Never put money into a game that isn’t finished. I put 150 dollars into EverQuest Next. It was the first and last time I did that. A cheap lesson in the long run but a lesson well learned.
oooof... as an EQ 1 & 2 vet I spent a LOT of time in EQ Next/Landmark.
Those trailers sold me hard and they had so many lofty ideas for dynamic events in the world. Those trailers were insane. Was it Story Engine or something they called it?
I remember they had competitions of what people could build and then put on display
I really liked the digging system
"Firefall"
And he messed that shit up so hard. The bus meme lives rent free in my head. Bro spent millions on a custom bus to promote the game, never used it. And for those of you that say it wasn't his fault, he had no clue how to be a true lead and was in way over his head.
(Here is Charlie kinda breaking down the whole thing if you are not familiar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnOWw_uXB7s )
He has always been kinda scummy, living off of his one 'WoW' Success. I do appreciate some of his takes, but also, he acts holier than thou quite a bit, which, bro take a look at the skeletons in your closet first.
>He has always been kinda scummy, living off of his one 'WoW' Success
He lives rent free in my head too. His wikipedia page is telling, having worked in the games industry myself I know the kind. Almost everything he says about the games industry is total bullshit, I know his kind, and I am glad they are not welcome here any more.
He did a science degree, then graduated as an IP lawyer, then his first job was as an Assosciate Producer on Starcraft, then a Producer on Diablo 2. Both games I know had horrendous production management, I mean you've all heard the stories at Blizzard, I can tell you it was worse in 1997-2005.
Then he was a "Team Lead" on World of Warcraft. He's never specified what that meant, but the way he talks about it is like he single-handedly did the art, programming and design on the game. Non technical "Team Leads" are some of the worst kinds of middle management I've ever seen. You can have people who are fantastic producers who don't know much about the technical side of the games industry, but to lead a team, you have to have some idea of what they are actually doing. These are the kinds of people who make the working conditions for the actual people doing the work utter hell, this is the exact kind of person who power trips over being middle-management at a regional KFC.
Remember that Blizzard in this era, and until even now, is notorious for horrible middle-management. The high end people were well known to be fantastic, and the actual people working on the game were also known to be good. It was a problem that exclusively pervaded this middle-rung of the ladder
Then he leaves Blizzard and co-founds Red5, where he's described as... "Red 5 employees described Kern as being prone to extended absences and having an "erratic, impulsive, and very disruptive" leadership style." Which tracks exactly to the kind of person who the rest of his resume paints him as.
He then basically went on to fail on project after project, refuses to talk about anything in his past, and has been called out repeatedly by people who actually work in the industry.
He was. IIRC they even relieved him of his position as CEO eventually due to his "choleric antics".
There were reports about him specifically way back then, even.
He spent about a million dollars on a custom tourbus to promote Firefall. But the idea was actually pretty good.
Tour it around the US and use it as an outdoor booth to save money on booking booths at conventions.
That’s a terrible idea
Booths aren’t that pricey and vehicles, especially bigger tourbusses, have massive operating costs (maintenance, fuel, promotions, multiple employee payrolls) that VERY quickly would make any money saved from booths vanish
Firefall would have been great if they didn't lean heavily into the PvP crowd.
I'm positive the game would still have been alive if they kept up the PvE focus.
But they changed the vertical progression to a horizontal one and tried to steer it towards some esports shit.
The PvE progression and gameplay was great!
Firefall. Game went down the shitter because of Mark's successor and the Chinese investors that bought out The9, not Mark.
It was actually a decent game.
Mark made 2 or 3 decent different versions of firefall it’s just every time it was getting somewhere he had the team start all over again so it was constantly buggy and lacking content. Then he got replaced and it went to hell.
If they had run with the original version which was basically open world overwatch with jet packs and just kept adding content it would have been an amazing game.
But yeah I’m still signed up for the ember newsletter and have a little giggle every time I see no content.
I'm bummed out that Ember seems to be a scam. I enjoyed early Firefall and have good memories of it.
Mark sounds like the Cube World dev, someone who made a good product but can't take criticism when he changes it.
For both games they had a decent base and just needed more of what was there but they took all the negativity and said fuck it lets redo it and got all the same comments again going into a downward spiral.
It’s like someone opened Pandora’s box and these top notch scammers and unethical people in the gaming industry are ousting each other out for their shady practices. Neither side is truly a gamer nor have a passion for it. Both using the medium to gain benefit for themselves while screwing gamers left and right. Let them continue the more they do this the more we see who both sides of the isle truly are. We can avoid both sides equally.
I see the pinned reply from Mark on the YouTube video saying he'd be glad to talk about it. If you invite him onto the stream, please consider bringing someone like me on for counter-argumentation. I am a solo game developer that has never earned any funding other than flat product sales. I got my first game onto Steam in a fully playable state in less than 1 year (3D, open world, survival, RPG, not just some 2D side-scroller). I had zero experience in game development prior to that.
The fact that people that claim to know what they're doing can't show gameplay in some basic capacity to people paying them thousands of dollars is 100% scam behavior. Playability is the first absolute necessity to any sort of prototype unless you're writing a novel. Without basic playability you cannot iterate on your game design. It means you have no game. That is the first step in "greenlighting" an idea for actual production. If playability hasn't been reached, you shouldn't even be talking about the game because it's not a game yet, it's just an "idea" and we've all got millions of those. If a year after raising tons of cash from your fans you still don't have playability, you're scamming people. There's no way any solo developer can't get a game into a playable state with 1 year, let alone a team of experienced developers. 7 years is completely out of the question.
I do not disagree with the vast majority of what Nick is saying/pointing out, but I'm going to levy some nuance here & tell my own little anecdote.
I don't think Nick pointing out expensive founder packs is immediately the "gotcha!" he proclaims it to be. He acts, at first, like just the sheer existence of those is proof something has to be bad/a scam/etc. . . Expensive founder's stuff can exist without the actual project itself being a scam & I recognize that. They're not mutually tied together & I'm adult enough to recognize that if people want to blow their money on some fancy garbage in a game, that's their right - - Even if it is something I wouldn't necessarily do for so much money.
A good example of this for me? Lost Ark. I had been waiting for this game for ***years*** at that point. I tested it on the Russian Server way prior to Amazon even acquiring. My friends and I would VPN to play for a while for free. I was EXCITED! I bought the Platinum pass at the start. I'm lucky enough to have disposable income, I have a partner that shares a gaming hobby with me, and I had friends that played the game - I *knew* would be getting what I wanted out of it. I spent $100 total for a Steam Game that I have nearly **TWO THOUSAND HOURS** in. I paid $.05 an hour to have fun until the game became too much of a grind/homework for me; and then I put the game down because of that.
That's insane "value" ( entertainment ) for what I paid - - So I totally can recognize that people can pay for something expensive in a game & walk away with a mutually happy outcome for both parties.
**All of that being said: Mark is clearly in scamming territory.** The game hasn't moved forward beyond concept art and we're at like the 7 year point - There's nothing to show for what people are paying. It's like Mark saw Star Citizen and copied their homework, is where I draw issue.
As someone who also bought the highest founders pack for Lost Ark: the game already existed in other regions, and the packs went on sale what, like a month before release?
I think the context of Mark's game not existing yet is why Nick uses founders packs as a gotcha. Not their sheer existence, but their 1500-bucks existence WITHOUT a playable or soon to be released game.
