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And your arrogance is abhorrent.

Sorry, let me provide a little context:

Someone needs an attitude check, stat!

Okay,you could be forgiven for dismissing this as simply another Micro$oft drone speaking from the usual orifice. Yet another example of mental diarrhea that pools all over social media. Except that when you factor in the disaster that was Diablo III and SimCity always online game launches, the dismissive if not outright insulting attitude from EA/BioWare about the Mass Effect ending and a host of bad business practices across the gaming industry, you start seeing a pattern that goes something like this:

“Silence peons! Do not question thy Masters! Buy, Buy, BUY!”

Which is surprising when you realize that gaming is a consumer driven market and that it has a long history littered with companies that simply failed to live to expectations. This is a market that saw at least one (if not two) major crashes in its infancy, is full of promising platforms that never made a dent in the market and that is just when companies are at least trying to do the right thing.

In recent years we have had: PSN hacked, the 360 red ring of death and the fall of THQ, among other things. You can not blame all of this on consumer dissatisfaction, in fact the first two example show how companies can, by careful application of good consumer policies, bounce back from dire situations.

Yet, the more warnings are handed to the industry in silver platters, the more the industry throws a tantrum or descends into a vicious cycle of recrimination, obfuscation and dismissal. Dismissal, I may add, of the very consumers that buy your products. As some of the following tweets from Mr. Orth’s chums suggest (the use of the word “fanboy” is telling), it may well be that he, and they are trapped in their own bubble and simply (and genuinely) fail to see what is wrong with the industry.

I wonder why?

Can fans be erratic if not downright trollish? Yes.

Do they have the tendency to overact? Definitely.

Does the industry, backed by loyal fans, have a problem with women? Yep!

Is the solution to give in to every trivial want or demand from the fan base? No.

Still, the isolation, the ignorance, the sheer unadulterated arrogance shown by people like Mr. Orth will only hurt the industry.

It will, in the long run, hurt the bottom line. Good luck selling that to your investors.

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Tweet of the Day: Star Citizen

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So, what is the appeal of retro-gaming?

The easy answer is: nostalgia. The first generation gamers are now becoming middle managers, parents, teachers and business owners. They long for the days of 2-bit computing (as in the Atari 2600), dropping quarters in the local arcade and those trippy chiptunes of old.

No points for easy answers.

What gamers want are two things sorely lacking in the modern games market: value for money and solid gameplay. Today processors dive right into the uncanny valley, produce gorgeous vistas and worlds populated by thousands of game avatars.

And little else. Sure there are some quality games out there, but with a lot of strings attached such as:

• Always online DRM (for single player games),
• Online passes (again for single player games),
• Bolting of multiplayer features where they don’t belong,
• Lack of depth in the experience,
• Day one DLC, pay
• Pay to Win microtrasaction (where in you pay extra to get the stuff needed to win game),
• Unfinished games whose proper ending is relagated to DLC and,

Painfully short games that offer you something like five hours of gameplay

All for the low, low, low price of $60+tax (even more overseas)

It is no surprise that men like Chris Roberts (of Wing Commander fame, see the Tweet of the Day) and Richard Garriott (of the Ultima series) are turning to Kickstarter to bypass the big publishers (like EA). But they are not the only appealing directly to the audience. Brian Fargo, maker of such gems as Wasteland and Torment, has also gone the Kickstarter route.

Why?

That’s why. These initiatives promise to solve two problems above. But how can they? Well, these guys come from the old of video game design. When a lone programmer or a bunch of friends coded on Apple IIs, IBM PCs or early Macs. Back then everything was new and everything was limited. Chiptunes existed because even the most sophisticated machines like the Commodore 64 could go no further.

And by the way, the 64 in C-64 stood for 64k of RAM.

Sixty-four kilobytes of RAM.

Nothing more than that.

