ROSS'S GAME DUNGEON: DARKSPORE

[Heliocentrical]

This is very important; letting Gamergate get its hands into this movement would be a complete disaster. It could very easily cause our attempts at opening a dialogue with EA to be strangled in its crib.

Again I must stress that we not mention them directly. The more that we talk about that hashtag the more likely that they will find the Accursed Farms Forums and ruin everything the operation has going for it. In order to obfuscate any connection that we might have to that hashtag I've created some shorthand so we'll still be able to talk about them without potentially providing a direct link to us. So when referring to the hashtag or those hashtag members please refer to shorthand before posting about them. The shorthand is vague enough that it could refer to anything but I think that the context in which the shorthand is presented in will be easy enough to understand. Also if you can think of a better, more sound shorthand than what I've provided I will use that instead.

 

GG: That hashtag

GGers: Those hashtag members

 

The fact that most hashtag members didn't find the Accursed Farms Forums the first time we discussed the hashtag is a miracle. Let's not potentially ruin that ambiguity again and I'm as guilty as everyone else who's mentioned the hashtag. This time however I've acknowledged the possible dangers of mentioning the hashtag and am letting the rest of you know.

[General Chaos]

I don't Understand why members here who WANT videogames to be given respect and not be killed off would be so scared of gamergate involvement. it's not some boogeyman, it's gamers who want the industry to not be meddled with by any political or shady business practices. completely invalidating what their side has to say by calling them "pseudo intellectuals" and "neckbeards" is not really looking at all into the cause. trying to obfuscate this board from gamergate is silly imo. as with any hashtag movement you will always have stupid people who do stupid things, but on the whole there are really compelling and well reasoned arguments for what gamergate does.

 

I don't actively engage in this, but i do follow these events from the outside looking in and seeing these posts making gamergate out to be some horrible boogeyman really bothered me. i just wish people made more of a concerted effort to find out the truth for themselves rather than being told by kotaku, polygon, etc what to believe.

 

and i sincerely hope Ross's campaign gets steam and can actually influence EA. seeing the work of programmers thrown away is truly sad.

[Binky The Rabbit]

Interesting comment on YouTube:

 

"Ross let's list non-MMO games that will no longer exist in a few years. I'll start with some recent and fairly recent ones:

 

- Destiny

- Titan Fall

- Star Wars Battlefront

- The Division

- The Crew

- Ghost Recon Phantoms

- Quake Wars (console ports)

 

What else."

 

I wonder if, say, Destiny got shut down, would that bring this issue to a more mainstream audience? As someone who doesn't play Destiny, how likely would it be to get shut down?

[Presence]

I don't Understand why members here who WANT videogames to be given respect and not be killed off would be so scared of gamergate involvement.

 

Avoiding some groups as a whole may or may not be fair, but it is probably a good political move. First off, EA is the major buyer of gaming "journalists". It might make them dig their heels in if this became a gate cause. Second, that groups involvement could also attract huge numbers of feminists, with similar bad results.

 

I believe the "neckbeards go home" comment was in specific regards to harassers. That type is a big reason to emphasize that EA's employees be contacted in a business context only. Doxing and harassment are completely unacceptable. This is a sentiment I wholeheartedly support. Passionate gamers who understand moderation are welcome. Harassers are welcome to go drink bleach.

 

This campaign is fundamentally a form of advertising. The impression needs to be one of offering good public image in exchange for EA and others improving publisher culture.

[Heliocentrical]

I don't Understand why members here who WANT videogames to be given respect and not be killed off would be so scared of gamergate involvement. it's not some boogeyman, it's gamers who want the industry to not be meddled with by any political or shady business practices. completely invalidating what their side has to say by calling them "pseudo intellectuals" and "neckbeards" is not really looking at all into the cause. trying to obfuscate this board from gamergate is silly imo. as with any hashtag movement you will always have stupid people who do stupid things, but on the whole there are really compelling and well reasoned arguments for what gamergate does.

 

I don't actively engage in this, but i do follow these events from the outside looking in and seeing these posts making gamergate out to be some horrible boogeyman really bothered me. i just wish people made more of a concerted effort to find out the truth for themselves rather than being told by kotaku, polygon, etc what to believe.

