cool rear end con for nerdlords) when they're fully on our side. It's just an issue of legal red tape that can't really end with 'and Gen Con bailed out in the night never to be heard of again' since that's what scumbags do.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2015 00:14

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Dave Brookshaw posted:

Most things haven't had other participants doxxed or sent death threats already, before the allegations about Matt came to light. Beast has.

No one seems to be reevaluating Promethean's "unhappy creature made of junk that slowly learns to be a human" or demon's "robot masquerading human emotions" in the light of this. It's just sticking it to the target that's already endangered its writers' lives a few times.

And yeah, I wrote on Beast.

Uh, neither of those games had major parts of their books being very very unpleasant segments that many felt were at best clumsy and insulting to abuse victims and at worst actively minimizing them to make a darker and more edgy story?

It's also kinda really hosed to say that going 'looking back that makes this project he worked on that was very troubling in some parts feel even grosser' is the same moral level as 'doxxing and death threats'. That's a really lovely way to try to cudgel people into not saying 'this weird abusive rear end in a top hat was a major contributor to a game that's kinda just about being a weird abusive rear end in a top hat and actually being noble for it and holy poo poo is that disturbing'.

sexpig by night fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Oct 25, 2017

# ¿ Oct 25, 2017 17:52

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

moths posted:

Can't wait for them to release victim NPC stats for country music fans on the one-year anniversary of Vegas.

My favorite part of Beast doing cheap 'what if the MONSTERS did a major tragedy' things was the...I wanna say it was a giant snake...that was said to have sunk the titanic instead of an iceberg. Because gently caress it, why not.

# ¿ Oct 25, 2017 20:33

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Simian_Prime posted:

Wasn�t one of the core book Hero antagonists a teenage girl who ended up in a coma after fighting off her Beast attacker?

This just gets worse and worse in light of everything now...

Remember when one of the beasts was an Indian lady based on a real vigilante group in real India that really provides protection for women and strong arms abusive spouses and poo poo when the court won't act, and the whole point was 'but is she not just as bad as the men who abuse women'.

Extremely Normal Game

# ¿ Oct 25, 2017 22:36

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Levi Kornelsen posted:

Eminently true.

It *does,* however, mean that when you're dumping on the game and how it was made, you're in close position with an existing practice of doxxing and death threats, directed largely at people who were just working a job. Which means that being precise about what you're going after is called for.

Ignoring that and dropping the widest, biggest load of poo poo you can find instead?

That means you're giving cover to aforementioned doxxers and death-threateners, mixed right in there with whatever useful critique is being delivered.

'by criticizing the game you're just giving the doxxers protection' is a bold talking point I've usually only seen in lovely one indie video games, let's see if it can apply to a major publisher having one specific person criticized for just horrifically abusive and illegal behavior!

Judges say no, no it can't.

Beast is a poo poo game. I'm deeply sorry to the people here who worked on it who seem like perfectly fine people, I believe them when they say 'yeeeea the original version was not...this...', I get that sometimes a freelancer needs to turn in a poo poo sandwich to make rent. If you'll note, though, no one at all has actually poo poo talked those people. We've been super specific in saying that these revelations about one dude (who was a major dude in the creation of the game) take an already very troubling product into an even more gross light. People have been pretty drat precise actually! It's this one rapist who was a major player in making a game about heroic abusers and turning their victims who fight back into villains. That's what we're talking about, that's what we're saying 'holy poo poo' at. No one at all is throwing anyone else on the team under the bus...except the people demanding no one be allowed to say 'this is hosed up' I guess?

# ¿ Oct 25, 2017 23:44

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

forums pre-crime being something a dude talks about unironically is the worst part of our cyberpunk hellscape

# ¿ Oct 25, 2017 23:49

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Levi Kornelsen posted:

Nah; failure to capitalize and punctuate is the worst part of our cyberpunk hellscape.

rood

# ¿ Oct 25, 2017 23:58

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

I'm glad they finally figured out that tough 'should we ban the abuser who has multiple people saying they feel unsafe with him around and we've already agreed was bad enough to take away his position of authority here' riddle.

# ¿ Oct 26, 2017 02:07

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Yea Draconomicon is easily one of the best D&D books. Great blend of weird super nerd detail fluff and useful crunch for everyone who wants to use dragons in their game and/or character backstory.

