>>300297 You're obligated to declare gifts.

>>299809 Devs have the right to not communicate with anyone they want. They're not OBLIGED to give out free review copies just because Kotaku keeps insisting they're a journalistic outlet of some sort. Especially when said outlet constantly trashes Ubisoft every chance they get.

The fundamental problem here is the pre-release review, which pretty much requires something that resembles but is legally distinct from collusion. If games journalism as a mass decided they just weren't going to play that game any more, and would stump up the cash to buy the game themselves, then a lot of this bullshit would disappear. "I have to write X thousand interesting words to justify expensing this $60 piece of shit" or "I have to look my boss in the eye and convince him my fuck buddy's game is worth $15", that changes the way things work, and if they only have the game at the same time consumers do, their ability to bullshit is greatly curtailed. Me, I value some barely literate /v/irgin's take on a game he bought with his own autism bucks far higher than someone with a BA who got flown to a resort to get their dick sucked while they played the only functional part of the game.

One other thing that has me wondering, it's pretty likely that the leaks the devs claim are the reason are just the casus belli. We know the kind of shit Gawker does that devs have every reason to grow tired of, but what exactly were Kotaku saying about these devs in the months prior that got things to this point? When did the leak about New Vegas missing a Metacritic bonus happen, who made that interview, did Kotaku spread it? At the very least, we need to investigate potential points of argument from the other side so we don't get blindsided.

>>300392 The real problem is that pre-release reviews SHOULD benefit everybody - journalists, publishers and consumer alike - and in an honest system it would. But we all know many journalists and many more publishers aren't completely honest. Of course, it's a publisher's job to present their product in the best light possible, but it's a journalist's job to call out the bullshit, blow away the smoke and smash the mirrors, and they frequently allow themselves to be fooled because it's easier than actually doing their job. I do wonder what would change if journalists still had to pay full price for those early review copies though, and maybe publishers wouldn't be so stingy with who they send them out to if they were making able to make a profit on them too.

>>300506 Vivian with shoes 7/10

Here's the thing. I can understand the complaints that aGG have when it comes to us not standing up for Kotaku. I can understand that the AAA gaming industry has a lot of pressure they can exert on gaming journalists. I can understand that there are times that a journalist will have to choose between being true to themselves and paying off their mortgage. But one thing the people defending Kotaku can't ignore is the fact that they took part in the "Gamers Are Dead" articles. When they were confronted with the corruption and wrongdoing they were involved in, they chose to throw the very subject they were committed to write about under the bus. Had those journalists chosen to stand up for the very thing they made their careers writing about, gaming journalism might be worth defending. But when I see sponsored content and political agendas handing out 9/10 ratings to games that don't deserve five minutes of a paying customer's time, that's when I become convinced that gaming journalism is dead. And the sad part about this is that Gaming Journalism nor the AAA gaming industry is the cause of this malignancy. The truth is, this is only a symptom of it. Journalism in itself is corrupt. I had high hopes that GamerGate would take journalism itself to task. That's why "the liberal media" went out of its way to smear us while "the conservative media" ignored us. They were afraid that our revolt against corrupt journalism would evolve into a grass roots movement that would demand ethical journalism. But notice today that nobody gives a shit about us. Notice that the latest media happening we have is Zoe Quinn making money off a book deal and not the fact that the media is trying to paint us as a terrorist organization worse than ISIS. Notice that the SJWs are powering ahead with their agenda with little concern for us. We are in the midst of a Cultural Revolution. We sit with our thumbs up our collective asses while the very people that corrupted Occupy Wall Street, the Atheists, and Comics are spreading their ideas while we argue among ourselves over which is the better board. People have quit GamerGate because of this and we ignore them because we're convinced that we're winning. Make no mistake that if we don't step up our game, WE WILL LOSE. We will see AAA game developers like Ubisoft paint people like Karl Marx as heroes while we bitterly cling to games like Fallout New Vegas as if they were the high water mark of good gaming. I have family that survived shit like the Cultural Revolution. I have family who sacrificed safe living conditions so they wouldn't have conditions so they wouldn't have to raise children under those conditions and I will be FUCKING DAMNED if I have to raise children under those conditions. We need to fight god damn it. We need the unity that made us a force to be reckoned with. We need to stand up and say that we will not stand for this shit. We need to create our own medium that stands for our own principles. We need to make it known that is our money that makes these game developers profitable and not political ideas that are "safe". We are gamers. We will carry this industry into the future. And most inporantly, we will make sure that gaming is enjoyed for future generations to come.

