Operation Krampus: The #GamerGate Grinches Who Want To Steal Christmas

@LBT – Let’s Play’s are great! I love them because you don’t necessarily need to listen to what the person playing is actually saying, you can make your own mind up just from their play through.

I really like the names these guys give their “operations” though, and that they call them “operations”.

Petulant losers.

It’s no wonder gg and the mrm are such natural allies. Their desire to boycott the Escapist even though they’ve been mostly favorable to gamergate is so much like Paul Elam and his fans turning on anyone who doesn’t uncritically adore them.

Thanks @Davidgerard and @Pendraegon.

Operations Disrespectful Nod does seem to be claiming that four whole advertisers have withdrawn from at least one journal each, none of them actual game publishers. Also, there seems to be corroboration from independent news sources only for Intel. Since both Playstation and Xbox use AMD chips, I guess I can still get a new console for Christmas, if I want. And now I don’t have to read all those “which chip is best for gaming” articles next time I want to upgrade my gaming PC. I think I’ll write Intel and thank them for that.

BERNARDO SOARES I HAD NO IDEA WHAT I WAS IN FOR AND NOW I’M DYING

So… are the only games they’re going to play the games in which the developer/publisher refused to send to critics? Which is not usually a good sign when it comes to quality.

So….their plan is for these self described gamers, those who say video games are a core part of identity to the point they seek to distinguish themselves from “fake gamers” and define who the “true gamers” who must be supported, their plan is for gamers to not buy games?

I mean, I think what they hope will happen is that the game companies will not send any review companies to the “enemie of gamergate” but realistically that won’t happen because the gaming companies are fairly sure they could shit in a box marked “Call of Duty” and gaters would still stick it in an xbox, so do they really think they, the people who buy every AAA game as soon as possible, are going to suddenly stop at the biggest sale period of the year?

Cool. I doubt it will every happen, just as the many doctor who fans who declared “I will never watch the show again if this happens” continue to watch weekly, and the little boy who says “I will never talk to you again” lasts until dinner time, but I wish them all the best in their self determined mission of giving up on buying new games. Because anyone who has their head outside of their arsehole knows that the only importance the big gaming companies place on “gaters” is the amount of money they spend. If they stop spending the money, gaming companies, already considering the far more profitable casual gaming market, will focus on that market exclusively. The alleged “Death of the gamer” threat the gaters at one point said is the cause of “Gamergate”-that is far more threatened by their own action than anything a gaming site is doing.

Also, if anyone needs some time out from these horrible fuckwads and you want to escape into the makebelieve worlds of superimmersive games:

http://squinky.me/quing/

That was great. My favorite was the response to clicking the alternative “Duck under the table!” > “There are no ducks under any of the tables, silly!”

This is exactly my level of humor.

Hey I might well be being dumb, but with the raise of the “ethics” clamor one of the things I’m seeing more and more of these gamergoons say they don’t want game reviewers to get review copies of games.

How do they expect them to do reviews? Review copies are typically pre-release beta versions, so that reviewers can publish a review prior to the game coming out and publishers can get a benchmark on what customers reactions will be to things while they still have a little window to make tweaks. Without review copies they’re basically saying they want the game reviewer to buy their own copy and to do their review a couple of days after a title has come out… which means a higher risk for the consumer as if they want to play a game on release day they will do so blind aside from whatever promo material the game publisher has seen fit to release, which is only going to be positive because what game publisher is going to come out with “our game has kind of shitty framerates and the inventory system is garbage you guys, sorry”.

That seem much higher risk to me than the risk that a game journo has had some kickback to write a positive review when you have lots of reviews to dip into to find a reasonable balance.

Now even if you make it so that game journo’s pay retail for the review copies instead of getting free ones… Now that makes things tighter on game journo’s (especially the indie reviewers), and actually limits the amount of games they’re going to be able to review, most likely to just AAA titles… so the AAA game houses will dominate the market even more.

I don’t really see a way around the free review copies of games that makes any sense either for reviewers or consumers.

I think a better system would be to establish some kind of user review system for gaming sites/reviewers so that users could rate from “paid shill” to “honest abe” (or some such) and voice their feedback on them. That way you could go check out the reviewer’s honesty rating before you put much stock in their review. Kind of like a Meta Critic for critics… a Meta-Meta-Critic? Inception Critic? lol

Yessss. Go away GamerGaters! Boycott all the games and never come back. I’d recommend you’d all find a new hobby, but I’d feel bad for whomever is already in that hobby having to put up with your eventual entitled, crybaby bullshit.

Seriously, if everyone in GamerGate stops playing video games, that will be the best Christmas present I ever get.

@greyskye
You’re overthinking it. This has nothing whatsoever to do with ethics or with what they want from games journalism. These are people who think that the metacritic rating system is an objective way of judging games.

There is no need for a system such as you describe. I can choose my own games to play, and I use sites that I know, because I know the reviewers’ tastes. RPS, for example, has been wrong (for me) a lot of times, but I know that for example John Walker is very picky when it comes to adventure games, and people in the comments often contradict him. Likewise, another reviewer hated Banished (I love it), and got called out for factual errors he made in the comments. This is because RPS is very straightforward in their subjectiveness when it comes to reviews and because they have managed to foster a great community that upholds humour and civility in the comment section, but has no problems in contradicting reviewers. You don’t need systems if you show honesty and sociability in your texts and behaviour.

I also don’t see why game reviews have to be held to higher standards than music or film reviews. I never trusted any reviews, I usually read them to get enough information about something to judge if I will look more into it.

@Bernardo Soares – see everything you said is what I think, I’m just trying to see it from the “rational” side of whats coming out of GG. You can’t objectively review something you don’t like, and critic reviews are all personal preference and opinion. I’m sure all of us can recount incidents when we have vehemently disagreed with a reviewer over something (game, movie, music etc).

Wait, they’re trying to keep Microsoft from sending Xbox games to the Xbox magazine?

RE: sunnysombrera

You’re right that Mark seems to be more interested in making people happy.

It’s one of the reasons Sneak likes him so much. His goal is one zie can admire!

LotusPrince tends to be way more quiet and understated, which for me perversely turns into a laugh riot when he’s doing a really terrifying game like Amnesia: the Dark Descent. Just seeing him FREEZE during a big scare, stay absolutely still for about five seconds, and then say flatly, “This game is a dick,” deeply entertains me. Plus he often gives cool trivia about the game itself!