Jimquisition: I'm Going To Murder Your Children

[IamLEAM1983]

Spoiler: The story how one bloke ruined the match for everyone else

Since Valve has ported it for Linux some time ago, I decided to give it a go again.
Yesterday I played some versus and got tired since it was getting late. Logically my performance in this round was kinda bad and I thought "I'll finish this campaign, then leave."

A few seconds later a popup to votekick me appeared and I had no idea why.
Luckily the people didn't just all press "Yes" and one asked why.
"cuz he sucks. lowest points in game"
They voted for "No" then and introduced him to the crazy concept that some might play a game to....wait for it.....have "fun".
He didn't seem to graps that concept and was like:
"maybe he'll learn that way"

But he just couldn't keep his mouth shut. Whenever somebody failed at trying something (you know, something that happens A LOT in versus), he insulted them. Whenever something worked out for him he was like:
"thats how you play"

Eventually he changed teams (or autochange happend) and he must have kept going on in teamchat, because one posted this in global chat:
"That's it! I'll leave after this round because I can't make you shut up."

And that's the story of how a single asshole ruined the game for the rest ended.

I'm more familiar with being called a fag because of my Mic Lisp (as in, my microphone sucks) and being pelted with homophobic slurs until the end of the match. At which point the idiot rage-quits because I didn't give him the pleasure of raging back or writing down something passive-aggressive in chat.

My usual tactic is pretty simple: clam up and keep playing. Lack of response always drives potential rager types up the wall and usually leads to them being votekicked.

Who knew silence could be the best weapon?

 

[Dragonbums]

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.

Unfortunately I can't link you right now.

However the things that sparked up gamers hatred towards her was in an interview with her- the interviewer in question asked her a bunch of questions.
Two of them sparked the controversy.

First question was what did she dislike most in videogames in which she said playing them. Hepler acknowledged right off the bat how horrible that sounded and further explained that the reason for this opinion was because she has poor hand eye co-ordination, struggles immensely with game maps, dislikes combat type of gameplay, and inventory checking.

The second question was if there was one thing she would like to be put in games, to appeal to more people what would it be. Hepler responded by stating that the same way devs offer gameplay enthusiasts a fastforward button to skip all the cutscenes so they can get right back in the action, they should offer a similar option for those who aren't great with videogames, but immensely enjoys the story of said game a fast forward button to skip the unnecessary and/or difficult bosses.

This last question is the one that pissed off people the most. Many people claimed that she was attempting to strip out gameplay in videogames (a feat that is not possible as a writer anyway.) and completely ignore the fact that games such as Super Mario Galaxy 2 already offer such a feature. If you lose a certain amount of times on a specific stage- You have the option to allow Princess Luna to play the stage for you and obtain a bronze star.(doesn't count as an actual star so there is still much incentive to actually beat the stage yourself.)

 

[TAGM]

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.

See, there's a tiny difference between criticizing people's writing and giving your honest opinion in a way to try and get some improvements going, and threatening to kill their children. And I know - or at least hope - that you can tell the difference. Bad writer or no, as soon as you're getting to the point where you start sending pictures of someone's children along with a threat on their lives, you've pushed into the realm of dick move. Not to say that any points against her writing are invalid - but then, the points on her writing, by the same token, don't invalidate the fact that threatening her children's lives over it is not the thing you should be doing.

I didn't know this [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QLz0CqtMVc] still had to be passed around.

That's because it doesn't. The controversy surrounding her may have been faked or not, but I should think that, either way, death threats on her children are something that shouldn't be done.
Unless you're trying to suggest that the whole death threat thing was faked all together, in which case:

 

[Mr_Terrific]

Yeah...should have went with the DLC episode as this is completely pointless since she got a book deal.

I also find it funny that Jim will jump down our throat for the Hepler thing but won't say shit to Marcus Beer or any of his peers who fuck up this industry just like the dipshits that threaten children.

Speaking of children, some loser threatens to murder a school full of children receives the support of damn near everyone in gaming because he was "joking" but when multiple people do it to Hepler, it's clearly serious threats and they all should be imprisoned.

I want my damned DLC episode....dammit.

 

[Canyoureadmydeadpan]

So count me the odd ball, but with all the many complaints that this show has addressed (many very very valid) am I seriously the only one who feels we are in a golden age of gaming? Games are dirt cheap and there are a shit ton of them for everything. I get many AAA releases are recycled garbage, but games are shoved out so frequently it is not only impossible to keep up with EVERY release. It's a good and a bad thing because for every 30 turds shat out monthly you will get 5 gems, but compared to even as recently as the PS2 day that's the most "good" games released in forever. Not to sound like an old grampa but there was a time when there were one, MAYBE TWO, good games released a season. Now I find it impossible to keep up with every release I want to take a look at. If you are a person who thinks that only shit is being released, get out of your comfort zone, get off your ass and take some chances. It's relatively easy to find things suited to your takes if you stop being a lazy shit and read (I emphasize read, a numeric scale can only measure an individuals personal enjoyment) the Good, Bad, and Mediocre reviews on metacritic and make informed decisions. If that is too much fucking work for you try the shouibuythisgame sub reddit where people will break it down for you.