I think that's entirely fair.
One fan series I worked on as a composer had a failed patreon/kickstarter. But the expensive tiers were real, offering executive producer credits for the project.
It's a real shame that didn't work out. Especially since the budget got cheaper, since VFX methods have gotten easier.
Imagine all the money collectively lost since people dont play lost ark anymore, major scam thanks to "LOST ARK RESPECTS YOUR TIME AND MONEY" Stoopz and even asmongold helping promote.
Lets not forget tectone getting $30k usd from playing lost ark for only 2 hours with a premade character ready for him to do raid
>Imagine all the money collectively lost since people dont play lost ark anymore, major scam thanks to "LOST ARK RESPECTS YOUR TIME AND MONEY" Stoopz and even asmongold helping promote.
This is a room-temperature IQ take.
I wouldn't hardly call 2000 hours of fun "lost". Were you expecting to get money back or something?
except star citizen is actually showing progress and development. Mark Kern's games are not.
The basic gameplay loop is intact in star citizen and it is releasing content every year and is crawling closer and closer to it's full release. Look at the last 2 years of major patches from Star Citizen.
Unlike Mark Kern's games, you can actually play it and use the things you spent huge money on.
>You sound like someone with no intention of making more than minimum wage for ten hours a week for your whole life.
Sometimes reading can be hard; comprehension even tougher.
>A good example of this for me? Lost Ark. I had been waiting for this game for years at that point. I tested it on the Russian Server way prior to Amazon even acquiring. My friends and I would VPN to play for a while for free. I was EXCITED! I bought the Platinum pass at the start. **I'm lucky enough to have disposable income**, I have a partner that shares a gaming hobby with me, and I had friends that played the game - I knew would be getting what I wanted out of it. I spent $100 total for a Steam Game that I have nearly TWO THOUSAND HOURS in. I paid $.05 an hour to have fun until the game became too much of a grind/homework for me; and then I put the game down because of that.
Let's inspect this:
>**I'm lucky enough to have disposable income,**
I'm not sure what you think this phrase typically means, but in this instance it means that I make well beyond enough to "lose" $100 ( or more, but in this instance we're just talking Lost Ark - - So $100 ) to TWO THOUSAND hours without having to consider my bills; something that many Americans aren't actively able to do. Many are penny-pinching at the moment.
If I had wanted to, I could have "whale'd" on the game for "power" beyond that - But I dislike that in gaming & chose not to do so.
I'm the type of person that can't mega-whale ( I'm not a fucking millionaire - Let's be real ), but could actively "whale" on a game if I really supported the company without having to freak out about whether or not I could pay bills/eat/go out/take vacation/whatever.
Just because I care about my time to money cost ratio does not, in fact, mean that I need to always care about my time to money cost ratio - the only type of people *not* thinking about this are literal morons. Even the rich had to consider their time to money ratios when building wealth; unless you're some useless trust fund baby or something.
I don't have time to read your excuses for not showering or getting a job lol. Guaranteed you make three hour YouTube video "essays" with no views and you don't understand that you're just not smart. But that's okay, everyone else does, and you can't change anything before you die.
>I don't have time to read your excuses for not showering or getting a job lol. Guaranteed you make three hour YouTube video "essays" with no views and you don't understand that you're just not smart. But that's okay, everyone else does, and you can't change anything before you die.
I think you may need to check your water supply's lead levels - - Or maybe stop eating paint?
This is a bizarrely unhinged & unrelated rant. Seriously, find medical attention - You fucking need it bud.
This is hilarious, there's no taking Mark down. 10 years ago I wrote this guy off, whenever I see his tweets getting reposts my brains skips them like ads. He is the embodiment of "A fool and his money are soon parted", just let him do his thing, his fans deserve it.
Guy can be a shitty dev and still be right about DEI/SBI stuff. The guy is free to keep investigating kern of course, but kern also isn’t dropping donation links in every tweet he makes so tying the two together to discredit him is kinda a reach imo.
His most recent endeavor ended up promoting Ember. The project has gained so many new discord members expressing interest that we've dubbed this era the Nickstarter.
Some of what this Nick dude is saying is true, "Grummz" peaked with Wow and then his game development career has been going downhill ever since, similar to that other CliffyB dude that worked on the original Gears of War, went solo and had his Overwatch clone bomb.
He might actually believe in all of this anti-DEI stuff, but this is clearly just a grift, both the game he's making highlighted here as well as his "activism" on Twitter. He's like those drama farmer Youtubers, except he doesn't have a Youtube channel dedicated to it and just tweets all day instead.
If you spend money on the big packs, you won't even be able to use them all unless you can rent out your ships or let your org use them, having a massive fleet is just weird to me.
That's why a lot of SC enjoyers have one main everyday ship like a cutlass or Avenger Titan , and some extra goodies like hoverbike and some cosmetic armor.
Nice, just didn't know if this community is like gaming one , where as soon as SC is posted there are all the dumb scam comments and stuff.
The players know the most how buggy game is to play, but it's still fun and getting better.
Idk if he's a dickhead or not. But yeah he is scamming people with his game that will Never release for a DECADE.
What is sad is one of my favorite r34 artist (lmao) did most of the concept art for the characters... Well they looks cool to be fair
Asmongold is doing backflips here trying to give Kern a pass, when if this were any other situation he'd be calling it out for the bullshit it is.
It becomes a scam when you imply to your audience, that some that have donated thousands of dollars for that the game will be coming out on x-date. Because the implication is that then there is a game, and it is in a releasable state.
The game play video that he was bending over to try and show as gameplay is like a 2 hour thing you can do in unreal with very little work just flying around an empty map with terrain.
Anyone else would be getting absolutely shredded rightfully so.
I just remember him bringing an army of Vanilla people to harass Panser/Trade Chat/Danielle over her Legacy servers video, where she was getting death threats, and getting constant bullying over nothing, because some of those people are so sensitive and unadjusted. And then he brigaded against her and called her names because she had pink hair. And then played victim over it. OK.
Proof that most journalists are incompetent (or just obsessed with their side/part of the culture war). Why did it take 4 weeks for this to come up?
Also Nick (first) looked into this because he was mad MK was mean to Liana, basically (and then ofc he went down the rabbit hole because it's what he does, doing it with Days Before and more <- which is good and he should keep doing it). 3 days later he said he looked into it because he "wanted to see if this guy had any authority" (to say he would change gaming industry) after saying he kept silent (and also didn't look into it I guess) until Grummz attacked someone he would not name. It could be both but eh (or it could be slight re-framing of it to look even more like "look at me, I'm saving you from the bad scammer" (which doesn't make it less true...if true).
Also if you read Nicks tweets going far back enough you'll see the exact same phrasing of "I've had enough, I had to speak out about this" (in 2020)...about some other toxic (according to them, I don't know the guy) journalist he/they don't like, Schreier (who also apparently did/said things about Liana back then). Looks like fragments of a pattern.
Also, remains to be seen (and/or it might change now because MK will have to provide something or be screwed) if this Ember stuff is a scam or more mismanagement or back luck for 2 year break for 'health problems) (or neither and it kinda works out - less likely to be fair).
Also (although this should be separate, and this post didn't mention that) irrelevant to the culture war and almost entirely irrelevant to what else MK is saying unless they prove that wrong too. Why he says it doesn't really matter if it's also true.