So they always coded on a hardware budget. What sold games back then was innovative game play, new features and memorable experiences.  They learn to do the most with the least and continued to do so for years. Sure, the video game crash of ’83 proved that even then, bad games and worst company practices nearly doomed the entire industry. In many ways, the current big publisher atmosphere resembles Hollywood with an emphasis on marketing, flashy graphics and big budgets. But like a Michael Bay movie, the only thing you end up with is a lot of expensive explosions. Simply put the big distributors spend all their cash swallowing development studios, hording game IP and running those same properties into the proverbial toilet. They turned the industry into a series of shiny bandwagons in which the push everybody into, and then run those bandwagons in circles until the wheels break and everybody bails out.

Leaving many games to feel like this:

And let tell you, if companies like Activision and EA could do the above, they would, counting on the fact that many a gamer will simply hand over their credit cards, life savings and firstborns just to play the latest installment of Mass Assassin of Honor. Add to this a bad doze of gaming media/publisher incest and you have a bad atmosphere all around.

That is why people are willing to support stuff like this:

That’s right boys and girls, an isometric CPRG from a 1989 pencil and paper RPG. And yes, people payed good money to develop this. But this is not only front where retro-gaming is making inroads in the modern gaming industry. Many an indie game made for iOS platforms (cellphones and tablets) as well as recent PC, XboxLive and Playstation Network releases such as FTL, the remake of XCOM and Hotline Miami succeed where far more expensive games  fail (I’m looking at you Colonial Marines).

Simply put, the big publishers are heading to an armaggedon of their own making and from the ashes a return to the first truism of video games:

Gameplay is the thing.

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Tweet of the Day: EA Employee Chastises Company Over SimCity in Public Letter

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This time around we have an extended interview with Richard Garriot, better known as Lord British (of the Origins/Ultima games franchise). This is an extended pitch for his new project on Kickstarter, but it also gives us a fascinating glimpse at the history of video games. Enjoy!

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Tweet of the Day: What’s the Difference Between Conflict and Tension?

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As in, it is time to stop circling the wagons and start burning the damn things.

Time to stop the attacks on Anita Sarkeesian for daring to examine tropes in gaming from a feminist point of view.

Or the whole fake gamer girl stupidity (see above).

And don’t get me started on the gaming industry/media going into self-protection mode when they get called out on their B.S.

I get it, fans will defend their fandoms, geeks will man the ghetto walls if they even smell a whiff of opposition to their clique. But this is more like self-choking, and not in the kinky pleasure driven way, unless you are into social suicide, which can be nearly as terminal as actual suicide. Not for anyone one person (I hope not) but certainly for the medium you claim to love.

But this is a reflection of video games coming of age. Ironic that a genre so strongly associated with children and teenagers can not break out of the mold due to the attitude of the grown ups who make the vast majority of the genre, on both sides of the creator/consumer divide. Hence time to burn the wagons, settle in a nice homestead and enjoy the medium you love. That or turn every forum, game store and convention into the lonely comic book store where only comic book nerds dare to enter and their beloved publications are sold at prices they can’t really afford while the lament the “good old days”.

Your choice.

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Steiner-Satori Estate, 24km Southeast off Milgrom, Bekenstein, Boltzmann, Serpent Nebula, March 14, 2196

“Get down!” I pushed Mrs. Steiner to the ground. Autocannon rounds shattered the windows. Galeena erected a biotic barrier around us. It muffled the roar of the explosions that ripped the room apart. Galeena kneeled beside me, exhausted.

The door opened. A pair of mechs armed with M8 assault rifles fired long burst into the bodies on the floor. Fountains of blood erupted from them. I tried to hack one of the nearest mech with my omintool.

“Viral attack detected. Firewalls active,” it said. I stared up at the barrel of a gun.

“RAAAAAAAARRRR!!!!” Something slammed both mechs against the wall and ran past.

“Blood rage?” I asked Galeena.

“Blood rage,” she replied. Mr. Turok guttural roar reverberated throughout the house. She handed me one of the rifles from a defunct mech.

Malena Dantius rose to her feet. Blue blood oozed from her broken nose, “Are…are you alright?” she asked.

I helped Mrs. Steiner to her feet, “So far so good.”

Galeena crouched under the windowsill, “Sir, you better take a look at this.” I moved in a half crouch to her position. I took a peak. Troops deployed from a pair of gunships. I tried the com again, but no luck. “Platoon strength with air support.”

