Nov. 23, 2014 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
01:02:33
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| Your internet jerked. | |
| Yeah, it did. | |
| Okay, sorry about that, everyone. | |
| Yes, I swear to God, I've been at the internet company so much, I haven't had any internet from them, it's pissing me off. | |
| Anyway, I'm going to go back a bunch of questions and ask them again. | |
| Oh, gosh. | |
| Do you know how far back we have no idea, so if I've missed anyone's questions, I apologise in advance. | |
| Oh, no. | |
| It shouldn't be too many, though. | |
| Right, so yeah, let's go back to moderating. | |
| How's the site going to be moderated? | |
| Okay, well, with moderation, it's going to be automated and it's going to be, you know, just human mods. | |
| It'll be a combo. | |
| Right, okay. | |
| I assume that the mods, how are you going to choose them? | |
| Well, right now, I'm getting a lot of direct messages of people who have modded in the past, and so I'll be using their expertise. | |
| I imagine that they're people from within Gamergate, aren't they? | |
| Yes, of course. | |
| Could you tell anyone? | |
| Tell anyone? | |
| I mean, you know, name any people you've been talking to. | |
| I don't think anyone would mind. | |
| Well, I don't know, maybe you shouldn't. | |
| I don't even know. | |
| Okay, you kind of cut off a bit there. | |
| I'm not quite sure what you said. | |
| Yeah, yeah, I was just, well, I was going to say, can you tell us who you've been talking to? | |
| But I don't know whether you should. | |
| I mean, I don't even know whether I should be asking that question. | |
| Oh, no, no. | |
| I'd rather keep everyone as private as possible just in case. | |
| Okay. | |
| I think if they're listening, and they may well be, it may be. | |
| I think transparency is a really good thing. | |
| I really do. | |
| I don't think it's going to hurt anyone to say that they're interested in becoming a moderator. | |
| But I understand that you might not be the person to reveal that information yet. | |
| Right. | |
| And I should always ask. | |
| Yeah, and it's always good to ask first before you expose any details. | |
| Yeah, I might not be able. | |
| I shouldn't probably be asking that question. | |
| Okay. | |
| So you're going to have human moderators, and you're going to have an ethical policy, aren't you? | |
| Yes, so I plan to have in-house journalists, and these in-house journalists will abide by these lists of ethics. | |
| And these ethics are derivatives of the SPJ, the Society of Professional Journalism, because I feel like their code of ethics is completely, you know, it's wonderful. | |
| Like it's everything that Gamergate is asking for. | |
| And I feel like we need to take that and put it into Git Base Gamer because that is everything that I believe in. | |
| Is it similar to the Reuters one? | |
| Sorry? | |
| Is it similar to the Reuters code of conduct? | |
| I've actually never really seen that code of conduct. | |
| Is that for journalists? | |
| Yeah, yeah, it's for journalists. | |
| It's exactly what people would want. | |
| It's a code of conduct that's probably going to guarantee honest ethical journalism if people abide by it, at least from what I saw anyway. | |
| Interesting. | |
| I really can't remember what I've asked and what I haven't. | |
| So the website's going to be advert it's going to have adverts, yeah? | |
| Yes. | |
| These advertisements are not going to take up a lot of space. | |
| They won't be spammy or flashy. | |
| They're going to be clearly labeled. | |
| And I don't plan on making them Very prominent on the website that it takes away or it distracts you from the actual website content. | |
| Okay. | |
| There seem to be people creating open source sites as a response to Based Gamer. | |
| I tweeted them earlier. | |
| I don't remember whether the caller dropped until then. | |
| So what do you think about them? | |
| Yeah, I think they're great. | |
| I think the more websites out there that are for Gamergate, the better. | |
| I applaud them for putting in the effort to make these websites because we need them. | |
| And it's as simple as that. | |
| Okay. | |
| Do you wish to make Based Gamer your full-time job? | |
| I know for a fact that it probably won't be my full-time job for at least two to three years. | |
| If it does become my full-time job, that would be amazing. | |
| But right now, I'm focusing on building and growing the website to screw over our opposition. | |
| So that's my main focus. | |
| Fair enough, I can support that motivation. | |
| So how exactly will the site be managed? | |
| And provided all this goes through as planned, who's going to manage it? | |
| I'm not quite sure what you mean by managed. | |
| Right now, I am leading. | |
| I don't know this question, so you're going to have to interpret that as it sounds. | |
| Okay, well, right now I am leading the project and the build of Based Gamer. | |
| As of now, I do plan to keep that position of managing the website. | |
| I think that answers the question. | |
| Okay. | |
| So why did you recently delete your LinkedIn profile? | |
| I deleted my LinkedIn profile because I was afraid of getting doxxed. | |
| Okay. | |
| What was this company called Played, and what did you do there as a community manager? | |
| Oh, right. | |
| This is where we left off. | |
| Yeah, so with Played, Played was actually a social app, a mobile social app that was very cool. | |
| It was kind of like social media for the gamer. | |
| So gamers were able to talk about the games they were playing. | |
| They'd be able to rate the games they were playing. | |
| It was actually very cool because they had this functionality where you could scan the barcode of your console, your console game, like the barcode of it, and it would immediately get transferred into your profile. | |
| It was very cool. | |
| And I was the community manager for it. | |
| And that essentially meant that I was the social media representative and I took care of all the social media pages. | |
| I talked with the community of Played. | |
| That was actually the start of my YouTube career. | |
| This was around three years ago. | |
| And so I was making weekly Played news videos on gaming news and all that. | |
| I made infographics. | |
| It was very fun. | |
| It was very creative. | |
| It was good stuff. | |
| And then afterwards, I transferred into the coalition. | |
| Okay, as community manager there, did you ever ban someone for misogyny? | |
| No, never. | |
| What? | |
| Oh, my God. | |
| That's my question. | |
| Right, okay. | |
| Last year, you did something called Gamer Gossip, which was connected to gamegossip.com. | |
| It looks like the site was never completed. | |
| No, no, no. | |
| Gamer gossip wasn't connected to Game Gossip. | |
| I actually don't even know what that website is. | |
| It was actually connected to thecoalition.com. | |
| Right, okay. | |
| What's that? | |
| Thecoalition.com is a great website. | |
| I am being completely biased here because I love that website. | |
| And I worked with them for, I think, around one or two years. | |
| And it's a great community. | |
| The editorials are so cool. | |
| The reviews are so cool. | |
| I was a contributor at the coalition. | |
| So I made a video series called Gamer Gossip. | |