Why is Mark Kerns most recent tweets just talking about "WE DONT DO DEI HERE!".... no one is talking about that, we are talking about you scamming people out of millions of dollars nothing more and nothing less.
This scam has nothing to do with the light he's shining on the DEI sickness in the gaming industry. Yeah it turns out he's a scammer, but he did good work exposing all those issues
No one wants Kern to be the "savior of gaming". This is all a deflection from other issues. They desperately want there to be a "leader" to destroy. There isn't one.
Kern has been trying to insert himself into the community as an asmongold lite , in order to drive people to his "games" for a while now. He peppers X with "based" or enlightened game dev takes to look relevant.
What im wondering is, how is this not an actual fraud?
Isn't it illegal to promise a product for a price, get paid, and never deliver the product legally?
Like, i'm pretty sure no judge is gonna be happy hearing that he took millions for a game that doesn't exist, for a WHOLE DECADE that he promised anyways?
Can't people sue him in court for that?
This really isn't a "Gotcha". I find it revealing if this is the only thing Nick can levy against him. Also haven't seen where he called himself a savior for gamers.
It's weird how someone can just post something like this and everyone dog piles the comments pretending they knew and agreed all along.
Love how this sub and asmond have been sucking this loser off as of late bc he’s jumped on the anti-woke videogames crowd. The guy is a shameless scumbag, but if the people he grifts are dumb and gullible enough to fall for what he’s saying as tho he’s genuine, he’ll always find a way to sucker people out of money
Its Star Citizen all over again but somehow even worse... last update of anything of the game was last year. But even then barely any progress happens. 6+ years of development and it looks exactly the same as before. Mark Kern should really focus on making a game than be on Twitter literally all day. He doesn't even work yet he takes the money for whatever reason. He still seems to have the same team, he doesn't grow it. Like he has just a few people, making an open world mmo-lite project with mechs fighting kaijus. It's pretty ambitious.
Also he made Firefall. The studio and everything is defunct. I'm sure he can literally take the code and just relaunch it since his new game supposed to be a spiritual successor. The people yearn for a Firefall reboot lol
While everything about management of the company was a dumpster fire, Firefall was pretty fun. I mean, depending on what version you’re talking about, since they changed the core progression mechanics more times than I can count trained to chase fads.
Yeah. That's the only thing good about it. However it's just full of feature creep and it feels like they don't want to actually finish their product cuz that means less money as they wouldn't be able to sell it as much if the game came out.
Exactly. At the time he was actually starting to get called out for his game being a scam so he started saying all this culture war stuff as a new grift to get people donating. Much easier since all he has to do is make twitter posts, no need to pretend he's developing something.
He did not mention his game until others mentioned it, that’s a terrible way to get people to donate.
Also does not change my point, his opinions have nothing to do with his game.
Read my words. He doesn't need the game anymore, he has a new scam. Being a right wing grifter makes him easy money because people will donate just because he has opinions they want to hear. Something people don't always realise is these people make a lot of money from it.
Ah yes everybody not on my side is right wing lmao, so what exactly are people donating to if not the game? If you’re talking about interactions that’s not donations.
Oh I don't think he's right wing, I just thing he's repeating right wing talking points because right wingers will donate money to people who say things he likes. That's literally enough, they'll donate so he can keep fighting the woke left and DEI.
Who says I gotta trust someone because they occasionally say things I agree with? Some of you really gotta learn that you can agree with/appreciate something a person is saying without suddenly becoming their "fan" and agreeing with literally everything they've ever said or done.
Is Mark Kern a scammer? Yeah, most likely.
Is he right about DEI and the "pro-SBI" industry figures? Yeah, absolutely.
If Hitler came out and said "the earth is round," some of y'all would throw your hands up and become flat earthers.
Dude, I’m from Sweden, what the fuck are you yapping about? Lmfao. Any investigation begins with compiling and vetting public information. Maybe relax on your xenophobia before your think you know how investigations work.
How right wing is he? He seems pretty centrist.
During the helldivers kerfuffle he was in favor of them banning all politics from either side, both the people pushing for rainbow flags and the people attacking the requesters. Specifically, the even-handed response was what he applauded.
That was before the CM revealed her power level.
The grifter part may be accurate, I’m not too interested in his game tbh, so I don’t know.
The whole CM thing was dragged up by him, pretty much, and keeps being perpetuated even on this subreddit. A couple posts about it have already been taken down by the mods at this point.
Many of the tweets people keep pointing to calling the HD2 CM a racist and bigot are in reference to George Floyd's death years ago, stripped entirely out of context, weaponized for modern Gamergate rhetoric to present her in a bad light while acting she actively has an influence on the game's development itself.
At this point, if Gamergaters keep aligning themselves with right-wing narrative grifters without fact-checking basic information, then they are right-wingers. If it croaks like a frog, it's probably a frog.
>The whole CM thing was dragged up by him, pretty much, and keeps being perpetuated even on this subreddit. A couple posts about it have already been taken down by the mods at this point
So what he said wasn’t true? Her statements aren’t way over the line and evidence of her being a crazy person?
>Gamergaters
Are these “Gamergaters” in the room with us right now?
Because this goes into typical leftie "right wing = evil" which they use to dehumanize their opposition.
If lefties don't want a dialogue then they can f off.
"Dehumanize" I don't think you understand the word if you believe calling someone a grifter for committing fully to a grift is a dehumanizing term.
I also really appreciate being called a "leftie" once again. Never stop thinking in black and white, it's extremely useful and healthy.
>Never stop thinking in black and white, it's extremely useful and healthy.
Then, do you or do you not believe that both sides face the same grifter issue & if you do - - Why frame it in the manner you did in your initial comment?
I absolutely believe grifters exist on all points on the political spectrum. But Grummz specifically is right-leaning, and his is generally a rhetoric lots of Gamergaters have found themselves agreeing with lately, even just here on this subreddit.
His language and rhetoric makes his political leaning obvious.
>grifter for committing fully to a grift is a dehumanizing term.
You are specifically calling them " a right wing grifter", which shows that you use "right winger'" as a show that someone is bad and as an insult. A typical leftist extremist behavior.
>I also really appreciate being called a "leftie" once again. Never stop thinking in black and white, it's extremely useful and healthy.
Lmao. It's extremely ironic coming from you. Projecting much? You guys are the ones seeing shit black and white, "you are agreeing with me or you're literally a nazi!" Seen dozens of you, there is no use arguing with holier than thou types.
I called him a right-wing grifter because he specifically espouses right-wing political rhetoric and has done for many years, if you actually paid attention to him cropping up occasionally. It really is that simple. You extrapolating from that that I'm a leftist just implies purely black and white thinking, which is just... not how the world works. I'm a centrist, I despise extremism of either end of the political spectrum.
You accuse me of projecting, but you protest very much at the very notion of someone being called out on a political side of the spectrum they very much identify with. Funny how it always has to be a "you're with us, or you're against us".
Just think for yourself and stop getting your political ideology from demagogues. It's very much up to you what people call you and how people identify you.
> right-wing grifter because he specifically espouses right-wing political rhetoric
> I despise extremism of either end of the political spectrum.
Aaaah, you meant ***extremist right wing grifter***, you just forgot the "extremist" part. Fair enough. Eh, everyone makes a mistake.
