This post made me incredibly sad because I never realized how intensely disliked you are by other game journalists. I discovered your writing back during the Mass Effect 3 times and following that I eventually started relying on your reviews before buying some games that I was unsure about. I'm probably generalizing in a very negative way here, but it felt like many other game journalists viewed themselves as "above" other gamers in a way that made their articles unreadable IMO.
They also seem to forget what happened during the infamous "Gamergate" time; as I remember it you criticized the so-called "gamergaters" many times. I think in total you probably had just one article with a positive slant on them, and even that one was framed more as bringing up something that was underdiscussed among the rest of the media environment.
Hey, Erik. I’ve been reading your work for years now, and I have always found your articles to be very well argued and well written. As I do not have Twitter, I am very surprised to hear that you are disliked by so many other people on the gaming journalism field. However, I have also noticed the increasingly, as you put it, authoritarian policing of language and thought (in place of actually arguments and discourse) in both the gaming industry and society in general. Thank you for maintaining your integrity and providing actual counter arguments to the nonsense coming from certain people (some of whom you have mentioned in this post). This is easy for me to say with no risk of getting cancelled, but please keep doing what you’re doing.
It seems like a lot of game “journalist“ more into this culture of “yeah, fuck that guy!“ rather than contemplative and introspective arguments. It’s fun and exciting but ultimately not a very good thing for you. Like McDonald’s french fries: they taste good but if ya eat a whole order, 20 minutes later your body feels like crap… Or at least mine does.
Dang, when did Alexander write that last bit? Crazy. I thought she wrote a pretty good article about (I think) Bioshock, over the Sander Cohen character, however long ago that was. What the heck happens to people over time??
I still haunt Kotaku, Polygon, Waypoint Vice and so on just because there aren't a lot of places that do opinion/commentary on video games (written commentary...not YouTube) but I'm very aware of the writers' beliefs at those sites so there can be a lot of straining a few nuggets of gold from the pile of garbage, as they say.
Honestly, I've never seen so much backward thinking, backward behavior, childishness and bullying other than some of these games writers. It's like they saw the worst behavior from the trolls of GamerGate and decided, hey, if they're gonna act that way, we should too! Like a bunch of pigs all wallowing in the mud together.
I believe there's likely some fault on both sides in this Avellone situation. He may (or may not!) have acted a bit of a cad and so, as they say, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned and these women lashed out at him. But who knows. Personal life opinion: if you're going to date/hook up with lots of women, your chances of starting a wildfire grow a lot higher.
Activists calling themselves journalists believe it's their moral duty to prevent Avellone from gaining a platform to voice his side of the story. Even if Avellone turns out to be innocent beyond a shadow of a doubt, they would still rationalize this as a necessary sacrifice to give credence to legitimate cases, and refuse to clear his name with the same publicity by which they condemned him. It seems impossible to reason with such people until they've suffered the misfortune of being selected for that week's social media sacrifice, and are left standing on the edge of a cliff contemplating their life choices. Even then, they usually end up jumping of their own volition and apologizing to the cult on the way down.
I was unaware that any of this was going on. It's probably because I get gaming industry news from Edge. The industry would be better off with fewer Hedda Hoppers.
Erik, I can't even imagine what it's like to have so many people (colleagues, no less) spouting vitiriol at you for printing calm and rational analysis of an issue. I only recently discovered your blog and while my own financial situation makes it unlikely that I will be able to make a donation for the next few years, I will continue to visit and hopefully one day make a more substantial contribution.
Situations like this always make me think of Ralph Waldo Emerson's words: "It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."
Keep being great in the face of these obvious bullies and you'll win in the end.
> When I first caught wind of this Avellone story I saw a screenshot that included some very inappropriate texting from Avellone to a woman (who is not named in his libel suits) and my immediate, kneejerk reaction was basically “holy shit what is wrong with people?” and I should not have tweeted about it without looking into it further.
The fact that the woman in question was shooting porn with James Deen at about the time of that exchange might explain the brazenness of his offer.