| You guys should check it out. | |
| It's on YouTube. | |
| If you type in Gamer Gossip, you'll see me with my blonde hair and my really high-pitched voice. | |
| It's pretty embarrassing. | |
| But yeah, it's cool. | |
| It's my past. | |
| I really like it. | |
| Fair enough. | |
| Okay, so why Indiegogo and the lack of refunds? | |
| I think there are some people who are under the impression that your campaign is, as far as I'm aware, it operates like Kickstarter, doesn't it? | |
| Yes, so it's a fixed campaign in the sense that if I don't receive 50K, then everyone will receive their money back. | |
| Right, okay. | |
| Last year, your production level was very low, and since May of this year, it has been dramatically increased. | |
| Who started funding you? | |
| That's actually quite the compliment. | |
| Thank you so much. | |
| I actually have not gotten any funding. | |
| It's just me, you know, trying to better myself. | |
| And I think it's very important to keep on challenging yourself over and over again. | |
| I essentially just have a blank wall. | |
| I have $20 worth of lighting equipment and I have $6.50 and overdue library fees. | |
| So that's my funding. | |
| If anyone wants to give me $30, that'll be my funding. | |
| So thank you. | |
| Okay. | |
| So your YouTube channel started five months ago. | |
| It seems you did a few videos on watchdogs that was sorry, people have written these really poorly. | |
| It seems she did a few sec videos on watchdogs. | |
| That was silly, then, when, into ideologies in gaming. | |
| I don't know what that question is, but I feel obliged to read all these questions. | |
| I don't really know what that means either, but I think that's a good idea. | |
| I think what they're questioning is: why did you around the time Gamergate started, the content of your videos changed? | |
| You were doing sort of gaming, like more game-related gaming stuff, and then you go to more sort of just leaning towards a sort of more analytical nature in your videos like that. | |
| Yeah, I wouldn't say that was during Gamergate. | |
| It was several months before. | |
| But I do want to let everyone know that when I started my YouTube career, this was around three years ago. | |
| And for so long, I was making these either comical videos, these little funny skit videos. | |
| I was making gaming news. | |
| And I had a previous channel. | |
| And after I went to E3, I wanted to change to dramatically change my brand personality into something more professional because I just felt that that was more fitting of my personality. | |
| And so it took me a year to actually do this because I was a bit fearful, I guess, of putting myself out there in a different light. | |
| I was doing something that I really wanted to do, but because it was something so dramatic, I was just very hesitant. | |
| I've always wanted to make these analytical videos. | |
| If you need proof, I have multiple notebooks of me just in, you know, of 2013 where I just say, you know, research this, do this, you know, get better lighting. | |
| It's just that it took me so long to do it. | |
| And it's as simple as that. | |
| Okay. | |
| Have you been sent by Jonathan McIntosh? | |
| No. | |
| This isn't my question. | |
| What the heck? | |
| Yeah, I know. | |
| Okay, so. | |
| Sorry, a lot of these questions I've got to skim over because they've already been asked. | |
| So how do you plan to aggregate YouTube reviews? | |
| But I think it's clear that you're not going to be aggregating YouTube reviews, are you? | |
| Oh, no, I will. | |
| I plan to aggregate YouTube reviews as well. | |
| And this will be... | |
| How's that going to work? | |
| Is that going to be separate to the user-written reviews? | |
| No, I plan to also incorporate them into the written reviews. | |
| So it's going to be written and video reviews. | |
| Because right now, YouTube reviews are kind of essential for a lot of gamers because YouTubers are just like you and I. | |
| And I think it's important to shine a light on them. | |
| Right, okay. | |
| So how's that going to be incorporated? | |
| I mean, what if I mean, is someone going to watch the review and then interpret what the review is saying? | |
| Right, yeah. | |
| So there's going to be the community, the community reviews, the community YouTube reviews that are going to score everything on their own, but then there's going to be that handful that will be scored via in-house employees of BaseGamer. | |
| And these are going to be critic YouTube reviews. | |
| Right, okay. | |
| Can you tell me more about that then, please? | |
| So it's going to be essentially the exact same system as written reviews. | |
| The only difference is it's going to be video instead of written anecdotes. | |
| Right. | |
| So by someone who works for Base Gamer. | |
| Yes. | |
| Right, okay. | |
| So it's their interpretation of what the video review was saying. | |
| Yes. | |
| Right, okay. | |
| So how do you feel that Base Gamer is going to handle agenda-driven voting, especially in these controversial times? | |
| I think real gamers in GamingGate vastly outnumber social justice warriors, but no doubt social justice warriors will simply upvote and downvote solely to push their agendas. | |
| Now, when people say SJWs are promoting agendas, SJWs can say the same things about us. | |
| So I want BaseGamer to be open for everyone, not just for us. | |
| I feel like BaseGamer could bring in everyone on one small pod. | |
| And that's my goal here. | |
| And for someone who believes in journalistic ethics and ethics in general so much, I don't feel it's right to simply ban a lot of votes just because they're from SJWs. | |
| I don't think that's fair. | |
| Everyone should be able to contribute and vote whatever they like. | |
| No, I agree with you. | |
| I think it should be absolutely in the name of fairness that I mean. | |
| It shouldn't be any way. | |
| You shouldn't have any way of particularly distinguishing between gamers and social justice warriors until they write their reviews and then the public on the website will just be able to up and down, vote it. | |
| So you know if, if a lot of social justice warriors play say, Gone Home, and they go to the website and they they upvote it, unless people deliberately go to downvote Gone Home because it's a social justice warrior game, who's going to know and what difference would it make? | |
| That would be a perfectly, I think that would be a perfectly good review. | |
| You know, a social justice review is probably a perfectly good review of Gone Home, because i'm personally going to look at that and say well, this is shit, you know, but that's because it's not designed for me. | |
| Um yeah, right there. | |
| Well, someone actually asked me um, if i'm going to be implementing a specific genre of games that um are more for a certain ideology. | |
| You know, I thought that was very interesting, but I don't want to offend the social justice warriors by saying, you know, these games are for you, you know and um, you know what's your opinion. | |
| Um, hang on a sec. | |
| I think the use of tags could be very very uh very, very good for this um, because there's no reason you can't just have, like a progressive tag so that you know a game that is particularly designed or just happens to fit the tag of what progressive social justice warriors are looking for in their games. | |