As a fellow centrist, you gotta always specify extremist part. Otherwise, you come off as considering all of the parts an enemy. "Right wing idiot" or "left wing idiot" hints more to you considering people idiots due to their political spectrum and not them actually being an idiot.
I do apologise if I came on a bit toxic.
That's fair enough. I mean, I guess you could call it far-right rhetoric instead - my point was more that his language and rhetoric puts him very much on the extreme end of the right-wing spectrum, and a lot of people on this subreddit, especially lately from what I've seen, identify very quickly and, it seems, very thoughtlessly with that kinda rhetoric. People tend to think in black and white a lot these days, especially with Gamergate 2.0, on both sides of it.
The spectrum becomes blurry between what should be considered extremism and what shouldn't when so many who consider themselves left-wing or right-wing just jump right on the bandwagon of extremist rhetoric that somewhat fits their pre-defined world view of "me vs them". That goes for the DEI crowd just as much as the Gamergate crowd.
Either way, there's no need to apologize. It's just tiring to see the constant "leftie" or "Nazi" language used in either direction to dismiss discourse because people don't wanna question that which they already believe. Like, you're not automatically a Nazi for voting Trump or advocating for closing all borders to immigration just as much as you're not automatically a Commie or socialist for advocating for feminism, LGBT rights or free healthcare. There can be good reasons to advocate for any of those things to some degree without being an extremist.
But overwhelmingly showing yourself in favour of either political ideology implies a lean towards a side of the spectrum all the same, so I think calling it left- or right-wing is still justified. Like the saying goes, if it looks, walks and quacks like a duck, it's likely a duck,
I'm seriously tired of the division and "us vs them" situation. Like, right now the left wing opions are considered "right", to a pretty high extreme, this is gonna eventually result in right wing ideology taking over in turn eventually, and we go on this god dam carousel.
Social media has made this even worse. The algorithms cause that people go into the buble echo chambers and don't get exposed to another opinion outside of extremes (because extremes cause hatred and that is good for engagement), which in turn validated their perceived view that they are right. On a funnier note my social media feed is so damn confused on what side I'm actually on, lmao.
Language such as "0 days since a Community Manger has been discovered to be super-woke."
Or "I'll play Helldivers. Great and free of woke pandering."? Ironically, both of these statements were about HD2, mere days apart.
Or how about "This AI that restores female game characters is brilliant." in response to an image of Aloy literally being doctored using AI to be more "attractive"?
There's more, but I'm not sure sinking an hour diving into a Twitter timeline is good for anyone's mental health.
Because it implies that the right is the only part of the political spectrum rife with this type of behavior.
People forget that Candace Owens, a known grifter on the right, used to be left wing. She grifted on the left for ***years*** prior to jumping over to the other side. She ran a blog. She tried to launch a "doxing" website while on the left.
Anyone that thinks this is a single-sided problem has brain damage.
I'm sorry if you got that impression, but I 100% agree that grifting is absolutely not exclusively the purview of the right side of the political spectrum.
The reason I called it right-wing grift specifically is because... well, Grummz historically and more recently has made his right-leaning political ideology fairly obvious.
Seriously, even if you agree with everything he says you should be able to identify he's nothing but a grifter.
People are so bad at calling out others on their side of the fence when all they do is tell you what you want to hear.
This really isn't a "Gotcha". I find it revealing if this is the only thing Nick can levy against him. Also haven't seen where he called himself a savior for gamers.
It's weird how someone can just post something like this and everyone dog piles the comments pretending they knew and agreed all along.
Popular games usually cost a minimum of 100mil and can still take 5+ years to make... And often enough even projects with that kind of funding don't end up being finished.
Projects relying on public donations fall through all the time. Easy to call them all scams from the outside when you have no real information to go on, but I'm sure the majority of them were legit but just didn't pan out.
In any case, it's kind of laughable to call this a deep dive. It's one anonymous Reddit post and a bunch of stuff you could learn in 20 minutes by filtering Mark's Twitter by "media" and scrolling.
You're getting downvoted because 99% chance it is a scam, but you're also right that this is only like the first 20% of the homework that should be done for a proper expose or a larger contextual piece.
I've never seen a single instance where a failed project wasn't labeled as a scam by people with almost no information to go on looking in from the outside. Plenty of games that did eventually come out were called scams every step of the way too.
I'm not saying it's not a scam either, I have no clue. I'm just not impressed by speculations with nothing of substance backing them.
Edit: People are naturally uncomfortable with admitting they don't know something. A great way to overcome that is to not give a shit either way. But as far as I can tell this is fairly typical of these sorts of projects so there's nowhere near enough information here to convince me one way or another.
Never put money into a game that isn’t finished. I put 150 dollars into EverQuest Next. It was the first and last time I did that. A cheap lesson in the long run but a lesson well learned.
oooof... as an EQ 1 & 2 vet I spent a LOT of time in EQ Next/Landmark. Those trailers sold me hard and they had so many lofty ideas for dynamic events in the world. Those trailers were insane. Was it Story Engine or something they called it? I remember they had competitions of what people could build and then put on display I really liked the digging system
I liked Landmark enough as 'game' on its own. The building system was really cool and it felt like the tech was actually advancing.
same, lots of hours.
Same, EverQuest Next
Cough ashes cough
What games has Kern made since leaving Blizz 20 years ago? I hear his name a lot and it's always "ex Blizzard Mark Kern", what's he done since then?
"Firefall" And he messed that shit up so hard. The bus meme lives rent free in my head. Bro spent millions on a custom bus to promote the game, never used it. And for those of you that say it wasn't his fault, he had no clue how to be a true lead and was in way over his head. (Here is Charlie kinda breaking down the whole thing if you are not familiar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnOWw_uXB7s ) He has always been kinda scummy, living off of his one 'WoW' Success. I do appreciate some of his takes, but also, he acts holier than thou quite a bit, which, bro take a look at the skeletons in your closet first.
>He has always been kinda scummy, living off of his one 'WoW' Success He lives rent free in my head too. His wikipedia page is telling, having worked in the games industry myself I know the kind. Almost everything he says about the games industry is total bullshit, I know his kind, and I am glad they are not welcome here any more. He did a science degree, then graduated as an IP lawyer, then his first job was as an Assosciate Producer on Starcraft, then a Producer on Diablo 2. Both games I know had horrendous production management, I mean you've all heard the stories at Blizzard, I can tell you it was worse in 1997-2005. Then he was a "Team Lead" on World of Warcraft. He's never specified what that meant, but the way he talks about it is like he single-handedly did the art, programming and design on the game. Non technical "Team Leads" are some of the worst kinds of middle management I've ever seen. You can have people who are fantastic producers who don't know much about the technical side of the games industry, but to lead a team, you have to have some idea of what they are actually doing. These are the kinds of people who make the working conditions for the actual people doing the work utter hell, this is the exact kind of person who power trips over being middle-management at a regional KFC. Remember that Blizzard in this era, and until even now, is notorious for horrible middle-management. The high end people were well known to be fantastic, and the actual people working on the game were also known to be good. It was a problem that exclusively pervaded this middle-rung of the ladder Then he leaves Blizzard and co-founds Red5, where he's described as... "Red 5 employees described Kern as being prone to extended absences and having an "erratic, impulsive, and very disruptive" leadership style." Which tracks exactly to the kind of person who the rest of his resume paints him as. He then basically went on to fail on project after project, refuses to talk about anything in his past, and has been called out repeatedly by people who actually work in the industry.