“And control of the security mechs inside,” I said, “Suggestions?”

“We can’t stay here, sir,” she said.

Mr. Turok would take down anyone or anything he encountered, but even an enraged Krogan was no match against a platoon backed by gunships.

“We need an exit strategy?” I said.

“All my Nezo aircars are armored and have kinetic barriers generators. I have two of them in the basement garage,” said Mrs. Steiner.

“That gives us a way out, if we can deactivate the mechs,” I said.

“All the security mechs are controlled from the central mainframe downstairs. I have the access codes,” she said.

“Galeena, take the ViPs to the garage, I’ll secure the main frame,” I said.

“Understood, sir.”

I engaged my tactical cloak and followed the path of destruction left by the krogan. Distant gunfire told me someone had their hands full.

Better them than me.

Two LOKI mechs guarded the door to the mainframe. I shifted to the Zone. A series of quick jabs with the electro-blades shorted the mechs out. One security code input later and I was inside the server room. I nearly tripped over the body dressed in catering uniform, pupils fully dilated. The server logs showed the last access five minutes ago followed by the activation of the fire suppression system, sans alarms. The inert gas snuffed the oxygen out of the room in seconds. I quarantined the intrusion VI in the system, copied it and rebooted the mech control software.

SECURITY REBOOT IN PROGRESS. FIFTEEN LOKI UNITS ACTIVE. NINE AERIAL DRONES ON STANDBY. SYSTEM PURGE COMPLETE. IFF RECALIBRATED. SELECT NEW IFF PARAMETERS. ENGAGE ALL EXCEPT IDSTIENER-IDTHOMPSOMRAMOS-IDGALEENAT’IALA-IDMALENADANTIUS-IDURDNOTTUROK.

With the mechs taken care off I headed for the garage. Galeena prepped one of the shuttles, a Nezo Gazelle-Z 2196. It had all the leather interiors, wooden trim and latest auto-nav systems that make the Gazelle series shine and I had no time to admire the craftsmanship. I punched the throttle the moment the doors opened. The Nezo slid under it with a few millimeters to spare.

“Galeena, contact headquarters, we need–” an explosion shook the shuttle.

“Kinetic barriers at forty-two percent,” announced the onboard VI in a sing-song voice reserved for elevators and fast food kiosks.

A gunship appeared on the rearview screen. I dove into a nearby construction site. Gunfire tore apart dry wall to our left. I careened through the skeleton of a skyscraper. Twin explosions pounded the shuttles hull.

“This is Captain T’iala to base. We are on a civilian shuttle under attack by an unknown gunship. Requesting immediate fire support,” said Galeena over the radio.

“Kinetic barriers at thirty-seven percent,” said the VI. I muted the audio. Nobody needed a reminder of how many percentage points stood between us and the grim reaper. Another gunship popped behind the first.

“Colonel, is that you?” asked Rodan over the radio.

“Affirmative, could you do something about our little problem,” I said.

“On it,” he said. The enemy gunship banked right. I swung the shuttle around to fly back to Milgrom when another gunship descended in front of us.

No place to run.

I switched all power to the thrusters.

“Galeena, barrier, now!”

Galeena’s biotic barrier engulfed the inside of the cabin. Rounds bounced off the shuttle’s nose. I rammed the side of the ship with a deafening screech of metal on carbon fiber armor. The world spun out of control. The shuttle crashed inside the fifth floor another unfinished skyscraper. My vision blurred. A spike of pain ran from elbow to shoulder blade. The shuttle doors opened. I fell out into the dusty floor. Every breath brought spasms of pain. I used the M8 as a makeshift crutch. Every single motion was rewarded with fresh waves of pain. A familiar shade darkened the sky. The enemy gunship was back. A long scar ran the side of the cockpit. Twin autocannons on the nose pointed at me.

Time for the last dance.

I balanced the rifle on the crook of my broken left arm.

“Come on you bastard, let’s do this!”

The gunship’s port nacelle disintegrated under a barrage of rocket fire. Thrust from the starboard side flipped the ship on its back. It crashed five stories below in a ball of fire.