| There's no reason again, there's. | |
| I don't, I don't, I don't think that anyone's saying that these games shouldn't exist or they shouldn't be. | |
| You know, given credence, I think that what they're saying is other games shouldn't be denigrated because they're not these games. | |
| Um, so I, I would, I would think that a tag system would work just as well. | |
| Just a progressive tag so, or feminist tag, or whatever they want to. | |
| You know, let the social justice warriors ask, you know right yeah, for sure, but yeah, I think that would be a perfectly good way of doing it, because you know people can just that'll see, you know that'll be a thing that people can see and say well, i'm not really interested in supporting that or really reading about it. | |
| I know what it's going to be like um, but yeah, okay. | |
| So the next question is, um well, the next question was why a detailed breakdown of cost provided, but no information on the ethical practices. | |
| Um, what was, what was the practice effect of the code of ethics you were going to use? | |
| Um, I did have um a list of ethics that i'll be creating in my official list of ethics during launch, in my details and outline document. | |
| Okay um, if I could make a recommendation, I would suggest writing that now um, not right this second obviously, but writing it as soon as possible and tweeting it and helping, you know, get getting community involvement in that, because if, if there's one thing you're gonna stumble on, I think it's that. | |
| So I I really think that that is not not you personally, but if there's one thing that I think people need to be able to see well in advance, it's that. | |
| So that's that's my recommendation there, get that done as soon as possible. | |
| Um yeah, good point. | |
| Um, the reason why I, uh I was planning to wait until launch is because, you know, there are still a lot of kinks to get through with this website and I feel like once um, you know, the requirement analysis is done and all that um, then we'll be fully able to create a list of ethics that is more um detailed, you know, and i'm all about detailed and making something look very polished, so i'm just waiting for that, but of course I can make, | |
| like a another revision, something that's more um, definitive. | |
| I guess I would sorry, my neighbours downstairs are yelling. | |
| I would definitely recommend at least having a first draft of a code of ethics that you can share with people. | |
| Again, I personally would just use the Reuters model. | |
| It seemed to be pretty damn ethical to me. | |
| Okay. | |
| So how do you feel about the varied responses to Based Gamer and do you think they're warranted? | |
| Well, it depends, right? | |
| There's a lot of healthy criticism which I definitely respect. | |
| And in some instances, I definitely applaud as well. | |
| But then there's a few others who have taken a lot of heat and have kind of gotten angry for very trivial reasons. | |
| And I don't respect that. | |
| Yeah, I've got to say, I'm a bit worried about the shill, the word shill. | |
| I'm going to go off on a little bit of a tangent and spaghetti will be spilled, but I think it's important because one of the things, I understand that people are afraid of being conned. | |
| I really do. | |
| But ultimately, I really have come to the conclusion that Gamergate is a cultural phenomenon. | |
| It's a gamer culture. | |
| It's definitely distinct from the social justice warrior culture. | |
| And if you're going to, it is a new culture, and I really think it is worth producing its own cultural artifacts because that's really how it really gains traction. | |
| And so I really do think that we need to start actually supporting people in Gamergate. | |
| I think that after, what, we're coming on the fourth month now, I think that, you know, if people are still in Gamergate, after all the shit that's been flung at people, then why don't we try and support them and construct something? | |
| You know, because we're never getting the old media back. | |
| That's gone. | |
| You know, I really don't see a time when anyone else, you know, when anyone on that side comes back to gamers. | |
| They have made their bed, they've drawn their lines, and they're not going to change, are they? | |
| So I really think that this talk is shill. | |
| Okay, let's get over it and start moving forward, you know? | |
| But sorry, that was my personal. | |
| And I don't even get accused of being a shill, but it's one of those things that I see it happening all the time to people. | |
| I'm just thinking, for Christ's sake, whoever it is, just gets so much shit from the other side. | |
| Would it be worth this? | |
| But especially with the amount that, like, I had to pull the conversation with the AAA developer the other day because he had been compromised and he asked me to take it down because it was going to affect his career. | |
| And it's like, Christ, if that's the case, why would anyone shill for Gamergate? | |
| You know, why would they do it? | |
| It would be career suicide. | |
| Exactly. | |
| I'm just, I'm finding it a bit hard to believe that there are so many fucking shills who want to go for a movement that is being so heavily vilified. | |
| I find it absurd. | |
| I'm sure there are some, but there can't be too many. | |
| But anyway, has the Indiegogo campaign gone as you expected so far? | |
| Yeah, actually. | |
| I think the Indiegogo campaign is around 12,000. | |
| That is a lot. | |
| And I'd like to thank everyone who has donated. | |
| It's amazing. | |
| Okay. | |
| What's the earliest generation of games that the site is going to cover? | |
| Right now, we're focusing on the latest generation of games. | |
| And then we're going to work our way chronologically backwards. | |
| At the end of the day, if they're user reviews, what difference does it make? | |
| People can just write whichever review they like. | |
| Well, it really depends, right? | |
| Because right now, Base Gamer is going to have the entire detail of a game, including what it's rated, the cover, when it was released, all these details. | |
| And users are probably not going to want to fill in all these details. | |
| Maybe it'd be worth taking a wiki approach to that sort of thing. | |
| Because if I mean, but then there is a lot of room for trolls out there, don't you think? | |
| There are, but there is also a lot of room for gamers who can counteract those trolls, can't they? | |
| You're right. | |
| Right now, though, I'm not quite sure what kind of community will be amidst base gamers, so I can't really say. | |
| Well, it's going to be GamerKate, isn't it? | |
| It's going to be gamers. | |
| Well, right now, there is a lot of trolling happening. | |
| So I feel like there's going to be a lot of trolls that we'll have to suppress, including SJWs, including the prominent figures, Kotaku and Metacritic. | |
| We don't really know what's going to happen. | |
| And because of that, I just. | |
| We don't, but I think that it would be a wiki approach. | |
| Moderators can have the final say. | |
| And so if someone is obviously going in to destroy things, they can have their accounts banned, whatever. | |
| I'm sure, obviously, they can sign up for new ones, but this is all time and effort for them. | |
| Eventually, they're going to give up. | |
