Five Guys Burger and Fries

[bur]

I bet this whole mess is just a marketing ploy for that burger place

[geekofalltrades]

“The official burger of infidelity and industry corruption.”

[Dr_Perky]

And now I want some Five Guys.

On the topic of Zoe Quinn, I didn’t really know who she was before this, but from looking at her “game” that appears to just be a poor excuse for a visual novel, I have no interest in it. Also anyone shocked by someone using sex to win favor shouldn’t be, it’s not that surprising shit like that happens, especially in the incredibly unprofessional environment that is games journalism.

[DeleteThis]

https://www.oppressionquest.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBNAUZiHTUI

[Grach]

At least you guys can try some Five Guys …

[danielsangeo]

@Dr. Perky

Also anyone shocked by someone using sex to win favor shouldn’t be, it’s not that surprising shit like that happens, especially in the incredibly unprofessional environment that is games journalism.

I’m reminded of the line from “Fierce Creatures” (a “sequel” to Fish Called Wanda starring a lot of the same actors in kind of the same roles, sort of).

Jamie Lee Curtis’s character is looking to take over running a zoo from John Cleese’s character, and she’s dressed in a tight dress showing off all her curves. As she’s going over plans for the zoo, Kevin Kline’s character tells her, “You know, you’d better be careful dressed like that around here. People will think you’re sleeping your way to the top.”

She responds, in a matter-of-fact voice, “Just as long as they don’t think I’m sleeping my way to the middle.”

[jerry]

TotalBiscuits take on this

[Chickenprotector]

Related.

Well looks like the shit storm is spreading…

[DeleteThis]

I think journalistic integrity is a pretty major issue no matter how much the other side tries to distort it or pretend it’s about their toxic brand of feminism. Of course, since gaming “journalists” had no integrity to begin with, hopefully this event will inspire less biased coverage of video games and a better environment for smaller developers.

[sloshedtrain]

Gone Homo
Parody of Gone Home.

Mundain Matts channel for his take on the whole thing. He’s already made a ton of videos explaining this whole debacle.

The fries we’re delicious though.
So Internet Aristrocrat and Mundain Matt went to a White Castle, and saw Five Guys Going In N’ Out of a “Dairy” Queen.

[Pyroclase]

https://storify.com/strictmachine/gameovergate

Apparently this blows the whole thing wide open? I have no idea, I haven’t really been following this drama.

[Chickenprotector]

Pure bullshit from the looks of it. Per usual.

Edit: Counter arguments
https://i.imgur.com/g385IJM.jpg

https://imgur.com/cBv8Wx5

[Grach]

Yep, outta context. This looks worse and worse by the day. Wonder what became of techraptor.

[Chickenprotector]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gC59EDr1-oM (found the article below here - and there is a monolog of the article below that lasts for a few minutes)

Well fuck I didn’t see THAT coming…

TL;DR: IGF and Indiecade could have committed a federal crime (racketeering)… emphasis on could as nothing is really proven (yet). Nor have charges been brought up officially (by the three letter organization known as the FBI). However they’ve been accused by some members of the community for racketeering and rigging the indie scene to their advantage to make money and make their products successful.

I defer to this video as it goes into the nitty gritty details: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM_Z5YTop7g

Edit: I’ve paid close attention to this shitstorm after it went down. I didn’t think much of Quinn cheating on the poor bastard that is her ex, but it busted the door wide open on this issue, and it’s getting pretty damn interesting.

@Lordkat's article/blog

We have some interesting facts to disseminate for the public interest. In 2009 Philippe Poisson received investment money for Polytron Corporation in the form of a loan from several influential people.

Ron Carmel of 2D Boy
Nathan Vella of Capybara Studios
Aaron Isaksen of AppAbove
Kellee Santiago of OUYA, formerly of thatgamecompany, and IndieCade
Jonathan Blow of EGW
Kyle Gabler of 2D Boy
Matthew Wegner of Flashbang Studios

These 7 people later went on to form Indie Fund, the “funding source for independent developers” who were “looking to encourage the next wave of game developers.” You can consider FEZ to have received the “Beta” Indie Fund.

Each of these individuals contributed a different amount of money to the FEZ creator and, in return, received a guarantee of a percentage of Gross Profits from Polytron.