 

and i sincerely hope Ross's campaign gets steam and can actually influence EA. Seeing the work of programmers thrown away is truly sad.

There are both good and bad sides to that hashtag there's no point in denying that. Believe me I was all for people like Totalbiscuit who actively disclosed his relationships with developers. I loved the Witcher 3 but I respect the hell out of what TB did in not reviewing it because he felt that his relationship with CD Projekt Red had made him biased towards the game. In fact I'm quite terrified and paranoid of these types of purely beneficial relationships because they can happen in an instant. You had a conversation with a game developer whom you're simultaneously reviewing game for? How personal did the conversation become? Did that conversation give you a negative/positive impression of that developer? Did you ever consider at one point that you and the developer could become good friends/bad enemies? All of these elements when encompassing a product that is suppose to be highly objective is fucking terrifying to me.

 

I'm not condemning that hashtag as a whole. For that would mean condemning TB and people like him whom I have so much admiration for. That being said I will not excuse covering the asses of the bad side of that hashtag and quite frankly I'm fucking done with it. I honestly wish more ethically concerned hashtag members would consider this opinion as option to take. This particular person gives a bad name to TB and people like him and that is why I called the person a pseudo intellectual fuckwad. Compare his content to TB's and you'll see that this particular person's content is clearly agenda driven with "Concerns about ethical journalism in video games" layered on top. Oh please, it is so evident that he doesn't give two shits about ethics in games journalism it's laughable and there are some many other people with distasteful views masquerading as "caring about ethics" like him I will not tolerate it. If you're here to defend this particular person then I can guarantee that you will get no love from me and not likely any others. He is a fucking disgusting waste of a human being and if some people within that hashtag warrant things like this soundcloud here

then maybe you should stop and consider who it is you're defending. TB himself has actively been passively distancing himself from that hashtag for quite sometime now and I commend wholeheartedly for that choice. He's seen that hashtag for what it mostly is. A devolved, amorphous mob with several completely innocent people within it. Remember it is important that you slay the monster and salvage the innocents. Not slay the innocents along with the monster because they believed the monster to be their brother in arms.

Edited February 20, 2016 by Guest (see edit history)

[TinKelp]

I don't Understand why members here who WANT videogames to be given respect and not be killed off would be so scared of [that hashtag's] involvement.

Probably because harassing people isn't how you earn respect and that's all they've ever done.

[ThePest179]

I don't Understand why members here who WANT videogames to be given respect and not be killed off would be so scared of gamergate involvement.

 

I'm doing this exactly one time, because I know that GGers are incredibly stubborn.

 

This is why: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Gamergate

 

Before you say ANYTHING about RationalWiki, the article I have linked to does not contain any opinion pieces by RationalWiki itself. The link above is made purely out of citations documenting GG behavior. It is entirely up to you whether you want to believe any of it, but I leave the facts here for anyone with an actual objective mindset.

[Binky The Rabbit]

Can we please stop talking about this? We are only on the second page of this thread and already it's devolved into this pointless and unrelated debate. We established very early on that drawing parallels was a bad idea. I don't care what anyone thinks of the double G, it's already been discussed to death in this forum. If you want to help Ross, you will stop talking about this now.

 

----

 

Something about Darkspore: the idea of not having any form of repeat playthrough of the story interests me, like a step up from permadeath. Correct me if I've misunderstood this, but being able to only complete the game once seems like a kick in the teeth for paying customers, regardless of replaying individual levels.

 

And considering it's due to be shut down in a couple of weeks, missing something on that only playthrough is even more fatal!

 

You know what, getting a mildly high-profile Let's Player to do a playthrough would give the game - and Ross's cause - very valuable exposure. He/she could even talk about what's going to happen to the game, maybe refer to Accursed Farms...

[Ross Scott]

How about Gamer's Wake?

 

I've contacted archive.org and Jason Scott to see if they could help since things shutting down and being unreachable is kindof a big giant pissoff button for them.

That would be great. I don't pretend to know the best method of contacting EA to get their attention, this is just my best guess. If Archive.org has better suggestions for who to contact, I'll use them.

 

 

This is very important; letting Gamergate get its hands into this movement would be a complete disaster. It could very easily cause our attempts at opening a dialogue with EA to be strangled in its crib.