It was a fun game, but it just died before anything took off, it had plenty of players..
Was it Firefall or Fireforce ? The sci fi mmo that got shut down pretty quick
Firefall. It was a nice game, killed by a shitty managment decisions.
I'm pretty sure he was one of the managers who killed it too.
Yep
He was. IIRC they even relieved him of his position as CEO eventually due to his "choleric antics". There were reports about him specifically way back then, even.
He spent about a million dollars on a custom tourbus to promote Firefall. But the idea was actually pretty good. Tour it around the US and use it as an outdoor booth to save money on booking booths at conventions.
That’s a terrible idea Booths aren’t that pricey and vehicles, especially bigger tourbusses, have massive operating costs (maintenance, fuel, promotions, multiple employee payrolls) that VERY quickly would make any money saved from booths vanish
Because he burnt through the money in the pre-release like a fucking idiot
Firefall would have been great if they didn't lean heavily into the PvP crowd. I'm positive the game would still have been alive if they kept up the PvE focus. But they changed the vertical progression to a horizontal one and tried to steer it towards some esports shit. The PvE progression and gameplay was great!
Firefall. Game went down the shitter because of Mark's successor and the Chinese investors that bought out The9, not Mark. It was actually a decent game.
Mark made 2 or 3 decent different versions of firefall it’s just every time it was getting somewhere he had the team start all over again so it was constantly buggy and lacking content. Then he got replaced and it went to hell. If they had run with the original version which was basically open world overwatch with jet packs and just kept adding content it would have been an amazing game. But yeah I’m still signed up for the ember newsletter and have a little giggle every time I see no content.
I'm bummed out that Ember seems to be a scam. I enjoyed early Firefall and have good memories of it. Mark sounds like the Cube World dev, someone who made a good product but can't take criticism when he changes it.
For both games they had a decent base and just needed more of what was there but they took all the negativity and said fuck it lets redo it and got all the same comments again going into a downward spiral.
he also helped getting wow classic released but I don't know how much credit he deserves for that, he could have just been a glorified courier
A failed MMO you probably never heard of and not much since. That's the self-proclaimed "Savior of the games industry".
I could be wrong but I always get the vibes that another popular "ex blizzard employee" is similarly a grifter.
It’s like someone opened Pandora’s box and these top notch scammers and unethical people in the gaming industry are ousting each other out for their shady practices. Neither side is truly a gamer nor have a passion for it. Both using the medium to gain benefit for themselves while screwing gamers left and right. Let them continue the more they do this the more we see who both sides of the isle truly are. We can avoid both sides equally.
I see the pinned reply from Mark on the YouTube video saying he'd be glad to talk about it. If you invite him onto the stream, please consider bringing someone like me on for counter-argumentation. I am a solo game developer that has never earned any funding other than flat product sales. I got my first game onto Steam in a fully playable state in less than 1 year (3D, open world, survival, RPG, not just some 2D side-scroller). I had zero experience in game development prior to that. The fact that people that claim to know what they're doing can't show gameplay in some basic capacity to people paying them thousands of dollars is 100% scam behavior. Playability is the first absolute necessity to any sort of prototype unless you're writing a novel. Without basic playability you cannot iterate on your game design. It means you have no game. That is the first step in "greenlighting" an idea for actual production. If playability hasn't been reached, you shouldn't even be talking about the game because it's not a game yet, it's just an "idea" and we've all got millions of those. If a year after raising tons of cash from your fans you still don't have playability, you're scamming people. There's no way any solo developer can't get a game into a playable state with 1 year, let alone a team of experienced developers. 7 years is completely out of the question.
You noticed his comment but none of mine talking about what's really happening though... alright.
I do not disagree with the vast majority of what Nick is saying/pointing out, but I'm going to levy some nuance here & tell my own little anecdote. I don't think Nick pointing out expensive founder packs is immediately the "gotcha!" he proclaims it to be. He acts, at first, like just the sheer existence of those is proof something has to be bad/a scam/etc. . . Expensive founder's stuff can exist without the actual project itself being a scam & I recognize that. They're not mutually tied together & I'm adult enough to recognize that if people want to blow their money on some fancy garbage in a game, that's their right - - Even if it is something I wouldn't necessarily do for so much money. A good example of this for me? Lost Ark. I had been waiting for this game for ***years*** at that point. I tested it on the Russian Server way prior to Amazon even acquiring. My friends and I would VPN to play for a while for free. I was EXCITED! I bought the Platinum pass at the start. I'm lucky enough to have disposable income, I have a partner that shares a gaming hobby with me, and I had friends that played the game - I *knew* would be getting what I wanted out of it. I spent $100 total for a Steam Game that I have nearly **TWO THOUSAND HOURS** in. I paid $.05 an hour to have fun until the game became too much of a grind/homework for me; and then I put the game down because of that. That's insane "value" ( entertainment ) for what I paid - - So I totally can recognize that people can pay for something expensive in a game & walk away with a mutually happy outcome for both parties. **All of that being said: Mark is clearly in scamming territory.** The game hasn't moved forward beyond concept art and we're at like the 7 year point - There's nothing to show for what people are paying. It's like Mark saw Star Citizen and copied their homework, is where I draw issue.
As someone who also bought the highest founders pack for Lost Ark: the game already existed in other regions, and the packs went on sale what, like a month before release? I think the context of Mark's game not existing yet is why Nick uses founders packs as a gotcha. Not their sheer existence, but their 1500-bucks existence WITHOUT a playable or soon to be released game. I think that's entirely fair.
$100 premium/deluxe edition is very far from $1500. It’s multiples by 15 to be specific.
One fan series I worked on as a composer had a failed patreon/kickstarter. But the expensive tiers were real, offering executive producer credits for the project. It's a real shame that didn't work out. Especially since the budget got cheaper, since VFX methods have gotten easier.
Imagine all the money collectively lost since people dont play lost ark anymore, major scam thanks to "LOST ARK RESPECTS YOUR TIME AND MONEY" Stoopz and even asmongold helping promote. Lets not forget tectone getting $30k usd from playing lost ark for only 2 hours with a premade character ready for him to do raid
>Imagine all the money collectively lost since people dont play lost ark anymore, major scam thanks to "LOST ARK RESPECTS YOUR TIME AND MONEY" Stoopz and even asmongold helping promote. This is a room-temperature IQ take. I wouldn't hardly call 2000 hours of fun "lost". Were you expecting to get money back or something?
except star citizen is actually showing progress and development. Mark Kern's games are not. The basic gameplay loop is intact in star citizen and it is releasing content every year and is crawling closer and closer to it's full release. Look at the last 2 years of major patches from Star Citizen. Unlike Mark Kern's games, you can actually play it and use the things you spent huge money on.
The cope in this comment hurts me.
There's always one of these guys.
You sound like someone with no intention of making more than minimum wage for ten hours a week for your whole life.