# ¿ Nov 7, 2017 05:22

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

I have bad news about how commonplace antisemitism is too

# ¿ Nov 7, 2017 06:30

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Well I guess "I believe victims of sexual harassment but Jews are probably still lying Zionists" is progress in a way, whatever gets people not rewarding his crap.

# ¿ Nov 7, 2017 09:13

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Peas and Rice posted:

From what it appears the anti-semitism charge is dubious at best, but the evidence of sexual harassment is pretty awful. Come on, GR, you're better than this.

I'm really genuinely sorry if it sounds like I'm harping on this but both charges are equally 'people are saying he's a scumbag', one is women are saying he did predatory poo poo and the other is Jewish writers are saying they blocked him because of antisemitic poo poo. Why is it that one has more weight? Why does the 'believe victims' line keep not including Jewish people saying 'yea this guy's hosed up about us too'? I don't know the inner working of the RPG world but I can tell you there's a lot of 'creative types' that get their antisemitism excused by occasionally also saying 'and I don't like what the Israeli government is doing' and hiding behind that to say 'oh see they're just saying I hate Jews because of that'. Why is it so hard to believe a predatory harasser also maybe thinks poorly of other minority groups?

# ¿ Nov 7, 2017 19:26

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Bieeardo posted:

Chuck Wendig, fake ally. That's going to get a lot of traction. Really.

Someone let me know when Green Ronin gets new management. I might put their kit back on my shopping list then.

Yea this is a pretty huge let down for me. I love GR's stuff but if this is how they react to this kind of thing I'm not comfortable giving them money at least until they acknowledge what a poo poo response this is or something.

# ¿ Nov 9, 2017 17:20

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Bummer that OrcaCon is also managed by douchebags, that sounded like a cool idea.

https://twitter.com/_Danicia_/status/928459433369264129

# ¿ Nov 9, 2017 21:27

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

admanb posted:

It's disappointing because she's definitely taken the "GR can't be wrong because they're ~good people~" and is ignoring that to people who don't have her insider knowledge of the situation their ~good people~ behavior has looked a whole lot like everyone else's bad behavior. I expect them to get it right and do better in the future, but I also expect them to analyze their own reaction and identify the issues with it (which that statement did a good job of).

That's really what bugs me about GR's handling that left me so sour on the company. They absolutely know what they're saying when they act like the onus is on everyone but them to vet these guys and that hey don't they deserve a pass for being such good folks? They're hiding behind their rep in a really gross way that kinda taints everything about them to me. It's like they think not being a lovely person is what you do to get points that you get to cash out in situations like this. Her going right for the 'they're a bunch of white knights and you're ignoring GR'S women when you believe them!!!!' is just a symptom of this kinda toxic poo poo.

# ¿ Nov 9, 2017 21:44

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

And that dumb rear end response is rightfully being hammered

quote:

I don't know Wendig from Adam and I can't speak to that.

I also don't really know much about you or your con, but I hope nobody hassles your volunteers.

That said, the version of events you are pushing here is completely wrong. I don't know if you genuinely have the facts wrong or if you're intentionally trying to spin it so hard it takes off like a helicopter.

Nicole went aggro, both on Facebook and on this forum right here where you are posting, when the allegations about CAS came up a week or so back. I have personal knowledge of women who decided not to come forward after they saw the way she treated other victims. She and/or GR have been deleting the statements of victims from their FB feed. She has literally been silencing the women victims. This idea that she didn't have "a chance to handle it or do anything" is wholly false; she had multiple opportunities and she used them to do two things she should not have done: 1) Claim it was a fabrication or unfounded and 2) Make the issue about her integrity or bona fides instead of CAS' conduct and what the victims experienced.

Wendig may or may not be a villain in this piece. I haven't heard yet from any victims how they feel about his conduct. But he was the one supporting the accusers (even if he did so in a way that you consider wrong) when Lindroos was attacking them.

Honestly, after what I've seen over the last week, I don't believe for a second that GR would have changed their tune if they hadn't come to the attention of much bigger fish, and I am profoundly disappointed about that.

# ¿ Nov 9, 2017 23:39

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Yea the ragepost was dumb but excusable in context, but they just keep running in to defend GR and say 'guys guys the timeline is coming any day now' without actually adding anything.

# ¿ Nov 9, 2017 23:50

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

FMguru posted:

A photograph of an early draft of The Timeline has been leaked:

If you zoom in you can clearly see the relationship between "Chuck Wendig", the Trilateral Commission, Gladio Lodge P2, and the Executive Committee of the Horror Writers of America.

I knew Pepe Sylvia was a trouble case!

