Giant Bombcast 449: Roomful of Narcs

Cuckulus Rift surely? Given the alt-right leanings of this organisation.

So glad there aren't any narcs in that room.

I think Jeff is generally very careful to keep politics out of the discussion. I think this stuff makes him pretty uncomfortable, and he'd rather it didn't encroach on our favorite hobby. I am sure there are some folks who would like him to speak up on issues more.

When issues crop up that can't be ignored, Jeff has tried to identify the aspects that should be least controversial (white supremacists == bad, hate speech == bad, death threats, doxxing, swatting...all bad stuff). He's also tried to separate legitimate political preferences from the political-fueled shitty behavior that is all too common today. From what I heard in the Bombcast, Jeff treated this issue fairly, and his opinions are really grounded in calling out the awful behavior. He's not prescribing how people should think.

I think he handles this stuff pretty well all things considered.

oy

@amyggen: Much appreciated, friend.

Indeed the PAL/British SNES (pronounced (correctly :P) 'sn-ess') does have the coloured buttons and it was a pretty good looking unit.

Dan is then worst sort of narc.

I used to go to 4chan regularly. What we used to talk about 2006ish has finally become true: Insane people take irony plainly and believe to be in good company. That place has become a shithole and this election cycle has been the worst for that. Anyone who looks at /pol/ and can't see this Trump guy has given a voice to a bunch of raving lunatics is probably a lunatic him or herself.

@jedikv: ...yeah, I'd trade 29 pounds of Car for that based on style alone.

@bacon: Sadly I agree, and I too followed your course of action. I used to be so excited to see a new QL, or any type of video come out on this site. Even if I had little to no interest in the game, I still enjoyed it because of Jeff, Ryan, Alex, Vinny, Brad, Drew, Rorie, etc, ALL had something to offer. They added humor. Humor is the biggest thing that I feel has died on here because they're too afraid of the PC brigade, or they might "offend" somebody. Poor Vinny, I feel, is stuck, and has been shamed for trying to make jokes, or has been shouted down for just simply trying to understand a topic or play devils advocate.

Install the battle.net launcher itself, thats all youre missing.

I have to think that the amount of Giant Bomb "funny" we've missed out on because of PC stuff is infinitesimally small, it's still the best place on the internet to have fun with people who love games. If there's been a shift in tone, I'd chalk it up to the crew getting more mature, some of them starting families, and of course the transition from the crazy Whiskey media days to the CBSi tenure.

I don't know... Jason is the only one with a kid.

Also, I never see Drew sick and he travels just as much as anyone else to conventions.

Basically, everyone should aspire to be more like Drew!

The idea of Vinny somehow being a victim of PC culture is one of the funniest things I`ve read in quite some time. POLITICAL CORRECTNESS DESTROYS EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!!!

What's bizarre about the Persona 5 streaming block is that the gigantic zeitgeist around Persona 4 (see: loads of spinoffs and a full-fledged remake, plus a dedicated anime localized for the US) was almost surely due to interest from such things as the Endurance Run and other YouTube exposure. I've only beaten Persona 3 personally, but I've bought basically every Persona 4 related game due watching and loving the Endurance Run here on the site. It's not exclusively a Japanese problem, but sometimes it's downright baffling how companies don't understand why their product is so popular in the first place and how people like to enjoy it.

What I found most hilarious about that whole Nimble America thing is that r/the_donald strongly rejected it, believing it was a scam and calling on the mods to stop trying to monetize them.

Sure, that's a fair assessment on part of the reason behind the change, and I would tend to agree with you to a degree. However, that whole debacle in 2014 which I won't name, I noticed a lot of mischaracterizations and simplifications. Certain guests, etc. They largely, LARGELY tried to stay out of it, to their credit. As @bacon pointed out, it did lean to one side.

I'm even a little scared to post this, and actually having second thoughts. I by no means want to, nor do I intend to start a long winded debate. I'm only trying to convey what I see. What I feel the overall mood of the site/staff is (I could be wrong).

@mormonwarrior: Especially for a huge game like Persona 5. I can understand developers of short narrative driven games being sceptical of streaming and playthroughs of their games, but I have no idea why a publisher of a massive JRPG would be.

@elcidtmax: I do agree. I'm pretty sure nobody would enjoy pushing real world governmental politics in Video Games. From what I can tell, the GB crew doesn't enjoy these kind of talks at all, but it is still news that should be discussed upon. Its way worse to ignore these kinds of things than to discuss them openly with others. Ideally, everyone can benefit from such a discussion. Jeff is pretty good to tackle things level headed and being nuanced but so is the rest of the team.

