Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Let's Play Violated Hero 5! part 16

And we’re getting near the end of the Violated Hero 5 playthrough.  Barring any more twists and turns, we’re down to the last boss.  For the start of all this insanity go back to here.  Usual rules apply: if you’re underage or don’t like sex, please don’t go any further as you’re likely to see things you’re not supposed to.

Last up we finally found the missing minor boss, the darkwitch, and it turned out she had more HP than the other major bosses.  This proved no obstacle to Luka-clone and he took her down.

Did he actually win one for real this time (as opposed to previously defeated bosses getting right up after the fight and attempting to jump his bones)?  The darkwitch says his light is too strong and starts to fade into the darkness.  Ah, but as long as there’s abyss she will be reborn.  There looks to be a lot of abyss.  So no change here either.  Oh well, time to push on to Shiva.

Onto stage two of abyss and is that the silhouette of another mini-boss?


Yep it is.  Her name is Remedy and she’s some sort of witch with melty legs.  Most of the mini-boss ends so far have been more brutal than sexy.  What does Remedy have for us?


A really brutal handjob it seems.  Afterwards she takes the rare (for VH5 mini-bosses) step of not killing us.  She wants to keep us as a pet, but the text makes it clear that’s not likely to be a long life before we’re emptied out.

For the rematch I one-shot her for spite with the nice new special attack Luna-Tea and Satan gifted me.

Then it’s a straight run to the end where Shiva is waiting.  She tells us we’ve been a bit a bit slow in arriving and shows us the consequences of that.


Um, that looks bad.  At least all the annoying early bosses with their things-in-the-ass Bad Ends are going down first.

Shiva mentions this has happened before, I think.  Unfortunately we’re going to struggle for good translation here if the story gets too complicated.  Because of her curse Luka-clone has to defeat her to save the universe.  I think she wants him to defeat her but because of the curse is going to fight to the best of the ability.  As best of her ability is universe-shredding Destruction God I suspect this might be a little tricky for our heroic ambulatory bag of concentrated semen.

It’s the last battle.  I have 6 super potions remaining.  Let’s see how many zillions of HP I have to get through.


Oh.  That’s less than the darkwitch.

Oh wait.  This is going to be one of those multi-stage things.

And indeed the combat cuts out after we knock half her HP off.


Shiva says she’s having fun and all her previous wounds heal up.  The end-game harem of Luna-Tea, Satan and Safi all show up to cheerlead.  Well, they try to seal Shiva, but that doesn’t work so well so it’s back to Luka-clone.

The game thoughtfully gives an option to go back to the item screen.  This is great as I can preserve my remaining super potions by using the basic HP and MP potions to max out my HP and MP.  And round 2!

Shiva has now reached the same level as her minion with a 1000 HP.  Okay, so she absorbs damage a lot better.  Everything is doing less than 100 per hit until I unleash the tier 4 special attack and knock of about 300 HP.  This triggers interlude number 2.

Time for Shiva to take the gloves off.  She goes all glowy and then it’s time for round 3.

This time her glowiness is reflected in the artwork as her hands glow with destructive magic (this is the same picture that’s on her profile on the VH5 website).  Her HP have increased, but only to 1200.

Her attacks do a lot more damage this time.  As this is likely to be the last battle I alternate between tier 4 special attack and super potion.  About four hits later and I’ve won.  But the likely harem shenanigans will have to wait until next blog post as we always show the Bad End first.

C’mere alt!Luka-clone.

This time Ariel doesn’t sneer or run away.  Luka-clone tells her to go and save whoever she can.

Not that it’ll matter.  Shiva’s gonna blow up everything.  She tells Luka-clone to enjoy extinction with her.

Bad End scene one looks like we’re about to get a good suck.  Either that or she’s about to fry Luka-clone’s erection with lightning.


She’s a lamia type, so Luka-clone gets all coiled up in snake body first (although it’s described as feeling slimy like a slug.  Snakes don’t feel like that as any exasperated herpetologist will tell you).  She also has the long snake tongue as well.  After that’s tugged a big load from Luka-clone she takes him in her mouth for a good long suck.

Next scene and Luka-clone is all bound up in snake tail while she rubs his erection against the outside of her pussy.


Translation gets a bit tricky again.  I think Luka-clone tries to talk her out of annihilating the universe.  She says it’s impossible unless anyone can solve the curse branded to her body.