| So I think, again, this is another one of those things that I think community engagement would be a really great thing. | |
| And people will give you a much better result in the end than I think a small team could do on its own. | |
| Because if you took a wiki approach to games, then literally people could just go there. | |
| Not necessarily on the first day because they'll probably end up crashing it or something. | |
| But people can go there and fill in the. | |
| I assume you can have a database of games. | |
| Yes. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Yes, of course. | |
| Exactly. | |
| So I'm just assuming that. | |
| People can fill in that information for you rather than you having a team struggling to keep up with what's going on because then you can cover all the bases. | |
| Because people will do what they're interested in. | |
| I'll probably be the one who goes and fluffs up the Medieval 2 entry or something like that and have people going, Saga, you don't know anything about games, shut your face or whatever. | |
| And it's true, I don't. | |
| I suck. | |
| So it's one of those things that I think it's a great resource. | |
| And just because there are some difficulties associated with it doesn't mean that they can't be mitigated in order to take advantage of that great resource. | |
| Right. | |
| You're absolutely right. | |
| Yeah, that's something I definitely have to think about. | |
| I think I just worry too much about what could go wrong. | |
| And I shouldn't. | |
| Gamerdy is a very big community. | |
| It's not wrong to worry about what's going to go wrong, but I think it's about cost-benefit. | |
| I think it'd be a lot easier to have a couple of moderators who were just making sure that the site was operating as is intended and then allowing people, like, I mean, they're writing their own reviews. | |
| They may as well write the, you know, there's no reason they can't give you people the information about the games and keep things updated. | |
| I don't see a reason anyway. | |
| Yeah, for sure. | |
| I totally agree with that. | |
| I mean, you could always have an approval function for the moderators. | |
| So they make a change, it gets sent to a moderator and a moderator approves that or something like that. | |
| Yeah, yeah, and a lot of sites do that too, and it's so much easier to implement. | |
| So I definitely have to think about that. | |
| Okay. | |
| Now, I have a question for you now, Sargon. | |
| So, what kind of games do you play? | |
| I play mostly strategy. | |
| Do you mind if we get through all the questions? | |
| Sorry. | |
| That's just so interesting, though. | |
| I know, I know, but I really, I really. | |
| I'm always so fascinated on what gamers, like, yeah, what their interests are because it kind of matches their personalities as well. | |
| And I definitely see you as a strategy person. | |
| I can imagine you'll be getting a flood of tweets of people telling you what games they like. | |
| Will there be transparency regarding how the aggregation algorithm will work? | |
| Yes, for sure. | |
| Yes. | |
| Do you happen to know how that's going to work at this time? | |
| I understand if you're not. | |
| Well, right now, we are creating an algorithm for this. | |
| We have an expert team with us, which is great. | |
| And so we're trying to go through how it's going to work out. | |
| So, so far, the upvotes are going to weigh much more heavier than the down votes. | |
| That's as far as we've gotten. | |
| But we're still working on it, and it's looking really good. | |
| And for sure, everything is going to be transparent for everyone. | |
| Right, okay. | |
| So, the upvotes are going to have more weight than the down votes when it comes to calculating whatever rating it ends up. | |
| Okay. | |
| All right. | |
| But you're definitely going to show everyone how the algorithm works in advance. | |
| Because, again, the great thing about this whole thing is that people are going to know so much about, you know, that you're going to get individuals who know so much about what's going on that they're probably going to be able to give you some really great information and really great advice. | |
| Right, and I've seen that already. | |
| You know, our community is so intelligent and their knowledge is so amazing. | |
| And it has really helped me out with the creation of this gamer. | |
| Okay. | |
| So, assuming the website is developed properly and is received well by a fair number of people, do you have any ideas of what the website could offer its users other than game reviews? | |
| Right, so I think we answered this already, but I think. | |
| It might be worth going back over quickly. | |
| Okay, so there's going to be editorials, there's going to be in-house journalists writing these editorials, there's going to be a discussion forum, there's also going to be YouTube videos embedded into the aggregation system. | |
| And gosh, am I missing something? | |
| I think that's it. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Well, maybe, but it's something that people can tweet you and ask you about. | |
| I mean, you know, you can always write Twitloggers or something like that. | |
| You know, so it's so people know you're aware of the question, so if people ask you, you can give them a more informed answer later, because this is all off the cuff. | |
| So I do understand if you don't have an answer. | |
| I think it's a bit. | |
| I'm all about writing documents, so I can just get one, publish one out right now. | |
| So, let me just get to where I was. | |
| Okay, I've got a question. | |
| How do you propose to avoid guerrilla marketeers? | |
| I'm actually not sure what a guerrilla marketeer is. | |
| Well, it's basically like someone who kind of does very unique campaigns for marketing. | |
| So I'm guessing this kind of falls back into astroturfing again, where quote-unquote consumers kind of Go into a game page and say that the game is wonderful, even though it's really not just to promote the game. | |
| This is something that still needs to be discussed, but it is a very huge concern, especially for me, because I'm sick and tired of this shit. | |
| So it'll definitely be looked into. | |
| Okay. | |
| So with the tag system, I don't know whether that was a confirmed feature or not. | |
| But is that tag system going to be moderated in any way? | |
| And will people be able to create new tags? | |
| Okay, so this tag system isn't confirmed, but it still needs to be discussed, actually. | |
| Yeah, I think that you should discuss it with your team because I think it's a very great idea. | |
| Yeah, for sure. | |
| I really do. | |
| And I think that if I think if you just had the moderators moderating the tags, and you know, you could have them petitioning the moderators in some way or something like that, you know. | |
| Yeah, yeah, I agree. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Yes, just more questions asking how the aggregation site works. | |
| Right, okay. | |
| I'm going to get mundane Matt into the conversation because he posted a bunch of really good questions on his video. | |
| And I think I'd like him to ask them with you. | |
| So if you give me a second. | |
| I'm sorry for everyone on the stream. | |
| This will probably get boring for a minute. | |
| Right. | |
