The Giant Beastcast: Episode 224

@Relic Yes, thank god. I wish we lived in your imagined world where victims detailing their abuse actually did “ruin” the lives of abusers. It would be nice to see consequences. But I live in the real world where the courts and corporations are frequently run themselves by abusers who look out for their own. And how many abusers, much less accused, actually see their lives ruined? Not many.

@tomservo50: okay..... I'm 35 and I have seen a lot of failures of the court system as well. I also have Major Depressive Disorder amongst a number of other mental health issues. Abuse is rampant in this world for sure, I've been on the bad end of it a bunch.

in the end a man killed him self because he was called out on social media, on maybe the biggest shit hole of the internet. I have never done any of the gross stuff he did, but I've done stupid/bad things in my life. if I was called out like that, I would probably consider suicide very seriously

you are myopic like a child.

I would also recommend ReCore if you have GamePass. I played it this year and although you instantly feel this is a launch-ass game for the current generation, it's actually pretty fun in it's own quirky way. Yeah, you can feel that it's not finished but it's definitely not trash. ReCore is one of those games I wish got a proper sequel because the ideas and mechanics were actually very solid and the world was likewise interesting, they just didn't properly execute the first time around. It's a CRIME that Knack got a sequel but ReCore didn't.

@tomservo50: Maybe I’m just a little jaded. The last time I saw rhetoric like yours it was when I was looking at how lynch mobs used to justify stringing black men from trees. At least we’ve moved to firing people, isolating them from their support network, ensuring no one will hire them in the future, and then harassing them to suicide instead of killing them in person.

@Youngshields I too suffer from mental health issues. And I hate when it is used as an excuse for violent behavior. I have luckily never had an Alec in my life, but know people who have. Such people deserve to be called out, because the primary concern should be preventing further victims. I’m not his family, so my concern is to the greater public at large.

I’ve done embarrassing and stupid stuff in my life, and I know how I would respond if called out. I would apologize and accept any consequences that may result. Take responsibility meaningfully. I’ve had to do it before in less public situations. It’s hard, but the only way to move forward and turn a bad situation less bad.

Of course taking ones life ends any chance of atonement, and leaves others to pick up the pieces.

@Relic Alec was an abuser. That fact is clear from the stories Zoe, Scott, Albertine and Kateh told, among others. There isn’t much evidence that Alec was harassed into any actions, just that his actions faced public scrutiny. His victims, however, have faced harassment and death threats (and if you can’t tell the difference between public knowledge and scrutiny versus harassment, boy...). Alec wasn’t fired from anything, just had ties cut. Which wasn’t the first time that people have cut ties with Alec before. Alec decided to end his life. He wasn’t forced into it. He could have sought treatment for his issues, apologized. Done lots of things to make up for the hurt he caused. But he didn’t. And do you think anyone wanted him to do this? Really? There is no justice here. No restitution. Just lots of pain left in this world. And that’s on Alec.

Tomservo50, I agree with all you are saying, but there is no point in trying to argue with these people. They are not acting in good faith and have a clear agenda — literally no point to any of this.

I'll go ahead and jump out of this before I lose my mind.

I miss Austin at Giant Bomb, it's very good to have him on the podcast today.

@BonelessSpirit yeah, you’re right. And let me say you’ve said a lot of wise things in this comment section that I hope people take to heart.

I feel this is a moment where such agenda pushers should be challenged on their lies, but there is only so much one can do. And I’m glad that most of games media seems to be covering this well, with sensitivity but clear-eyed.

Alex has always seemed to be a reasonable guy. But his views on work trash cans are outrageous and unforgivable.

Also, Dan’s soda addiction is going to kill him.

@abadwind: Saying it’s fine to call out a celebrity’s spouse on Twitter for being physically unattractive because they won’t see the tweet is a weak excuse, not a clarification.

I hope that somehow Cate Blanchett actually does see it, and let’s Abby knows what she thinks of that type of “comedy”.

@curufinwe: Abby’s response to pushback has been “whatever” every time she’s gotten any. She isn’t going to learn or grow from any of this.

Xenoblade 1 remake basically the Nintendo equivalent of the FF7 remake. Easily the best JRPG of this past decade.

WHAT'S GOOD, INTERNET?!?

@tomservo50: Social consequences are just as meaningful as legal consequences? Really? That is my cue to check out. This is going nowhere and there is no point in continuing. You talk about people with agendas and calling them out on their lies but you are unwilling to even admit that there have been bad actors on both "sides" of this shit show and you came into my reply with bad intentions and assumptions because you "know" you are right.