Then they start fucking.  Shiva makes Luka-clone come and then makes him watch while she destroys the tree world containing his village and presumably friends and family.

Yeep.  Even I’m not that brutal.

Horrorhead:  You can be.  Be like Brian Keene.  Let me out.  We’ll destroy a world or three.  It’ll be fun.  Let meee ouuuttttt.

And then she keeps on making him ejaculate while she blows up world after world.

So much for my theory of Shiva having so much fun playing with Luka-clone she’d be distracted from destroying everything.  I guess that brings a whole new meaning to fucking someone while something they love is destroyed in front of them.

Even though everything has turned dark we still get an interlude before presumably Shiva’s extra scene.

Shiva is disappointed the person who could have solved her curse never arrived before she obliterated everything.  Now the rest of existence is collapsing, including the abyss.  Shiva decides her last moments will be having sex with Luka-clone.  She switches to a more human form and sits astride him for one last fuck.


And they fuck, with everything going dark around them.

It turns out there is more to Shiva’s action than seeking a last burst of hedonistic pleasure.  She doesn’t want to be solely a goddess of destruction.  She also wants to be a goddess of creation.  She’s doing this with Luka-clone because she wants to conceive and when she does conceive she tells Luka-clone that this will be the next world to replace everything that was destroyed.

Everything fades to black apart from a tiny spark in Shiva’s belly.

..

..

Okay so that was unexpected.  As much as I joke about when Dieselmine gets things wrong, I’m going to have to congratulate their writers here.  They did a very good job with that ending.

Next up, the likely harem shenanigans as we check out the Good End.

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Let's Play Violated Hero 5! part 15

And we’re getting near the end of the Violated Hero 5 playthrough.  Four major bosses down, nine of the minor bosses.  That leaves us with one major boss, a minor boss (who I really hope isn’t some kind of hidden content I managed to miss) and whatever deliciously naughty scenes we get at the end.  If you want to see where it all started, the link to the first part is here.  Usual disclaimers apply: It’s a hentai game featuring lots of sexually explicit cartoons—go no further if you’re underage or a moaning prude.

Okay, so last time around Luka-clone added Team ‘Good’ to his list of conquests (not that way—this isn’t a Rance game!).  As with Satan (and most of the other bosses if we’re perfectly honest), ‘defeating’ Luna-Tea doesn’t actually equate to defeating her.  She’s about to power up to turn Luka-clone into a Rorschach smear when the throne room goes all starry and wibbly-wobbly.

This upsets Luna-Tea, who starts saying it’s too soon and she’s not ready.

Then Alice-clone with a silly hat shows up—the real Big Bad.


Luna-Tea knows who she is.  Satan doesn’t.  Alice-clone gives her real name as Destruction God Shiva.

Whelp.  If that’s not a name to run from really fast I don’t know what it.

Because both Satan and the goddess were defeated by Luka-clone, a lowly human, it means the balance has collapsed and Shiva gets to eat the universe.

Good news, Luka-clone.  You beat both Team Evil and Team Good.

Bad news, Luka-clone.  Because of that the universe is about to be destroyed.

Uh oh, I think we done a very bad thing.

They talk about more background, which I can only get snippets of because my ability to read Japanese is non-existent and automatic machine translation is only marginally better.  There was once an abyss filled with hundreds of worlds.  Shiva destroyed most of them.  It’s her curse.

Luna-Tea mentions a hidden world.  Ooh, is this where we’ll find mystery minor boss no.10.

Shiva reminds Luka-clone he is responsible for all this.  He can fix it, but it means going to her home turf and defeating her.

After Shiva leaves it’s an opportunity for everyone to cheer him on.

Luka-clone mentions the naughty ceremonies Ariel put him through to boost his powers.  Luna-Tea says that’s all lies.  Haha.  Busted, Ariel!

Oh, or maybe not.  I’m thinking this game really needs to be translated.  I’m missing a ton of story points and to be fair to Dieselmine, I think they might have put a better story together this time.

Okay, it seems like Ariel’s shenanigans actually worked as some kind of placebo.  Luka-clone must have picked up a power boost from doing the naughty with Ariel, otherwise there was no way he should have been able to defeat both Satan and Luna-Tea.

Uh oh.  Both Satan and Luna-Tea have come to the conclusion Luka-clone does get a power boost from all the naughty sex stuff.