“Sorry for the delay Colonel. Had to take care of a pesky bug. Evac shuttles are on….” Rodan words faded into darkness.

Tweet of the Day: Raising the Stakes

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The Fallout series of games appeared on computer screens in the late 90′s. A retro-futuristic game that asks, “What would the world look like if all the projections made in the 1950′s about nuclear war came true?” The answer, a dark commentary on modern America.

And that is the key. Many times content creators come up with great themes but fail to embrace it fully. Not so with Fallout. Gallows humor permeates the game(s). It makes fun of itself, gaming conventions and the players. It knows that in a world that is Hell on Earth you have three options: A) ignore it, B) fall into despair or C) armor yourself with some psyche protecting cynicism.

The game choses option C.

The game does this by a constant contrast between post-apocalyptic savagery of the various wastelands it dumps you in (Souther California, Northern California, Washington D.C. and the Mojave Desert, to name a few) with the weird view of the future the people of the 1950′s created for themselves. And this is the world they created. A world born out of self-delusions of safety underpinned by massive paranoia and military jingoism. The world before the bombs was a crapsack mess waiting to be blown up. What happened was the inevitable conclusion of that world.

The visual language is used perfectly. The sterile, mechanical world inside the vaults where denizens are fed a steady stream of pre-war propaganda.  The world outside is dust filled, ruble choked arena of death. Sprinkled throughout the wasteland are signs of  civilizations, a town here, a village there, even the odd city. And here you find the best and worst of humanity, drug users, prostitutes, slavers, cannibals, officers of the law (both straight and corrupt) and average folks just scrapping a living. Then you have tons of easter eggs that highlight the absurdity of it all, like a exploded whale in the middle of the desert, a crashed Star Trek shuttle, a dematerializing Tardis, or the odd robot Robby the Robot spouting gibberish.

But as dark as the post-apocalypse is, you, the protagonist, can make it little better. Or not, if you don’t want to. The player has choices and those choices affect the people around him/her. Hence the game offers a fine balance between hope and despair with the main character as the fulcrum. The MC rarely tips the balance in a huge way, but does so in small ways that add up. Free a slave here, backup a sheriff there, betray a scientist over there. The world will still be a hellhole but either he can burn the exits or create new ones. And he can do with sarcastic comments along the way.

The careful use of scenery, background material. character interactions and humor creates a deeply enjoyable world that accepts what it is and makes no apologies for it. Something many writers forget.

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Tweet of the Day: Revenants: Stories of the Shunned

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Good news everybody! Somebody decided to apply a liberal amount of Occam’s Razor to the Mass Effect ending and come up with this:

This is far from perfect and in no way goes as far as my own ending (settle down Ego, settle down!), but goes to show you that sometimes the simplest answer is the best or at least better than the rest. BTW, this is an actual game mod (file that modifies an existing game) and not just an edited video using existing footage. That means that if you have the PC version of the game, you can download it and install it and have it be the ending to your game, if you like. Sure, it is certainly rough around the edges, but still a good effort.

So, what do you think?

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Tweet of the Day: The Lost Fairy Tale

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Gaming Galaxy with Grick

Serpent Nebula, Widow System, the Citadel, Zakera Ward, February 8, 2196

Grick: Hello and welcome to Gaming Galaxy the largest extranet gaming show in the galaxy, coming straight from Zakera Ward. And let me tell you this is way cooler than manning a game shop. I mean, you can only sweep the floor or stack OSDs so many times a day. But enough of that lets get the show started. With us today we have Ben Sterling, game critic for the extranet gaming mag, the Eludist. Welcome to the program.

Ben: Glad to be here.

Grick: You heard the news about Galaxy of Fantasy reached twelve billion subscribers last month, breaking its pre-war record while N7: Code of Honor: Shadow Ops failed to reach one billion last year. What do you make of this?

Ben: First of all, I don’t know what Elegant Artists were thinking about when they decided to take on the granddaddy of extranet games with a glorified multiplayer campaign.

Grick: But multiplayer sells.

