Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - Based Gamer #GamerGate
Aired: 2014-11-19
Duration: 03:16


=== Jenny Barrage's Based Gamer (03:16) ===

[00:00:00]  I'd like to announce that I'll be having a conversation with Jenny Barrage about Based Gamer on Sunday the 23rd of November 2014 at 10pm British Standard Time.
[00:00:10]  If you have any questions you'd like me to ask Jenny, please leave them in the comments.
[00:00:14]  I'm neither condemning nor endorsing anything about this project.
[00:00:18]  I'm going to take a quick look at the information that I have available to me to give everyone a quick overview of what I know.
[00:00:23]  Basedgamer.com is currently a holding site where anyone can sign up and reserve their username in advance.
[00:00:29]  It has a link to an Indiegogo campaign to raise the funds to create the website.
[00:00:33]  The stated goal is $50,000 and has just over $11,000 pledged now from 182 backers.
[00:00:39]  I've been informed multiple times in conversation that Jenny put up $2,000 of this money herself.
[00:00:46]  In the introduction bit, Jenny states that Based Gamer will be devoted to a community driven by gamers, similar to the popular website rottentomatoes.com.
[00:00:54]  Based Gamer will feature a genuine aggregation of game reviews and other great features.
[00:00:59]  Jenny has apparently already assembled a team who at this time are undisclosed and she's expecting 650 hours work to build the website with them.
[00:01:08]  This includes design, programming and testing, and a percentage breakdown of the cost is as follows.
[00:01:14]  35% cost to designers, this will include 45 iterations of design work for web and mobile screens, 45% to the cost of development, this will include front-end and back-end programming, and 20% cost of performance testing slash tuning.
[00:01:30]  This will include unit testing, beta testing and bug fixing.
[00:01:33]  We are expecting to work with a team of five two-end front designers, one back-end programmer, and one front-end programmer and one testing lead.
[00:01:41]  She states the current risks as being a low number of sign-ups as well as a lot of recent instance of malicious attacks targeting individuals and websites in the game industry, and she is concerned about similar attacks towards Based Gamer.
[00:01:53]  To remind you who Jenny Barrage is, she's been a relatively prominent voice in Gamergate, having appeared on both the Huffington Post and the David Pacman show in defense of Gamergate.
[00:02:04]  And she has a genuinely solid body of work behind her on her YouTube channel that she's been doing for the last five months predating Gamergate.
[00:02:11]  Jenny's project has recently received criticism from a website called Reaxion that honestly I don't feel has done itself any favours at all with its clickbait headline and rather extreme statements.
[00:02:22]  For example, Jenny Barrage does not want $50,000 of any individual's money, so saying why does she want $50,000 of your money is wrong.
[00:02:32]  I don't know who these people are but I wouldn't be surprised if they were owned by Gorka.
[00:02:35]  But they do raise some valid points that I will go through here.
[00:02:39]  They think $50,000 is an excessive amount of money to ask for.
[00:02:43]  They question what's the need for a video game review aggregation site.
[00:02:47]  They want a more clear breakdown of how the money's going to be spent.
[00:02:51]  And they want to know more about the team that she's working with.
[00:02:54]  I think all of these are valid questions, but I don't think they're beyond answering.
[00:02:58]  And I think Jenny has definitely paid her dues with Gamergate so far, so she's certainly entitled to the benefit of the doubt.
[00:03:04]  So to wrap up, I'm quite ambivalent about the subject, but I'm quite willing to listen.
[00:03:08]  There's nothing about the project that immediately strikes me as untenable, and I don't see why it couldn't be a success, especially if it has solid community backing.