>>300554 > But notice today that nobody gives a shit about us. Notice that the latest media happening we have is Zoe Quinn making money off a book deal and not the fact that the media is trying to paint us as a terrorist organization worse than ISIS. Notice that the SJWs are powering ahead with their agenda with little concern for us. That's because they stopped taking the fight to gaming media. They won't publish anything because they know we can get their advertising revenue taken away, and instead they are using other outlets. The battlefield is evolving. >while we argue among ourselves over which is the better board Agreed completely, but it doesn't help this board is broken and doesn't update. The fight is in other places now. >We need to fight god damn it Then what do we do Leader? GG has been in watchdog mode since the slanderous articles stopped being so blatant.

>>300556 >Then what do we do Leader? GG has been in watchdog mode since the slanderous articles stopped being so blatant. How long have we been telling SJWs that if they don't like the industry, they should make their own content? How long have we been telling them if they don't like gaming, they should make their own games? How long have we been saying that if they don't like comics, they should make their own comics? How long have we been saying that if they don't like entertainment, they should make their own entertainment? We've become everything we hate. We told them to make their own media and they did. Sure their answers to our arguments are shit, but they made it. They made their own media while we bitched and moaned about it. We make our own media. We make our own games, we make our own publications, and we make our own media. We can't rely on Milo forever. If we can't stand up for ourselves, what can we do for our future?

>>300557 Except we aren't telling them they can't make it and bitching and moaning. We're laughing when their walking simulators fail, but aren't barring them from being made. Meanwhile, games are being censored upon localization on the off chance someone (sjws) will be offended. >We make our own media. We make our own games, we make our own publications, and we make our own media. We can't rely on Milo forever. If we can't stand up for ourselves, what can we do for our future? Yes we do, and we have people listening as well, but sjws are there every step of the way in publications. That's the difference between us and them: we play whatever is handed to us but sjws can be handed exactly what they want but they won't play it. The way it sounds, you want us to just let MSM shit on us because that's "their" territory and we need to make our own. That's not how it works.

>>300559 The more they shit on us, the more they have to admit that we have an impact. The more they shit on us, the more they have to admit that it is our money and not theirs that carries the gaming industry into the future. Gaming, as well as any hobby and fandom, isn't "their territory." It was our territory before they muscled in and decided that gaming wasn't good enough on its own. We had to be gaming+. We had to be gamers + feminists. We had to be gamers + POC activists. We had to be gamers + whatever pronoun they came up with in order to move the goal posts. Now you have a point. We're slaves to the fact that a AAA game developer can shit on a plate and expect us to gobble up every sixty dollar piece they serve us. But we have the upper hand. We have something that the SJWs will never be able to wield and that is our wallets. We're the ones who buy games. We're the ones who made gaming a billion dollar industry. GamerGate started because of corruption in journalism but we only addressed one source of it. That's why we need to send the message that colluding with journalists for a 9/10 rating isn't the same as releasing a quality product. As long as they're able to buy good reviews, As long as they're able to do that, we will always be the factioned watch dogs we are now.

>>300129 >never realized how great a video game magazine like Game Players was Even when they switched to Ultra Gameplayers it was still so damn good. Was one of the first mags to offer demo discs with each issue. The whole entire industry was so much more fun back then. Nobody in the community would dare to point a finger at another gamer and say they are a bigot for not being a hardline progressive feminist. Journalists would take people like that to the cleaners in the court of public opinion on a regular basis. Nowadays this new rotten breed of game "journalist" will do nothing except lap up whatever Snarky-session has to bitch about this month because the cute image she had that made her so popular when she was younger and more beautiful is quickly fading. Her Armenian genetics are catching up fast, and just like every gypsy woman before her, that 30-something body is about to do nature's greatest bait-and-switch scheme on Josh McIntosh. Gypsy women mostly start out looking like natural-born fucking machines and then transform into Romanian men no later than their 38th birthday. We used to be so excited to read the latest videogame news each month and check out the editorial section for extra laughs. Now I get my news from imageboards and go to youtube e-celebs for extra laughs. I don't feel the need to self-flagellate and wonder what part of my personal experience will be demonized or shamed by the SJW faggots. Fuck, I miss Game Players, and Nintendo Power, and Gamepro, and the original PC Gamer… Life sucks now. ;_;

> Why is GG suddenly in favor of blacklists? BECAUSE THIS ISN'T A BLACKLISTING Kotaku was ignored by the AAAs, and they have the gall to call it a blacklisting.

>>300718 Shit, I have copies of the top middle one and top right one, along with a few boxes full of other vidya magazines from the 90's.