Ben: When done well, yes. But the N7 series was good when it concentrated on the single player game. It had a solid, if at times formulaic story but great characters and good action sequences. Although the vehicles sections always left something to be desired.

Grick: Yeah I got some mail from Alliance marines saying that the Mako wasn’t meant to be driven up the side of a sheer cliff.  It also helps GoF that Passive Sight has aggressively marketed to Krogans and Quarians.

Ben: And unlike Elegant Artists they have done it well. Three new expansions: City of the Ancients, Blood Arena and Metal Storm were made with Krogans and Quarians in mind. They took their approach to Turian mythology and rolled with it. Rannock and Tuchanka are the two biggest gaming markets right now. You have millions with access to improved extranet bandwidth now that the military has switched a lot of their communications to quantum entanglement. Cheaper is better.

Grick: But BA and MS stirred a storm of controversy about exploiting negative cultural stereotypes about Geth, Krogans and Quarians.

Ben: It stirred short lived controversy from idiots who didn’t play the game, just like Grand Terminus Alliance did back in the day. Once people got to play the game they saw it was just another tempest in a teapot. Besides these are not the Hannar we are talking about. The execs at Passive Sight know better than to mess with them, less they send a couple of Drell to “clean up” their offices.

Grick: I wouldn’t want that either. But we haven’t talk about the, what do humans call it, the “pachyderm-

Ben: Elephant in the room and it stinks like a giant pile of poop in the middle of the carpet.

Grick: The N7 storyline?

Ben: Exactly. To be honest I didn’t mind it myself, mostly because I came to the game with low expectations. I mean, you know how I am about remakes and sequels.

Grick: I do.

Ben: Well, the thing is that it upset a lot of their hardcore fans, the ones that didn’t download the game from a pirate site out in the Terminus systems. The last fifteen minutes of the game is not the place for you to go off the rails, story wise.

Grick: How about the tons of free multiplayer maps and the promised of a “revised” ending?

Ben: I am of two minds, Grick. On one hand, if Elegant Artists believes this is the story they wanted to tell, then they should say so and stick with it. On the other hand if they screwed up, they should admit it and apply Occam’s razor to the thing and be done with it. No need to remake the remake. The free maps are just a cheap PR move to keep the multiplayer side going and the fans happy. I don’t do multiplayer either. A game should stand on its single player mode unless like GoF it was meant to be multiplayer from the get go.

Grick: Which N7 was not?

Ben: No. It was a good shooter with a decent story and interesting third person mechanics not a massive extranet monstrosity for everyone and their Asari grandmother to play with.

Grick: Well our time is up, thank you for stopping by Ben.

Ben: Thank you for having me.

Grick: Next week we will talk about the new features of GoF: Metal Storm and a slew of vid tie-ins starting with Archangel: Omega Nights.  Until then, see you around the Wards!

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Tweet of the Day: Where’d You Get That Black Hat?

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Yes, this is a filler post.

Yes, it is about Mass Effect.

Yes, I “borrowed” the idea from somebody at deviantArt, who borrowed it from the Internet at large.

Yes, I am a fanboy.

No, I don’t have any shame, because I don’t know the meaning of the word. Also, I don’t own a dictionary and I’m too lazy to look it up on Google.

Enjoy!

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“When Shepard saw the Thorian he said, ‘We are going to need a bigger gun.’ Garrus Vakarian reply? ‘Need me for something?’”

“Eve named her first child Mordin because the universe can’t have more than one Garrus Vakarian.”

“Saren shot himself when he saw Garrus Vakarian on the Citadel and thought, ‘F@#! this!’”

“Nobody believed Shepard when she said the Reapers were coming. Garrus Vakarian went to the Primarch and told him they were and he gave him a task force.”

“James Vega was going to tattoo Garrus Vakarian’s name on his back. The Batarian tattoo artist told him that it would go against his religion to write the true name of God.”

“Garrus Vakarian out calibrates AIs from Monday to Saturday. On Sunday? He rests.”

“EDI romanced Joker because her sexy robot body did not have the flexibility to match Garrus Vakarian’s reach.”

“Garrus Vakarian apologized to Tali. The power of his humility destroyed a Reaper.”

