After some billing-related domain shenanigans we’re back online. Note however that I almost never post here because, um, who blogs any more? (Ignore Damion, he’s a throwback.)

Most of my ramblings can be found on Facebook which you are welcome to follow but I don’t really usually have much to say there these days either. Most of my creative writing of late is going into my day job which I think we can all say is a good thing.

So, Derek Smart had a bad 90s. It’s OK, it was pretty bad for many of us. Creed, Shaq-Fu, Newt Gingrich, HIMEM.SYS, Donald Trump, there was just so much we prefer we would forget ever happened. In Smart’s case, it was declaring war on pretty much the entire Internet (luckily, it was much smaller then).

Time passed. We survived Y2K, al-Qaeda, Everquest, Internet Explorer 6, and many other threats to our way of life, entering a brave new era where everything is new. Derek Smart kept plugging away, working on his holy grail, which, in his case until very recently, was making you believe a battlecruiser could fly. Decades pass. Derek Smart gets older, grayer, and despite the occasional indulgence in pitying fools, finally gets public acknowledgement that one can survive one of the most notorious stories in game development and still reinvent themselves in the second act. Older, wiser, calmer.

Then 2015 rolled around. Welcome to Act 3.

I love this industry. An industry that, while brutal, gave me the opportunity to do something that I love, while not making it easy. I take pride in the fact that when I screw up, or fail, and fall down, I can pick myself up – and keep on running. For me, there is no shame in failure; only pride in being able to acknowledge mistakes, and to learn from them.

My article (below) which I wrote, was a result of my observation that there is another industry disaster brewing, and which is, once again, going to not only cast the industry in a poor light if we didn’t do something, but which threatens to make it that much harder for the inbound generation to find their footing, because a bunch of people who came before, pretty much made it FUBAR.

And during my research for the piece, and for which I have hundreds of web articles, forum posts etc in an Evernote notepad, I came across a lot of things that I wasn’t even aware of. And once the article went live, I started hearing from all kinds of people in media, game development, gamers etc. And the more I read, the more I came to the realization that my article, which was merely a technical wake-up call of sorts, hadn’t even touched the tip of the iceberg. Which is why I am adding this next paragraph.

If you feel that you have been misled when you backed the Star Citizen project after Oct, 2012, and you want a chance to get your money back, the FTC has setup a special department that deals with crowd-funding complaints…

Why, yes, he did go pretty much right to Defcon One, didn’t he? But this isn’t just Derek Smart, this is OLDSCHOOL Derek Smart. You guys just don’t know the kraken you released. He blew through Defcon One, hit Defcon Zero…

In the interim, since this pledge by you, has ended up being the usual meaningless lip service, as of this moment, Chris, your crowd-funding efforts for this Star Citizen project, in addition to the selling of virtual items for a non-existent game, are coming to AN END.

went straight to Defcon Absolute Zero…

Here’s the thing, yanking my RSI account, won’t silence me.  All you’ve done, is strengthened my resolve, and unwittingly broadcast to the world that you have something to hide by kicking me out as a backer, without warning. I am going to keep talking (podcast 1, 2) about this incessantly until we get some answers, as outlined in my Interstellar Discourse article.

And next, I’m going to take out a full page article in the NY times, just to prove it.

…and is currently threatening to go to Defcon YOUR FACE unless his demands are met. No, that is not a typo.

1. You, and your wife, Sandra Roberts (aka Sandi Gardiner), should resign, effective immediately, and relinquish control of this company to an interim CEO.

2. Using the same rules you used to refund my pledge, without my asking, you are to immediately process refunds in the amount of $2,134,374 as per the initial Kickstarter crowd-funding effort for those who request it. Those who want to wait to see the end (my instinct, from what I know now, is telling me that the end is looking a lot like a catastrophic total loss of this project), and funded to the tune of $83m on your website, are welcome to do that.

3. Give backers the opportunity to hire an independent forensics accountant, and an executive producer, to audit the company records, and give an accurate picture of the financial health of the company, and it’s ability to complete, and deliver this project in a timely fashion. I hereby offer to foot the entire costs of this effort. And I will put up to $1m of my own money, in an escrow account of an attorney’s choosing, to be used as-needed for this exercise. I will pay this price to prove that I had every right to seek these answers. So this money can either go toward a good cause (righting this ship), or to attorneys who are most likely to burn it all down anyway.