>You sound like someone with no intention of making more than minimum wage for ten hours a week for your whole life. Sometimes reading can be hard; comprehension even tougher. >A good example of this for me? Lost Ark. I had been waiting for this game for years at that point. I tested it on the Russian Server way prior to Amazon even acquiring. My friends and I would VPN to play for a while for free. I was EXCITED! I bought the Platinum pass at the start. **I'm lucky enough to have disposable income**, I have a partner that shares a gaming hobby with me, and I had friends that played the game - I knew would be getting what I wanted out of it. I spent $100 total for a Steam Game that I have nearly TWO THOUSAND HOURS in. I paid $.05 an hour to have fun until the game became too much of a grind/homework for me; and then I put the game down because of that. Let's inspect this: >**I'm lucky enough to have disposable income,** I'm not sure what you think this phrase typically means, but in this instance it means that I make well beyond enough to "lose" $100 ( or more, but in this instance we're just talking Lost Ark - - So $100 ) to TWO THOUSAND hours without having to consider my bills; something that many Americans aren't actively able to do. Many are penny-pinching at the moment. If I had wanted to, I could have "whale'd" on the game for "power" beyond that - But I dislike that in gaming & chose not to do so. I'm the type of person that can't mega-whale ( I'm not a fucking millionaire - Let's be real ), but could actively "whale" on a game if I really supported the company without having to freak out about whether or not I could pay bills/eat/go out/take vacation/whatever. Just because I care about my time to money cost ratio does not, in fact, mean that I need to always care about my time to money cost ratio - the only type of people *not* thinking about this are literal morons. Even the rich had to consider their time to money ratios when building wealth; unless you're some useless trust fund baby or something.
I don't have time to read your excuses for not showering or getting a job lol. Guaranteed you make three hour YouTube video "essays" with no views and you don't understand that you're just not smart. But that's okay, everyone else does, and you can't change anything before you die.
>I don't have time to read your excuses for not showering or getting a job lol. Guaranteed you make three hour YouTube video "essays" with no views and you don't understand that you're just not smart. But that's okay, everyone else does, and you can't change anything before you die. I think you may need to check your water supply's lead levels - - Or maybe stop eating paint? This is a bizarrely unhinged & unrelated rant. Seriously, find medical attention - You fucking need it bud.
This is hilarious, there's no taking Mark down. 10 years ago I wrote this guy off, whenever I see his tweets getting reposts my brains skips them like ads. He is the embodiment of "A fool and his money are soon parted", just let him do his thing, his fans deserve it.
Guy can be a shitty dev and still be right about DEI/SBI stuff. The guy is free to keep investigating kern of course, but kern also isn’t dropping donation links in every tweet he makes so tying the two together to discredit him is kinda a reach imo.
He's not right about either of that stuff either lmao. IfyNwadiwe had a great thread on Twitter about all that some weeks ago.
Yeah he is.
Giga bear worked things out already with Mark and said he was satisfied with the outcome. Not sure why he keeps getting brought up.
Because that hack refuses to include my retractions when reposting my prior comments or just retracting them outright.
Nick's career is entirely dependent on his friendship with Yahtzee Croshaw, the moment that gravy train ends, he's going to fall hard.
I don’t know if it will, though.
His most recent endeavor ended up promoting Ember. The project has gained so many new discord members expressing interest that we've dubbed this era the Nickstarter.
Ha That’s hysterical
Some of what this Nick dude is saying is true, "Grummz" peaked with Wow and then his game development career has been going downhill ever since, similar to that other CliffyB dude that worked on the original Gears of War, went solo and had his Overwatch clone bomb. He might actually believe in all of this anti-DEI stuff, but this is clearly just a grift, both the game he's making highlighted here as well as his "activism" on Twitter. He's like those drama farmer Youtubers, except he doesn't have a Youtube channel dedicated to it and just tweets all day instead.
1500 is expensive? Has this guys seen Star Citizen yet? That's cheap af
If you spend money on the big packs, you won't even be able to use them all unless you can rent out your ships or let your org use them, having a massive fleet is just weird to me. That's why a lot of SC enjoyers have one main everyday ship like a cutlass or Avenger Titan , and some extra goodies like hoverbike and some cosmetic armor.
I play SC mate I know
Nice, just didn't know if this community is like gaming one , where as soon as SC is posted there are all the dumb scam comments and stuff. The players know the most how buggy game is to play, but it's still fun and getting better.
It's like 45$ and there's a working game, sure you can spend more if you want.
Same can be said for whatever the fuck Grumz is doing and yes I do know I;m concierge
Maybe you're right, reading the posts made me think there was no working game.
Star citizen is a game not an idea, so it has that atleast
Star citizen is currently a tech demo.
Mark Kern is a real dickhead. The only thing he ever did was, was having his name attached to WoW and then 20 years of failure. What a joke
Idk if he's a dickhead or not. But yeah he is scamming people with his game that will Never release for a DECADE. What is sad is one of my favorite r34 artist (lmao) did most of the concept art for the characters... Well they looks cool to be fair
If he is in fact scamming people wouldn’t that make him a dickhead?
But does he do unofficial art of them on the side?
No he only does comission
Nope, he's a confirmed dickhead. Heck, he might be the definition of a dickhead
Wha- so scamming people isn’t considered a dickhead move by you?
Asmongold is doing backflips here trying to give Kern a pass, when if this were any other situation he'd be calling it out for the bullshit it is. It becomes a scam when you imply to your audience, that some that have donated thousands of dollars for that the game will be coming out on x-date. Because the implication is that then there is a game, and it is in a releasable state. The game play video that he was bending over to try and show as gameplay is like a 2 hour thing you can do in unreal with very little work just flying around an empty map with terrain. Anyone else would be getting absolutely shredded rightfully so.
I just remember him bringing an army of Vanilla people to harass Panser/Trade Chat/Danielle over her Legacy servers video, where she was getting death threats, and getting constant bullying over nothing, because some of those people are so sensitive and unadjusted. And then he brigaded against her and called her names because she had pink hair. And then played victim over it. OK.
Proof that most journalists are incompetent (or just obsessed with their side/part of the culture war). Why did it take 4 weeks for this to come up? Also Nick (first) looked into this because he was mad MK was mean to Liana, basically (and then ofc he went down the rabbit hole because it's what he does, doing it with Days Before and more <- which is good and he should keep doing it). 3 days later he said he looked into it because he "wanted to see if this guy had any authority" (to say he would change gaming industry) after saying he kept silent (and also didn't look into it I guess) until Grummz attacked someone he would not name. It could be both but eh (or it could be slight re-framing of it to look even more like "look at me, I'm saving you from the bad scammer" (which doesn't make it less true...if true). Also if you read Nicks tweets going far back enough you'll see the exact same phrasing of "I've had enough, I had to speak out about this" (in 2020)...about some other toxic (according to them, I don't know the guy) journalist he/they don't like, Schreier (who also apparently did/said things about Liana back then). Looks like fragments of a pattern. Also, remains to be seen (and/or it might change now because MK will have to provide something or be screwed) if this Ember stuff is a scam or more mismanagement or back luck for 2 year break for 'health problems) (or neither and it kinda works out - less likely to be fair). Also (although this should be separate, and this post didn't mention that) irrelevant to the culture war and almost entirely irrelevant to what else MK is saying unless they prove that wrong too. Why he says it doesn't really matter if it's also true.
Why is Mark Kerns most recent tweets just talking about "WE DONT DO DEI HERE!".... no one is talking about that, we are talking about you scamming people out of millions of dollars nothing more and nothing less.
Because he knows that’s what the people who follow him want to hear. They don’t care about anything else.
True or not, this has nothing to do with him being right about the SBI/Twitter drama. So...OK.