“Garrus Vakarian played Galaxy of Fantasy once. He won by entering his name on the sign up screen.”

“The First Contact War ended the day Garrus Vakarian was born. Coincidence? No.”

“When Archangel: Omega Nights was released, it broke every box officer record across the galaxy. Nobody bothered to charge for admission at movie theaters after that.”

“When Garrus Vakarian was born, every Dictionary and Thesaurus, in every language in the galaxy, had to be re-written. All words are defined as and synonyms of his name. Garrus Vakarian does not have antonyms.”

“How did Cerberus brought Shepard back to life? Super science? Billions of credits? No. They wrote Garrus Vakarian name on a piece of paper and read it backwards over his body.”

“Miranda Lawson thought she was perfect. Then she saw Garrus Vakarian, ran off crying and locked herself in her room for three days straight.”

“The Collectors harvested humans because if they harvested Turians they might tick off Garrus Vakarian. Nobody is that stupid.”

“Wherever Garrus Vakarian stands on the Citadel, that is everybody best spot on the Citadel.”

“The Turian Councilor tried to “dismiss” Garrus Vakarian and had his fingers shot off with a single round.”

“Matriarch Benezia didn’t fight off indoctrination. Garrus Vakarian presence made her forget all about it.”

“The Citadel Gun Store owner wanted to name his first born after Shepard, but his wife already named him Garrus Vakarian.”

“The council made Shepard a Spectre so she could deal with Garrus Vakarian. Garrus Vakarian only deals with Spectres.”

“The Collectors timed their attack on the SR-1 to make sure that Garrus Vakarian was NOT on board.”

“Only Garrus Vakarian can comment on Shepard’s driving skill…and live to calibrate the Mako again.”

“Dr. Heart committed suicide-by-Shepard because he could not face Garrus Vakarian’s pitiless stare.”

‘Javik could not touch-read Garru Vakarian. Nobody can touch that much awesomeness and live.”

“Awesome? See Garrus Vakarian.”

“Garrus Vakarian is the first, last and only entry in the Codex. He is all that you need to know.”

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Tweet of the Day: Some Mechanism Underlying Narrative Tension

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Scandal.

Controversy.

Distrust.

Commingling.

Fiduciary.

Wait, what was that last one?

f, relating to, or involving a confidence or trust: as

a :held or founded in trust or confidence

b :holding in trust

c : depending on public confidence for value or currency <fiduciary fiat money>

You probably know about the “paid for review” scandal, or the “create phony accounts on Amazon to hype one product and demean others” scandal, or the cozy relationship between the media and politicians or….

It all boils down to trust.

Let’s take my old whipping boy out of the corner of the closet I dump him in: Mass Effect 3.  One character in particular:

Meet Diana Allers, voiced by and modeled (maybe the face, I guess) on one Jessica Chobot. And who is Jessica Chobot? From Wikipedia:

Chobot gained exposure when a tongue-in-cheek modeling photo of her licking the Sony PSP appeared online in 2005. The photo has been widely parodied since, even appearing on Sony-branded advertising.^[4] Supplementing her love of video games is an obsession with Japanese culture, specifically anime and manga.

In 2006, Chobot was hired full-time by IGN.com to take over hosting responsibilities for the network’s IGN Weekly show which is still running. Her segments included stand-up introductions as well as “woman-on-the-street” pieces. Starting in 2009 and ending in 2011, Chobot hosted a daily show entitled “IGN Daily Fix”; the first episode aired March 23, 2009. In addition, she contributes columns, features and reviews and runs a blog on IGN. Chobot is also a former contributor to FHM UK, Mania.com, and has made multiple appearances on G4‘s “Filter” and “Attack of the Show!“. She has also hosted a videogame preview segment for Fuel TV’s, “The Daily Habit,” and co-hosts on Lifeskool TV’s, “Gamer’s Dojo”. She also contributes as a weekly guest on Maxim Radio, where she answers caller questions for an hour each Monday.^{[citation needed]} Chobot and Ryan Dunn starred in Proving Ground, a program whose airing cycle was disrupted by Dunn’s death in an automotive crash on June 20, 2011 after the end of production; the program was pulled from airing for a month before returning to finish its run beginning on July 19, 2011.