That means there’s only one way to save the universe.  They both pounce on him and wrap their ginormous boobies around his cock.


Quit complaining Luka-clone.  It’s to save the world!

(and it looks fucken hot)

After a bit of smooshing, Luka-clone ends up dirtying their breasts.  They like the taste so much they start sucking directly from the source.

Satan says to give it all until our balls and head are empty.  Um, isn’t that defeating the whole point of this?

So after Luka-clone has been sucked dry by the big fluffy breasts and hot lips of Satan and Luna-Tea he falls over in a wizened . . .

Don’t be silly.  He’s a VH protagonist.  Their balls are literally bottomless.

All the girls wish him luck before his trip to the abyss.  Hate to point this out, Luka-clone, but you’re doomed whatever happens.  Even if you beat Shiva there’s no way you’re going to survive the attentions of this horny foursome when you return.  Then it's time to enter the abyss.


He’s not going into the abyss alone.  Ariel is coming with him (Not by choice—the goddess forced her).

And after that monstrous pile-up of cut scene followed by boss fight followed by cut scene followed by boss fight, etc. etc., we’re back to the main game board.

I 100% the last level and find out the new special attack Satan and Luna-Tea have gifted me with does a lot of damage but uses up nearly all my MP to use.

Back to the map screen and ooh look, new world.


And there, if I’m not very much mistaken is the missing minor boss no.10.


In the abyss the wandering mooks are moth girls with no arms.  The pissed-off-looking one vants to suck our blud.


At the end of the track Ariel warns us a follower of Shiva is about and then the last minor boss finally makes an appearance.  She looks very succubus-y and is wearing a mask.  She also talks about darkness a lot, which probably explains the mask.  I’m not sure what her name is, mainly because I’m not sure what the first character is.  It seems to be missing off the first 10 katakana charts I googled.  I think it’s a ‘Wa’, which would make her name something like Warumine, but I’m not totally sure on this.

I go and check the dlsite for Violated Hero 5 and find out she’s not a succubus, but a Darkwitch.  They don’t give her name in English.  This is where I also find out they do have the names of the major characters and I’ve been getting them completely wrong for the past month.  I’d like to claim this was deliberate, in the same way I always call the protagonist Luka-clone, but no, it’s me being stupid.  I forgot to check for some reason.  I was probably distracted by boobies.  Anyway, I’ll keep using the names I’ve been using rather than confuse everyone.

Also distracted by boobies is our hero, Luka-clone.  Ariel shows why Luna-Tea sent her along by slapping him out of it.  And then the fight.

It shouldn’t be too hard, she’s just a minor boss after all.  A quick check to see how many HP she has and . . .


Whoa!  Is that right?

Time to abuse more super potions.  She talks a lot about darkness and her sex feeler attack is generic black suction tube.  Once again a single super potion is all I need to quaff and that’s enough juice for me to reduce that massive HP total to 0.

Which means it’s time to yank alt!Luka-clone off the bench as our official Bad End tester.  Don’t worry, buddy.  I have a good feeling about this one.  She looks hot.

Scene one starts off with a nice bit of paizuri.  The voice actress sounds familiar.  If she’s the one I think she is we’re about to be blown by a vacuum pump.


Yep.  Many deliciously filthy blowjob sounds follow as lots of creamy cum gets sucked from Luka-clone’s balls.

At the end of the first scene Luka-clone is yanked into darkness.  This could be worrying as VH has been  relatively well restrained for a while.  Their writers must be itching to do something crazy.

No, it’s a very nice woman-on-top scene.


She says she’s going to drown him darkness.  I think she’s getting darkness and pleasure mixed up.  She rubs her pussy along the outside and then her labia puff up to a ridiculous degree as she takes him inside.  Then there’s a lot of tight squeezing and bouncing up and down until Luka-clone sprays white stuff all over the place.  Again.  And Again.  And Again.  Eventually his mind gets overwhelmed by the darkness and he forgets why he came down here.

See, I said I had a good feeling about this one.

Unless she drains us to a withered husk . . .

But no.  She takes us into the darkness and keeps us as a cum slave.  Apart from the little matter of Shiva blowing up the known universe, it’s not that bad of a Bad End at all.

Apart from the early bosses, Violated Hero has been very restrained on the whole violated bit.  There’s only Shiva left now.  Maybe they’ve been saving up all the freaky stuff for her Bad Ends.  Find out here.