With this said, I'm certain that Governmental Politics and Video Games are never related if a game doesn't advert for a political party, indirectly or directly. A game can have a valueable political message (Politics as in, influencing an audience via a message, when I write about government politics, its about pushing an pro-Trump/pro-Clinton agenda). For instance, Undertale has a political message like: "Being nice to people has its rewards!". Gone Home is also a good example of a game with a positive political message ("Acceptance relates to a positive lifestyle") that isn't related to either political party, but is still based on Morals. And of course, a game can be without such things. DOOM is probably the best example of a good game that doesn't need any political message and morals at all. But then, only having games like DOOM would make Video Games a little too bland and uninteresting in the long run.

"Get Politics away from Video Games" is basically saying "I want no important meanings inside Video Games that can affect me in a way". And since Video Games do affect us conciously and unconciously, this is a pretty difficult thing to achieve. I wish there would be a term which simplifies the term Governmental Policies when talking about these things, which basically is what everybody means when people talk about politics and video games.

The Palmer Lucky issue is entirely related on the issue that starts when someone uses their influence/money to push an governmental political agenda (making memes to do some Pro-Trump propaganda), which is the crux of the matter here. If someone else would do the same by using their influence within the Video Game industry to push a Pro-Clinton agenda, it would be the exact same problem. I wish more people would discuss these things like the Giant Bomb team does.

Pour one out for Meme Magic.

This Palmer Luckey debacle has once again shown the gaming media to be incredibly incompetent. Every article I've seen -- be it Polygon, The Daily Beast or Wired -- never contextualize or provide proof that this Nimble America group posted anything anti-Semitic or racist. The only thing I can find after digging on the Internet is that some 4chan shitposter -- with no direct connection to the group -- used Pepe a meme from 2005 to make some edgy joke with Pepe having a swastika on his head. With no other connection than Pepe is a popular meme that even has its own popular Twitch emote (they must be racist!), Trump's son retweeted a photo of Trump with Pepe ("The Deplorables" it proclaimed). This leads us back to Nimble America who have made their own dumb pepe pictures but none of which have any racist iconography. We are to take that Pepe itself is somehow racist because of one 4chan user, even though it's been used without any political/race context since 2005. Welcome to the gaming media!

Let's apply this logic to Giant Bomb. Giant Bomb is a racist organization. How do I know this? Because they employ Dan Ryckert who is a racist. We can confirm he is a racist 100% because he likes Guns n Roses who wrote "One in a Million", one of the most unapologetically racist songs of the '80s that the singer later justified as being made to get attention for controversy (kind of like the 4chan user). So racist song = racists band = racist fan (Ryckert) = racist organization that employs him. Not so fun when you use idiotic game journalist logic to your own brand, is it?

This isn't about politics. This is about being a damn person. People in the game industry need to grow up and stop throwing tantrums because another human being doesn't share their world view. Accusing someone or some group of being a racist/bigot with no proof is nothing more than intellectual bullying. Substantial claims deserves substantial evidence and it's a damn shame there are so many mean-spirited people blinded by politics who feel differently.

Cant wait for November... pop some popcorn, sit on the couch, and watch those electoral votes come in. gonna be an interesting one indeed.

Your analogy relating this to Giant Bomb doesn't make any sense at all.

Did you read the Daily Beast articles? Palmer himself confirmed to them via email that he posts to that Reddit account, and he was cooperating with the admins of "The_Donald" subreddit to donate and spread the style of memes and message from that subreddit to real-world political advertisements.

Have you visited "The_Donald" subreddit, and seen what they tend to talk about and how they talk about it?

I have, periodically for the last 4 months; I can confirm personally that the Pepe the Frog image has been adopted as pretty much their go-to mascot. In addition, as I've posted earlier in this thread that there is a constant stream of content hating on Muslims, complaining about nearly every attempt that women and minorities to stand up for their rights and dignity, and a strong support for nationalist and xenophobic sentiment. It follows that the moderators of a community like that (who are the organizers of Nimble America) are at least complicit in perpetuating this kind of behavior, since they certainly aren't doing much to reign it in.

Just because they're not literally putting swastikas on the frog doesn't mean he isn't being associated with this kind of horrible shit - it's often been observed that if fascism ever takes root in America, it will drape itself in more American iconography, so asking "where are the swastikas" probably isn't the best question.

Now, it's possible that Palmer was just in it for the "shitposting", and not the racism, but it still shows a weird lapse in judgement on his choice of bedfellows, because it should have been obvious that this kind of blowback would happen after it got out. At the very least, I don't think he can stay in the role of spokesman (although I think he was already retired from that after the anti-competitive DRM stuff blew up, as well as the pre-order delays).