Not exactly a reporter or reviewer of games, but someone “in the industry” on the side of gaming websites that are at the core of the gaming “journalism”.  Apparently someone at BioWare (the games creator) or Electronic Arts (the studios parent company) thought it would be a good idea to throw a bone to the gaming websites by having her on the game. No surprise when the whole ending mess exploded all over EA’s lap that the “media” rallied around the company and that Chobot joined the chorus of attackers who trolled the Retake Movement calling them “whiners” and “entitled fan boys” who had no right to ask for the product they payed for.  Chobot apologized for her words in a later post, but the damage was already done.

Hence the title of this post. The gaming sites need a steady stream of interviews, behind the scene pieces and trailers as content. Without it they become old news. And the companies crave the “buzz” created by these sites, plus the review numbers generated by these sites. Some companies even grant or deny bonuses based on the Metacrtic scores. They need each other and the consumers be dammed. They will, so both side figure, mindlessly consume whatever is fed to them.

It gets worse when others “industry insiders” like gaming webcomics or machina studios (Penny Arcade/Rooster Teeth) jump into the “this stuff is great and you suck for even daring to say otherwise” bandwagon.  I find Penny Arcade’s case especially galling , so much so I dropped the site and will not link to them. When the game came out, the artist not only defended with what would become industry talking points about “classic science fiction” (without a single mention of any such classics) but then produced a comic mocking the fans in the most insulting way possible.

It turns out that they had no choice about. For you see a few companies commissioned art work from them, among them BioWare. So they have business ties with them. But it goes much further than that:

The Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) is a series of gaming festivals held in both Seattle and Boston. PAX was created by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, the authors of the Penny Arcade webcomic, because they wanted to attend a show that gave equal attention to console gamers, computer gamers, and tabletop gamers.^{[citation needed]}

Created in 2004, PAX has been hailed as celebration of gamer culture. Defining characteristics of the festival include an opening keynote speech from an industry insider, game-culture inspired concerts, panels on game topics, exhibitor booths from independent and major game developers and publishers, a LAN party, tabletop game tournaments, and video game freeplay areas. Every PAX also features the Omegathon, a festival long tournament consisting of a group of randomly selected attendees competing for a grand prize. The final round of the Omegathon makes up the closing ceremony of PAX. Past games for the final round have included Tetris, Pong, Halo 3, and Skee ball.

After many successful years of PAX, in 2010 the first PAX East was held in Boston with attendance levels that rivaled those of PAX 2009. From then on, the original Washington festival was referred to as PAX Prime in order to avoid confusion between the two. In 2011, 2 days before PAX Prime, a much smaller developer only event was held for the first time. Referred to as PAX Dev, the supplemental event was created as a forum where “developers [could] speak freely and focus entirely on their trade”^[1]

An agreement reached in early 2012 has extended Boston as the home of PAX East until 2023.^[2]

Simply put, you don’t shit where you eat, son, but feel free to fling poo at the gawkers who payed to see you make faces (and feces) in your gilded cage. Which brings me back to the first quote on this page.

To the consumer, be careful who you trust. That one was easy. It’s on the content creator side that things get tricky. We want people to read our blogs, buy our books, rave over our games. It is how we make (or hope to make) a living. Nothing wrong with that. But when you start gaming the system instead of delivering a quality product, you might get away with it for awhile but then stuff like this happens:

In a shock move Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk have announced they are to leave both BioWare and the games industry as a whole. The exact reasons are still unclear but the news comes just a day after Dragon Age III was announcedand just as two other new games are revealed – including a new Mass Effect.Although the natural assumption is that the two doctors (the pair met while getting their medical degrees) had become frustrated at the corporate culture at EA, they had nothing but praise for the publisher in their leaving messages.But despite a lengthy blog entry each there’s little explanation for why they’re actually leaving.
Read more: http://www.metro.co.uk/tech/games/912420-new-mass-effect-confirmed-as-bioware-founders-quit-gaming#ixzz277RDfWwi

I have a few guesses as to why.

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