I also forgot the rapist breeding ground. Only Nintendo games is the safe haven. Oh no, the Religious Video game site says they are not.

I come here for GOG's positive attitude and their own good sales picks. TB is good at collecting Youtube fans, and he's not the worst person to ask for a game list. But he also has a knack for lighting fires under the most unpleasant and reactionary of those fans, and then, like you say, distancing himself from the consequences.

To me GOG represents silly monk costumes, clever contests, diverse inventory, and shake-your-head ideas like shutting down the site to promote a redesign. They have their corporate side like every corporation, but it never comes across as malicious. At worst, they stumble around at times trying to make corporate decisions fit their public image. Over and over, they've shown humility when responding to their mistakes. GOG enjoys all kinds of games and tries to pass along that attitude while selling them. And their attitude carried over into the community, making the site fun for everyone.

GOG doesn't outwardly represent specs-over-substance, narrow-minded definitions of games, or ongoing harassment campaigns. Not that TB explicitly represents all that either, but it's not a stretch to say his feet are stuck in some of that mud. It's a big stretch to call him humble. It's hard to look at one of his lists without recalling some of his public flames. His e-celebrity comes in part from his relentless picking apart things that bother him. He's a mismatch for GOG's positivity.

Maybe GOG thinks they can enlist his good side (and market presence) without the baggage. Maybe in private they don't care about the baggage. But given some of TB's more inflammatory public comments, and the appalling behavior of other gaming culture warriors this past year, I have to wonder if GOG will reach a point where they're forced to choose between hanging onto his fanbase or cultivating a broader audience like before.

What would GOG look like with the most outspoken TB fans dominating it? I don't think it would be nearly as fun to visit, and the game variety would suffer as well. What would a GOG-TB rift look like in the present era? I hope the fallout wouldn't spread too far.

"People" – game fans like you and me – are telling you, explicitly, that it's all right to play these games and have all the fun in the world with them, but to be aware of some possibly problematic aspects.

They explicitly DON'T tell us not to play games.

And they explicitly DON'T tell us that we're bad persons because we do.

It's a rather common misconception, and while people can be avid gamers without becoming involved with any of the present cultural conflict, at least people should get rid of those basic misconceptions about the criticism that is voiced.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y8XgGhXkTQ
(All six parts are well worth watching)

Oh my. "There are enticement to lust issues in this game as well."

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if you get horny playing Smash Brothers, the problem is rooted deeper than anything present in the game.

OK, I'll bite...

Make up your mind. Is GOG already hanging onto TB's fanbase or do we have to imagine a world where they'd have influence?

As a counter to your stereotyping example - what would GOG be like if TB's most outspoken detractors were running the show? Don't you think "game variety would suffer" and the place wouldn't be "fun to visit"? Do you believe people like me wouldn't get banned instantly? Inb4 "good riddance", I'm sure some here would love to have me silenced...

GOG cares about games and so does TB. In my eyes that makes them a good match. The community remains nice, partially because bullshit is frowned upon.
Finally - here comes the shocker - GOG won't have to choose between TB's fans and the rest of the world, because the rest of the world does not consist solely of TB's detractors. If anything, they'd be making a choice between losing the adamant haters vs (maybe) losing the adamant fans, while keeping a huge group of neutral individuals who are here just for the vidya. Don't quote me on this, but I'd say that there are more people they are bringing in thanks to TB than they are scaring away... as far as potential customers go anyway.

P.S.: Don't use the term "reactionary" outside the hugbox. It's only an effective insult to the ears of a select few people, others will be either left scratching their heads or become instantly suspicious of you and your motives. In addition - if you absolutely cannot get the same point across without resorting to specific vocabulary, then you're not getting a "point" across but merely spouting buzzwords... Just something to consider.

He's surely not very friendly and a bit too "business man", but.. such arrogant characters aren't that uncommon among showmen, even if some manage to mask it.

Getting angry for a simple promo is a bit silly, come on.

Btw, I find his analysis often interesting and his Co-optional show quite funny.

The direct inclusion of a "wtf is" video in the new guild of dungeoneering announcement made me actually laugh out loud. Because of this ragethread.

I wonder if it's meant as an answer to it.

Yeah sure, I became a very bad person due to that RISKS PLAYING GAMES, OMG facepalm...

Exactly, I partially can understand I repeat, the "I am getting tired of Youtubers" feeling... but if people don´t like them, then, why they are still watching or following them? ...

