What do you guys think about this?



https://leagueforgamers.com/

Maybe it'll end up being something legitimately beneficial to the industry.

More likely, it's one of the million ill-fated attempts to cash in on controversy (from their FAQ: "at a future point, we will offer an optional paid-membership to help support our efforts") like several others have. Remember goodgamers.us? For all its initial momentum, it doesn't exist anymore. As for this current thing, the Twitter appeals to outrage and blatant whoring leave me with a bad taste in my mouth, as do the site's mentions of politics (around the part talking almost longingly about PACs and lobbying). Because politics in gaming is bad unless the right people are doing it, apparently? Yeah, my alarm bells and inner Admiral Ackbars are going off. At best, the whole thing seems superfluous since there's already that thing dedicated to ethics in game journalism. Gamerfence? Something like that.

Maybe equal and opposite politics will actually make people ease up on the puritanical outrage. Maybe ancient aliens will show up and deliver a shipment of unicorns to make our daily commutes more magical. I don't have much hope for either, though, and can't help but worry that we'll end up with equal and opposite monsters who looked into Nietzsche's abyss too long.

Ah yes, mistletoe is "rape culture", but of course

Yep, one only has to peruse these forums (not to mention just about anywhere else in internet-land) to realise that.
Prolly be a good idea to find out who's behind it prior to investing any time and/or energy towards it.

Mark Kern is behind this idea https://twitter.com/grummz, he was lead dev of WoW vanilla. Honestly I have no opinion about his plan, currently I'm just watching how it goes.

about the mistletoe bullshit, i would say that at this point, they should just ban any xmas celebration at all
after all there is nothing more religious marked that xmas... it is basically celebrating birthday of major christianism mythos... but if they are so much into "dont offense diversity" bs, well, many religions dont give a damn about xmas and dont recognize it (islam, bouddhism, taoism, etc)

about the leagu of gamer... would just say "meh?!" because the first two paragraphs and features are completly open door to any damn sjw activist to come and be very vocal and noisy more that other people, and not to mention there can be no proof that a registered user ever touched/played any game before complaining and venting about them

best would be (dont know if it already exist for each individual platform) that there would be web API that could interact with xbox gamertag system, psn whatever system and steam profile (oh, and... even galaxy if ya want uh uh uh), even in a "hidden user/anonymous mode" and aggregate all the data under a unique number for a sort of overall gamer card one could browse. wouldnt be perfect but you could see xbla/psn/steam achievements and maybe playtime (dont think psn and xbla display playtime, or if it ever record it for internal purpose)
but yes, that way, you can build up a REAL "league of gamer", because you could glance at anyone and see what game they played.

other way is just to set up and host your own diaspora pod, and be strict about registering rules (coopting by fellow registered members, test, quizz, chat, whatever)

but in the current form, the "league of gamer" sounds just like a "so called safe place bait" to be invaded by F*cktards with their own hysterical integrist agenda

You expose good points. I trust Kern, but it is true that his pet project could be easily coopted by SJWs. Ater all NeoGAF started focusing on bringing gamers together and now it is the gaming equivalent of Tumblr. I hate Tumblr, she turned a friend of mine into a "bigender" sjw.

Apparently the whole mistletoe thing started as a prank and some sjw's took it seriously and ran with it - now it's another example of the rampant out-of-control craziness everywhere, seriously.

According to breitbart.com: Further evidence why tyranny never has a sense of humour.


And of course its always better to have opinions, reviews etc from people who actually play the game being reviewed rather than self righteous bullies with an odious political agenda, as is the case with most mainstream publications. (I've always thought it would be a good idea if the game reviews here on GOG indicated if the reviewer had purchased the game here).
He certainly appears to have game dev credentials. He wants 50,000 members for his site - ambitious, especially considering at this stage his forum has less functionality than GOG forums - and then he can claim to have a constituency which he'll use, supposedly to influence developers etc.

i will reiterate my opinion about this idea, as i did in comments of the wishlist entry for it:
i think it is overall a bad idea in such actual form.
the concept of asking for some legitimity or proof from the reviewer is not a bad thing in itself, that i agree with.
but preventing "non buyer" to review is biaised in many ways.
why ?