| While we're waiting for him, yeah, I like strategy games mostly. | |
| I'd really like to be good at Mountain Blade by sucking Mountain Blade. | |
| So, yeah, that's fine. | |
| You know, there are so many gamers out there that aren't really experts in the games they're interested in, but that doesn't make you any less of a gamer. | |
| I know. | |
| So I'm having a quick look for any questions I might have missed. | |
| I think while we wait for Matt, why don't we go over quickly exactly? | |
| I'm just trying to get a solid grasp of how this is going to work in my head. | |
| So it's going to be, everyone's going to have an account that they have registered. | |
| Are you going to have forums? | |
| I assume you're going to have forums, right? | |
| Yes, so this is going. | |
| Yes, yes. | |
| Right, okay. | |
| So you're going to have forums. | |
| It's important for gamers to have just chat. | |
| I was just going to say, it's I don't know what's going on. | |
| Oh, no, no, sorry. | |
| It's all right. | |
| Sorry, go on. | |
| Okay, I was just going to say it's very important for gamers to communicate, you know, unfiltered and just, you know, to chill and discuss games. | |
| So, you know, discussion forums are very important. | |
| Hey, it's Matt. | |
| It is me. | |
| Hi, Matt. | |
| How's it going? | |
| What's up? | |
| Not too much. | |
| Just listening to this thing while playing some of the on the PS4. | |
| So if you want to know what kind of games I like, there you go. | |
| Nice. | |
| I'm actually waiting for the PC version, but I feel like, you know, I've waited when the PS3 version came out. | |
| I was like, no, I'll wait for the PS4 version. | |
| Now the PS4 version's out. | |
| And I'm like, no, I'll wait for the PC version. | |
| And I just, like, I'm just getting over my head. | |
| That's all. | |
| Two months. | |
| It's a long wait. | |
| I understand that. | |
| Yeah. | |
| We've been playing it for well over a year now and enjoying it. | |
| So you guys get a little bit longer to wait. | |
| You know, it's all good. | |
| Yeah. | |
| So yeah, we'll listen after that. | |
| Oh, yeah. | |
| So is this in regards to your video? | |
| Yeah. | |
| Well, mostly, I mean, like, looking at the information and everything. | |
| I've taught social media campaigns, crowdfunding campaigns, and Hollywood and everything. | |
| My concern mostly stems from the way that the Indiegogo campaign was presented. | |
| So, I've been listening today, I've got a lot more information that, in my opinion, should have already been made available prior to, or like at least with the launch of the campaign itself, to mitigate questions and concerns because that's kind of when I know the term shill has been thrown around quite a bit, and it's not a word I like, nor is it one that I use, but it's I was reading some of the comments about it, | |
| and I can see where people are coming from in terms of why it was being used is because there was just such a lack of information. | |
| People didn't know what to make from it. | |
| And that's kind of where I was coming from with going through it is just this is what I taught people to do successful film crowdfunding campaigns. | |
| And it's very similar in nature for what you were achieving or attempting to achieve. | |
| Yeah, I completely agree. | |
| Now, I never got to watch your video until only recently. | |
| And when you published your video, I was getting so many messages in my Twitter inbox. | |
| And everyone was saying, oh, Monday Matt is saying such horrible things about you and all that. | |
| And I was like, what? | |
| And finally, when I watched that video, it was completely the opposite. | |
| I was actually kind of shocked because you said nothing horrible at all. | |
| It was just criticism, which I totally respect. | |
| And you had very valid points. | |
| And you are obviously a very intelligent person. | |
| You know what you were talking about. | |
| And, you know, I wish I had gone to you sooner, but at least most of everything is updated now. | |
| I do plan to make my Indiegogo video soon. | |
| It's just that I don't feel like the videos I produce right now are that are of that quality that I want. | |
| And so it's not so much the quality. | |
| Really, what it boils down to is that it's the fact that the information is there. | |
| I mean, you could literally be standing in front of a garbage dump or something and just say, hey, everyone, I'm here for Base Gamer. | |
| Don't mind the shit behind me. | |
| Let me tell you about what's going on. | |
| And I think what it is is because what we've been dealing with the last couple months is the amount of, and you said it yourself, it's been just shit constantly flung at gamers for the last couple months. | |
| And so a lot of people are very kind of weary and kind of tired over everything that's happened. | |
| And when they want, I think they want to believe in Base Gamer. | |
| I really think they want to believe in it. | |
| But it's just when you come out of the blue, I saw some tweets you had posted about it prior to the launch of the Indiegogo campaign. | |
| And so I think that got people interested. | |
| And then they were just kind of like, this is it? | |
| Like, what's, I don't get this. | |
| Like, it's just, you know, there's been there's been the fear of the viral marketers coming in and trying to make a quick dollar off of Gamergate. | |
| We've seen certain things happen that have alluded to that. | |
| You know, the guerrilla marketing stuff happens frequently on sites like 4chan and Reddit. | |
| I mean, look at Ian Miles Chong, when he was a moderator at Reddit, he was shilling his own website under the name Sol Invictus. | |
| You know what I mean? | |
| And that's what got him removed as a moderator. | |
| So those kind of things cause a lot of confusion and doubt with the community. | |
| And so you could have been coming, I'm sure you're coming at this from very genuine intentions, but just right off the bat of just like, hey, everyone, here's my campaign. | |
| It's like five sentences. | |
| I need 50 grand. | |
| It just, like, you could have just, I mean, like, I was looking at that going like, oh, wow, like, really? | |
| Like, okay. | |
| And people were, and people were donating because they believe in it. | |
| They believe, obviously, and what you want to create. | |
| But people like me that are more like, I need more information in order to dictate what I want to spend my money on. | |
| That's kind of where I was coming from. | |
| And I know people were, I mean, I have a way of speaking when I'm kind of informative, informed on something. | |
| I come across sometimes as my opinions sound very authoritative. | |
| I get this from my sister all the time. | |
| Not at all. | |
| No, you have nothing to worry about. | |
| So I wasn't trying to be mean or anything like that. | |
| I've done this for a very long period of time now. | |
| I mean, I crowdfunded my very first feature film, you know, so I understand and everything. | |
| It's just, yeah, it's like the more information you put out there never harms anybody. | |
| And, you know, you can put out like the 20-page PDF you put out was good. | |
| It was very informative. | |
| It was, you know, you broke down a lot of elements. | |
| Where was that day one? | |
| You know, like, what is it now? | |