This post made me incredibly sad because I never realized how intensely disliked you are by other game journalists. I discovered your writing back during the Mass Effect 3 times and following that I eventually started relying on your reviews before buying some games that I was unsure about. I'm probably generalizing in a very negative way here, but it felt like many other game journalists viewed themselves as "above" other gamers in a way that made their articles unreadable IMO.
They also seem to forget what happened during the infamous "Gamergate" time; as I remember it you criticized the so-called "gamergaters" many times. I think in total you probably had just one article with a positive slant on them, and even that one was framed more as bringing up something that was underdiscussed among the rest of the media environment.
Hey, Erik. I’ve been reading your work for years now, and I have always found your articles to be very well argued and well written. As I do not have Twitter, I am very surprised to hear that you are disliked by so many other people on the gaming journalism field. However, I have also noticed the increasingly, as you put it, authoritarian policing of language and thought (in place of actually arguments and discourse) in both the gaming industry and society in general. Thank you for maintaining your integrity and providing actual counter arguments to the nonsense coming from certain people (some of whom you have mentioned in this post). This is easy for me to say with no risk of getting cancelled, but please keep doing what you’re doing.
It seems like a lot of game “journalist“ more into this culture of “yeah, fuck that guy!“ rather than contemplative and introspective arguments. It’s fun and exciting but ultimately not a very good thing for you. Like McDonald’s french fries: they taste good but if ya eat a whole order, 20 minutes later your body feels like crap… Or at least mine does.
Dang, when did Alexander write that last bit? Crazy. I thought she wrote a pretty good article about (I think) Bioshock, over the Sander Cohen character, however long ago that was. What the heck happens to people over time??
I still haunt Kotaku, Polygon, Waypoint Vice and so on just because there aren't a lot of places that do opinion/commentary on video games (written commentary...not YouTube) but I'm very aware of the writers' beliefs at those sites so there can be a lot of straining a few nuggets of gold from the pile of garbage, as they say.
Honestly, I've never seen so much backward thinking, backward behavior, childishness and bullying other than some of these games writers. It's like they saw the worst behavior from the trolls of GamerGate and decided, hey, if they're gonna act that way, we should too! Like a bunch of pigs all wallowing in the mud together.
I believe there's likely some fault on both sides in this Avellone situation. He may (or may not!) have acted a bit of a cad and so, as they say, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned and these women lashed out at him. But who knows. Personal life opinion: if you're going to date/hook up with lots of women, your chances of starting a wildfire grow a lot higher.
Activists calling themselves journalists believe it's their moral duty to prevent Avellone from gaining a platform to voice his side of the story. Even if Avellone turns out to be innocent beyond a shadow of a doubt, they would still rationalize this as a necessary sacrifice to give credence to legitimate cases, and refuse to clear his name with the same publicity by which they condemned him. It seems impossible to reason with such people until they've suffered the misfortune of being selected for that week's social media sacrifice, and are left standing on the edge of a cliff contemplating their life choices. Even then, they usually end up jumping of their own volition and apologizing to the cult on the way down.
I was unaware that any of this was going on. It's probably because I get gaming industry news from Edge. The industry would be better off with fewer Hedda Hoppers.
Erik, I can't even imagine what it's like to have so many people (colleagues, no less) spouting vitiriol at you for printing calm and rational analysis of an issue. I only recently discovered your blog and while my own financial situation makes it unlikely that I will be able to make a donation for the next few years, I will continue to visit and hopefully one day make a more substantial contribution.
Situations like this always make me think of Ralph Waldo Emerson's words: "It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."
Keep being great in the face of these obvious bullies and you'll win in the end.
People like Jason Shreier give me hope that all isn’t lost. But how many genuine and honest journalists are out there?
I think you're a very principled writer and thinker and that's quite rare these days. Thank you for that.
> When I first caught wind of this Avellone story I saw a screenshot that included some very inappropriate texting from Avellone to a woman (who is not named in his libel suits) and my immediate, kneejerk reaction was basically “holy shit what is wrong with people?” and I should not have tweeted about it without looking into it further.
The fact that the woman in question was shooting porn with James Deen at about the time of that exchange might explain the brazenness of his offer.