4. If you ignore this, the more time passes, the more articles that myself, and investigative media write, revealing what we know, the more likely it is that this will end in legal (someone suing someone, and opening the flood gates) action, thereby  forcing you all to come to court and answer these questions.

If anyone else was posting these demands on their blog, people at Cloud Imperium would likely cackle a few times and then keep doing, well, this.

But this is Derek Smart, who is, for all his Act 2 calm Zen Master developerness, still can occasionally be as litigious as someone who has had a legal team on retainer for the past 25 years can be. So instead, CI decided to revoke Smart’s Star Citizenship due to his being Derek Smart (oh, and threatening to bring down the entire company and demand top-level changes in corporate management and a few other things).

Mr. Lesnick, I can safely say this isn’t about Smart’s promoting Line of Defense any more. No one really can say! No one knows where this train is going to stop any more; Derek Smart is promising more updates, the media has been nibbling, and out of the 300 or so Cloud Imperium employees, I’m pretty sure one or two of them have a few things they want to get off their chest. At which point:

At any rate, this entire tale could not get more weird. It really couldn’t. Trust me, there is no way this can…

…OK, yes, it can.

You see, there’s this thing called Gamergate.

More specifically, there’s this thing called Airplay, which is a debate being run by Michael Koretzky during a Society of Professional Journalists trade show. Koretzky surveyed the landscape and decided not enough people were talking about how, actually, it was about ethics in video game journalism, and by cracky, he was going to fix that!

Specifically by having a debate between some of Gamergate’s noted ethical paragons (such as the guy who writes for Breitbart about how he hates women in tech so very much, the other guy who writes for Breitbart about how cool 4chan is, the lady scholar who gives commentary on feminism from the somewhat unique standpoint that it’s actually men who are oppressed in modern society, and the ex-journalist who flamed out and yelled at Koretzky about how racist he was for not giving Gamergate an hour to explain what it was, presumably with Powerpoints and flowcharts) and, well, hrm.

There was a distinct lack of interest in potential punching bags to show up and be punched for a day, to which the other Breitbart guy responded FINE WE DIDN’T NEED YOU ANYWAY, WE’LL JUST DEBATE OURSELVES! with no hint of perceptible irony or self-awareness.

Yes, like anything else Gamergate-involved, this quickly became so stupid that Mark Kern may actually have gotten involved. But you may ask yourself, self, why I am I reading about this crazy not-a-debate in an article about Derek Sma….

oh no.

Oh, no.

OH YES.

Yes, Derek Smart is going to take time out of his busy schedule demolishing Star Citizen to solve this whole Gamergate thing. I am not making any of this up at all. I AM NOT CREATIVE ENOUGH TO MAKE ANY OF THIS UP.

At this point, the only thing that can make this weirder is if Donald Trump gives a statement about crowd-funding Kickstarter game journalism. I fully expect this to happen by Wednesday.

full disclosure!

• the author works on a crowd-funded project of his own which has nothing to do with any of this and you will note he is posting this blog article at 1:30 AM on his own time so kindly do not swarm his workplace ANY OF YOU.
• the author has been Internet-acquaintances with Derek Smart for a good while now and has occasionally given him what he thinks is helpful advice. It’s safe to say Derek didn’t ask the author about Airplay.
• the author knows quite a few people over at Cloud Imperium and wishes them all the best and wants a cool game for his Oculus Rift when it comes out, please.
• the author is so old he remembers the 1990s from back when he started blogging, and often speaks in the third person.

 

…but until that day, Damion Schubert is tanking the Mark Kern aggro, and doing so very adeptly.

First off, let me say, without irony: welcome to the discourse, Mark. You have your own megaphone. No one is shutting you down, no one is shouting you down. I linked to your reply to Damion in the first line of this post. Your position in this foofrah is on the record and public knowledge. This is how it is supposed to work. You say things, other people say things in response, readers enjoy the interplay of ideas, *it’s all good*.

Welcome to blogging, circa 2002.

 

Let me start by saying, I don’t have a problem with people blocking other people on Twitter, or using a service like a block-bot to do so. If, for some reason, you came to this conclusion I’d like to apologize.