@lonelyspacepanda: Wasn't The Daily Beast the news outlet that broke the Palmer Lucky story though, at least from what I've heard during the Bombcast? I haven't read the article, but I guess that it has merit, otherwise people wouldn't talk about it. I do not care about Polygons news as they're hit or miss and I rarely read them, but heres what I've found in just 5 seconds of google.

ADL database entry of Pepe the Frog, with some explaination and examples

Exerpt: "However, because so many Pepe the Frog memes are not bigoted in nature, it is important to examine use of the meme only in context. The mere fact of posting a Pepe meme does not mean that someone is racist or white supremacist."

CNN editorial about the entry - its a worthwhile article actually

You should look at both links to get a better idea on what is going on with the "Pepe controversy".

The examples speak for themselves and I believe that it provides evidence. You can't compare this to One in a Million. I mean read this from the lyrics:

"Radicals and Racists

Don't point your finger at me

I'm a small town white boy

Just tryin' to make ends meet

Don't need your religion

Don't watch that much T.V.

Just makin' my livin', baby

Well that's enough for me"

"Let me be edgy while I make mad dosh so you can shut the fuck up."

So the lyrics are not tasteful. So what? I listen to metal every day, and you should know that the lyrics there certainly can be way worse. But acknowledging certain parts about this, which may also include reading between the lines, is part of what makes metal the thing people know and love. What I mean is listening to Guns N' Roses is a little different than wasting your time by posting nazi memes. You cannot correlate these two things.

Maybe I'm just old, but I remember that accepting a different worldview didn't include stuff that implies wanting the Fourth Reich. You also come of as being a little bit too sarcastic and emotionally loaded about the issue. Its just a dumb meme that gets spammed all over the place, sometimes hateful from the groups that are, 99% its just people spamming Pepe because it is a popular meme (and still better than Doge, there, I wrote it).

@lonelyspacepanda: I agree 100 percent. Don't have a different view or you are a scum.

If this were any other election I would be more sympathetic, but to many of us, Trump represents an existential threat to the country, categorically different from any American politician in living memory; we're going to get a little worked up about the people who are validating him as "normal" and acceptable (see the response to Trump appearing on Jimmy Fallon's show).

I am there every day because its funny. and I can't say iv'e seen anything all that racist. Even then its obviously not the majority of the people in there given that its a 1/4 million user subreddit..

I'm guessing we have very different definitions for what passes as racism then. Every time there is any unruliness at a BLM protest (or even a non-BLM protest of similar incidents), I see the Trump fans in The_Donald try to smear the entire movement and do nothing but dismiss police brutality / violence as an issue. Every time there is any terrorist act, there are calls to ban hundreds of millions of people from even entering American for beliefs that aren't even really related. Basically any time people who aren't white complain about an injustice, "/r/the_donald" is curiously unsympathetic, and would rather pass around memes about how the cultural marxists / SJW's are out to get them.

So yes, that's what I would call racism (and the same goes for sexism while we're at it). It's not always as obvious as a person wearing a hood, most of the time it's a complete unwillingness to consider the lived experiences of people who aren't the same color / gender / etc, and knee-jerk dismissal when they tell you that things aren't as easy for them.

#poorvinny #thinkofthevinny

LoL, I literally just spit out some of my water when I saw this. Ok, Ok, maybe he is getting older and laid back. I can't even remember what podcast, or even what the topic it was that they were discussing. I just remember thinking, "wow guys, you're kind of jumping on him for no reason." I think it was Ubisoft vs. Kotaku, but I'm not 100%

Yo! Signed up for premium recently and I'm enjoying my AD FREE experience.

Dope.

@mithhunter55:

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This particular case probably feels shitty specifically because of the "well, it's his money" argument- if not for the Oculus' crowdfunding efforts it wouldn't have been sold to Facebook, and Oculus has definitely made diversity and empathy a sizable part of its marketing campaign. Just four months ago, Oculus hosted a diversity summit with the express intent of emphasizing the need for inclusivity in VR development and the recognition of diverse perspectives, and Luckey was there to deliver the keynote. His presence there, where he promoted and encouraged ideals he financially opposed in secret, looks rather shady and hypocritical in hindsight. The whole thing has a similar feel to Uber's plans to replace all its drivers- and with them, the narrative that they give hardworking americans a chance to make a buck- with self-driving cars as soon as it's practical. I guess that gets into the weird questions of presumption of ownership through crowdfunding and the problems with buying a product as performance of ideology, but those questions are weird in this case because of the sour taste they left when Oculus was sold in the first place. Now they're back with a hint of neo-fascism in a time of damn near societal upheaval, so it's not unsurprising to see people taking it personally.