Tuesday, September 09, 2014

Let's Play Violated Hero 5! part 14

Hmm.  So last week ended up being a little strange.  I was engaged in a mad race to finish a short story for a competition (and failed because the damn thing ran over 10K words) and then got distracted by the current upheaval in the videogaming community.  That’s enough of that anyway.  Time to get back to the playthrough of Violated Hero 5 (The first part is here for new visitors).

On the off chance I picked up some new readers with my last few blog posts, this warning is important:  Violated Hero 5 is a sexually explicit hentai game.  The following is not suitable browsing material for minors.  And I definitely don’t want any holier-than-thou types sniffing around for things to feed their outrage habit.

With all that out of the way, where were we?

Oh yeah, we kicked Satan’s ass.  Sweet.

Satan is a little shocked at being beaten.  Luka-clone does his usual naive hero thing of asking Satan politely to desist from oppressing the poor humans.

Um dude, this is like Satan.  The supreme evil in the universe and all that.

Oh shit.  I think she's mad about losing.


Turns out she’s not exactly “defeated” either.

At this point I got a little confused by the translation.  I thought Luka-clone might have killed her in that typical ‘the enemy I refuse to kill because of my morals obligingly leaps onto the end of my sword’ way storytellers use when they need a baddie dead but don't want their hero to actually do the dirty deed directly.

Nope.  This time it’s the opposite way around from the Safi scene.  Satan is about to tear Luka-clone apart – in the giblets and gore sense rather than the sexual sense VH usually employs.  Thankfully, Luna-Tea show up at that moment.  Or maybe not thankfully, her silhouette was on the level map as a boss fight as well.

Then it gets a bit Reservoir Dogs complicated.  Luna-Tea starts powering up to obliterate Satan once and for all.  Safi comes charging to the rescue and Ariel gets in between Safi and Luna-Tea.

Turns out Safi’s intervention didn’t achieve a great deal and we’re back to the goddess charging up to dish out Satan’s imminent obliteration.  Which leaves . . .

Luka-clone, don’t tell me you’re stupid enough to step right into the middle of . . .

Yes, of course Luka-clone, the ambulatory bag of concentrated semen and hopelessly naive hero, is going to step right between a goddess and the supreme evil of that universe.  Why not.  Sigh.

Ariel, who’s been completely terrified of Luna-Tea all game, frantically begs Luka-clone to get on his knees and beg for mercy before he ends up like Rorschach at the end of Watchmen (does that still need a spoiler warning?  Both the comic and film have been out for aeons).

Luna-Tea decides not to turn our hero into a smear of giblets and gore and offers to make him king of the humans.

That’s weakness!  If they don’t obliterate you on the spot they’re scared of you.  Get in there, Luka-clone!

. . . and fight both of them.  At the same time.  Ulp.


Um, Luka-clone buddy, I think we may have been a little rash here.

I think this is a new thing for the series.  I don’t think they’ve ever set two bosses on the main character simultaneously before (although I might be wrong as I never made it to the last sections of VH3).  It’s less intimidating that it first looks.  Neither hits that hard.  Once again the tier 2 special attack seems to do more damage than the tier 3 special attack for some reason.  Quaffing one super potion is enough to get past Ariel and another two give me enough juice to take out Luna-Tea.  It also helps that they switch to the useless sex attack at critical points in the fight.  (Ariel’s is some weird slime tube thing.  I have no idea where she’s been stashing that).

The annoying thing from my perspective is I don’t know whether I’ll need to repeat the fight multiple times to check if the Bad End varies depending on whether you lose to both, or Ariel or Luna-Tea on their own after the other is taken out.

Anyway, I use the handy boot icon (escape vs normal mooks, instant death vs bosses) to throw the fight to both.

Afterwards Luna-Tea decides not to murderate us.  She needs a puppet king and that post has Luka-clone’s name on it.  Luka-clone refuses, obviously, which means we get to see what perverted sexual stuff the goddess will use to break poor Luka-clone’s fragile little mind.

And we start with that Violated Hero favourite – a good ole cock stamping.


Hmm, if Luna-Tea’s foot is going down on Luka-clone’s penis, then where is Ariel’s stamping foot going.  Oh yeah, best to not think about that too much.

shiver

You know how if you squeeze the bottom of a tube of toothpaste . . .