I'm okay with anyone getting involved with this who wants to. However, in my eyes, there's two things to keep in mind:

 

1. I don't support personal attacks against anyone for this. Aside from the legality of that, I don't see that as fixing anything.

 

2. My ONLY agenda for this is for them to stop killing games (and not just EA, but especially them). I think keeping the message simple is important.

[Presence]

Can we please stop talking about this? We are only on the second page of this thread and already it's devolved into this pointless and unrelated debate.

 

Seemed healthy to me. It looked like one dude who had a question and a consensus was formed in response. Happy to move on though.

 

One thing I wondered is why Ross didn't make a supplementary video that just focused on the issue. Not that the Game Dungeon was hurt by including the EA material, it's just less....digestible. Or is that already in the pipes, and this got pushed out first due to the severe time sensitivity?

[Heliocentrical]

Does anyone remember City of Heroes? For those who don't know City of Heroes was this great superhero/supervillian MMO. If you want more info you can go to this fanmade wiki called Paragon Wiki http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page. I used to play it ton when it was still alive. City of Heroes is one of the few MMOs that I wish I could go back in time and play again. it was unique in it's own right and definitely wasn't a WoW clone which were popular to make at that time to make. What happened to Battleforge sucks but it atleast had some form of a source as is evident by Battleforge Reborn http://bfreborn.com/ so eventually you'll be able play the same old Battleforge. Whereas with City of Heroes there's no option of reviving it as there's literally nothing left. The closest City of Heroes got to a revive was a chat room.

 

BoeHD7CvBSA

 

I don't mean to put anyone down who worked on this chat room. I'd rather have something reminiscent of CoH exist than nothing at all. But I know that if I ever tried to use that chat room it will only make me miss CoH more then I already am. All that's left of CoH are a few fanmade wikis and game projects attempting to remake City of Heroes. Now it does appear that the fanmade game projects City of Titans http://cityoftitans.com/ and Valiance Online http://valiance.shogn.net/ are making some progress. But they've still got a long way to go and they won't be the same as the CoH.

 

Using Ross's killing Grandpa analogy this whole situation feels surreal. It's like you're not even sure if grandpa existed in first place because you couldn't find his body. You often hear of how cool your grandpa was but your memory of what he was like has dwindled away to nothing. Then you come across three people. A ghost of your grandpa and two people who knew your grandpa but have differing opinions of what he was like. They all mean well but you know that they aren't your grandpa. I hope that made sense. It atleast gave me something to chuckle about.

[Zelpa]

Can someone explain to me WHY this game is online? If it's literally just a single-player game what's the point? Why would EA pay for that bandwidth?

[Box Tactics]

Something about Darkspore: the idea of not having any form of repeat playthrough of the story interests me, like a step up from permadeath. Correct me if I've misunderstood this, but being able to only complete the game once seems like a kick in the teeth for paying customers, regardless of replaying individual levels.

 

And considering it's due to be shut down in a couple of weeks, missing something on that only playthrough is even more fatal!

 

You know what, getting a mildly high-profile Let's Player to do a playthrough would give the game - and Ross's cause - very valuable exposure. He/she could even talk about what's going to happen to the game, maybe refer to Accursed Farms...

 

Huh, come to think of it, this'd be interesting in a game with a morality system...

[General Chaos]

I appreciate the responses.

 

I've been following the movement for a while. not sure if anything can really change my mind about it at this point. It just bothered me that everybody was so quick to throw the group under the bus when these same people may feel the same way about it that you do. what's nice about this topic is that it is in no way connected to the political aspect of Gamergate. It's EA killing games; regardless of political affiliations or social mores why dismiss potential allies? it's the equivalent of cutting off the nose to spite your face.

I didn't come here to add unnecessary tension to this topic, i just wanted to throw in my two cents.

 

and thank you all for remaining civil. it's refreshing in this day and age for people to act cordial to one another.

[Schwarzwald]

Bravo Ross. I have to admire your commitment to these issues.

 

You're the Bernie Sanders of video games.

[Ross Scott]

One thing I wondered is why Ross didn't make a supplementary video that just focused on the issue. Not that the Game Dungeon was hurt by including the EA material, it's just less....digestible. Or is that already in the pipes, and this got pushed out first due to the severe time sensitivity?