It will all end in tears. Good Luck with all that.

@boringk: They all deftly sidestepped the bait there, but I would have loved to have them all, especially Austin, really drill into that insane statement.

I was KIND OF onboard with the trash can thing, until they got to the point where they mentioned THEY DON'T EVEN TAKE THEIR OWN TRASH OUT. Truly cannot relate to these coastal elites. J/k. As long as you're not throwing away smelly food or something so big that it takes up the whole remainder of space in the trash can, I don't see an issue with tossing something small away. Unless it's a personal hygiene item--put your used q-tips and dental floss in your own trash can. Also, if you're in a high traffic area, just get rid of the can or put it under your desk so people can't use it.

If someone puts their sweater on the back of what is clearly YOUR chair (that you were already sitting in), you have the right to pick it up, crumple it, and toss it on the counter so it's not in your space anymore.

I understand why someone might feel the need to correct something from 2010--listening to old podcasts can be entertaining AND it was in the context of a game that recently had something like 35 hours worth of video on the site.

@billcrystals: It's not anything new, Dan says it everytime they mention Link's Awakening.

Finished that dissertation yet?

Also Austin could you please not throw out random shit like "oh the guy that won SamSho at EVO 2019 is a shitheel". I expect a whole lot more from you than that kind of garbage.

Hard to imagine why Abby is outright dismissive of criticism on the internet when it almost always consists of nitpicking nonsense that barely serves to obfuscate the real motivation (one guess as to what that is).

She made a joke that someone was out of another persons league attractiveness wise. That joke is literally made ALL THE TIME in media by commentators, and mediums themselves. I just finished watching The Boys and one of the main characters, the son of Denis Quaid and Meg Ryan, for crying out loud, was joked with that the girl with him was out of his league. There is a movie with THAT LITERAL title.

People always want to act like they're on the level, but it's always super transparent. Get back to me when Blanchett's husband is upset by it (I'd suspect he thinks she's out of his league too), or when you're ready to go after the many men that make the same joke all the time. Until then, stop pretending at clutching your pearls.

@sethmode: The incidents I was thinking of were directed towards her coworkers, while she was sitting across from them. Look at her first game of the year and when she decided that Mortal Kombat XI had an all-soldier roster. She just straight up refuses to take even mild criticism or engage in surface-level self-reflection. I do think she probably gets more flak that she deserves, especially given the criticisms that could be leveled at the rest of the crew, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t need to grow up a little.

@relic: I tend to not pay attention to anything regarding her coworkers like that, because I don't know what the dynamic is in the office outside of the limited time I hear them/see them. I figure if she's not doing her job as well as she should be or not taking workplace criticism well, none of that is my business and I don't really engage in the whole making assumptions about what work life is like at GB. I feel like when people do, they step into territory that they aren't really qualified to be in with the small window we get. And even if they did, none of us are her boss or coworker.

It's similar to how I find it a little silly when people come into the comments and claim Jeff is being bullied. Jeff is an adult that works with these people, and not our friend in need of defending. Just my perspective. The community in general has some boundary issues sometimes (both on small and large scales) with the crew, I think.

@sethmode: They’re putting on a product that we pay for and if somebody is childish while serious discussions are going on, it drags the audience experience down. I don’t care about how the day-to-day life around the office is. I care about the times she gets into an argument in an otherwise enjoyable piece of content and I’m stuck riding it out because I don’t know when it’s going to end.

Think about this in terms of quicklooks. There has probably been at least one game which the crew liked a lot, but made it look like trash when they played it on video. If you like that game and want to recommend it to somebody, that’s frustrating, because you now have to scrounge around for a good video to show them instead of using your go-to source. It doesn’t matter if it’s better off camera. It looked like trash where people could see it.

@relic: An example is Alex drastically toning down his "I just wanted to say my piece." from the last couple of GOTY's. I assume it's because he saw the criticism, toned it down and I think he's one of the most well thought out people at the table now.

Meanwhile Abby made a tweet saying that she'll just ignore "the haters".

@SethMode there has always been a crappy part of the GB community that treat women in games terribly to make up for their fragile egos. No surprise that it now craps on Abby, even if it is sickening. It’s especially rich when I see dudes who buys into Gjoni’s manipulative lies think a woman should listen to anything they have to say. “Abby should grow up, behave better and smile more.” Nah, they’re the ones that need to grow up and stop being dicks to women.

