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GAMING NERDS: ARE THEY WORSE THAN EVERYONE ELSE?

7/8/2019

23 Comments

 
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I'm lucky. Our YouTube channel, on the whole, has never really been the target of any especially nasty comments. We get the occasional one, of course - it's the Internet - and I've deleted the odd comment or two that seemed particularly mean-spirited towards somebody on the channel (never myself, so you know).

I mean, fine if you want to see that as censorship, but I figure I have the right to protect people I care about. If you came into my house and threw handfuls of gravel at my cats, I'd ask you to leave, probably. On the whole, however, it happens a lot less than I was expecting. 

We're a pretty small channel of course. I don't think we're particularly controversial. Plus, we're all SO lovely that how could you possibly have an issue with us?! The only time we ever got a lot of negative attention was when Digitiser The Show first went out. Part of that, I believe, was down to expectation versus what they got. 

We had a lot of people who were new to the whole Digi thing. Plus there was an element of Digitiser The Show that was trying to appeal to two different audiences; the die-hards who were there for Found Footage and classic Digi... and those who wanted a proper, serious, gaming show. And some of those people, because the Kickstarter drew in those who weren't necessarily Digi fans, were backers. They weren't best pleased by the presence of Beautiful Boys and Chart Cats.

Still, I felt the pressure to appeal to everyone, rather than the core audience I prefer to make stuff for. Clearly I no longer care about that when it comes to the Digi Minis. Consequently, they're much more glorious and purely "me" as a result. Suffice to say, even if it means we end up raising less money for projects, that's the starting point next time.

However, that's all preamble. What I want too talk about is Ooblets. 

​Sorry... what?

Yes: Ooblets!

Ooblets...
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LIFE IS THE NAME OF THE GAME
Ooblets is described as a "life simulation game" - you know, a bit Stardew, a bit Pokemon, a bit Animal Crossing - from tiny, two-person studio, Gumberland.

​Originally it was going to be released by Double Fine, but when that studio was acquired by Microsoft, Gumberland announced that they would be self-publishing instead. That's a big old undertaking for such a small team. 

The game has been, in part, crowdfunded through Patreon... and that seems to be at least a degree of why those anticipating its release have reacted badly to the news that Gumberland has signed an exclusivity deal with... THE EPIC STORE!

<CUE LIGHTNING FLASH, DRAMATIC ORGAN MUSIC, STACCATO FLATULENCE>


And when I say "badly", I mean... death threats, racist abuse, and rape threats against Gumberland's husband-and-wife team, Ben Wasser and Rebecca Cordingley.

Also, apropos nothing, when I'm working or driving, and my wife asks if I'd like some water, she won't actually give me any until I pretend I'm dying of thirst, and I have to stroke my throat and groan, and mutter the word "Wasser... wasser..."  

That's actually true, and I don't care that it makes us sound insane. Though sometimes we shorten it to "Wass-wass".

​Anyway.

IRE-LAND
Of course, this wouldn't be the first time that an Epic exclusive has stoked the ire of gamers - something that Gumberland seemed very aware of, when they announced the deal by describing it as  “The latest thing Gamers™ have gotten angry about."

The announcement adopted a generally tongue-in-cheek tone across the board: "Just imagine if other companies got it in their head to offer funding in exchange for exclusives. What’d be next? Game consoles paying for games to be exclusive on their consoles? Netflix paying for exclusive shows? Newspapers paying for exclusive articles? It’d be some sort of late capitalist dystopia."

Importantly, though, Gumberland needs the deal. As it explained: "Because Epic doesn’t yet have the same market share as their competitors, they offered us a minimum guarantee on sales that would match what we’d be wanting to earn if we were just selling Ooblets across all the stores.

"That takes a huge burden of uncertainty off of us because now we know that no matter what, the game won’t fail and we won’t be forced to move back in with our parents (but we do love and appreciate you, parents!). Now we can just focus on making the game without worrying about keeping the lights on. The upfront money they’re providing means we’ll be able to afford more help and resources to start ramping up production and doing some cooler things."