While this isn’t necessarily the de-facto standard method of investing in a company, it is a valid method of fund raising and isn’t suspicious in its own right.

What is suspicious are the events that followed the initial investment of Polytron.

In 2011, the Independent Games Festival (or IGF) had 5 members of Indie Fund on the finalists panel, and 3 members of Polytron’s staff. That’s 8 out of 10 judges. Mere days before IGF was to accept submissions, FEZ creator Philippe Poisson had to announce the delay of FEZ. Had Polytron finished FEZ on time, the game would have been a shoe-in to win the grand prize at IGF that year as they had a controlling interest.

In 2012, FEZ gets through nominations and wins big. Of note here is the IGF anonymous nomination panel: all of the finalist judges are invited back to nominate games the following year. So the Indie Fund judges from 2011 would anonymously judge entrants for 2012.

The nomination process is simple: a majority of people who vote on your game is all that is needed to push you through to the selection process. While judges are explicitly told that they can only vote on the games they are given, this is not the case, and any judge can vote on any game; for example, eight people who are members of a small clique can give one game a huge starting bias.

In this instance FEZ would have started off with a bias of +8, and since it only takes a majority of people who voted to push a game through it would take at least 8 other judges to vote no, plus the number of judges that legitimately vote yes for FEZ.

Even more interesting is that judges are not even required to play the game to submit a ruling on them. So, no time need be wasted by the submitting judges: they merely must say yes or no to continue the process.

We know all of this thanks to leaked conversations of anonymous judges from past IGFs. We’d like to thank these judges for coming forward.

Interestingly enough, and we think this is not a coincidence, the software used by IGF for the anonymous judges was created by Flashbang Studios – the same studio run by Matthew Wegner who had a financial interest in Polytron Corporation.

FEZ was allowed through the IGF process twice – once in 2008 as a demo, which was strictly against IGF standards, and again in 2012 as a complete game – which created a fire-storm in the indie gaming community.

FEZ was a pre-Indie Fund game. Antichamber was also an Indie Fund game, and it too was pushed through the IGF twice: once as Antichamber, and the year prior as Hazard.

We do not suspect illegitimate practices on the part of the IGF; however, we do find it suspect that Brandon Boyer is close friends with Philippe Poisson, as he has stated on his twitter account multiple times, and is also friends with members of Indie Fund.

We would encourage the IGF to investigate these possible abuses of the anonymous nomination process as well as have an outside third party firm audit the code of their anonymous jury nomination software.

With that being said, I would now turn your attention to IndieCade, which labels itself as supporting the independent game development community. We intend to show that the only thing IndieCade supports is their own wallets.

Kellee Santiago, in 2009, invested money in Polytron which gave her voting rights in the company and a percentage stake in FEZ’s Gross Profits. In 2011 she became Chair of the Awards Jury of IndieCade. Coincidentally, 2011 was the year that FEZ won two major awards at IndieCade:

Disciplinary Excellence in Story/World Design
General Excellence by Grand Jury (or, their grand prize)

IndieCade works with “hundreds” of jurors to select a winner, where the Chair of the Awards Jury “works closely” with each juror to help them select the right game. We find it suspicious that the Chair of the Awards Jury works closely with the anonymous jurors (some of which may or may not be members of Indie Fund) and has a vested financial interest in one of the games submitted to IndieCade which, interestingly, won their grand prize.

If this is true, then IndieCade is guilty of siphoning funds through ticket sales and sponsorship money as a prize for FEZ, which is then recycled directly back into the pockets of those investors. Philippe Poisson gets a payday from his buddy investors, and the investors, including Kellee Santiago, get a payday thanks to their loan agreement.

Coincidentally, after its big awards win at IGF, FEZ was released less than a month later. This helped bolster the property and contribute to its hot sales. We question just how much of a hand Indie Fund had in procuring those IGF awards.

We suspect that Indie Fund has manipulated events to guarantee that their “beta” product – FEZ – would be a success and give the investors at Indie Fund a good name, at the cost of damaging the entire reputation of the indie gaming community.

This racketeering allowed FEZ to receive top marketing in the gaming media through its win at IndieCade, and helped line the wallets of its investors thanks to its win and Indie Fund’s suspicious involvement with IGF.