>>300744 basically they showed them the door but it's blacklisting when it's about them

>>300798 >I have copies of the top middle one and top right one, >along with a few boxes full of other vidya magazines from the 90's Save all of it in a protected box. You will likely never see video game journalism be that good and entertaining ever again. We likely will never see the entire video game industry like that again. You have a piece of the Garden of Eden. Save it. Do it for those of us who wished we would have had the opportunity to do the same.

>>300890 what is this, a magazine for ants?

> Why is GG suddenly in favor of blacklists? Maybe Goobergate finally realized they can't win without actually doing something that hurts their enemies?

>>300890 You're right. I also have the original boxes and shit for most of my 90's PC games, so I'll be keeping those too. I think the vidya industry is going to keep getting worst and worst as time goes on (there won't ever be another golden age, and a crash won't fix anything like many people on /v/ think), so I'll cherish these things even more as time goes on.

>>300718 >>300798 >>300890 I also kept most video game magazine I've bought. This is what people claiming that "calling yourself a gamer is stupid" don't get. There IS a video game culture, and there IS a real interest in games, in the technology, in the universe, in the people who made it possible. Playing candy crush half an hour waiting for the bus to come and not giving a shit about the next big game to come is not being a gamer. (polite sage for nothing relevant to add)

>Gamers! Save us from the blacklists! I'm sorry, I can't hear you, I'm dead.

>>300931 >original boxes and shit for most of my 90's PC games >pic 1 related I miss those old PC boxes so badly, too. It feels similar to how music is now just being sold digitally. Back in the day kids used to roam the record store aisles and gawk at all the cover art and cool inserts. Two generations later and the record stores were quickly disappearing but the game stores had taken off in a huge way, and they had row upon row of huge game boxes to match. Every one would have something unique inside to discover. Sometimes it would just be a poster, but other times you might get the holy grail: A CLOTH MAP! Icewind Dale came with one and it made the whole game world feel so much more real since you could physically feel the actual map of it. Even to this day, as I replay IWD: Enhanced Edition, I think back to that long-lost cloth map and just the memory of it STILL makes the game more fun even though the map itself is probably in a landfill. Now the game stores are slowly disappearing, and many have stopped selling PC games but remained open. The few places where one can still catch a PC game in the wild will greet you with tiny, plastic boxes that come with nothing inside but the game disc and a two sheets of paper. One is the warranty and the other is usually an advertisement for another game or piece of hardware. They don't even print out an instruction booklet anymore! Icewind Dale came with a fucking instructional tome that was spiral-bound (pic 2 related). Oh well! I guess we still get the occasional special edition. Even though Skyrim was dumbed down to shit, I treasure my faux-leather 200-page-long art book that came with it and the dragon statue, as well. It was $150 but I got it for $50 off somehow during Christmas time. If you want extras to come with your game these days then you gotta shell out big bucks for all of it, and best of luck to finding a store that carries it. I remember hearing "old people" reminisce poetically about how the death of the record store was a treasure lost for the youth of tomorrow, and I used to just think that videogame stores were the new alternative that kids gather. Now those stores are going the way of the Dodo and I cannot foresee anything at all that is taking their place. Shit, this is making me feel really, really old. >sad_pepe.jpg

>>300967 While I do find digital distribution to be very convenient and appreciate that it makes things better for small and middle market studios/companies, I miss old PC game boxes too. Just opening them and looking at them was an experience. I remember buying Forsaken, and then fapping to the calendar it came with later that night.

>>300967 > The beautiful Icewind Dale manual I envy you so much. I was looking at some sales in GOG, offering BG1 & IWD with an 80% discount… … it's not the same if it's not in physical form. Not for this nostalgia-filled games. At least I have BG2+exp in their boxes. I wish I had the collector's edition. I'd still be playing it if my friends didn't told me "You've beaten Shadows of Amn + Throne of Bhaal six times now, you should give it a break and play Dragon's Age 1 or Pillars of Eternity, ffs!". I don't believe I'm stuck in the past, I just found a good game that fit with my tastes and that stands the test of time.

>>301126 >I envy you so much. I wish that I still had all of my old game boxes and manuals. Unfortunately I "lost" all of that stuff while moving one time due to a "family" member, who was well-known for "losing" things, helping me move out of my apartment. If you get a chance, go for the IWD: EE version on GoG. They just released a patch for it that fixes over 500 bugs, many of which were in the original game but never fixed due to Black Isle Studios running out of money. The story is really lacking but the combat is amazingly fun. even if you don't have the cloth map Certainly the 30-40 hours you will get out of it will be money well spent, even at full price. Also, the company that is doing the EE versions, Beamdog, is developing a completely new BG game (pic related) that takes place in-between the first and second one. It will run on the Infinity Engine and Chris Avellone is a "narrative consultant" on the project, so it should have some of that old Black Isle feel to it, but obviously nothing can come close to BG2. Speaking of which, I really need to get the EE version of that game, too.