Seems reasonable doesn't it, being able to survive while making your game? Surely we don't expect our creators to become homeless, just so they can release their content in the way we demand?!

And Gumberland's justification seems fair. We do live in an age of exclusives. There are shows I want to watch that I need Amazon Prime for, shows I'm only able to watch on Netflix, or Sky. And as they say - it's not like games haven't been exclusive before. They've always been exclusive! You think Combat was available on anything other than the Atari 2600?

But of course, this is the games industry, and we're dealing with gamers, and... man. It got really nasty.
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EPIC FAIL
Epic's management has promised to support Gumberland over the abuse they've received, hissing, from their evil lair (an abandoned slaughterhouse): "The announcement of Ooblets highlighted a disturbing trend which is growing and undermining healthy public discourse, and that's the coordinated and deliberate creation and promotion of false information, including fake screenshots, videos, and technical analysis, accompanied by harassment of partners, promotion of hateful themes, and intimidation of those with opposing views."

Gumberland's Wasser also issued a statement regarding the situation. However, lot of what he had to say felt horribly familiar to me.

Around the time of Digitiser The Show's second or third ep - whichever one it was that a big idiot paid for us to receive hundreds of dislikes on - I had grown a bit weary of the negative comments, and just started taking the piss in return. I didn't have the energy or patience to engage with it anymore.

I mean, it's a bit like the Mr Biffo-looks-like-Charlie Brooker thing. It doesn't bother me - I mean, so what? - but I'm just bored of it. I don't have the energy to engage with it anymore. How many different responses am I meant to have to somebody who thinks they're being witty by pointing it out for the fiftieth time?!

"Hur-hur... you look like Charlie Brooker."

And...?! Okay. What's the response you expect to that? What am I meant to say?! Sorry. No offence, but it's just so boring and witless now.

And it got like that on the Digi comments last year; I was just weary of the same things being said over and over and over and over and over and over...

Out of the hundreds, possibly thousands, of comments and emails and messages we got telling us what we should've done, or what we should do, or how we could individually tailor the show to one person's specific sensibilities, less than 1% of them were useful or helpful.

We made a thing. We made creative decisions. That was the end result. You learn from it, you move onto the next thing, and you hopefully put what you've learned to good use.

ENGAGE!
It got to the point where the only way I could engage with all of it was to at least try and be entertaining in the process, for onlookers... and myself. Otherwise you just end up saying the same thing hundreds of times, and it drives you insane. 

But, from the outside, it doesn't read as that, I guess.

"Why are you getting arsey with people, you prick?" 

"Oh, I see that Mr Biffo, the prick, can't take criticism."

"Thin-skinned prick."

"I'm just trying to give you some advice, you prick."

​"Looks like I touched a nerve, prick."

Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. They don't like it up 'em. I was only entertaining myself - and my wife, actually; she found it funny too, but then she knows me best, and knew my intent. Others on the Digi team were worried about how it was coming across, and so I stopped doing it. Instead of engaging, I just began ignoring it. I can take it, but I don't want my wilfully dickish behaviour rebounding onto others.

Unfortunately, it seems as if Gumberland's Ben Wasser handled it in much the same way.

He honked in the wake of the backlash: "I very foolishly engaged with these people, sometimes just answering them, sometimes making jokes, and often saying things in exasperation. It was obviously a mistake to engage in that way.

"I unintentionally threw a lot of fuel on the fire because my messages were screenshotted without any of that context (and sometimes specifically rearranged to change the context or outrightly fabricated) and shared back amongst where the hate mobs were mobilizing.

"To try to re-inject a little context into how you might conceptualize this situation, note that we’ve gotten literally tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of messages on every conceivable platform. We see a lot more than you ever could looking in from outside, and the worst of it usually gets deleted or is sent to us privately."
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OUTRAGE NATION
This keeps happening. Not people signing exclusivity deals with Epic - but this massive, over-the-top, outrage, with an accompanying bowl of abuse. 

Why does it keep happening, and why do gamers, in particular, seem so fanatical and extreme?