three scenarios below:

1) i actually played a rather long time of a game, but in its old disc-physical version...
I owned and played the game (on a gamer point of view) yet my review could (not necessarily "would) be biased because memories tend to be flawed, and i couldnt comment with accuracy on gog compatibility/patching work

2) i played the game on another platform (console ?) or already played a long deal of the game as a digital pc version i would own from humble or steam... i shouldnt be allowed to review it "on gog" without purchasing it here as well ? sounds a bit ludicrous. Also "played a great deal of the game at a friend place, enough to give my impression even if i dont own it)

3) frantic collector, i got the game on gog but never played it yet. I may (or may not) had played the game on another media (old physical release, console, etc). How valid would my review be then ? Also, not a collector, just a mean moron that want to rent against a game or dev studio or publisher for whatever reason and can afford a few dollars from my pocket just to spit out my BS publicly. How valid would my review be ? that includes nasty hyppocrit activists with an agenda... i mean i am sure those groups of social crusaders are the kind that can gather donation to build up a "war treasury" to cover the expenses of registering here and there, buying something to bypass your idea of "ownership verification" and so on...

4) bonus reason: if you write a review (of Fez but maybe not only), you own Phil Fish money :)
(i could even believe the word "phishing" would be named after him)

point is "ownership of the game on gog" is not accurate or reliable at all on its own to give any validity or credibility to a review. could be an hint, but i think a flag "owner of te game" can be added on a review YET not limitate review writing to this. If you see a review without the tag, well, you can be more cautious about it maybe... yet again, as i stated above, owning a game ain't warranty of valid review either

now with galaxy, you can tell if the person played the game... oh wait: some people( me included) refuse to use galaxy so far

indicator of actual playtime is to be preferred for this purpose, yet "intrusive" in some way (dont like it), and can be faked (i let a comp with the game running without playing...); achievments are also a decent landmark but again a bit intrusive and often artificials in some ways.

just my point on the matter, nothing else

I wasn't saying that Gog should restrict reviewing games to those who purchased it here, just an indicator saying they purchased it at Gog. They probably won't do it coz it is a little intrusive.

if it's an additionnal indicator (like a sort of badge or icon aside from reviewer name/review title) then it is totally ok with me, even if it can yet be an unaccurate indicator nonetheless.. and it is "intrusive" strictly speaking, but it may be the least intrusive thing one can think off, tbh (compared to some very intrusive stuff i saw everywhere around)

i jumped up a bit because i already read somewhere on gog (maybe wishlist) that someone wanted to RESTRICT review posting on ownership only... that, on the other hand, is way too much afaic.

as i said, i think the best possible thing would be normalized anonymous/hiddenuser web api for any/every major digital game distribution platform (steam, gog, desura, gamergate, amazon ?, xbla, psn) but it would imply "cooperation" among every actor in the market, unless the whole initiative comes from an independant third party and then each platform would be responsible for designing a plugin/bridge for that normalized system

but, hell, yes, it would be fantastic to see something next to user review like:

User sumthing (don't own this game / played this game 0 hour): this game suxk blah blah blah ranting bs completely gameplay irrelevant...

User Another (own this game on plateformA/platformB, played this game total xxx hours)

oh yeah this way, i could really TRUST reviews. Of course as itself it is yet not enough cause out of context. I mean, i'm not much the puzzle/point and click game myself, for exemple (aside from FEW exception), so no matter i play a given point n click 5 or 50 hours, i would not like it. Though, with some sort of globalized aggregated "Gamer ID Card", if you see i don't own many Pnclick games, and if you see me giving a good review of one, that will tell something: 1) it may be too easy for seasonned PnC lovers (but not necesseraly) and 2) it can appeal people not really in mood for such genre

knowing the reviewer and its taste matters at least as much as the review's content

shamefully, i'm completely NO web developper or web designer, and have no connection required in the market to bring such idea outside of cloudy dream. but still... would be great