Because I'm sloppy at doing things. I plan on making a concise video that can be shared with anyone later on, but it's probably a couple months away with everything else I'm doing. Meanwhile, Darkspore dies in a couple weeks, so I had to move.

 

City of Heroes is one of the few MMOs that I wish I could go back in time and play again. it was unique in it's own right and definitely wasn't a WoW clone which were popular to make at that time to make.

I admit I'm on the extreme end of the scale and don't like seeing ANY game die artificially, even if I'm not interested in it personally. I focus on EA because they're the leader. If it's even possible to get them to change their policies, it could serve as a precedent for other parts of the industry. MMOs definitely see this kind of artificial death more than any other genre.

 

Can someone explain to me WHY this game is online? If it's literally just a single-player game what's the point? Why would EA pay for that bandwidth?

It was single AND multiplayer, I guess I should have mentioned that in the review. As for why, all I can think of it is piracy prevention, which I WOULD be cool with if it wasn't for the fact that online-only is treated like an automatic death sentence.

[JezuzLizard]

I noticed how everyone(probably) is focusing on the effects of this practice on the consumer, but it seems no one has realized another party is also harmed greatly by shutting down and effectively erasing games.

I think that video games are art just like movies, books, paintings, and many other means of artistic expression, and just like art video games must also have artists. Since EA is the publisher they own the copyright, even if they did none of the work. EA can do whatever they want saying "Well I own the copyright these are my decisions", so imagine being a developer of Darkspore and everything you worked on whether for money or, just to make a game that could be enjoyed by people present and future, is no longer available to anyone, potentially for 85 years. Imagine if ALL the games you've ever worked on had been shutdown or removed from sale by the publisher. You would have absolutely no legacy for anyone to look back on, so things like "this guy made my favorite game" or "I'm so glad I was able to find this old game its not perfect but I love it" wouldn't happen anymore. This isn't at all like movies or books, or paintings where the very idea of self-censorship is not only an affront to capitalism but also considered the worst evil imaginable. Destroying your own works because you do not like them is one thing, destroying someone else's work is something else.

 

This practice is bad for everyone; businesses, consumers, and developers everyone loses.

[krickit]

I also think that getting other organisations, site owners, journalists, and others in on this would be worthwhile. Contacting groups such as the EFF who have lobbied for gaming archival in the past (https://www.eff.org/...) seems worthwhile as they would be in the know how for getting this sort of issue noticed, even if it is not a political or legal issue.

 

At any rate I'll write a letter next week and if it's any good I'll spoiler it here after posting.

[Behemot]

Because I'm sloppy at doing things. I plan on making a concise video that can be shared with anyone later on, but it's probably a couple months away with everything else I'm doing. Meanwhile, Darkspore dies in a couple weeks, so I had to move.

Making a special page on your accursedfarms.com main website would be a good start. If it is to have any real significance, doing the whole thing in discussions under some YT video (frankly, shitloads of ppl will never register there) is like hiding that notice about Earth demolition at Alpha Centauri. I think the website is a good place where all main information may be centered while video is more like propagation of the idea and the forums is for all the related discussion…and flame

[Heliocentrical]

I can see that Ross has some footage of Path of Exile https://www.pathofexile.com/ in the video. It's a much better hack and slash then Darkspore. I think it's one of the best hack and slashes ever created and I think it even surpasses classics like Diablo 2 and Sacred from a mechanical standpoint. When Diablo 3 was still a mess it got it's ass handed to them by Path of Exile. Now that Diablo 3 is somewhat fixed I'm still not planning on going back to Diablo 3. I couldn't find any details on if Path of Exile had an end of life plan for it or not. But Path of Exile seems to be doing pretty well for itself since it's on it's fourth expansion pack now and it had a lot of passion and soul put into it by the indie company Grinding Gear Games. I can't see Path of Exile shutting down anytime soon unless something horrible happens to them like if they're bought out by Blizzard and were shut down subsequently after for less competition. Though I feel that if this sort of thing ever came to pass then Grinding Gear Games would find a way to back it up so people would still be able to play it before the fact. Passionate people like GGG won't let something they've worked so hard on die so easily especially with the freedom they currently have as an indie company.