It has always been so; think of how territorial some could get over the Amiga. Lest we forget, they tried to get me and Mr Hairs fired, of course, because we didn't cover their stupid computer. And we probably only made it worse because - as per my response to YouTube commenters last year - we took the piss on the letters page. It's what Digitiser has always done. 

Though I appreciate that you need 26 years of context to get the jokes. 

I do sometimes wonder if it is specific - or at least more widespread - in gaming fandom than elsewhere; that sort of fanatical, extreme outrage, that inability to ready irony or context, to fixate and obsess and launch campaigns of harassment and the like. Does it just feel like that because I'm inside the bubble?

Maybe tellingly, even though we made fun of Sega and Nintendo as much as we did the Amiga, it was the Amiga owners who took it personally, who got nasty. Are you more prone to that sort of thing, the bigger nerd you are?

Is it because so many of us are locked into our little pretend electronic worlds, interacting mostly through social media? Is there a higher percentage of lonely people and atypicals among gamers? Does it mean something that out of my kids, the only one who has ever remotely been into games is the one with the autism diagnosis?

It's not said as a criticism, or an attempt to blanket label. Plus, I don't exactly consider myself neurotypical. I'm just genuinely curious to know where this keeps coming from, and why?

I want to understand it, because when abuse - like that received by Gumberland, or like when somebody pays for a video to receive hundreds of thumbs-downs, or when they set up a social media account that's targeting just one relatively minor YouTuber... when it's that extreme, it's not about the target. Something is very wrong there, with an individual. Something isn't wired-up right, because most of us wouldn't behave that way.

It's not enough to just call these people names. What is it they want? What's driving them? What can we learn from how they respond to things?

Most importantly, how can we stop this happening?

"Wasser... wass... wasser..."
23 Comments
Lino
7/8/2019 01:22:51 pm

Spot on. I'll be honest, I'd never heard of Jim Sterling till last week and watched his Youtube video (Which, of course, I can't find now) on this very subject and it was more than a little snarky towards the developer. I've not been involved actively in the industry since Activision worked out of a swish block of flats on the Marylebone Road and money seemingly came out of the taps, but for an indie to survive these days, it's either a case of being swallowed by Microsoft (Saucy), or do this. Fair play to them. If they were to stick it on Steam, it'd get lost quickly. This Epic Store hatred is beyond me, I pre-ordered Rebel Galaxy Outlaw last week, again, only available via Epic, and the amount of hatred it's getting, even in the comments section of people doing video previews on Youtube is crazy. THERE IS NO POINT TO THIS INSANE RAMBLE!

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President Chimp
7/8/2019 01:25:13 pm

I liked the way you managed to stir us Amiga owners up AGAIN with a barely disguised insult. Well played Biffo, well played.

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RichardM
7/8/2019 01:26:23 pm

People really hate the Epic Store for some reason.

Recently, Rebel Galaxy was available for free - like, totally free! Just register an account and download it! - in advance of the sequel, Rebel Galaxy: Outlaw, coming out (also an EGS exclusive). When one of the creators announced this on Twitter, they got responses like “I was going to download this, but epic? Naaaahhhhh”.

Imagine not wanting a really good free game just because you had to get it from Asda instead of Tesco. Some people are absolutely beyond understanding (or forgiveness).

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RichardM
7/8/2019 01:38:22 pm

I see you, guy who also mentioned Rebel Galaxy: Outlaw. That’ll teach me not to read the comments before commenting!

Re: people saying the same boring rubbish a billion times, I suppose there only are a limited number of possible responses to anything. It seems to be de rigeur on YouTube videos for the comments section to be an endless cycle of the same cliched or vile responses, to the point where you wonder if any human is actually writing them. I’m sure there must be a corner of the Internet with bots endlessly screaming hate at other bots. Was going to make a joke about Biffo looking like notorious screenwriter P. Rose, but it’s been done, I’m sure...

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Josh Chown
7/8/2019 01:42:43 pm

I remember how angry people were when Steam first started becoming a big thing. It seems to be a terror of the new rather than anything else.

I'm sure this game going to Epic makes business sense to the developers. It's a shame that we live in a world where that's a deciding factor, but as it is we do.