If FEZ received such preferential treatment thanks to Indie Fund, what other games also received this treatment? Did Monaco, Antichamber, Dear Esther, and Framed, which are all Indie Fund games, also received special treatment because the investors at Indie Fund have their hands in the cookie jar? What other companies does Kellee Santiago have a vested financial interest in? What financial interests do these anonymous jurors for IGF and IndieCade have? Why aren’t any of these interests disclosed to the public, or even the developers that apply to these expensive events? Of the journalists that covered this, how many of them were “incentivized” by Indie Fund or their members to cover these games positively?

We may never know the answer to these questions. We do know that these different festivals are extremely important to marketing departments, as Edmond McMillen stated on a podcast where he recounts a conversation he had with a Microsoft marketing director.

Until we get full transparency of the judges and judging processes behind IGF and IndieCade we cannot trust their results.

The following parties were reached out to without success before we aired this piece:

Brandon Boyer
Philippe Poisson
Ron Carmel
Nathan Vella
Aaron Isaksen
Kellee Santiago
Jonathan Blow
Kyle Gabler
Matthew Wegner
IndieCade
Independent Games Festival

We would encourage these people who have any comments on this story to reach out to us at lordkat@lordkat.com if they wish to clarify, dispute, or affirm any statements made herein.

For further analysis on this situation I would refer you to CameraLady’s Video, which you can find on Short Fat Otaku’s YouTube channel.

Special thanks to:
Camera Lady
Peter No One
Temet – an unfortunate victim to house slipper abuse
RogueStar
Anon
Our anonymous leakers, developers, and judges
and the 1971 Supreme Court case: New York Times Co. v United States.

[Kairouseki]

Philippe Poisson

I’ve always thought his name was Phil Fish and Philippe Poisson was some kind of joke name people gave him, but I guess that’s his real name.

Anyway, throw them all in the gulag. Indie games especially have essentially no set standards and shit is praised all the time for no reason. If there’s illegal activity responsible for some of these games getting big and not just bad taste then that’s even worse.

[Chickenprotector]

Dear Ester was actually decent imo. You shouldn’t demote the entire scene, as there are some decent games out on the floor that are indie. Path of Exile is one that is popular (somewhat) and is pretty damn good as I’ve played it myself.

Still I agree with you, it’s far too unregulated, but some people like it that way, it seems.

[Kairouseki]

No, I agree that there are good indie games but a lot of the ones that are big hits shouldn’t be, at least in my opinion. I haven’t played Dear Esther or Stanley Parable but video games need to stop trying to be walking simulators. Gone Home is the best example as it’s literally less than half an hour long of essentially nothing and praised more for its “message” than anything. I don’t think the scene needs any regulation, just that video games should be praised for being video games and games that rely solely on being “progressive” or whatever shouldn’t be getting 10/10 scores. Though I suppose that’s a larger issue with the community than anything to do with the industry and the AAA industry has similar issues. Video games have stopped being required to be video games really and I think that’s an issue.

[Chickenprotector]

Define “video games” because it’s technically interactive media imo. Most of them fit the criteria despite being nothing more than a fucking simulator.

But I digress, yeah, there I agree with you. Though hype is part of the problem. I’d recommend watching/listening TotalBiscuit’s take on this. It sheds a bit of light on the issue you describe.

[DeleteThis]

Oh jeez it’s just like the postmodern art “movement” all over again
A bunch of colors vomited onto a canvas now counts as art and is therefore worth millions! yay.

[papernick]

@Kairouseki

No, I agree that there are good indie games but a lot of the ones that are big hits shouldn’t be, at least in my opinion. I haven’t played Dear Esther or Stanley Parable but video games need to stop trying to be walking simulators. Gone Home is the best example as it’s literally less than half an hour long of essentially nothing and praised more for its “message” than anything. I don’t think the scene needs any regulation, just that video games should be praised for being video games and games that rely solely on being “progressive” or whatever shouldn’t be getting 10/10 scores. Though I suppose that’s a larger issue with the community than anything to do with the industry and the AAA industry has similar issues. Video games have stopped being required to be video games really and I think that’s an issue.

Just wanted to say that Stanley Parable is an excellent game, and definitely NOT just a walking simulator.