No, let’s not think about that either.  Or delicate dangly parts of the male anatomy being squished in general.

They complain about Luka-clone dirtying a goddess’s foot with his semen (Hey, not our fault!) and so they get Luka-clone to clean it off.  With his mouth.

You have to watch out for the “good” ones.  They’re always meaner.

Now it’s time for scene two and . . .


Ah.  Thanks Dieselmine.  Tons of angry holier-than-thou fucks on the rampage and you give me something that doesn’t look dodgy at all . . .

I should probably remind people again that these are cartoons and the thing with cartoons is you can screw around with size and proportion to exaggerate certain things for effect.  I mean look at the size of Ariel’s foot as she tries to boot Luka-clone into Luna-Tea’s pussy.  I’m sure she was about the same size as Luka-clone when they were doing the naughty earlier.  The size changes also become more obvious when you check out the other pics below.

Generally these games try to hit a range of kinks to make sure a wide audience can find at least one scene that hammers their fetish button.  I suspect this is flirting with pseudo-incest mother-son fantasies.  The last game had Busty, the ludicrously pneumatic cow demoness, in a Bad End that also played around with size differences, as well as big breasts and lactation.  That’s how these games tend to be.  Sometimes they stray into territory that’s a little dubious by Western standards.  Personally I’d prefer it if the protagonist for VH6 was six foot tall, built like a brick shithouse . . . and still got sexually demolished by hot, big-titted succubi, but I’m guessing Dieselmine know their audience better than me.  They had me hooked at big-titted demon girls anyway.

I didn't want to say anything on this, but sensitive area, people getting wrong idea, massive outrage machine on the internet, yadda, yadda, only here for the giant demon boobies anyway.

Moving on . . .

Luka-clone gets to fuck a goddess with some help from Ariel.  I feel a little sorry for Ariel as she doesn’t seem to be getting much out of this.  Then she pulls a flogger out and starts flogging our back.

Well that’s what sympathy gets you.  Thanks Ariel, would you like to rub some lemon juice into the flayed flesh while you’re here.

So we have a sort of half-maternal, half-BDSM hybrid Bad End scene.  Luka-clone breaks after he pours most of his spirit along with his cum into Luna-Tea’s juicy pussy.

Because they’re a major boss, we get the usual interlude followed by an extra Bad End scene.

Luna-Tea talks with Ariel a bit about balance, I think.  The impression I get is that if things aren’t in balance then a scary monster girl will show up and eat all the worlds.  I’m guessing that’s Alice-clone in a silly hat and she’ll turn out to be the overall final boss (They did drop a big hint – she’s the girl on the cover of the game after all).

Afterwards Luna-Tea goes off to have fun with her boy-toy Luka-clone (who seems to have grown a foot and a half since the last scene).  Aside from a blindfold on Luka-clone this is a much more restrained scene as the amply-gifted-in-the-chest-department goddess rides him to multiple magic-induced orgasms.


Oh, and we’re not done either.

At the end Ariel shows up and complains that she’s been left out.

Does this mean?  Yes, it’s a fourth scene featuring Luna-Tea and Ariel double pussy-rubbing Luka-clone’s cock.


The scene looks a little complicated and I’m not entirely sure what’s happened to Luna-Tea’s left leg, but everyone appears to be having a good time.  Luna-Tea and Ariel take turns to put Luka-clone’s manhood in their vaginas.  Everyone gets splattered with the white stuff.

It’s good to be the king, I guess.

It's also good for me as with four scenes I can be reasonably certain the same Bad End is used regardless of which combination of Ariel and Luna-Tea is around when they defeat you.

So the rule for VH protagonists:  Lose to the later bosses and not the early ones.  (Unless it’s the psycho one at the end of VH2.  If a tail goes in your ass and carries on until it comes out of your mouth, very bad things have happened to your insides).

So we’ve beaten both Team Evil and Team Good.  I guess that leaves Alice-clone in a silly hat.  Maybe we’ll also find out where the mystery tenth boss is hiding.

Sunday, September 07, 2014

This should have been when I tell you about a hot new story, but...

This week didn't exactly go to plan.  Actually the whole of August didn't exactly go to plan, considering I was too ill to do anything for half of it.