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Monkeymanbob
7/8/2019 01:45:35 pm

I feel I need to give Mr Biffo a shoulder rub.

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Ben Ward
7/8/2019 01:55:00 pm

Wow, is that Teletext reader the Stuart N Hardy who plagued the letters pages of Amiga Power? Who could imagined back then the gamer culture he was harbingering...

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Dave
7/8/2019 03:44:04 pm

The same kind of people who actually care whether someone has an iPhone or Android etc. "Oh you have an Apple product, you're a corporate sellout".

As if Samsung hand make their products out of hemp in the middle of the woods. Have you ever kissed a girl, son? Or boy. Whatever.

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Geebs
7/8/2019 05:39:32 pm

It’s not a “gamer” thing at all, really. I bet Nasty Nick still gets the occasional poison pen letter.

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Peter Duncan (off of Blue Peter)
7/8/2019 06:26:37 pm

This is the second (2nd) article I've read on this and I still don't get what people are upset about.

To use a biscuit analogy, is it like finding out that your favourite chocolate digestives are going to be an exclusive in Sainsburys but for some bizarre brand loyalty you only buy biscuits from Tescos?

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Sedric-and-Charlie
7/8/2019 06:45:40 pm

I feel like the whole snapjawed modern gamer culture probably stems back to when Playstation started courting them as a secret legion of radical individuals who have commanded armies and conquered worlds. But don't quote me on that

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Lee Chrimes
7/8/2019 07:11:19 pm

I've always wondered if this feverish, tribal devotion is a uniquely American thing, but it seems to be a rage that transcends borders (and perhaps always was, maybe I was just too naive to notice before).

To me, if you don't like a thing I don't like, that doesn't stop *me* liking that thing. Is it really that simple, I ask? Can Person A's dislike for Thing X really prevent my continued enjoyment? Of course it doesn't, and that's the element of these beefs that I just can't relate to.

I love my Amiga. It was the computer of my youth and I'll always love it. Digi Classic's mockery didn't stop me loading up Chaos Engine and activating them there nodes, so what's the issue?

Only thing I can think of is consumers getting annoyed at not being able to access all the games they want through one storefront, but given an Epic Store account is free... suck it up, chaps. The world has bigger problems than an extra icon on your desktop.

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Meatballs-me-branch-me-do
8/8/2019 12:10:59 am

You are naive, look at football supporters going to matches specifically to attack the other team’s supporters for supporting the “wrong” team. The UK has tribal crap embedded in its DNA. Southern poofs and northern twats and Scousers need to calm down, etc etc.

The interwebs just provides an echo chamber for them and makes it easier for it to be broadcast at us.

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Hank bacon
7/8/2019 08:29:31 pm

It's definitely not just limited to games. It seems to be a human trait to get on one side, and then hate, abuse and generally think terribly of the other. It's very apparent in sport, and also in where people live for example. I honestly can not understand why people in Manchester and liverpool hate each other for example, what's the difference between them? Basically nothing.

I think it exists in any part of life where you can form a 'side', we just happen to see it in games as that's a large area of interest for us.

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Steve
7/8/2019 11:22:01 pm

I most certainly don't agree with the death threats or homophobic, anti-semitic, racist and sexist slurs being thrown about by idiots, but some people do have legitimate reasons to hate the Epic Game Store and the way it goes about things.

1. The main one is that it's simply not as secure as the likes of Steam is.
2. The EGS copied local Steam files without user permission. Epic later apologised because this was a "mistake". But how can you "accidentally" create code to copy specific files? The answer is that you can't, Epic just got caught using shady tactics.
3. Buying up exclusives which were funded by people on Kickstarter with the promise of Steam keys. Without the Kickstarter funds the games wouldn't have even been created or finished for them to even be able to appear on the EGS, so it's a big middle finger to those who paid money expecting to receive a Steam key upon release. (and they'll either now not be released on Steam, the backers have to wait another year, or they get a refund - all of which are not ideal)
4. Epic have offered Gumberland guaranteed sales money, which means that Gumberland gets paid no matter how much they sell. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of indie devs who don't have this guarantee so if you've got a small amount of money to buy one game, why would you support a dev who doesn't need the money instead of one who actually does to keep things running?