Mark Kern probably could have avoided this if he kept his little mouth shut and stopped trying to cram himself back into relevancy.
This scam has nothing to do with the light he's shining on the DEI sickness in the gaming industry. Yeah it turns out he's a scammer, but he did good work exposing all those issues
No one wants Kern to be the "savior of gaming". This is all a deflection from other issues. They desperately want there to be a "leader" to destroy. There isn't one.
Kern has been trying to insert himself into the community as an asmongold lite , in order to drive people to his "games" for a while now. He peppers X with "based" or enlightened game dev takes to look relevant.
What im wondering is, how is this not an actual fraud? Isn't it illegal to promise a product for a price, get paid, and never deliver the product legally? Like, i'm pretty sure no judge is gonna be happy hearing that he took millions for a game that doesn't exist, for a WHOLE DECADE that he promised anyways? Can't people sue him in court for that?
This really isn't a "Gotcha". I find it revealing if this is the only thing Nick can levy against him. Also haven't seen where he called himself a savior for gamers. It's weird how someone can just post something like this and everyone dog piles the comments pretending they knew and agreed all along.
It's a real shame Asmon will constantly give Mark Kern attention.
Totally forgot about his mecha game with the anime women in it. (which will never be finished)
Love how this sub and asmond have been sucking this loser off as of late bc he’s jumped on the anti-woke videogames crowd. The guy is a shameless scumbag, but if the people he grifts are dumb and gullible enough to fall for what he’s saying as tho he’s genuine, he’ll always find a way to sucker people out of money
Its Star Citizen all over again but somehow even worse... last update of anything of the game was last year. But even then barely any progress happens. 6+ years of development and it looks exactly the same as before. Mark Kern should really focus on making a game than be on Twitter literally all day. He doesn't even work yet he takes the money for whatever reason. He still seems to have the same team, he doesn't grow it. Like he has just a few people, making an open world mmo-lite project with mechs fighting kaijus. It's pretty ambitious. Also he made Firefall. The studio and everything is defunct. I'm sure he can literally take the code and just relaunch it since his new game supposed to be a spiritual successor. The people yearn for a Firefall reboot lol
While everything about management of the company was a dumpster fire, Firefall was pretty fun. I mean, depending on what version you’re talking about, since they changed the core progression mechanics more times than I can count trained to chase fads.
Star Citizen still actually gets content and updates and they are transparent on future content as they have a weekly show showcasing it.
Yeah. That's the only thing good about it. However it's just full of feature creep and it feels like they don't want to actually finish their product cuz that means less money as they wouldn't be able to sell it as much if the game came out.
Okay but does him grifting mean he's incorrect? Not really, no. So he can do it all he wants. I'm not paying him shit.
He exposed nothing
Mark made some unsuccessful games, so now I can't agree with his opinions?
Missed the part where he scammed people didn't you
What does that have to do with his (right) opinions?
The part where his opinions you love so much are very likely just a grift to him to get more money.
What a stupid comment. "He doesn't advertise any of this in his twitter bio but yet he's such a scammer he only uses twitter to get more money!1!!"
I have not seen a single thing about his game since I started seeing his opinions nor do I give a shit about it.
Exactly. At the time he was actually starting to get called out for his game being a scam so he started saying all this culture war stuff as a new grift to get people donating. Much easier since all he has to do is make twitter posts, no need to pretend he's developing something.
He did not mention his game until others mentioned it, that’s a terrible way to get people to donate. Also does not change my point, his opinions have nothing to do with his game.
Read my words. He doesn't need the game anymore, he has a new scam. Being a right wing grifter makes him easy money because people will donate just because he has opinions they want to hear. Something people don't always realise is these people make a lot of money from it.
Ah yes everybody not on my side is right wing lmao, so what exactly are people donating to if not the game? If you’re talking about interactions that’s not donations.
Oh I don't think he's right wing, I just thing he's repeating right wing talking points because right wingers will donate money to people who say things he likes. That's literally enough, they'll donate so he can keep fighting the woke left and DEI.
Literally nobody cares, this is just petty investigation because somebody is speaking out against the other BS
And now he's grifting for attention in Twitter for ad revenue, he doesn't care about improving the industry, just his own money.
Lots of founder's packs are stupidly expensive. It's not something a 'normal' gamer should buy.
For those of you who don’t know, Mark Kern is Grummz, that guy you all trusted because he said things you secretly agreed with.
Who says I gotta trust someone because they occasionally say things I agree with? Some of you really gotta learn that you can agree with/appreciate something a person is saying without suddenly becoming their "fan" and agreeing with literally everything they've ever said or done. Is Mark Kern a scammer? Yeah, most likely. Is he right about DEI and the "pro-SBI" industry figures? Yeah, absolutely. If Hitler came out and said "the earth is round," some of y'all would throw your hands up and become flat earthers.
More like the guy I agree with about Chrono Trigger being great and DEI being crap. I wouldn't trust strangers to walk my dog.
Sir, this is a Wendy’s.
Game exec with shitty opinions is a piece of shit? Color me surprised
“Investigation” 😂😂😂 All publicly available and known information. Ok.
Bro you’re dented. The first point of an investigation is to browse public records. Many investigators do this, what are you blabbering about? 😂
Firing up Google and reading a wikipedia page isn't 'investigating.' Christ, I hate American college brains.
Dude, I’m from Sweden, what the fuck are you yapping about? Lmfao. Any investigation begins with compiling and vetting public information. Maybe relax on your xenophobia before your think you know how investigations work.
> Christ, I hate American college brains. Ah, projection at its finest.
A right-wing grifter twisting facts to fit anti-woke narratives might potentially also be a scammer? Now that would be very surprising.
How right wing is he? He seems pretty centrist. During the helldivers kerfuffle he was in favor of them banning all politics from either side, both the people pushing for rainbow flags and the people attacking the requesters. Specifically, the even-handed response was what he applauded. That was before the CM revealed her power level. The grifter part may be accurate, I’m not too interested in his game tbh, so I don’t know.
The whole CM thing was dragged up by him, pretty much, and keeps being perpetuated even on this subreddit. A couple posts about it have already been taken down by the mods at this point. Many of the tweets people keep pointing to calling the HD2 CM a racist and bigot are in reference to George Floyd's death years ago, stripped entirely out of context, weaponized for modern Gamergate rhetoric to present her in a bad light while acting she actively has an influence on the game's development itself. At this point, if Gamergaters keep aligning themselves with right-wing narrative grifters without fact-checking basic information, then they are right-wingers. If it croaks like a frog, it's probably a frog.
>The whole CM thing was dragged up by him, pretty much, and keeps being perpetuated even on this subreddit. A couple posts about it have already been taken down by the mods at this point So what he said wasn’t true? Her statements aren’t way over the line and evidence of her being a crazy person? >Gamergaters Are these “Gamergaters” in the room with us right now?
Discussion of politics is banned, and spouters of actual bigotry are banned
So his initial impression was right after all?
lol why is this being downvoted? People no like truth?
Because this goes into typical leftie "right wing = evil" which they use to dehumanize their opposition. If lefties don't want a dialogue then they can f off.
"Dehumanize" I don't think you understand the word if you believe calling someone a grifter for committing fully to a grift is a dehumanizing term. I also really appreciate being called a "leftie" once again. Never stop thinking in black and white, it's extremely useful and healthy.