@relic: This is all fine and good and you're entitled to all of those opinions...I just stated why I personally don't care to engage with them. If you feel a particular piece of content and Abby in it is at times a distraction or makes the content worse for you, I'd personally say you should just skip that content. Stopping by to single people out and weigh in on how they do their job when you're just a consumer of their content never comes off as "constructive" as people think it does, and it is screaming into the void regardless, because it's not like Vinny is going to pull Abby aside and say "look, bongripper84 said you need to grow more as a commentator so either shape up or we'll have to address the problem". That is literally never going to happen, not the least of which I assume is because plenty of behind-the-scenes conversations happen that again, I'm not privy to, so I choose to not just make wild assumptions about how much a person is "growing" or how they're improving at their job. I don't know anyone at GB. I choose not to take snippets to guess on how much they're "grown".

The closest, and most justified, impact that the community should have is to state what content in general that they think is working and what isn't, in as constructive of a means as possible. Star Spangled Beasters comes to mind. Personally, I was fine with the show, but a lot of people weren't, and 90% (maybe closer to 100% even) of the people criticizing it were focused on the content and its timing, how it felt "tone deaf", etc...not anything directly about how "good" Abby or Dan were. The second people start saying things like "Ben was bad in this content" or "Brad is terrible keep him off of these kinds of games he's always in the menu" or "Why is Dan so stupid!?" or "Why is Abby yelling!?" is the second you just sound like an asshole couching your desire to drag down one of the staff under the guise of it being "constructive criticism".

Anyway, this is pretty far into the weeds at this point and pretty wildly off topic since we're all just vaguely referencing a comment about a joke tweet and not even anything truly directly pertaining to the episode, so I'm going to bow out of this discussion because I don't really have anything additional to add with regards to my perspective.

You could take the worst criticism that all of the male staff members have received over the course of them releasing the deliberations, and none of it will compare to how people went after Abby (with the exception of maybe Patrick) for almost an entire year over things like Cuphead or PUBG. Last years comments both here and on Reddit weren't much better. So, I can see why it might be a little easier for Alex to perhaps take whatever criticism he has received and change his perspective, than maybe it is for Abby, who was facing a cacophony of shit like "this is why they shouldn't have hired a woman" and "Abby is a child she's bad at games" and "I wish they would just get rid of Abby." The amount of shit she got would make anyone eventually just say "Man, fuck the haters."

I laughed way too hard on the subway during the karaoke story.

So being an asshole is okay just as long as it's portrayed "all the time" in media? Get a grip, dude. This is real life, not some movie. And her remark was neither funny nor nice. I cannot tolerate anyone who puts a grade on people because of their looks.

@sintes: I think if anyone needs to get a grip here, it's you. But to each their own.

"You Want Ice-cream, Pay the Robot" is definitely a "if this show did episode titles" moments.

@sethmode: So your argument is that because there are shitheads in the world it's fine to ignore any and all criticism? Ok then.

@dastardry: No, my "argument", such as it is, is that 1) what Abby said is being wildly overblown; 2) similar jokes have existed forever and are harmless and go without reaction all the time, especially with regards to celebs; and 3) it feels disingenuous to me that people are behaving this way over what Abby said and acting like she called him some grotesque goblin or something. It smacks of yet another instance of people nitpicking every little thing Abby says, and illustrates a double standard women have to deal with that men don't, especially, in the games space.

I thought all of this was clear in my first post but there it is again, as clearly as possible. I'm sure people disagree with my perspective, but now, because this is so very off topic, I'm done with the conversation.

As far as GOTY is concerned, the point was people constantly being shits to you inside and outside the community means you're likely to not take much stock in the supposed criticism offered. It becomes white noise. This is a normal psychological reaction. At no point am I saying ignore constructive criticism, I'm saying the community isn't good at constructive criticism so I imagine often the staff looks elsewhere for it. Especially with how the community gets during GOTY, and especially more so with regards to Abby.

hot take guys you might want to back off that whole convo about the death this week in gaming give a reporter is not proving she made it up

@grimrook: now proving she made it up

I was pretty interested in Astral Chain, but I do have fairly low tolerance for some stereotypical elements of Japanese gameplay design. Hearing Austin's criticism of it definitely has me further on the "skip it" side of the fence.

I am most curious to hear Vinny's take on it after he's played a bit, because out of all the GB crew (past and present) his gaming tastes are the closest to mine.

It's astounding that the word "suicide" was not uttered once. Wow.

@aegon: It would be irresponsible reporting to call it suicide at this time. As far as I’m aware, Holowka’s sister said he passed away. Until someone gets a different statement from Holowka’s family or from Manitoba authorities, that is all that has been shared.