| It's on day 10 of the campaign at this point. | |
| I think it's less than that, actually. | |
| I think it was a 45. | |
| It was a 45-day campaign, correct? | |
| Yes. | |
| Okay, so yeah, we're on day 30. | |
| Yeah, there's 35 days left. | |
| So yeah, we're 10 days into the campaign. | |
| And I think part of the concern is, too, yesterday you did the AMA on Reddit, today, or Friday we're on Reddit today, obviously Sargon. | |
| So it's like this should have been day one. | |
| You know, that's kind of another thing as well. | |
| Is there a particular reason? | |
| This is more for my own curiosity why you waited until now to do these kind of AMAs and to address these issues instead of having them ready to go before launch. | |
| Well, this week has been pretty busy for me for external reasons, but when it comes to the detail of the Indiegogo page, I guess I was a bit afraid, frankly, because I was afraid that people would come after me or people would try to dox me for this. | |
| So I wanted to be very vague as possible because I know that I have a very successful idea, and that could cause a lot of threats coming at me. | |
| And it was just my fear, and I should have done that. | |
| I've learned this the hard way, but it's okay. | |
| No, and I understand that too. | |
| The fear of doxing, obviously, is large right now amongst a lot of people, given everything that's happened in the last couple months. | |
| I get that, but I mean, at the same time, essentially, you're putting yourself out there. | |
| I mean, your name's out there, so people want to dox you. | |
| It's not going to be very hard to kind of like put together just based on the information that's readily available. | |
| So I get your point, but it's also like your name is out there. | |
| So people know what you look like. | |
| They know your name. | |
| You've been on HuffPo Live. | |
| You've been on David Pacman. | |
| You're not necessarily a private person. | |
| So towing the line between private and public is something I think a lot of us want to do. | |
| But eventually we have to either make the plunge into being public or rescind back into being private. | |
| But with you wanting to come out kind of and be the head of this thing, it does fall, the responsibility does fall on your soldier, sorry, your shoulders in terms of maintaining that public persona to keep people, for one, informed of what's going on and two, comforted to the fact that their investment is going to the right thing. | |
| It's not going to be, you know, take the money and run scenario, which I don't believe that's going to happen. | |
| But I mean, I think you can see where that concern might come from. | |
| Yeah, for sure. | |
| This was actually something that my team discussed because we wanted to prove to the community that we are transparent. | |
| And I think it was SZ, one of my team members, who was thinking about holding a web series either every two weeks or every month just to keep everyone updated on what's going on. | |
| Do you think that would be a good idea? | |
| Yeah, I think that I think that having your team be visible as well, maybe not necessarily completely in the public eye, but When you talk to the team, like, okay, like, go look at any, you know, Indiegogo or Kickstarter campaign. | |
| Uh, and when they, when they go, oh, here, here's who's involved, here's what they've worked on, here's what they've done. | |
| You know, I mean, like, that's that's the thing is, like, you link back to certain things so people can go, oh, okay, these guys have obviously had experience. | |
| Um, you mentioned earlier that you were a campaign manager for that played app, which actually honestly sounded really awesome. | |
| I really don't think that's and I would do that in the barcode of the game, go chat about what I've got. | |
| That's actually really good. | |
| Um, you know, but it's like, have you ever run a website before? | |
| That's that's, I mean, because you're kind of like people would assume that you are going to be maybe the EIC of this thing, the person in charge calling the shots. | |
| Have you ever handled something like this before? | |
| Not for a website, but I do have plenty of management and experience, but not as an EIC. | |
| Okay, okay. | |
| See, I mean, things like that, like, you know, and you could list the other sites that you've done. | |
| And that's kind of why the video is there, too, is people like to connect with someone, at least through an audio-visual level. | |
| I mean, even if you just had like a picture of yourself on there, like, hi, I'm Jenny Barrage. | |
| You may know me from YouTube and all these other things being pro Gamergate and everything. | |
| There's that. | |
| And then additionally, like, just I felt like the information, because you said it's very similar to Rotten Tomatoes, but without giving people, not everyone knows what Rotten Tomatoes is. | |
| You know, they know it's an aggregate, they might go look to see that it's an aggregate site for movies. | |
| But what about Rotten Tomatoes is it that you're wanting to copy? | |
| Because Rotten Tomatoes, in essence, is very similar to Metacritic or Game Rankings or any of those other aggregate sites that are out there. | |
| Right, yeah. | |
| So, I mean, things like that, just like it's, and that was kind of my take on it. | |
| Was like, you know, there's very little information that would, you know, want to get me to open up my wallet. | |
| You know, it's like, I'll give you an example. | |
| Recently, people I knew were funding a movie, and I threw down some money to help them out, but their video had a trailer for the movie. | |
| They had gone in, they had paid the money to have a trailer made. | |
| They had a bunch of people from Star Trek in the movie, and they spent time updating the page constantly, always on social media. | |
| When you do a crowdfunding campaign, on average, it's a full-time job for two people for the duration of the campaign. | |
| So if you've got a 45-day campaign, it's a full-time job for two people because you have to be tweeting about it constantly. | |
| You have to be setting up interviews, going on streams, doing interviews with websites, getting the word out there as much as possible. | |
| And part, I think, of the concern, at least from what I saw and what I was reading from other people, was the lack of that. | |
| Like, here we are, a week and a half into this thing, and now you're kind of coming out and talking. | |
| I understand that you've been very busy, and I get that holidays and other work and everything like that, too. | |
| But shouldn't that have been kind of like on the docket from day one? | |
| Yeah, I just want to just want to add a quick thing here. | |
| I would worry a lot less about developing and all the other background costs while the campaign's going on. | |
| That can all be settled afterwards. | |
| I strongly recommend getting your presence out there. | |
| Yeah, for sure. | |
| So right now, while all the algorithm is being completed, while all the dev work is being completed, I am now trying to make a presence in these media outlets, like what I'm doing right now. | |
| So I am very late on this, but I'm definitely doing that right now. | |
| Yeah, I mean, it's okay to make mistakes, but like. | |
| It is. | |
| It always is. | |
| Because everyone does. | |