well, when i first launched and played Fez, i really thought it was a nice game... but the more i had to hear/read about the game maker, the less i felt like playing the game at all
that is, in fact, a genius situation... make something, behave as such a turnback that people will just resign to not "use" what you made, but after they paid.
no, seriously, so far only two music bands turned me away from listening to their songs in such same way...
the first rule about the fish club is "you do not talk about the fish club", second rule: if you play fez, you owe fish money, if you write a review of fez, you owe fish money, etc

about double fine products/games (cant be sure of the correct word for them), from what i could see during the KS campaigns and when the games were released... Tim Schafer is indeed a creative game maker... yet "good gamemaking" does not grant skill in "accurate project management" or "accounting", because those are completely not in the same skill tree.
oh i saw such kind of oddities irl in our educationnal system here, where a 3years worth degree in, lets say, foreignlangage, would "grant" youthe rights of a 2 years worth science degree for some specific purpose.
afaic, Tim Schafer may better invest his time and effort at doing what he is good at, and deleguate the managing to someone whose job it is...

i liked brutal legend and still wonder why it is so underrated, because it still dares to try interesting things.

and, oh, wow... playing hunniepop didnt turn me into a rapist monster... i sure didnt play it correctly if i didnt end up with this expected result...
i naively saw it as an interesting match3 game with funmechanism wrapped into a really grinning exxagerated parody of old dos/w98/sega saturn japanese dating sims. Tbh you could be exposed to waaay more "offensive" content in my country just stepping outside your home and walking by the bus stop add posters or newspaper front stores, or on many of our tv channels in late evening (or even mid day). Have no opinion on the matter, just stating a fact. Dunno how it is in other countries.

this said, i now have to leave you for a while because i feel compelled to go smash some tiny cute animals with a shovel because i miss playing viva pinata for too long (should i have added a "sarcasm alert" in this sentence ? or the ovbiousness is below enough any regular IQ level ?)

Well, I played Fez, and I don't regret paying for it. Of course I am glad I bought it at a discount price since Fish does not deserve the full price to be paid. I am a bit more capable than the average to keep the work and the maker separate. I think Fez is a good but flawed game. The constant use of QR codes embeded as clues in the game and the need of a gamepad to trully anjoy the game make it flawed in my opinion.

On Huniepop, well, the uncensored version is rather explicit for my country standards, but the normal version, well, I am sure children find worse things listening to the local radio stations. Still some of the reviews went downright moralistic and I am sure the reviewers did not even play the game.

i usually am able to separate work and its maker... nearly always do...
but when you push me too far (and i mean really far) like metallica when, during an interview for a tv channel in my country, just directly insulted their fan base with plain swear words... well i still listen to metallica tunes: if they are played/performed as cover by any OTHER band :)

well, so i nearly always could separate work from its maker... then came Phil Fish... and i couldnt do that any longer.
in fact he both robbed me from my money and from the desire to enjoy his game and play it (i only had tested it a couple of hour before i endured a fishstorm. i know i miss something. maybe one day i'll manage to play it again)

though i'm completely clueless and hermetic to qr codes, so i guess it saves me from more frustration...

on hunnie pop what i found completely absurd was that some people reviewed the game on the perspective of children.
Hello, it is an adult game. it is advertised as such, it is sold as such, it is meant as such. there is no trick or deception that tries to corrupt poor youngster innocent mind. of course the match3 part is completely manageable andenjoyable by a kid (i mean the special item plus combos plus raising attribute are good mechanism) but what surround the match 3 part is a purposefully cliched and parodic dating sim with explicit strong langage and that is about, nonetheless, getting laid with many partners (how do they NEVER find out anyway ?)

so there are three solutions (not mutually exclusive)

1) those folks are just hyppocrits with some agenda who like to lurk like vultures over a potential corpse to feed on and rant about

2) they are completely unthoughtful and lack any sense of responsability because they keep not giving a damn about age classification and insist on putting unappropriate games within grasp of their kid

and/or

3) 'the worse, afaic) they are so condescendant and patronizing that they insist on viewing and treating every adult as if they were children (their own children), and sorry, i dont want to be kiddified by those folks, i am full grown up

And a new orientation is born : https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/3wr0ps/hi_im_journofluid_and_you_can_be_too/
Seriously this needs to be pushed as far as it'll go.