# ¿ Nov 10, 2017 00:02

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Tendales posted:

Yeah, I don't know what I was worried about

yea this is my worry. I worry we'll have a nice satisfying and just wave of revelations like this, and then once that's over it'll just be assumed 'ok so we won right? Problem SOLVED!'

# ¿ Nov 10, 2017 01:07

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Bedlamdan posted:

Things like this are going to keep on happening forever and with more frequency, imho, but it's way more exciting when it happens to glamorous Hollywood Celebrities and public officials then some rando basement-dwelling rpg writer.

Yea at least hollywood poo poo has the tabloid 'we watched Harvey Weinstein leave his mansion to take a private plane to europe for a one day sex addiction rehab and promises he's all good now' opulence to make fun of. This is just 'yea this fuckin dude harassed me and all his friends were my bosses so when I said that was hosed up they ignored me'

# ¿ Nov 10, 2017 02:11

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

RPGnet feels like the the natural end point of the hobbyist dominated RPG game industry. It's a great thing that so many places from little indies to big names are full of people who were big fans before joining, and those people tend to bring great insight. The problem is there's almost no 'division' any more between consumers and the people making the stuff, there's very little 'business presence' that we get. So, now we have places like this where the writers and all are just part of the community, but they're a part of the community with cool special access and knowledge and that makes the community more valuable because it's a place you can interact with them directly. Video games and all are such sprawling things except for small indie things mostly you just have community reps and all, and those people are suuuuper trained/restricted to avoid problems.

RPGnet genuinely feels like it values having the cool cred of 'we have all these writers who come here' more than anything else, so yea discussions like this become almost impossible because the mods are required to take this really sad handwringing 'guys let's not be MEAN about this systematic abusive behavior that was protected by company heads and had the accusers attacked by company reps' stance. I don't think they're bad guys and I certainly don't think any of them are somehow PRO sexual assault or whatever, but I think they do have their values kinda askew.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2017 18:22

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Comrade Gorbash posted:

Let's keep in mind it's a site built around pretending to be loving elves, and that for the most part the worst posters have been people who truly believe liking the wrong edition of a game is worth making death threats over.

RPG.net has and is taking too long to recognize that's not the only kind of discussion happening and that you can't moderate all those discussions the same way, but they're a niche hobbyist site run primarily by unpaid volunteers in their spare time. Twitter is supposedly multi-million dollar operation with full-time paid admins and they're not only far worse with double-secret probation bullshit and tone policing, they actively promote loving Nazis. The difference doesn't excuse or shield RPG.net from critique but have some loving perspective at least.

Oh yea, 100% like I said I don't think this is the result of some moral failing or evil plot or whatever. For most of the history of the site there's nothing bad about maybe leaning a bit to favoring creators because hey it's nice to say they enjoy posting here and all because most of the conflicts were nerd on nerd arguments and the worst that would happen where that bias could be a problem is maybe sometimes a dev got a bit too passionate defending their work and someone gets called an elf-tard or whatever the cool insults were at that time.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2017 18:30

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Nihilarian posted:

lmao are they still blaming the people who helped the victims for how this all went down

Considering it feels like rules 5 and 9 were specifically written to appease the three people angry that a victim of someone vented to a friend about how people who defended her attacker were now getting good guy points by going after someone else yea pretty much

# ¿ Nov 10, 2017 20:13

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

Plutonis posted:

Can someone give me an example of rules that would work out better

The current rules require a victim to out themselves in some way, I don't see the problem in it being like basically any other public forum where it's not a bannable offense to say 'yea I have some friends who've told me this is a serious issue' and then yea if someone wants to go 'yea I don't believe that' you can just have that conversation?

# ¿ Nov 10, 2017 21:02

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

my favorite part is the little 'well, the man of the house is dying and I have to be there for the women in my life...my female family...yep three strong women, all great...better than me even...great women I love'.

Like, he pulled a straight up Women Respecter to try to deflect, it's amazingly poo poo and of course his friends are falling over themselves to say 'my god they HAVE to forgive you now or they're huge bitches!' This piece of poo poo will learn nothing and go right back to abusing people.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2017 23:40

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 18:13

sexpig by night: Sep 8, 2011; by Azathoth

ladies. I'm so sorry that while being a sexy, intense, passionate, man who many have described as a 'sex golem' you may have felt uncomfortable with me. Have I mentioned I love my mom?

# ¿ Nov 10, 2017 23:47

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