| But it's one of those things that, you know, you've got to learn. | |
| So you've got to start, like, you've got to start shilling, to be honest. | |
| I don't even know what shilling means, to be honest. | |
| It means a lot of promoting. | |
| You have to do a lot of promoting. | |
| It's very much like you have to walk around and just be like, buy my book. | |
| Buy my book over and over and over again. | |
| So, basically, I think you're going to have to start arranging interviews and just speaking to more people, talk more about it on Twitter, all that sort of thing. | |
| It's horrible to have to do. | |
| I personally find it horrible anyway. | |
| It is horrible. | |
| Nobody likes it. | |
| It's exhausting. | |
| It's very exhausting. | |
| It is. | |
| You have to just remember, though, that what you're doing is you're not only selling your product, you're selling yourself. | |
| And yourself is your product in essence. | |
| But that's what it boils down to: people, they might like your idea, but they want to be sold that idea by you. | |
| They want to know that they can trust you. | |
| And, you know, I mean, you've been active in Gamergate since the beginning. | |
| You've gone on the different shows, and you've been very active on Twitter and everything. | |
| So those core people know you, right? | |
| But the idea is if you want to take on the established gaming media, which is something I think all of us are very much looking forward to seeing happen, because we want to see a lot of those fuckers burn. | |
| Fuck you. | |
| You know, you've got to be out there. | |
| You know, I don't, not necessarily like, let's say, you know, like leading the torch and going over to Taku and Light in the match or something like that. | |
| It's not like that, but it's like you have to be out there and reminding people this is what you're doing. | |
| The internet has a very short collective memory. | |
| And even though Gamergate itself is going on now for almost, we're five days away or four days away from three months since the tag was created, by the way. | |
| Yeah, I mean, it's like, but the people in there, though, are like, there's always stuff going on. | |
| There's always new things happening. | |
| You know, look at Kotaku in action on a daily basis. | |
| Shit feels like it's going off 24-7. | |
| No, no, sorry, go on. | |
| Sorry. | |
| Oh, no. | |
| And I'm just saying, it's just putting yourself out there. | |
| It's a shitty thing. | |
| It's very draining. | |
| But that way you're building the trust with the consumer base that are going to fund your site, basically, and keep your site afloat once it's created. | |
| You have to establish those roots as soon as humanly possible because once they're broken or once they die, you won't be able to get them back. | |
| Right. | |
| And like from a marketing perspective, I totally understand. | |
| And you're right. | |
| I should have started this way before the campaign even started. | |
| But, you know, there's still a month left, and I feel like I can still do it. | |
| I'm really, I'm really glad, Matt, that you know made that video, that you published it, and that I watched it because I would not really have any sort of direction on where to even go from, you know, when I created that Indiegogo campaign. | |
| So I thank you so much. | |
| You know, my team also looked into it and they were impressed by your intelligence for this whole Indiegogo campaign thing. | |
| So it was a really nice surprise. | |
| Oh, no. | |
| You're welcome. | |
| Look, I want to see people succeed ultimately in Gamergate. | |
| I want to see everyone succeed because I think that it's worth it for us to continue growing this community and ultimately this kind of new culture, if you think about it. | |
| And it's just kind of like it's best to always do as much as you can to maybe help that in any way. | |
| I would say that going forward, because you've got 35 days, it's still quite a long time to get the rest of the money. | |
| Focus most of your efforts. | |
| Let your dev team do their dev work and then you focus on the definite building the trust and answering the questions. | |
| So I mean, like, and I've got a couple questions as well, actually, about the site if that's okay, Sargon. | |
| No, no, no. | |
| Go ahead. | |
| All right. | |
| Could you make this quick just because I need to leave soon? | |
| Sure. | |
| No, no, no. | |
| Mostly I'm curious about how you will be, because I heard the thing about you'll have someone, an employee, watch YouTube videos and then aggregate a score based on that. | |
| Are you going to have that particular person, the people that are going to be making the YouTube videos, would you contact those YouTubers ahead of time to see if they have a particular scoring style or structure in order to maybe get the best? | |
| Because I have trouble just wrapping my head around that particular aspect of the aggregation process. | |
| And then also just I'm curious about will there be an application for sites to get to get into the aggregator? | |
| Like what is the application process for those sites? | |
| Okay, yeah, those are all great questions. | |
| So to answer your first question, we will definitely contact these YouTubers beforehand just to get a sense of how their reviews will be and just getting their permission in general. | |
| And what Rotten Tomatoes does is they have a handful of critics that they rate themselves. | |
| And so I'm thinking of making BaseGamer almost the same way, except with a handful of very, I don't want to say elite, but I'd say very prominent critics in the industry. | |
| Now, this could be either a YouTube critic or a written critic, but that's essentially what I'm trying to focus on. | |
| I forgot your second question. | |
| Oh, it was about the application process for websites into the aggregator. | |
| Right. | |
| So this is something that I'm also still thinking about, especially with YouTube videos. | |
| What makes a YouTuber worthy of being a critic? | |
| You know, this is going to need a lot of research because right now people with 4,000 subscribers have 30 to 50,000 views on their reviews, and then you have vice versa as well. | |
| So I kind of need to determine what makes a proper critic. | |
| Because right now, it's a very, very ambiguous number. | |
| What's the need for critics if it's going to be user-generated criticisms and user-generated reviews that are then voted on by the community? | |
| What's the point of having YouTubers and various outside factors? | |
| Well, when I say critics, it essentially means those who have a lot of influence. | |
| Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, they're journalists or anything, but, you know, it essentially means people who are very prominent in the industry. | |
| So, for example, someone... | |
| They play, exactly. | |
| Sorry? | |
| What role would they play exactly? | |
| As in, what role would they play as a critic? | |
| Well, no, just in relation to base games, as I understand it, the review will be written by some Joe Public gamer. | |
| And if it's a good review, people will read it and upvote it. | |
| If it's a bad review, they'll probably read the first couple of lines and downvote it, won't they? | |
| Yes, exactly. | |
| I'm not sure if you're referring to the critic reviews. | |