Real talk though, I know Jeff has to dance around touchier subjects for presentation reasons, but I appreciate his increasing willingness to straight up call a spade a spade on these issues. People get together in these comments and whine about how the content has been sanitized and things were better Back In The Day, but when you look at stuff like Ryan picking apart Avatar as a lazy white savior story, it's hard to buy into the narrative that anything has changed or that they've "caved" to any sort of pressure. Unfortunately, it's just as likely that it's not so much anything about the site changing alignment and more the world becoming increasingly more slanted, but in either case, they've got my money.

@lively: While I find the behavior of the_donald pretty childish and lame, especially for the main community for a presidential candidate, I don't agree that it posts racists/xenophobic propaganda. These are value judgements at the end of the day, but when compared to the extreme stuff posted elsewhere, it's more reactionary outrage than anything outright discriminatory or hateful.

I agree that it's a bad look to associate with them as a professional. Also really bad look to associate with that Milo guy (the Giant Bomb guys hinted at this but kind of avoided it) who connected him to this Nimble America group.

But as for Nimble America or the_donald being "white supremacists" groups or spreading "white supremacy", these claims are entirely baseless. When groups like the KKK and Stormfront still exist, it's an exaggeration to call these benign meme groups a threat -- and by association, someone who visits/interacts with them racist themself as is the case with Luckey. Once again, I'm only talking about the "white supremacist" claim going around.

@dray2k: Those ADL and CNN articles are a joke. There was recently a 4chan meme around putting the child cartoon Arthur in horrible scenarios. Does that mean the PBS cartoon and anything tied to it supports beating women, racism and hate crimes? No. These old media organizations don't know how the internet works. We do. And we should call them out on bullshit like this.

You are making a real strawman with the Guns N Roses comparison I made. My point is that if associating with pepe makes Nimble America/Luckey "white supremacists" than Giant Bomb/Dan Ryckert associating with Guns N Roses fandom makes them "white supremacists". Also, you quoted the least offensive part of the song; a song that rails against blacks and gays, dropping the f-bomb and n-bomb in it's chorus. It's so bad the guitarist whose mom is black refused to ever play it live and the band hated Axel Rose for writing it.

I'm not saying Giant Bomb/Ryckert are white supremacists. I'm only showing how stupid this kind of guilty-by-association logic is when it extends to a meme from 2005 with no political context.

The "existential threat" stuff is mostly propaganda. I'm not voting but I'm equally disgusted in the two candidates. That said, I think we can all benefit from more interaction across both sides and lowering the tension based on absolute nonsense (Trump will set off nukes! Hillary will work with ISIS!). I highly recommend reading the r/askTrumpsupporters Reddit, if only to see uncensored discussion from both sides asking questions about Trump's policy and behavior with honest responses. This trend of thinking half of America are hateful racists isn't healthy. Why are we so afraid of actual engagement with them and intellectual conversation? Instead we watch a Daily Show clip that finds the worst people in America and then we feel good about ourselves thinking that's everyone else that isn't us.

It really helps show that most of this election is about policy differences buried under a heap of propaganda and fear. Trump represents risk but with risk could come great rewards. I don't say this to influence anyone to vote Trump, but to help people chill out and see it's not as bad as the liberal media wants you to think. I could say a lot bad about Hillary but I don't care. I only want to have a positive outlook and respect that both candidates could potentially do a lot of good, even if they are far, far away from anything I'd ever want.

@lively said:

A lot of people view Clinton as an existential threat.

They see her as the ultimate insider of a system run by two nakedly corrupt private organizations that have conspired to rig the system so that only their candidates have a real chance of winning. Both parties have more or less agreed to impoverish American workers by sending their jobs overseas and bringing in millions to compete for the jobs that are left. And both parties waste the lives and bodies of patriots in conflicts that only serve the interest of the donor-class in "stability" and have nothing to do with the defense of the United States.

Trump scares the crap out of me, too, but I'm pretty sure that a country that can survive Nixon and Reagan and W can (probably) survive Trump. But just because I think he's awful doesn't mean I think that anyone who supports him must be awful - most of them just see things differently than I do.

@sciential: @lonelyspacepanda: You two are honestly bringing back hope for me (for GB) in that, I'm not alone in seeing past the BS and actually being able to have a civil conversation. Simply labeling people as racist, homophobes, etc. is so unproductive. And seeing it over and over again, those words lose their power and people just don't care what they're called if their ideas aren't being heard.