I don't care about this game in particular as it doesn't interest me at all. Epic have bought up games as exclusives which I did want to play though, but I won't even consider using the EGS for at least a few years down the line.

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Treacle
7/8/2019 11:28:38 pm

I perceive the Charlie Brooker thing as a Digi community trope.

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Meatballs-me-branch-me-do
8/8/2019 12:12:36 am

All I’ll say with regard to EGS is it’s sure made it easy to cope with the release schedule as a new parent - there plenty of games I’d like to have a go at but not wanting to encourage Epic’s shitty business practices by giving them custom means I will just wait out their exclusivity.

It’s not that you have to go to Asda to buy specific biscuits, it’s that when you get home you have to store them into a specific cupboard you had to install just for them.

I feel bad for these Ooblets lot for the hate, but at the same time they can’t possibly have missed the vociferous dislike for how Epic is doing business or that they basically had money waved at them to get them to sign up vs the massive installed user base of Steam. Nobody really wins with exclusivity, many folks won’t go to any hassle of signing up for services or whatever just to get a specific game or show.

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whatevs
8/8/2019 01:33:51 am

what?! You dont't go to specific physical places to buy food or anything because it's not sold on another store?? I have to do it every time I want those Yuca chips... mmmm.. they are so delicious! Of course they only sell it at one place in my town. Maybe sending death threats to my preferred supermarket will make them sell it to ME! and not call the cops this time...

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Almighty Casual
8/8/2019 07:27:01 am

I think we should just switch the Internet off again, then at least these weirdos couldn't find each other so easily to form their mobs.

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Robert McMIllan
11/8/2019 01:28:46 pm

What a genuinely MARVELOUS idea.

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Pete Davison link
8/8/2019 10:23:11 am

As others have said above... no, gaming nerds are not worse than anyone else. There's a particular breed of nerd personality type that lives in pretty much every community with the potential for nerddom, and they derive enjoyment from riling people up in the most stupid ways.

My wife and I were looking for information on buying a new hob the other night, and I stumbled across a forum for people seeking advice with installing electrical appliances. In the first thread I found, there were people dogpiling someone who was just asking for simple advice.

So no. Some people are just shitty, regardless of what they're into. And I think it's important to call them out for their shitty *behaviour* rather than what group they supposedly fall into, because if you do the latter you end up catching other people in the crossfire and pissing them off in the process, too.

"Stop sending offensive messages to people who do things you don't like, it makes you come across as an arse" as opposed to "lol, the Gamers™ are mad again".

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Ghandi
9/8/2019 02:54:50 pm

I know I’m too late for you to read this Biffo, but I just wanted to extend thanks for such a well written piece. As I was reading it I imagined the world in which I could buy magazines filled with such interesting, opinionated and reasoned thoughts about a subject I am interested in. Alas, it is but a dream, but luckily I get to support you on Patreon, and it is worth every penny. Never stop writing please.

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Simon Broome
9/8/2019 08:40:16 pm

I hate to be "That Guy", but was it not the case that they funded this via Crowd-funding, then Epic offered them Tencent's money to go EGS exclusive? And yeah, it's totes smart business or other such justifications to do that, but people can feel rather let down.

And is it also not the case that the Epic Game store doesn't even have a shopping cart feature currently? Or other such conveniences? No doubt the game that crowdfund backers funded would still be a code or suchlike, but still.

None of which, of course, justified the Anti-semitism, Misogyny and other such assorted Terribleness that literal and figurative 12-year-olds have been spewing at them. And good luck to them for it, even if I'm very much not the target audience. Though, if a bunch of Ramshackle gunslingers wanted to take Tencent's Yuan and make a PC version of Gunlord (or even Turrican 4: Rise of the Machine for Realsies), then I'd grab that Epic client, Thrust my money in their digital faces and Bite their hands off for that sweet, sweet, Turrican-y Goodness! (I really like Turrican)

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