| Well, no, what I mean is it's just a user of the site that's written the review of a game that they've presumably played and they give their review. | |
| And if it's a good, useful review, people can upvote it. | |
| And so you don't need sort of elite or influential critics in any way because it's a public-driven site, isn't it? | |
| Yeah, that's absolutely right. | |
| But right now, I hate to say it, but there are a lot of leaders when it comes to influencing consumers on what to buy and what not to buy. | |
| And Right now I do want to differentiate between those two parties, the consumer party and those who are also influential. | |
| So as I understand it, then you'll have two separate categories, sort of like the user reviews and the critic reviews aggregation scores? | |
| Yes, that's right. | |
| Okay. | |
| Because that's fine, because I think that the user-driven scores, personally, I would find them a lot more valuable. | |
| So I would strongly recommend keeping them distinct from the rest of the world. | |
| Right, yeah. | |
| Yeah, because essentially the user reviews are going to act like word of mouth or what we see on genuine forums and 4chan and Reddit and Achan. | |
| And that's why I want to make them more distinct than the critic reviews. | |
| But critic reviews are always going to be there. | |
| Okay, so but they're just going to be a separate section of the site or separate well right now I do have a design set up where the page is going to be very minimal. | |
| It's going to have both the community review and the critic review side by side. | |
| So people can compare and look at the scores and just see where things differ. | |
| And I think that's a very cool thing in my opinion because right now we're seeing a lot of differing opinions with journalists in the gaming community in comparison to what consumers feel like. | |
| So if we do find that critic reviews are drastically different in comparison to consumer reviews, then we'll be able to kind of decipher that this is something a little fishy, I guess. | |
| And it's just something that I was thinking. | |
| Okay, well I think it's something that probably needs further discussion. | |
| Yeah for sure. | |
| Okay. | |
| I personally would recommend speaking with your team and writing a full plan of how the website is envisaged to work and then just tweeting it so everyone can see it. | |
| Right. | |
| So I do have my outline and details document and that was kind of like the general idea of the entire website. | |
| I think details will start being exposed as the months go by. | |
| Right. | |
| I think it's more important to have a specific a specific sort of overarching plan. | |
| What do you think, Matt? | |
| I would prefer to see the specifics like you know state your goals obviously and then try to itemize out the specifics of those goals just to keep things on on the transparent side so people kind of know where they stand because that's what happens with a lot of these projects is they kind of become stalled or they come stalemated to an extent and then people don't know where they stand and they kind of like things get lost in translation, confusion, word breaks out, kind of that whole thing. | |
| So if you're on the ball with it during the process, people will feel more comfortable still. | |
| And then as long as they're so comfortable, they're happy and then they're still working with you instead of freaking out not knowing what's going on. | |
| Right, but we also want to implement a lot of the comments from our alpha testers as well. | |
| So they're definitely going to have a very important role when it comes to the aesthetics and the mechanics of how the website will work. | |
| So It's definitely something to discuss with the team for sure, but I definitely want to refine details of the site with the community afterwards. | |
| Okay, I think that's a good thing. | |
| I suppose we've better wrap it up here because we did plan for an hour and a half and now it'd been two hours. | |
| So thanks for coming on. | |
| Thanks, Matt, for coming on as well. | |
| I appreciate it. | |
| Oh, yeah, no, thank you. | |
| Thank you, Hamyon. | |
| No, no, that's great. | |
| You had some good questions, and you've got a different perspective to myself, so I thought it was quite important. | |
| Okay, so I guess I'll close by saying I think it's important to understand, Jenny, that this is your reputation that's on the line. | |
| And I'm not saying this is a threat or anything like that. | |
| I'm just I want you to know what's what the situation is from my perspective. | |
| So it's very much your reputation that's on the line. | |
| And I think one of the biggest things that people seem to be afraid of is that you're going to take the money and run. | |
| I personally don't think that's what you're going to do because, I mean, you've been using what I presume is your real name, and you've been quite active within Gamergate. | |
| So I think it would be just as much career suicide to now abandon Gamergate. | |
| So I think that I don't think that you're untrustworthy. | |
| Yeah, and you're absolutely right. | |
| This is my real name, and I'm not going to take the money and run. | |
| I have no reason to. | |
| I'm very genuine. | |
| Yeah. | |
| So I believe you. | |
| I really do. | |
| I think my primary concern is inexperience. | |
| And I think that's probably the primary concern of a lot of people. | |
| So instead of people saying, oh, it's just going to fail or something, I think that what would be really helpful is if you did some sort of, I don't know, Reddit does some sort of ask-me-anything thing or something, doesn't it? | |
| I don't use Reddit, but people ask me. | |
| I actually did that yesterday. | |
| Did you? | |
| Right, okay. | |
| I don't, I didn't see that. | |
| But basically, I think that people offering suggestions and help would be more helpful than people trying to tear down the idea. | |
| Because I really think that, you know, I think a public sort of criticism, and I like the idea of people writing their own reviews and then those reviews being chosen on merit, you know, pushed up to the top on merit. | |
| So you can genuinely see where the community feeling is. | |
| And that way, it's protected from any kind of outside corporate influence or ideological influence other than the one that the gamer community wants to promote, if there is any at all. | |
| So I just waffling now, I think. | |
| But so basically, there's a lot on the line, and I think that you do understand that it's very important. | |
| So, you know, I think we can leave it there because I think I'm now just in the realm of waffling. | |
| Oh, no, you agree. | |
| I'm actually going to put $10 of my own money towards the project because I actually do want to see it succeed. | |
| Because I'm not going to endorse it for anyone else, but at the end of the day, if for some reason it fails or you take the money and run, it's just $10. | |
| Not worried. | |
| And ultimately, I would much rather see something Gamergate has produced succeed than not. | |
| Because we can sit here and complain about the old media all day, but they're never coming back. | |
| They've gone to the dark side. | |
| They are never coming back. | |
| They're never even going to fucking apologize. | |
| So, you know, fuck them. | |
| That's my opinion. |
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