I think I agree with the major point of the article, that many gaming journalists… don’t do a great job. At all. Many seem to outright hate the communities they serve, which can’t be healthy for either side.

But it certainly wasn’t this article that convinced me. It’s needlessly hostile, contains personal attacks and petty insults, and despite its many claims and assumptions about Deadlock, gaming companies, journalists and gamers, it has only 4 outgoing links—one of them, bizarrely, simply to x.com—and nothing else. Screenshots? More supporting evidence? Have a useless picture of Valve’s office, I guess.

One of the linked resources is a tweet:

bye Twitter Quoted tweet: “Where to find Verge staff on Mastodon https://theverge.com/23519135/mastodon…”

Why does the author think this is relevant?

Their Twitter account links to a Mastodon address, a throwback to when Elon Musk bought the website and the journos had a hissy fit because they could no longer backchannel to have accounts banned for telling them to “learn to code.”

Wow, that’s why you think people were complaining? Nothing else, no other possible undesirable consequence arising from Musk’s takeover of Twitter? Not even his influence in levels and management of hate speech and misinformation in the platform?

Indeed, the majority of his last month’s output on Twitter – now X.com – is whining about Musk and bizarrely saying “bye Twitter” despite The Verge still being very much active on the site. It’s all so tiresomely typical.

It’s actually quite common for organizations that give mastodon a chance to keep their Twitter account as well. It’s the sad reality that most people (many of their following) will stay on Twitter. See Mozilla for another example, they host their own instance, even, but that sadly doesn’t mean they can throw away Twitter.

So the journalist in question shows support for mastodon, both by mentioning their account and bringing attention to the fact that The Verge is also joining, and this is your reaction? If you know why this happens, it’s misleading, and if you don’t, then it’s a failure in reporting. Both are bad and make me hesitant to believe anything else you say.

By the way, I’m curious about your choice of platform. I wonder what factors led to you picking nazi central as your center of operations. I’m not claiming you’re a Nazi, it’s just… you’re sitting at the table with them, you know?

The answer is games journalism, maybe journalism in general, has become a largely self-serving practice where nothing matters except appearing smarter than the audience you’re supposed to serve.

Well said, Richard. Definitely got that feeling just now.

And to people thinking The Verge sucks completely: don’t generalize publishers like this, please! You should be critical, aware of their leanings and biases, but remember that they’re still an organization hosting multiple writers with different skills too. The Verge has some solid reporting, like when they showed how SEO ruined the web. They also have some utterly shameful moments—let us never forget The Verge PC—just like most other media.

I sincerely apologize if I misrepresented your position, I hate it when that happens to me. Maybe I was too defensive. I genuinely tried to engage with your original comment as I understood it. It didn’t help that, in my experience, people who start off a discussion like this:

Makes me want to sit down watch it and pick out any falacies, but let’s be honest, that’s not likely to happen.

Tell me you don’t understand fallacies without telling me you don’t understand fallacies I guess.

Are often not discussing in good faith.

If you can’t see the flaws in the argument that “we’re making the first bridge across this river, so we’re your only hope for a bridge across the river”. You’re going to have some really tough times not being scammed.

Yes, but I addressed in my previous comment how I don’t believe that’s the spirit of the message being conveyed.

Regardless, if you’ve already spent that much time in this comment section, there’s no need to drag things out even more. You sound very set in your ideas—whatever they are, what you meant to accomplish; I don’t think I’ve grasped them quite yet—so I won’t bother you further.

Hope you have a good day.

We are the only ones currently trying to do this, who have gained this much momentum and a serious chance of accomplishing it.

Is how I understand Ross wanted his message to be interpreted.

Starting off with a false dichotomy, conflating that no one else is trying so you’re their only hope.

It might be incorrect, but I genuinely don’t know of any other project trying to do the same. There’s more, please read on.

Makes me want to sit down watch it and pick out any falacies

Would you also recognize its valid points when you noticed any, or would you just go hypercritical on it? I don’t feel the latter is a healthy mindset in general, to be honest you with you.

You mention—and I appreciate that—that you didn’t watch the entire video. I understand that, because it’s lengthy and we all need to be judicious with how we spend our time. But in this instance, I think you’re missing the forest for the trees, overly focusing on one specific fault to the point of disregarding the rest of the effort.

From your other comment:

I’m sorry, but who else is trying?

Doesn’t matter, the false dichotomy is our way is the right way because no one else is trying.

I don’t think that’s the spirit. It’s more along the lines of, “this may not be ideal, but it’s the best we have right now, and it’s unlikely you’ll have other options, if any, before more avoidable damage is done to the industry.” Which I find entirely believable. Momentum is a widely understood political tool, you see it every election.

It’s not necessarily the right way, but it sure is your best shot.

Just like we don’t always get to vote for the politicians we want, but the ones we need, among the ones we can.

Your focus on…

Best, not only.

…is not key to the discussion at large, and borders on pedantic.

I appreciate Ross purely answering questions and not referencing any names in the community, even though it’s quite clear where much of the noise and misunderstandings/misinformation originate from. Hopefully this helps people still on the fence realize the value of this initiative.

I didn’t think I would end up watching the entire video, considering I already support the movement as much as I can, but it was interesting. Some of the questions caught me off-guard.

Sometimes, there are already resources explaining more clearly and thoroughly than we could. And although I’m unsure if this case qualifies, there are definitely topics that can’t be reduced to a few sentences. Thus, a reputable link is often worth more to both sides: it saves the explainer time and effort while informing the target far better.

If you don’t want to engage with the content, I believe there are better ways to go about it than being rude to people who were likely trying to help.

Ah, figures, thank you. I still don’t get it, with the counts I’m seeing, but I think we’ve gone deep enough down this comment chain already.

what does that even mean

Yeah, you do you. I don’t think posting to three relevant communities is being annoyingly self-promotional, though. Two of them are literally just the same community in two different instances. Why, I find it weird there’s no post to [email protected]

I assumed your first comment was a complaint that they were posting in too many communities. I was disagreeing and presenting why I think that assessment would be incorrect, and sneakily trying to hint that you might want to consider a different app/frontend if this was bothering you.

I only found three posts, all in (at least) semi-relevant communities. I think my frontends of choice only show me one, then reference the others below as crossposts.

That’s a shame! Be good if someone could look into that later. Glad you found something that works, though.

Very simple, “just works.” Great if you want to make a one-time transfer and don’t care about syncing files over time.

I love Syncthing, KDE Connect (why is it not Konnect?) and others, but they might be a bit “extra” for this case.

I assume pirates will get the better service, again. The AAA game industry’s evolution is a frustrating, pitiful joke. Really glad for the indie scene we have today.