All this PINK JOURNALISM inside the game industry is so BORING... I hate you, you hate me, I tweet you something flame... Jesus... I thought soap operas will never arrive to videogames, I was WRONG...

Anyways getting back to why GOG is great ( and nothing to do with Totalbiscuit ) .... Shadow of the Comet has just landed in the store ! ... this release reminds me of what GOG is all about .... I think I must now leave this thread and go and purchase it ... toodle pip chaps ! ;)

You speak the truth my friend , " Anger only damages the vessel it is stored in not what it is poured over " ... +1 to you ... but sometimes self control breaks down ... sometimes :(

Actually when I saw the joke, I found it funny because of how ridiculous it was that said person would jump off a cliff over something like that. I think most progressive people look at it in this light. It's pretty silly to make a fuss about it.

I wonder, if the joke was about a drunk lesbian who went home with who she thinks is a woman, but upon sobering up discovers that she just slept with a man and commits suicide - would SJWs consider that joke to be making fun of the lesbian or of the man mistaken for a woman? Something tells me they'll blame the man for pretending to be a woman so that he can sleep with the lesbian under false pretenses (rape!). Still don't buy that there's any actual transgendering going on there in the first place.

They are appealing to his fanbase as part of their overall marketing plan. They aren't catering to his fanbase at the expense of everyone else.

Suppose, for instance, that the more radicalized TB fans start a "consumer revolt" demanding that GOG drop some hated publishers. If there's a lot of overlap between GOG customers and TB fans, GOG would have to give their protest a lot of weight. That's an extreme example. It's more realistic to assume a strong TB contingent will influence sales and forum culture more subtly, less overtly. Skewing the population more towards that fanbase links the needs of the site with that fanbase.

I think you miss my point. GOG is doing a fine job on their own. I don't like seeing them add polarized or hostile voices on top of that. They don't need TB, his fans, his opponents, or anyone else setting the tone of GOG's website.

If they didn't think he'd bring in customers, they wouldn't put his name all over their site. It's a given he can steer traffic their way. But it may back them into a corner down the line. I don't know because I can't foretell the future.

To give you an out-of-left-field example, consider Bill Cosby. His endorsement was solid marketing gold for decades. But now he's a liability. Hitching onto a celebrity has risks attached no matter how good they look, and TB's public image is already not stellar. Don't get me wrong, TB never had Cosby's former stature and he'll never be in Cosby's current position. They're totally different situations. The point is it's a gamble whether someone as mercurial as TB will bring GOG more good things than bad in the long run.

Words like "hugbox" are also loaded buzzwords implying a lot more than anything I said. Reactionary is a longstanding term that nicely encapsulates the kind of person I was talking about. You clearly understood what I meant by it, and there's no disputing there are some very vocal gamers that fall into that category. I was careful to refer to them separately from TB and his total followers.

Ironically, the game's developer was recently targeted by followers of TB's "Framerate Police" steam group. To his credit, TB quickly spoke out against the abuse, but it's insane it happened at all.

https://twitter.com/gambrinous/status/622186459953500160

http://steamcommunity.com/app/317820/discussions/0/535150948602548346/#p1

It's a good example of the kind of behavior I'd hate to see take over GOG. Not because TB makes everyone do those things, but because it seems to follow him around.

Yeah. I regularly check TB's reviews because I agree with most of his judgement criterias (he is also a very good reviewer in the sense that he always explains who will and will not like a game for which reasons, which make his reviews useful even for those who don't share his tastes, and the sad truth is that very few critics do this, be it in gaming, cinema, etc), but I find his framerate obsession quite ridiculous. Okay, he has a preference, but he makes such a drama out of it, like All Things Good are at stake...

And, okay, it's his thing. So, I thought, a grin and an eye-roll and we were done. But I hadn't taken in consideration the factor that he should take in consideration too : the number of moronic crusade-seeking kids amongst gamers. And the effect of strong cool-sounding super-opinionated rants on such imbeciles. I don't think he should be held accountable for any butterfly effect of his rants (he's no pope or politician), but still, maybe he should realise that he largely speaks to a population of teenage hate-seekers (heck, especially that he is also a victim of this mentality) and maybe relativise his points accordingly.

I'm not all for adapting any statement to the lowest member of the public (this legal duty tends tends to kill dark humour), but when you know by experience what sort of crowd flock around internet celebrities, maybe it's still something that should play a role on the posturing choices.

Internet.