Well, thank you, Mark. In an ideal world, this would have been your entire post. And I’m glad that you recognize that most people do not particularly want to see what weird anime porn 8chan saw that week on their Twitter feed and act accordingly. The best way to solve every problem is to give people the tools and power to solve it themselves. That is the libertarian philosophy, the anarchist perogative. We rule our own roosts, we have our own castles. This is the ideal. I’m glad you recognized this fact. And in a perfect world, this blog post would have stopped… here.

It’s not over.

Another brief factual point, which Mark is correct on:

Also, Damion’s article refers largely to Randi Harper’s gg autoblocker. In my public tweets with Randi, I’ve made it quite clear that I’m not talking about her list, but rather the Atheism + list, called “theblockbot,” which is operated out of the UK and predates the gg Autoblocker. So this part of the article is factually in error and fails to address my concerns with the theblockbot.com.

And regular readers of this blog will note that this is in fact what we discussed. The issues with the UK Atheist blockbot (which are minor, but still problematic) have nothing to do with Randi Harper’s ggautoblocker, who, in case you missed it at any point, I 100% support and recommend. Randi is doing the Lord’s work, and being harassed for her pains, because, well, Internet. Do I need to continue? No.

But, of course, Mark does, because MarkKernMarkKern.

My simple question to the readers of @ZenOfDesign is this: Why is it necessary for these blockbots to label its lists as lists of horrible people who are bigots, harassers, or otherwise “bad people?”

Gosh Mark

Scott Jennings is a fifty year old man who has yet to release a single game. @Lum_ pic.twitter.com/rAVGJUt9wm

— Darlingport (@CHOBITCOIN) March 3, 2015

I can’t

As a supplement to my article, by the way, here's a few images of GG creepiness directed at me or those close to me: t.co/CGPm4kmoGt

— Katherine Cross (@Quinnae_Moon) March 19, 2015

imagine

#gamergate is still fighting for their right to harass people that don't want to interact with them. pic.twitter.com/2MNhTuJZIi

— Sarah Nyberg (@srhbutts) March 19, 2015

why

why do I feel like one guy is just spawncamping my ask.fm inbox right now hmmm pic.twitter.com/TWkYzSEa7F

— dank meme (@TheQuinnspiracy) March 16, 2015

with such polite discourse being brutally suppressed by bots acting in self defense. (And trust me – it took some doing to find things that weren’t in and of themselves an assault. I died for your sins.)

And that’s really the point here. We’re not talking about an alternative political viewpoint that is being suppressed. We’re talking about a pack of obscene idiots who use the open nature of the Internet as a weapon to attack people they don’t like. And those self-same pack of obscene idiots then complain, with no visible irony whatsoever, because they are being censored because a good many site hosts do not particularly want to host blathering obscenity.

At the end of the day, that is why people install blockbots. Not because they want to live in an echo chamber of people they agree with (or “hugboxes”, in the entirely too illustrative vernacular of Gamergate where hugs are apparently awful things to avoid at all costs), but because they would like to read Twitter with 80% less sewage. That is, for everyone I’ve talked to about this, literally, LITERALLY the only consideration. No one has any problem with the sea-lioning “actually, it’s about X in X” justifications. It’s what comes after. It’s the flood. It’s the sewage. It’s about self-defense.

And the fact that Mark Kern denies that flood of sewage exists is obvious, and incredibly illustrative, and demolishes any credibility he may have as a “neutral commentator” that he pretends to hold.

(But he’s still fun to make fun of. Though I’ll try to only do so in moderation.)

(PPS, and I didn’t notice this but someone else did, so I will just point that out because it made me laugh for about four minutes)

@tauriqmoosa @Lum_ @athenahollow The kicker, tho? *Mark's blog doesn't have a comment section* 😀

— The Notorious S.J.W. (@InnerPartisan) March 20, 2015

From my last piece:

I am not obligated to turn my blog password over to Mark Kern so he can post happy pictures and complain about how he can’t speak to anyone because I made fun of him.

And… it turns out, I’m really not.

@ZenOfDesign Hi, I read your article. I would like to write a response on your blog for your readers. Also, you have some facts wrong. DM.

— Mark Kern (@Grummz) March 18, 2015

Damion is.

At last report, Damion is still completely preventing Kern from commenting on his blog post, because comments on blog posts do not exist.

