Jimquisition: I'm Going To Murder Your Children

[Manthraxx]

maybe we should have drivers licenses for the internet...

 

[proghead]

Some prick has insulted someone on the internet. In other news: water is still wet. More after these commercials.

Seriously, those were probably just a few stupid teenagers who will just get even more laughs out of this the more angry you become at them, and the more you give them any attention.

[sarcasm] To quote a wise man: "Just let it go. It'll be over soon." [/sarcasm]

 

[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.

Which is both fair enough and also kinda bullshit since i know how flimsy and vague internet "laws" are in reality but, yeah that doesnt make it any more ok and certainly doesnt protect it under "Lol freedom of speech, first amendment, lol murrikans"

Not in my eyes anyway but, obviously you dont hold the same opinion so...yeah :L

Pretty much. I'm in agreement that these people are douches, but not in anything else. Law is law, no matter how you try to conceptualize it. When you put your name out there, people are going to respond. If you don't want the comments, don't put your name out there. I really do wish this wasn't the case, but it's just how the world works.

 

[Ferisar]

This has nothing to do with difference, Jim. The CoD patch was boilerplate stuff for gaming. While I don't know specifically what Hepler wrote in the Dragon Age series, nothing there was really different. Phil Fish is only "different" in the sense that he's a jackass who tells people to kill themselves because he can dish out "harsh truths" but is too delicate to handle them thrown back.

And even then, that seems to be the gamer in a nutshell. People who demand everyone else grow thicker skin but who themselves are so fucking fragile that they will fly off the handle when it affects them.

Wait, so you're the guy who threw around the Phil Fish video in my direction as evidence that one of my points was invalid, but then you turn around and ignore that very video by saying he needs to grow a thicker skin, and you justify the attacks made at him, but then turn around and lambast people for justifying attacks?

Wow.

Given the Phil Fish video is a simple counter-point to your prior statement about "making big deelz for gurls" , I don't think there's quite as much to it as you want to believe. He doesn't have to agree with the video outside of just providing Jim's point of view.

Either way, go on with... Whatever. I'll come back in a couple of hours to see some more of whatever this thread is becoming.

 

[Winnosh]

A woman is threatened on the internet in a grossly disproportionate manner. I was wondering when we'd have a brouhaha about how some stupid people doing stupid people shit and one/some woman/women taking it all too seriously means that gaming is sexist and we're sexist.

BRB, gotta flaggelate.

And in case you're wondering, no I didn't watch past the first minute or so, there really isn't a need to at this point.

Lady Victim, evil sexists, misogyny, gaming needs to change, THE ISSUE, etc.

Edit: Well blow me down, I've since been convinced to watch the video and while the basis of the whole thing has only happened because someone thought it was acceptable to lay into a woman, the content itself managed to subvert expectations. Good work Jim I guess.

Too bad you didn't feel the pressing need to stand up and be the hero we apparently needed when all the men you mentioned were getting threatened with death, but better late than never I guess.

You must not watch Jim very often. He did something similar just two weeks ago on Phil Fish

So umm NO He doesn't just rush to the defense of women, he defends PEOPLE

 

[the December King]

...

I am sorry that she didn't really seem to enjoy games themselves. I know what it's like to work in an industry and not like parts of it... in fact I'll bet there are a lot of people who have to put up with stuff they don't like, to do what they do like.

The death threat stuff is saddening, but irrelevant to her employment, or so she said long ago. But it totally does make for a horrible work environment, I'll wager. And is childish and mean.

...

You know what? I just realized I don't have a lot to contribute to this, aside from feeling reflexively like I had to say something, to defend myself from Jim's 'counter attack' on gamers. Which might not have been directed at me personally, but sure felt like it, as opposed to unconcerned, small-minded trolls. From years ago.

... humph.

That dildo better be like a drum barrel with a beach ball on it. With dragon wings.

 

[Rachith Sridhar]

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.

He doesn't ignore it because it wasn't the case. Hepler was a senior writer, not the lead writer. She would likely have written a few sidequests and characters, but the lead writer, who was responsible for the main plot, was David Gaider.

Does it really matter what Hepler was or what shitty story she was responsible for? The point is she was threatened and games industry lost another key contributor.

 

[gigastar]

I dont condone the threats made against her, but i will not say that im sorry that she left the gaming industry.

Not because shes a mediocre writer, but because she has gone on record saying that games would be better if they removed interactivity.

Which begs the question, why get into an industry focused on interactive entertainment, if you want to minimise the interactivity? Why not write books, movie scripts or TV shows?

 

[TWEWYFan]

Bad yes but inevitable.
Short answer: Because democracy
Long answer: If we have to have an inclusive and appealing community like we say we do then we have to deal with the fact that since we let everyone in on the same terms, not everyone is gonna want to exist within the community on the same terms and will break rules and will behave in a toxic way to ruin it for everyone, because we seriously shouldnt censor them or just delete, ban or run the community with an iron fist. Its not ok or right to call someone a retarded monkey with downs syndrome on the web but neither should it be illegal, and for those who say that we should make some thing illegal, most of them already are. It is illegal to make death threats in any format, it is already illegal in some countries to use racial terms on the internet and such, we already have the tools for that. What we dont have the tools for it seems in most gaming communities, are the tools to combat the toxic people who may not break the rules but are disruptive towards other members of it.
Toxicity should be punished i believe and it should be mocked and frowned up, but then at the same time we also have to highlight as many good things as possible about the personalities in the community who do behave in an exemplary way.

I think that's a pretty good perspective to take on this, especially with such a tricky issue.