It’s possible that if Alec died due to something like an overdose, it could be unclear whether it was an accidental or intentional overdose. Obviously Alec was distraught over the recent developments, but it would be incredibly inappropriate for industry commentators to assume it is a suicide when the deceased’s family has not said that.

I love everyone at GB honestly, but the subtle jabs at Infiltration in the last few podcasts kind of irked me. Its already documented that he w secured s innocent of any legit physical abuse crime.

https://m.imgur.com/a/HFZeOuW

Ign Korea even did a pretty fleshed out interview that deserves a read.

https://kr.ign.com/samurai-shodown-2019/7916/feature/samurai-syodaun-segye-caempieon-iseonu-ssi-inteobyu-2bu

Yay for Austin. Been a while since I heard him, and I love how he's an academic man who also "gets" wrestling. A rare combination in my eyes.

Fwiw, I cannot understand anyone confusing Austin's voice for Jeff B. Two very different voices, let alone accents.

I got blocked by Abby too! A long time ago, and for a very innocuous tweet. Oh well.

I don't understand the acceptance of flossing/brushing one's teeth at work. Keep that shit at home.

@tomservo50: Taking an accusation as fact is what destroyed a mans life and lead him o suicide. It's especially irresponsible when the accuser is know for their dishonesty. The new evidence that suggest a lot of what she said was made up farther proves the point.

Also there always been a crappy part of the community that label criticism of certain people has motivated by hate while unabashedly acting the most hatefuly in any conversation.

It seems suspicious to skip over his death without mentioning that the cause is not yet public knowledge.

"He passed"

What a peaceful statement.

The solution to the subscription thing is just not to be a media glutton. If you're subscribed to three, four, ten services then you're paying so much for things you can't possibly have time for.

There's too much.

Just rotate. I wanted to watch some Prime stuff, so I unsubed from Netflix. When Disney has a bank of stuff I'll cancel Prime and get that. When Netflix gets a good back log of stuff I care about I'll go back to them.

You don't need all the things at once. That's just dumb marketing telling you you need to be part of the zeitgeist. You don't. Game of Thrones will still be just as disappointing if you grab HBO's app next year and watch it then *rimshot*

Don't pay a premium because you think you need to seeit when it's new. It's no different then games. You don't need to buy Gears 5 today if you're still in the middle of Remnant, Astral Chain, Control, etc. It'll be there.

I really want to see the new Dark Crystal but I cancelled Netflix. That's fine. I'll see it next year. ?or two months from now. Whenever. In the meantime I haven't started Good Omens and can catch up on the Expanse.

I still see all the things. And my service bill is sub $20 bucks a month.

Before more people start weighing in on the truthfulness of Quinn and acting as if that is the be-all, end-all of this situation, I hope you read the NITW Kickstarter backer message, especially if you're taking that Post Millennial piece as gospel. You can see it here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/NightInTheWoods/comments/cxqjp8/end_of_summer_backer_update/

@sethmode: I tracked down the Post Millenial piece, and I don’t find it particularly compelling. It’s a bunch of old tweets, and obviously very few people are going to just make a bunch of tweets about their unhappiness. People put on a brave face and only post about the moments when they are happy and pretend things are fine.

I’d imagine that even abusive relationships have their good days and bad days, and people often don’t admit to themselves at the time that they’re in a bad relationship. So my reaction is: OK, great, some people dug up a bunch of old tweets where Quinn just tweets ‘normal’ everyday stuff during her time with Holowka. Who cares? It doesn’t “disprove” Quinn’s allegations, which are mostly about his interpersonal behaviour behind closed doors with her.

@bisonhero: I agree. That was my major issue with it. The piece itself even starts off as if is going to debunk everything she said and instead literally ends with "None of this is expulcapatory" regarding Holowka. Most abuse goes hidden. This is nothing new.

But regardless, I realize there are a lot of peoplethat dislike and even hate Quinn so much that this this is enough for them, and I hope they also read the NITW response to the situation as a whole before jumping to conclusions.

@sethmode: For those people that still regularly vilify Quinn, I'm sure the explanation is somehow her and Anita Sarkeesian teamed up their social media clout to bully Scott Benson into saying all those mean things about Holowka. What other explanation could there be? /s

@bisonhero: Yeah, I mean, I made the mistake of seeing what the approach towards everything was at some of the more unsavory places on reddit and...honestly, you would think Quinn is an Illuminati hacker controlling the entire world, yet she is also a dumb, attention seeking psychopath according to the same people.