This mob mentality truly needs to stop. I'm not just talking about the electoral candidates, but in general. I may be going off on a tangent, but I remember being in chat for a UPF and Jeff was showing something he had bought, and I thought he got ripped off. Instead of saying those exact words I said, "Man, he got jipped" which at the time I thought it was a perfectly innocent thing to say. I was jumped on by about 6-7 people telling me I was being hateful, or they were trying to correct me because it was offensive to gypsies. I had NO idea! I'd been using it my entire life, without any kind of hate or malice in my heart. In my mind, and in context, it meant being ripped off.

So when people laugh about others claiming that PC culture hasn't changed the course of language with what we can and can't say... I highly beg to differ. And it ultimately disrupts honest discourse between people.

I think if more people speak up, the better chance we can have to actually survive this election without being at each others throats all the time. Sure, they'll be trolls and actual racist or sexist... Ignore them. Let them talk so other people can see how ridiculous they are. (That sounds contradictory, but I think you know what I'm getting at.)

@lonelyspacepanda: While I find the behavior of the_donald pretty childish and lame, especially for the main community for a presidential candidate, I don't agree that it posts racists/xenophobic propaganda.

I think you're just plain wrong here. You can look at the links I posted above your comment and that's just minimal examples I found of pure racism in the_donald. And that was just for African Americans. The xenophobia, sexism, homophobia and racism there is extraordinary and the main thing is, it's being upvoted. This isn't some case of a few horrible comments getting quickly buried and rebutted like what happens in most subreddits, it's fucking rampant in that subreddit.

I have a newfound respect for Palmer Luckey, I'll be keeping an eye on him. Also it seems like everyone is a white supremacist these days.

Also that FH3 junk is absurd, I hate these devs that keep getting away with unoptimized garbage on the PC. I'll won't accept 30fps in a racing game either.

@m16mojo2: You might not have meant anything by it, but 50 years ago there were a whole bunch of words/slurs you could use in public for being cheap, lazy etc that people today would rightfully call you out on, society evolves, language evolves, either get with it or get left on the wrong side of history.

This comment section is eye opening. With few exceptions, it's striking how intolerant the GB community is and how quickly it resorts to the same vitriol it purports to denounce.

@slindz: I appreciate the effort in posting those links, although I am still very skeptical. clearly those commenters are one of two things. One they are idiots who feel protected enough by free speech and lack of moderation to spout out their views. Two they are planted comments to discredit that subreddit and push the hate monger Trump angle.

I am not willing to put it out of the realm of possibility. Too many people are losing their minds thinking once again an election cycle means the end of the world. If there are "shitposting" organizations on one side there are on the other side too. Troll espionage. But anyways I am not even American and my own cousin said trump = Hitler. Ever since then I have been doubly careful not to believe things as they appear in news. A lot of bias as people want to push their chosen candidate.

Basically everything is fucked. Trust nothing. What is rhetoric and what is real is too blurry for me. Either way it's just crazy to watch it all happen. If I was from there I'd be voting third party. As a Canadian I would have loved to see Bernie win. It was amusing to see him called too left. When according to political compass he was just slightly left of centre. Mean while I'm all they way left.

It seems like a page out of Trump's playbook: say "nuh uh" when presented with overwhelming evidence.

Please stay off of political opinions. I come here to escape that crap.

Oh goodness look at these comments. Giant bomb team please stay away from commenting on political crap. I try to come here to escape all this and enjoy some funny discussion on video games. Can we have our one corner of escape from all this bs?

The_Donald is definitely a hive of racists. Any casual glance from an unbiased observer would confirm that. Even without that, Nimble America is co-founded by Milo Y, and that guy takes to hatefulness like it's a going out of business sale.

If he just donated to Trump's campaign directly, it'd be a non-story. But if you lie down with dogs, you get fleas.

When someone read things like this and say, 'That's not racist' or do mental gymnastics to come up with reasons to defend the environment that foster them ('they were plants' 'these are outliers') then I have news for you. You are a racist.

These 'false equivalency' arguments with 'you can't call us racists' is pathetic. As an outside observer (Non American) it's quite obvious. Donald Trump is using racist, sexist NeoCon rhetoric to appeal to the worst portions of the population.

@flamingeyebrows: I didn't say it wasn't racist. Anyways no point discussing any further. When both sides are bigoted nothing civil can advance. That's my general feeling about this whole year. Shits effed up.

I'm right there with you. When my sub is up in a few months I don't plan, at this point, to renew again. The GB I fell in love with back in 2008 - 2010 is very different than the GB of today....and that's ok!

@gundogan: This is by far the shocking and disturbing subject (or revelation!) discussed on this podcast! ;-)