ITEM! Chris Mancil is an EA community director who started his gaming career as Community Manager for Shadowbane, thus implying he was somewhat familiar with full PvP. However, he wasn’t ready for the full-on no-limits WRATH OF BEN KUCHERA!

Yes, Kuchera, bête noire of Gamergate ranty types, proves once again that those who are harassed online aren’t necessarily innocent and pure themselves, by responding to Mancil’s blog post (which, like mine, has the I’m-just-speaking-for-myself-and-not-my-employers-why-did-I-even-bother-none-of-you-are-paying-attention-and-emailing-every-email-address-on-my-work’s-web-site-right-now disclaimer) with the completely reasonable retort of “Quit talking about me, or I’m telling your dad!” Dad in this case being, um, Peter Moore.

Dear @petermooreEA and @EA: please ask @ChrisMancil to remove links to my work in his article defending harassers. t.co/FNDnxz5GTP

— Ben Kuchera (@BenKuchera) March 14, 2015

Note that normally I could link to Mancil’s piece and point out that making a long post decrying how people unfriended you for speaking kindly of Milo “I Literally Have No Ethics Or Morals Or Point Or Really Anything Save Hair Gel” Yiannopolous and his current hobby of finding material for a book through writing articles that had as their eminently ethical and moral original title, “Lying, Greedy, Promiscuous Feminist Bullies Are Tearing The Video Game Industry Apart” (you will note that Yiannopolous later thought better of calling someone “promiscuous” from the same platform where he spends a non-zero amount of time talking about his personally having lots of great sex, and you will also note that Yiannopolous, being a former new media entrepreneur, doesn’t know how to change the titles of blog URLs). I realize I’m starting to wade deeply into the parenthetical here; Milo does that to a person. Despite that, he’s actually one of the better writers on the pro-Gamergate side (note to Gamergaters: find better writers, now) and Mancil’s appreciation of his occasional flashes of wit left amongst the tidal wave of misogyny, transphobia, and really, really Vogon-bad poetry is a touch understandable, if you don’t think about it very much.

At any rate, this is an interesting discussion we could be having. We can’t have it, because Ben Kuchera told Chris Mancil’s dad and Mancil had to take his blog down. (The original piece has been archived, but I’m not linking to it here, because I’m one of those crazy people who actually believes in respecting people’s wishes when they wish to disengage in such a way.) Thanks, Kuchera. Next, maybe you can yell at confused department stores about what their employees say on Twitter or something…

Dear @DICKS, look up GamerGate, see @RedHurricane24's tweets, and ask yourself if that's how you want your brand to look online.

— Ben Kuchera (@BenKuchera) January 1, 2015

Oh. Carry on proving that Gamergate has no monopoly on jerks, then.

ITEM! Mark Kern.

What. I can’t just stop there? Oh, all right. But I warned you.

So I can't reply to press articles about myself, I can't blog about it, and now I can't tweet my defense to those accusing me. Sounds fair.

— Mark Kern (@Grummz) March 16, 2015

MARK KERN CAN’T BLO…

@Grummz @leighalexander Mark, just checking you know that half of Gamasutra's content is dev blogs, and any user can submit one?

— Simon Carless (@simoncarless) February 27, 2015

Oh. Well, MARK KERN CAN’T SPEA…

@sean_morrison @BenBenMiri Tks, but I do not do press interviews.

— Mark Kern (@Grummz) March 17, 2015

Oh. Well, MARK KERN CAN’T TWEET!

Well, more specifically, he can’t tweet to you. You being someone who blocked him. You would think this would be somewhat self evident to anyone still holding enough brain power to walk from one side of the room to another.

People may not need to listen, but they should at least have a choice about it without the press or silent block lists deciding for them.

— Mark Kern (@Grummz) March 16, 2015

…well, then. I agree that it could possibly be a tragedy when people who go to the trouble of activating a program to block a given list of people then proceeds to not see tweets from that given list of people. That is truly very, very bad. At least, according to Mark Kern, who is one of the finest legal minds of our time…

I co-founded a law journal and have fought at least 3 litigations, including overseas. No stranger here to fighting legal battles.

— Mark Kern (@Grummz) March 17, 2015

…it is illegal in at least one English-speaking country called “England” to not listen to people when they scream #NOTYOURSHIELD in your face.