I did have a good idea for a (loosely) summer themed story for Literotica's current story contest.  It was last minute, but I reckoned I might be able to finish it this week and get it out before the deadline of Saturday midnight.  (This is also why the Violated Hero 5 updates have been absent this week).

Then I got distracted by the #GamerGate stuff and had to hack up one of those mental hairballs just to get rid of it.

Even then I thought I might make it, until I realised how long the story wanted to be.  By Friday I had typed up 7,500 words and just needed to finish the 1st draft, type up the rest, edit it and then get it in before midnight.  Didn't seem so bad, except the rest of the story ended up running to 21 pages.  The succubus decided she was going to give someone a thorough sexual working over in this story.  It's a new succubus character, but I think people will like her.  It's also a really steamy story.  Plenty of hot succubus sex in this tale.

You won't have to wait too long to read it.  I didn't make this deadline, but Literotica's Halloween contest isn't far off and pretty much all of my stories are appropriate for that theme.  It will give me a chance to properly edit it so I don't embarrass myself with tons of typos and grammar errors.  I'll let you all know as soon as it's posted.

On the positive side, as soon as I realised I wasn't going to make it I switched back to Succubus Summoning and finished typing 210 up.  I'll edit that over the next couple of days and it should be up next week sometime.

As for Violated Hero 5, I'll get back to that tomorrow.

And for me:

Stop getting distracted by political things...
Stop getting distracted by political things...
Stop getting distracted by political things...

Thursday, September 04, 2014

#GamerGate, The Ratner Effect, and how to get rid of a SJW infection

I should be writing other things, but this #GamerGate thing currently causing some seismic upheavals in the videogaming community has burrowed into my head and I’m going to have to write something on it to get rid of the damn thing so I can get back to my other writing projects.  What is #GamerGate?  Uh, it’s complex.  In summary, a section of gaming community has risen up against a gaming press they no longer believe represents their interests.  A good summary can be found here.  And this piece here covers the background leading up to it.

This is something like my third or fourth attempt to write this.  On the previous attempts my utter loathing of Social Justice Warriors (SJW) - a group I despise for their intolerance, shocking hypocrisy, and quickness to censor and stifle opinions they don’t agree with – rose to the surface and drowned the piece in too much hate.  I do have a bias towards the #GamerGate side, but another screaming rant about interfering SJWs doesn’t really add anything new to the discussion.

It’s not about them anyway.  Oh, they play a part, but it’s not the full story.

After following the story on social media for a while, there seem to be several distinct complaints coming out of the gamer camp.

Some are unhappy about the corruption and cronyism displayed in the gaming press.  They think the relationship between some game devs and some game journalists is too pally and this is making the reporting untrustworthy.

Some are unhappy with the adversarial and condescending attitudes of some game journalists.  They’re fed up of going to read articles on their hobby only to be insulted and denigrated as “neckbeards”, “misogynists”, “manchildren” and other slurs.

Some are unhappy with the infiltration of the gaming press by SJWs.  They want to read articles on gaming, not political opinion pieces telling them that game they liked is sexist/racist and they’re a piece of shit for liking it.

On the other side, the gaming press think it’s about angry white males being misogynist assholes, again.  Which is why they’re in a lot more trouble than they realise.

I’ve followed it festering away in the background for the last couple of weeks.  It was when the main gaming sites all put out very similar articles announcing the death of the “gamer” within roughly the same 24 hour period that I sat up and took notice.

I’ve not seen this before.  I’ve not seen media declare war on their own consumers and viciously attack them, which is what the gaming press appeared to be doing.  The reason I’ve not seen it before is because it’s totally fucking insane.  Generally speaking, unless you’re a dominatrix running a BDSM parlour, insulting your own customers is usually a very quick way to go out of business.  A lot of the gaming press (and some gaming devs) seem to have completely forgotten this and are still in attack mode, not realising the only thing they’ll win from this fight is a pink slip from the audience they just alienated.

It reminds me of the Ratner Effect.  Before working as a software developer I spent some years working in the jewellery industry.  Most of my family still work in the same industry.  In 1991 Gerald Ratner was head of one of the biggest jewellery companies in Britain.  During a speech he jokingly referred to his product as cheap and “total crap”.  His customers took this as an insult and voted with their feet.  Within a year Ratner’s off-the-cuff joke had wiped 500 million off the value of his company and nearly destroyed it.