 

[ShirowShirow]

Yeah...should have went with the DLC episode as this is completely pointless since she got a book deal.

I also find it funny that Jim will jump down our throat for the Hepler thing but won't say shit to Marcus Beer or any of his peers who fuck up this industry just like the dipshits that threaten children.

Speaking of children, some loser threatens to murder a school full of children receives the support of damn near everyone in gaming because he was "joking" but when multiple people do it to Hepler, it's clearly serious threats and they all should be imprisoned.

I want my damned DLC episode....dammit.

Dude did a whole episode on the Phil Fish fiasco. Go look for it.

 

[RaikuFA]

Agree with everything, Jim, except for one thing(in a way).

The Phil Fish harassment. It wasn't just his remark about japanese games or his actions in IGTM. It was his actions since Fez was released where he has a "Holier than thou" attitude. He called a boycotters on the steam forums nerds, he uses controversy to sell his game whenever he can. He calls people ingrateful if they buy Fez while it was on sale. He insults PC gaming then runs to it when Fez dosen't sell as well as he wanted to. Heck, Fez on XBLA isn't patched, my save got deleted so I deleted the game.

TLDR: Beer was the lesser of the two evils in that situation.

 

[endtherapture]

Wait, we're wailing on Dragon Age 2 here again? ... did I wake up like... what, a couple years ago somehow? And the writer? ... We're going to attack the one thing Bioware does better than any other company? ...

It's not 2003 Bioware certainly aren't the best writers in the games industry any more.

But yeah, trolls are bad, this isn't a games-industry exclusive issue though so I don't see the need for an episode.

 

[lord.jeff]

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?

I think she enjoyed that games let the player to choose the direction of the story and feel it was part their actions that things played out the way they did. She didn't wish to remove interactivity all together just to remove the dungeons and other parts that need not be there for the narrative, I other words she should of been writing visual novels.

 

[NWJ94]

Dear god...

I mean I didn't like DA2 and was pretty disappointed in ME3's ending, but...

Threatening the children of the writer? I don't care if it was over the internet, I don't care if it was a "joke." That's a line you never cross, death threats are bad in any context but to threaten the children of someone you dislike is the most vile, disgusting, cowardly act you could do, and to do it over something so PETTY is nausea inducing.

I spend a lot of time hoping gaming can be seen as a respected medium, but times like this make me think that this will not happen anytime soon.

 

[neoontime]

Sum of the video:
Gamers can be shits.
What the video missed:
Gamers are a sub-group of people. People can be in general, shitty. Some of these people have an active past-time of sending death threats to people they disagree with. That is bad and we need some way if any to fix that, though shitty people are hard to deal with, so tough luck.

 

[tzimize]

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

Thanks for mentioning Beyond Good and Evil 2. I want that game ;_;

OT: Well...this is the ugly side of offering anonymity to the masses. That doesnt keep me from being glad we have it...I just wish some people would manage it better :\

 

[BrownGaijin]

This reminds me of the time when someone called into the Howard Stern Show, and said that they were going to kidnap Rosie O' Donnell's son.

And this my fellow gamers is why we can't have nice things.

 

[JPArbiter]

I can put up with a lot of shit in my life... but I am a dad. Threaten my sons and I will end your miserable little life. The slime that threatened this woman's family did was beyond reprehensible, it was actually criminal.

I hope Bioware saved the IP addresses of the posters, I hope she prosecutes, and I hope the brats who did this spend a few weeks in jail to shock them back into the reality that they are not that important.

Give the abusive and threatening post you've made you shouldn't be surprise if these "brats" also prosecute you for the same reason.

clearly you are not a parent, so you do not understand just how dear a child's life is to a parent. and who would file charges against me? I threatened no specific person. Your attempt to point out hypocrisy fails, as these people are seeking revenge for a product they do not like, whereas I am stating intent to guard another living human beings life from being under threat.

 

[jluzar20]

Sum of the video:
Gamers can be shits.
What the video missed:
Gamers are a sub-group of people. People can be in general, shitty. Some of these people have an active past-time of sending death threats to people they disagree with. That is bad and we need some way if any to fix that, though shitty people are hard to deal with, so tough luck.

Agreed. You can't crazy proof the world.

 

[RJ 17]

"An episode that shouldn't have had to have been made." I'd say that about sums things up. He really does bring up a good point about ripping creative risk-takers to shreds yet demanding more creativity than your standard "brown-to-brownish-grey shooter". The fact of the matter is that there are things in life - not just games - that you're (no one in particular around here, just making a general statement) not going to like because the world doesn't exist to appease your standards. If you don't like a game for whatever reason, that's fine, but to start frothing at the mouth, punching holes in the walls, and threatening to murder children is just absurd.