>>301229 > EE I thought that version was only recommended if you're using a touchscreen or a Mac. I believe I did played all the games that used the Infinity engine (BG1, Torment, IWD, BG2 & IWD2, right?) I didn't like the intro they did for BG1 but I can understand why they did it. Regardless, I have been waiting 15 years for a Baldur's Gate 3 so I'll certainly be watching that "Siege of Dragonspear" thing.

>>301240 I don't think I'll be getting BG1:EE just because they changed the intro. It should have come with both options. Seems like they left everything in BG2:EE intact, even if The Black Pits addition isn't up to the same level of quality as the original material. As for IWD:EE it is worth it since they released the patch. The bugs in that game are much worse on new hardware than they were back when it came out, and many of them tranfered over to EE, but all of those issues have since been fixed (380MB patch). It controls better than ever with mouse and keyboard since you can give each character a different colored highlight circle so they are easy to tell apart when it is dark (pic related). The menus for the game have been completely redone to fit modern resolutions and color depth. But best of all is that they finally fixed the fucking pathfinding bugs. Now, if you tell your characters to walk across a narrow bridge they will all go up to it and wait as each one takes their turn walking across in single file; before, half of them would get stuck and then scatter across the map in the exact opposite direction. I'm glad that I waited for the EE versions to get patched because IWD is now absolutely finished as the original designers intended it to be. It has flaws, like a razor-thin plot and shorter play time than average Black Isle games, but there are simply no more glaring fuck-ups that are due to programming errors caused by Interplay falling apart and not being able to properly fund their development studios. All of that particular bullshit has finally been corrected 15 years later. What makes this a bit more of a tough call is the rose-colored glasses we all wear when looking back on these games. Over time we have forgiven these titles for their atrocious aspects because we so much adored everything else about them. So when you go back and the pathfinding is perfect it doesn't really make as big of a difference as it could have it you just tried both versions for the first time. Still, it is a nice to have closure knowing that the game Black Isle truly wished to make was released into the world. I don't have very high hopes for Seige of Dragonspear, but Beamdog has had a ton of practice using the Infinity Engine in designing new content for the BG:EE. They have a chance to make it good if they listen to Avellone and their fans' feedback enough. The real upside of this is if they manage to create a compelling new BG title then a BG3 will not only be inevitable, but it will also have a chance at being a good game. This is certainly a long shot, but if BG3 grew into a big enough project then Beamdog would likely be able to attract a few more of the original developers to join them as designers or at least consultants. It would be quite amazing if that actually happened. Of course there is maybe a one-in-a-billion chance that BG3 is a huge hit and they form Black Isle Studios 2.

>>299934 This reeks of "no bad tactics, only bad targets".

>>301266 More like bad people get punished.

>>300718 I wish i took better care of my game magazines in my defense i have 2 retarded younger brothers who would take them give them out and never get them back or spill coke or food on them or otherwise destroy them. I have a final fantasy tactics magazine at home somewhere i know its still there i hid it from my brothers.

>>300506 >Vivian happy 3/10

>>300744 Basically, the only way we can fight in Kotaku's corner on this is by arguing that they're an upstanding journalistic outlet that are worth Bethesda's and Ubisoft's time, and thus should ideally be treated about the same as any other. Thing is, none of us can do that with a straight face, and nor can any other decent people. It looks like a shit blog, posts like a shit blog, whines like a shit blog, it probably is, and like with Youtubers, it's going to be the company's call. If they met some basic standards of respectable outlets, they'd have a case against being singled out.

>>301266 >no bad tactics Clue: A blacklist is a list of parties that is used by a group that have mutually agreed to treat parties on that list as -persona non grata- without respect to or consideration for why they are on that list. This is a type of collusion, which the gaming media has demonstrably been practicing. See also: GGAutoblocker. This is not a blacklist. The devs have decided not to talk to Kotaku as a direct consequence of their documented and well-known behavior. Kotaku/Gawker has earned itself a bad reputation known far and wide by just about everyone. Complaining about this is like complaining that Jeffrey Dahmer can't find a date.

>>301329 >If they met some basic standards Not much of a chance that Kotaku could ever dream of achieving such a thing. They had a chance to rise up to basic journalistic standards last year.

bump2