Ratner disconnected himself from his customers.  They wanted nice jewellery.  He told them it was tacky shit.  They went elsewhere.  He lost his job.

What’s happening with #GamerGate looks remarkably similar.  There is a disconnect between producers (gaming press and to some extent game devs) and a large chunk of their consumers (gamers).  Only in this case the relationship has become hostile and extremely ill-tempered.

This can be seen by how #GamerGate is covered.

Some sections of the gaming press have blamed it on misogyny because they’ve become unhealthily fixated on what they see as misogyny in gaming.  Unfortunately this has left them out of touch with the majority of their audience, who are currently upset about issues of content and transparency, and are well and truly hacked off with being branded misogynist for not toeing the media line.  (Not all of the people tweeting the #GamerGate tag are white males.  There are a lot of women and persons of colour.  The one thing they have in common is they’re all dissatisfied with the current gaming press.)

This is a problem I’ve noticed with people who are heavily interested in social justice (As an aside, I believe social justice is a good thing and a laudable aim.  I also think it’s a completely different thing from social justice warriors, who are basically scum), they’re not always aware that other people don’t share their interest to the same intensity.  For the worst of them, the ones that tip over into SJW-asshattery, they see lack of interest as evidence of sexism, racism, etc., and are quick to accuse others of it.  For most normal well-adjusted people that aren’t sexist, racist, homophobic or transphobic, being accused of any of these things is extremely insulting.  The typical human reaction is to lash back . . . and then you end up with the vicious trench warfare seen over the last couple of weeks.

Again it’s a disconnect between media and audience.  Imagine you and your friends are watching an awesome movie.  But you have that one friend that can’t help themselves and has to drone on and on about how the crew was mistreated, that the wildlife was disturbed, that one of the female characters is being objectified, that the foreign character is a negative stereotype.  At some point you’re going to snap and say, “Shut the fuck up!  We’re trying to enjoy this awesome movie here.”

This is why some gaming sites are in real trouble.

Gaming sites have disconnected from gamers.  Gamers wanted cool articles about gaming.  They got academic and political analysis that didn’t interest them.  Gamers wanted trustworthy reviews they could use to determine where they should spend their money.  They got hints of conflicts of interest and possible corruption.  Gamers raised concerns.  They were told they were “dead” and irrelevant.  Gamers will go elsewhere.  Some journalists will lose their jobs.  Some sites will die.

How do you get rid of an SJW infection?  Same way you get rid of any business that no longer serves your needs in a free market – you stop giving them money and they go bust.

While sections of the gaming press are still trumpeting about the misogyny problem (and attacking their readers), their former audience has stolen a play from the classic SJW manual.  They’re boycotting the sites, journalists and game devs they believe no longer speak to them.  Not only that, they’re contacting the advertisers to these sites and telling them they will also see a reduction in business and brand damage for associating with the broken sections of the games press.

By the way, the above, way way more effective than impotent rage-fuelled death threats.

I’m curious to see how this will all pan out.  It could be a seismic change that completely changes the landscape.  Or it could be another one of those internet things that has plenty of sound and fury, but fizzles out after a couple of days and is forgotten after a couple of weeks.

The current web traffic stats for the more hated websites make for interesting reading.  The expression “falling off a cliff” comes to mind.  I’m cautious about reading too much into those graphs (you can google them – alexa + [name of site]) as I don’t know the seasonal variations in web traffic for gaming sites.  However, they do appear to show a sharp downward trend.  I wonder what will happen if these sharp downward trends are still happening a couple of weeks from now.  Will we start to see personnel changes and grovelling apologies?

“Hey gamers, you know when we said you were dead.  We didn’t mean it.  Please come back.  Pleeeeeeeassssse.”

Remember that xkcd cartoon about free speech.

It doesn’t only apply to bigoted old duck-whistle guys.  Insult your audience and they will show you the door.

I wonder if we’re at the beginning of what will be known as The Great Gaming Website Cull of 2014?

UPDATE

I found a link to an article that came out just after mine that comes to the same conclusions, but is much better sourced.  There are more links there explaining the background and also to the articles that detail exactly where the gaming press committed collective suicide.  The writer also keeps a more detached tone (I've had too many run ins with unpleasant SJWs to be able to remain totally objective on that subject unfortunately).

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/09/gamergate_explodes_gaming_journalists_declare_the_gamers_are_over_but_they.html