 

[Jenny Jones]

I'm Going To Murder Your Children

If your first response to a game creator doing something you dislike is to get personal with them and threaten their families, you waive any righteousness you might have had. Seems like a no-brainer ... yet so few of us seem to have brains.

Watch Video

I think it's also worth pointing out what's happening with the media shitstorm over ask.fm and twitter in regards to abuse. If we let people continue threatening and bullying others on the internet we will get regulation, restrictions, monitoring and all sorts of other shit. Now some may not care, others might welcome it but we will say goodbye to a lot of the freedom we have been afforded if we continue letting a few idiots behave like this without being shunned, ignored and told to effectively piss off.

I mean look at what Mr Cameron is trying to get ISP's to do, install filters at network level to filter all adult content by default. Adult content includes anything pornographic, violent and "extreme political views". The internet and any regulation won't be decided by a group of tech savvy, veteran forum users. It will be decided by middle aged politicians who may or may not have a clue about how to even install an ad blocker.

In my book any form of death threat whether it's to the person you are talking to or their wider family/friends is unacceptable and crossing the line. If we don't remove these pests then someone else will and I guarantee they will not have your best interests at heart.

 

[RA92]

Yeah, I know he's not calling me a sick fuck personally, but white knights always leave a bitter taste in my mouth.

Oh look, another guy who didn't watch the video.

He can't really be a white knight when he also mentioned the men getting death threats as well (one of whom, Phil Fish, had gotten an entire episode from Jim himself), eh?

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Agreed. Disagree with something, fine. But the death threats? So not cool. Anyone here have read books, watched movies or listened to songs that sucked. But we dont call death threats on them. Seems thats a game only thing. An yes people saying it are arseholes, but if you had kids you would take those threats seriously. Regardless if its some anon guy, you still would take it seriously. End of the day, yes a game sucked, ME3 ending sucked, i got over that after an hour. An this is after re buying ME1 and ME2 before ME3 was released to replay those games. ME3 ending sucked. But, people are acting like its a cancer thats eating their brain and only a good ending can fix it. Get over it. If a bad game ending is that bad that it effects you months later, then you have major issues.

Now these arseholes are using language to state their level of anger. They wont rape or kill or anything, though if you are on the receiving end im sure you will worry. Especially if you have kids. On this site this language is not acceptable. On others it is. Thing is the stories in that game would good, just the repeating levels etc sucked. Gamers need to stop expecting everything to be awesome. CoD is awesome because it knows what the fans want. It cant fail. Others try something different, fail, but people call death to everyone involved. You know what, with out new ideas, we would still be playing Pong.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

*complaints about immature children playing video games*

I'm not trying to misrepresent your argument, something about having a stack of quotes within quotes and giant posts just sort of irks me, so please don't take this the wrong way.

There's nothing for me to take the wrong way. It's standard post snipping. No worries.

But the terrible, immature, rude, obnoxious gamers who make the rest of us look bad has always been an issue, and we all know it. This much is true, but there's one problem with Jim coming to a site like this and speaking directly at the camera to chastise us with generalities about our behavior as a community: We're not those people.

For the most part, the sort of gamers who do that, the ones who insult and send death threats, and whip their controllers across the room when they lose, and send death threats to developers for patching their favorite sniper rifle, and infect the whole community with an air of hostility and vulgarity don't come to sites like this. They don't.

Quite true, but the problem is their vocal nature. Non-gamers only perk their ears when some truly horrid howling is heard from our hills, so to speak, so they get the impression that your average gamer is somewhere up there with your average bath salts-snorting face-muncher. Either we segregate them, or we teach the greater masses to disregard the howler monkeys we've got in our midst.

And just because it's worth mentioning, since Jim won't talk about this sort of thing, but take a look at this. http://gamerfury.tumblr.com/ That's some of the collection of some of the tweets that one of the Call of Duty developers received, which Jim mentioned.

Saw it a few weeks ago. Made me ashamed to be a gamer, honestly. Or, to be more precise, it made me proud that I was old enough to be able to distance myself from co-op or competitive gaming and go back to my personal roots whenever the primates become too hard to bear. I'm a point-and-click and role-playing type of gamer, for the most part, with a very casual investment in a couple shooters. I'm one of million other guys and gals like myself, and we all probably feel grossly misrepresented by the general idea the rest of the world has of the gamer culture.

 

[Erttheking]

I dont condone the threats made against her, but i will not say that im sorry that she left the gaming industry.

Not because shes a mediocre writer, but because she has gone on record saying that games would be better if they removed interactivity.

Which begs the question, why get into an industry focused on interactive entertainment, if you want to minimise the interactivity? Why not write books, movie scripts or TV shows?

And here is a major problem I have with the whole issue.

First of all she didn't say that, she said that she was tired of how games were always about violence and killing as opposed to something else. Second of all, even if she did say that, why does it matter? She wasn't ripping all of the gameplay out of Dragon Age 2, her opinion was just that, her opinion. It wasn't hurting anyone, why do we care about it? Thirdly, the woman got death threats and people keep bringing this up, why? We have an example of how frighteningly toxic our culture can get, and people keep trying to bring up this harmless thing that she said so long ago. You are missing the point! A massive amount of hate was directed towards this woman, threats and harassment, and people still keep bringing up what she said as if it was some unspeakable sin that we shouldn't let go. It was just an opinion, I myself think that it was a dumb opinion, but that's all it was, a dumb opinion. I don't see why we need to keep bringing it up at every turn and I really don't see what harm it did.