It's stuff like this that makes me think such people SHOULD be tracked down and punished in some way or another. A massive fine, jail time, a court-ordered mandate that they can never use the internet again...there should be some consequence to these kinds of actions. It's morons like the ones issuing death threats over the stupidest, most trivial things (or really issuing death threats at all, for that matter) that give the rest of the gaming community a bad name. It's stuff like this that just adds more fuel to the argument "games make people violent." We all know it's BS, but we also know those arguments aren't going away...and with stuff like this happening, it's easy to see WHY they won't go away.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

No. This episode didn't need to be done IMO. The people who agree with you are not going to get anything out of this and the people you're calling out aren't going to watch this or are but just not care enough to even listen to you.

 

[Erttheking]

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.

Evidently you missed the part where Jim was harping on and on about how we need diversity in gaming and how it's wrong to criticise someone who tried something new. In fact several times throughout this video Jim stopped talking about the death threats and talked about other issues.

Also if people don't willing resign after ruining a game without poor writing and continue to ruin other games then the only way left to "save" these games is to force this person to quit. Perhaps if people took more responsibility for producing poor quality products this wouldn't happen.

It's wrong to criticize new things in the industry? Uh, he never said that. In fact he said the exact opposite.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abLspv3bgRo

Also once again you seem to be missing the point. We are not talking about the people who didn't like Dragon Age 2 we are talking about the people who hated it so much they felt the need to say that they were going to kill her children. One is ok, the other isn't

 

[xyrafhoan]

"Hepler was a terrible writer for games that people waited for anxiously and put a lot of hope into."
"Phil Fish is an asshole who explicitly said he likes to provoke people and asked for everything he got."
"Some reviews are inherently more or less acceptable based on how objectively analytical and intellectually honest their writers were, and some of those writers should not have their jobs."

These are all positions that someone could hold (and they'd hold them correctly). It's understandable to get emotional over them as they pertain to things that people care about, plus they sometimes have very legitimate reasons for believing these things that can't be dismissed as simple idiocy/immaturity/biggotry etc. I wish Jim and others who oppose these movements would try more to understand these reasons instead of immediately jumping to fighting fire with fire at all cost. Speaking pragmatically, I don't think Jim has accomplished much with this episode at all, only made more people pissed off even more intensely. Despite what he said, this episode didn't NEED to be done.

There. With that said, I completely AGREE that death threats, insults and childish rage are despicable, distasteful and don't belong in a discussion between adults. THAT'S the part of the video I agree with. I just wish Jim didn't use it as a strawman to attack legitimate opinions, didn't twist the truth and tried to understand the opposition just a LITTLE bit better.

No opinion is objectively correct (well, aside from the consensus about Phil Fish). In Dragon Age 2, even though Hepler is one of the writers, she isn't the only one. The lead writer credited is actually David Gaider, but people have targeted Hepler for one of her interviews where she said she wasn't coordinated at video games and wished there was a fast forward for action segments, much like how there is almost always an option to skip dialogue. She has become the punching bag of the game for everything that's wrong with it, even though the game is obviously rushed and she has nothing to do with copy-pasted game areas or the decision to have the dialogue wheel with no ambiguity.

It's rare that the problems of a video game are any one person's fault. You're working on a big team and you have deadlines to meet and not everything can be perfect. If a game is ultimately bad, ripping into whoever approached the media is not the way to go. Criticize the studio as a whole. In Bioware's case, criticize the publisher who has been steadily eroding the quality of Bioware's games through their demands to streamline for the mainstream. Jim isn't twisting the truth when he points out the kind of shit individuals get working in the industry. The real truth is that there is a vocal minority out there that thinks any mild disappointment is worth issuing death threats, because apparently there is nothing else they can do like play other games that suit them better. God forbid people stop buying just-good-enough/bad games, all the popular IPs stop being popular and publishers have to come up with something new to satisfy the consumers. Nope, out with the personal attacks and attacks on people's families! This is a serious problem that goes beyond the game industry, but at the very least, we should be demanding better behaviour out of the people around us. We shouldn't demean the quality of individual people when we are dissatisfied with a product. You're entitled to your opinion, but making someone feel like they need to be surrounded by security at all times and evacuate all forms of communication is not acceptable at all.

 

[Ninjamedic]

I shouldn't really have to preface this by stating that I automatically found the threats to be abhorrent and pathetic, but I do find the threats to be abhorrent and pathetic. Obvious aside,

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?`. 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.

It is a coincidence, this stuff happens all the time in all manners of settings and events, and its not because of gaming itself its because of factors of the internet and how anonymity can embolden people to-

But I imagine if we just pass around that Penny Arcade picture and stick our collective heads in the sand we can ignore this until it happens again next week, right?

You have to ask yourself: Would the reaction to this even be as controversial had it been not for the constant shitstorm over "Sexism in Gaming" and related bandwagons in the past while? Given the near universal anger directed at the COD death threats, are you really saying that people think this is okay? What do you expect to be done about it exactly? PRISM?

Also, since when did "lol i hop ur kidz die" suddenly gain the same weight as the fatwa placed on Salman Rushdie?

EDIT: Really, now it's `white-knighting` to say that maybe people who threaten to murder someone's children are fucked up?
Stay classy, escapists.

I've just been skimming the thread, but what posts have been saying this? Most of what I've seen has been about the knee-jerk reactions to the incident and how it proves the "issues of the gaming community".