Saltlord wrote:

I have a moment so I'll indulge your long-form Qt3 forum bullshit since you're one of the three people on the internet in this age of character limits and snapchat that still responds to masthead, you fucking fossil. Your whole point here, your homespun THESIS to use a Jerry Holkins mealy-mouthed faggot word, is that this tweet isn't worth skewering with however much limp polemic Caltrops still has in it because it describes the conditions of a business that has been created within an existing industry framework that provides players with reviews to guide their decision-making because it takes advantage of the market economy. This makes sense, how dare we say anything against it!? We're out of control!!!! We dropout malcontents need to be taught a lesson. You're going to show us by our own logic how stupid and wrong we are. Okay.

Let's set aside that any businessman - since that's what you're asking us to consider, Bennie K as a businessman, a steward of organizational responsibility and fiduciary duties, right? Let's set aside that any businessman that puts himself into a position where he publicly exposes how the sausage is made is completely screwing up in maintaining the image essential to the facade of his market, which is an indicator of his abilities and a fair target for public commentary. Let's set aside that the product quality and the production quality of games journalism in general and polygon in particular have been so lousy for so long that it just goes without saying around here, deserving of little more than a middling density shot of Caltrops' acid-poison semen right in its eye and then to be forgotten about, like our RealDolls. Let's set aside that there is value in periodic reminders of the insufferable character of the individuals that facilitate the continued existence of all this stupid shit that hasn't given me a useful game recommendation maybe ever.

That's all fucking great. You're posting on Caltrops. There's not a lot of people here who respect the premise that this system as a whole generates better reviews than picking through the garbage dump of internet randos posting their opinions on a gaming forum. Some of us might very slightly prefer to pick through the pile of shit in the steam user reviews for a game in hope of a nutritious kernel - that sucks too. The core of the userbase (all six members of it) come here to share their own good and bad experiences because that works better than looking to the products of a system where people earn money from advertisers by upping their reader count. Convincing us that this system is worth preserving is about as likely as convincing us we should give a fuck about your opinion of us, which is I hope not really what you were going for when you told us you were gonna say shrill housewife things about Caltrops on Qt3 or whatever idiot forum war bullshit joke you were making because you should really be folding laundry or trying to get a Cheryl Sandburg style career going so you can be another nameless battery to keep the lights on for late-stage capitalism. Maybe you could start growing food on your lawn.

The role gamers want from game journalism is going to be in conflict with the economic motivations of people like Kuchera. Maybe patreon models for games writing will change this but I don't expect anything to come of it so I just come here for game recommendations and I have no complaints. But I do occasionally listen to other media that's advertiser-supported and I've never felt that it'd be good if one of those people blankly told me or their partners in production that they were just in this for the ad revenue from people who make Casper mattresses and Blue Apron meals and that we could all fuck off if I didn't facilitate this goal. In case it was unclear, that would not just be amoral and disrespectful (who fucking cares); that works at cross purposes with the creation of high quality content because it indicates that the primary motivator is money, which means the person marketing himself as a creator devoted to making something I want to experience is just putting that on over being a money-grubbing yuppie in an age of abundance so great that if he was driven by the desire to make good content with less income he'd be fine doing it on the side with a shit part-time job, let alone at the helm of a genre review site.

I can't believe I have to fucking underscore this for you, but a capitalist-first mentality concerned with negotiating better relations with one's business partners and vendors in public will not create anything as useful or good as what comes out of an effort of craft. If Kuchera's dropping shit about risk management with company funds and protecting his payroll budget on twitter, he's either a retard at public relations or no longer a curator or a craftsman or an artisan or any of that dweeb shit that tends to make for better games writing - he has become a producer of content, a profiteer seeking to benefit from a technocratic economic system by facilitating production such that his organizational funds benefit. The virtue of products created in this way is that they are numerous, inexpensive to produce, and allow the owner of the means of their production to sequester as much profit as possible for himself. They put more dimes on Ben's sweaty forehead, not more actionably great, hindsight-proof game reviews on my feed. Don't come here defending that. It's not worth all the words typed in this thread, that time could have been spent finding something better to do.

If you're having problems browsing a list of indie games on steam your approach doesn't seem as satisfying as mine. I hope that improves for you. No, really, sounds bad. Best wishes. Hey, do you think you'd get more spending money for your shot-in-the-dark game purchase strategy if you sucked off Tom Chick? Asking for a friend. Hey, did this thread give you the orgasm you were looking for? Are you seeking satisfaction in cyclical forum arguments about obvious shit because your husband is a cuck just like his son and your friends at Qt3? Are you trying to make Caltrops users your bull in an internet version of some stupid fantasy? That's not gay so we can't help you. Here on Caltrops, we believe that the world of a hetrosexual is a sick and boring life.