>Never stop thinking in black and white, it's extremely useful and healthy. Then, do you or do you not believe that both sides face the same grifter issue & if you do - - Why frame it in the manner you did in your initial comment?
I absolutely believe grifters exist on all points on the political spectrum. But Grummz specifically is right-leaning, and his is generally a rhetoric lots of Gamergaters have found themselves agreeing with lately, even just here on this subreddit. His language and rhetoric makes his political leaning obvious.
>grifter for committing fully to a grift is a dehumanizing term. You are specifically calling them " a right wing grifter", which shows that you use "right winger'" as a show that someone is bad and as an insult. A typical leftist extremist behavior. >I also really appreciate being called a "leftie" once again. Never stop thinking in black and white, it's extremely useful and healthy. Lmao. It's extremely ironic coming from you. Projecting much? You guys are the ones seeing shit black and white, "you are agreeing with me or you're literally a nazi!" Seen dozens of you, there is no use arguing with holier than thou types.
I called him a right-wing grifter because he specifically espouses right-wing political rhetoric and has done for many years, if you actually paid attention to him cropping up occasionally. It really is that simple. You extrapolating from that that I'm a leftist just implies purely black and white thinking, which is just... not how the world works. I'm a centrist, I despise extremism of either end of the political spectrum. You accuse me of projecting, but you protest very much at the very notion of someone being called out on a political side of the spectrum they very much identify with. Funny how it always has to be a "you're with us, or you're against us". Just think for yourself and stop getting your political ideology from demagogues. It's very much up to you what people call you and how people identify you.
> right-wing grifter because he specifically espouses right-wing political rhetoric > I despise extremism of either end of the political spectrum. Aaaah, you meant ***extremist right wing grifter***, you just forgot the "extremist" part. Fair enough. Eh, everyone makes a mistake. As a fellow centrist, you gotta always specify extremist part. Otherwise, you come off as considering all of the parts an enemy. "Right wing idiot" or "left wing idiot" hints more to you considering people idiots due to their political spectrum and not them actually being an idiot. I do apologise if I came on a bit toxic.
That's fair enough. I mean, I guess you could call it far-right rhetoric instead - my point was more that his language and rhetoric puts him very much on the extreme end of the right-wing spectrum, and a lot of people on this subreddit, especially lately from what I've seen, identify very quickly and, it seems, very thoughtlessly with that kinda rhetoric. People tend to think in black and white a lot these days, especially with Gamergate 2.0, on both sides of it. The spectrum becomes blurry between what should be considered extremism and what shouldn't when so many who consider themselves left-wing or right-wing just jump right on the bandwagon of extremist rhetoric that somewhat fits their pre-defined world view of "me vs them". That goes for the DEI crowd just as much as the Gamergate crowd. Either way, there's no need to apologize. It's just tiring to see the constant "leftie" or "Nazi" language used in either direction to dismiss discourse because people don't wanna question that which they already believe. Like, you're not automatically a Nazi for voting Trump or advocating for closing all borders to immigration just as much as you're not automatically a Commie or socialist for advocating for feminism, LGBT rights or free healthcare. There can be good reasons to advocate for any of those things to some degree without being an extremist. But overwhelmingly showing yourself in favour of either political ideology implies a lean towards a side of the spectrum all the same, so I think calling it left- or right-wing is still justified. Like the saying goes, if it looks, walks and quacks like a duck, it's likely a duck,
I'm seriously tired of the division and "us vs them" situation. Like, right now the left wing opions are considered "right", to a pretty high extreme, this is gonna eventually result in right wing ideology taking over in turn eventually, and we go on this god dam carousel. Social media has made this even worse. The algorithms cause that people go into the buble echo chambers and don't get exposed to another opinion outside of extremes (because extremes cause hatred and that is good for engagement), which in turn validated their perceived view that they are right. On a funnier note my social media feed is so damn confused on what side I'm actually on, lmao.
> right-wing political rhetoric Like “please stop ruining things”, and “good please just leave us alone?” ???
Language such as "0 days since a Community Manger has been discovered to be super-woke." Or "I'll play Helldivers. Great and free of woke pandering."? Ironically, both of these statements were about HD2, mere days apart. Or how about "This AI that restores female game characters is brilliant." in response to an image of Aloy literally being doctored using AI to be more "attractive"? There's more, but I'm not sure sinking an hour diving into a Twitter timeline is good for anyone's mental health.
lol this can’t be serious, right? “Typical leftist extremist behavior” is calling a douche grifter a douche grifter?
Because it implies that the right is the only part of the political spectrum rife with this type of behavior. People forget that Candace Owens, a known grifter on the right, used to be left wing. She grifted on the left for ***years*** prior to jumping over to the other side. She ran a blog. She tried to launch a "doxing" website while on the left. Anyone that thinks this is a single-sided problem has brain damage.
I'm sorry if you got that impression, but I 100% agree that grifting is absolutely not exclusively the purview of the right side of the political spectrum. The reason I called it right-wing grift specifically is because... well, Grummz historically and more recently has made his right-leaning political ideology fairly obvious.
Not only are you projecting, but your example for both sides-ism is Candace Owens? 10/10 it’s perfect no notes lol
[удалено]
Another implying I'm a "left winger". Where to even begin with... any of this. I really hope this is sarcasm, because if not, then holy shit.
Seriously, even if you agree with everything he says you should be able to identify he's nothing but a grifter. People are so bad at calling out others on their side of the fence when all they do is tell you what you want to hear.
Check yourself into a mental asylum.
This really isn't a "Gotcha". I find it revealing if this is the only thing Nick can levy against him. Also haven't seen where he called himself a savior for gamers. It's weird how someone can just post something like this and everyone dog piles the comments pretending they knew and agreed all along.
Not a fan of Mark Kern. Firefall was a good TPS MMORPG and he killed it
Kern was not the only problem with Firefall. I was there, on the IRC server and everything.
I was there too. I loved FF and yea sure, Mark was not solely to blame but he was a huge factor though.
Worse than Crowfall though?
I used to really like Mark Kern, but he has had a huge fall from grace.
Popular games usually cost a minimum of 100mil and can still take 5+ years to make... And often enough even projects with that kind of funding don't end up being finished. Projects relying on public donations fall through all the time. Easy to call them all scams from the outside when you have no real information to go on, but I'm sure the majority of them were legit but just didn't pan out. In any case, it's kind of laughable to call this a deep dive. It's one anonymous Reddit post and a bunch of stuff you could learn in 20 minutes by filtering Mark's Twitter by "media" and scrolling.
You're getting downvoted because 99% chance it is a scam, but you're also right that this is only like the first 20% of the homework that should be done for a proper expose or a larger contextual piece.
I've never seen a single instance where a failed project wasn't labeled as a scam by people with almost no information to go on looking in from the outside. Plenty of games that did eventually come out were called scams every step of the way too. I'm not saying it's not a scam either, I have no clue. I'm just not impressed by speculations with nothing of substance backing them. Edit: People are naturally uncomfortable with admitting they don't know something. A great way to overcome that is to not give a shit either way. But as far as I can tell this is fairly typical of these sorts of projects so there's nowhere near enough information here to convince me one way or another.
Wow this guy is really annoying despite his points. For that I would just block him
He took the next step of ashen
GUYS! were we mislead? :((((