Having been put on a block list myself for doing nothing but speaking my mind, please spread word of its illegality in the UK.

— Mark Kern (@Grummz) March 16, 2015

For those in the UK, THE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU CAN DO is to get together, find a lawyer, split the fee, and take down the blocklist.

— Mark Kern (@Grummz) March 17, 2015

How is it illegal, exactly? Well, mumble frumble data export laws mumble mutter privacy issues LOOK JUST HARASS THEM UNTIL THEY GIVE UP, OK I HEARD YOU GUYS DID THAT ONCE OR TWICE

You don't need to sue them, just send them takedown notices due to data export laws and potential libel. Far cheaper and just as effective.

— Mark Kern (@Grummz) March 17, 2015

What has mumbled Kern’s frumples specifically? Well, it seems a combination of Kuchera’s TOTALLY TELLING ON CHRIS MANCIL TO DAD (and sadly, since Mark Kern is totally incapable of blogging, speaking to the media, tweeting, or posting on any other social media site, he was unable to call him out on this like I did ten minutes ago) and Kern’s discovering he was being blocked for talking about Gamergate a lot.

Kern does have a fragment of a point – too bad that he is, according to him, completely incapable from communicating with the outside world, so I will have to make it for him. TheBlockBot’s system is, well, snarky. You can search for Twitter handles (anyone’s, obviously, and find out why the person who categorized you as blockable chose to do so. Here is Mark Kern’s listing. It is safe to say Kern did not agree to being listed here. It is also safe to say Kern, despite being locked in a Faraday Box in the core of the earth and thus only able to communicate with the world outside through the keening unearthly wail of mole demons that escape through an intricate system of volcano ventings, has made all of those tweets publicly accessible to all. Some people won’t appreciate them. Some people may actually make fun of them! Some of them even have blogs!

That’s a solvable problem, and one that may be solved if Mark Kern’s massive and totally-locked-out-of-any-communication-with-Mark-Kern army follows through on his threats and starts sending the people who run TheBlockBot cease and desists. Then again, maybe not. They’re apparently run by a forum of professional atheists, which may possibly be the one group on earth more annoying than Gamergate trolls. But somehow I don’t think that will make his-mouth-is-being-held-shut-by-boll-weevils Mark Kern happier.

I'll mention it again when Europe is awake and active, but really, this type of list imho is intolerable to a free society

— Mark Kern (@Grummz) March 17, 2015

I'm for freedom of expression in art. Including an artists' right to pull their own work from public view. But the *reason* is important.

— Mark Kern (@Grummz) March 17, 2015

Not being allowed to speak to those accusing you of horrible things or their readers to defend yourself is…what is even the word for it?

— Mark Kern (@Grummz) March 16, 2015

People may not need to listen, but they should at least have a choice about it without the press or silent block lists deciding for them.

— Mark Kern (@Grummz) March 16, 2015

I… um…

 

In case you missed it from my mocking-into-the-ground, Mark Kern can speak all he wants. He has, in fact, quite a large megaphone, and is using it to great effect! There are many people who have never heard from him this month who follow him on social media, and he seems to be integrating into the Gamergate hive mind quite smoothly indeed.  Possibly because they agree on this one point: being prevented from talking to someone is censorship.

Even when that person preventing you is the person themselves.

That’s what this whole storm and fury about block bots represents, what Gamergaters froth about when banned from various forums, etc. They know they are perfectly free to say what they like. They want to say it, and you will be forced to listen.

That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.

A lack of indoctrination is not censorship. I am not obligated to turn my blog password over to Mark Kern so he can post happy pictures and complain about how he can’t speak to anyone because I made fun of him. I made fun of speech that he made in public on my blog. I get to do that. It’s part of civil discourse in a free society. It doesn’t obligate me to do anything else. It doesn’t obligate me to host a long-running comment thread full of people speaking in 4chan lingo about how I’m fat. It doesn’t require me to page through dozens of pages of Twitter mentions about how my tears are salty. It doesn’t require me to trudge through hundreds of Youtube comments that are so bizarrely obscene they are literally incomprehensible to anyone over the age of 12.

And if I choose not to participate in such an enlightened discourse, I can choose to use whatever tools are available to assist me in so doing. You do not have a right to my eyeballs