Yahtzee goes after gaming web-comics

[The Yosemite Bear]

1. who the frag is Yatzee?
2. as I found out from dealing with fundy idiots, "Spontaneous Abortion" is the medical term for a miscarriage. some idiot fundies think that they are the same...
3. in terms of being a male jerk. I was crushed in a relationship because of the trauma of her being assualted by our boss.

[Zixinus]

1. who the frag is Yatzee?

Ben "Yathzee" Cornsaw (or whatever) is the man responsible for Zero Punctuation, a weekly 5-or-so minute video where he reviews a video game in the most hilarious manner possible, point any little flaw he can find. He's sorta popular. The first post contains the video in question.

He also makes some interesting freeware retro games and is relatively intelligent. Among the gaming community, he's like a zoologist stuck in a pet convention. I think.

2. as I found out from dealing with fundy idiots, "Spontaneous Abortion" is the medical term for a miscarriage. some idiot fundies think that they are the same...

Just a normal miscarriage is the topic. I think.

The story is simple: a guy called Tim Buckley makes a 3-day webcomic called Ctrl-Alt-Del, a shitty gaming webcomic with zany humour. One day, he suddenly switches and makes a story about the female lead having a miscarriage, which is a complete brake from the zanny humour. Then the Tim Buckley tells that the story was made because it happaned to him and it turns out that he's an even greater asshole then anybody thought.
Yathzee does his weekly video and breaks away from video games again to do a video decrying gamer comics, which are usually shit. He mentions that internet drama is also what keeps webcomics alive and cites CAD's case as an example.

3. in terms of being a male jerk. I was crushed in a relationship because of the trauma of her being assualted by our boss.

Wait, what?

[Losonti Tokash]

Just popping in here for a second. Zixinus, I know it's a relatively minor thing, but please get your homonyms straightened out. The word you are looking for is "break," not "brake."

[Braedley]

EDIT: Also, Yethzee video isn't a direct attack on CAD. He cites CAD as an example of internet drama. He likes Penny Arcade, and I am guessing here, because they were the first gaming webcomic and they did their stuff seriously. He doesn't hate webcomics as a whole, he even has a section of his site where he shows a list of his favourites (or good ones at least, I don't remember). The video does take a shot at CAD but its point is againts the entire gamer webcomics (for which the "I named no one, so if you feel targeted that speaks of you" massage was for).

But he was attacking CAD. He included the rest of the gamer webcomics because they suffer from the same flaw, but he singled out CAD. What other gamer webcomic (hell, I'll extend this to any comedic graphic story medium) has done a story about a miscarriage? I'll take a shot in the dark and say one (to be generous). He could have used a different and/or more generic situation, say having a secondary but prominent character (either now or would have been in the future) dieing for some unspecified reason. On that bases, the review would have applied to CAD, as I'm sure the child would have been prominent had he/she been born. But no, Yahtzee had to be an ass and single out CAD.

[CaptHawkeye]

But no, Yahtzee had to be an ass and single out CAD.

Oh no, the big bad Yahtzee bad mouthed CAD. Whatever will Buckley do now?

[Instant Sunrise]

I would like to point out that myself and a lot of the webcomics folk that I roll with saw that miscarriage arc from a mile away.

Here is the logic that we figured would lead to this:

• Status Quo is an unchanging God.
• "Grrl Gamer" character announces that she is pregnant.
• Status Quo cannot change, ergo 3 things will happen. 1: Abortion. 2: Not pregnant all along, whoops!. 3: Miscarriage.
• 1 is too controversial, so it is out.
• CAD was trying to handle the issue too seriously to be 2.
• Therefore, the only remaining option for Buckley is 3, a miscarriage.

Tim Buckley is a hack writer and the sooner that people call him out, the better.

[Questor]

I had been souring on CAD for few weeks, and his douchebaggery in the explanation for the arc was what killed it for me. This is a complicated issue, and no webcomic is really set up to handle it, the three frames then a punch-line format is too truncated.

This kind of arc could be fucked up by television shows that have years of character development and a full hour format to tell a story, much less a webcomic. In fact, the only time I can think of it occurring with a main character is JAG, which at least took several episodes to pay it off. IIRC, in JAG the event rocked the entire cast.

[Covenant]

What the hell Braedley? You expect us to honestly feel bad that one member of the fragmented gaming community badmouthed another one about what is probably the most heinously badly envisioned bit of writing yet--and furthermore than he was singled out for it? Despite the subhuman reasoning the creator gave?

If the only special thing about Yahtzee is his soapbox then all you're angry about is that someone with a megaphone called some other guy with a megaphone a douchebag. But I'll say it too--CAD isn't funny and Buckley is a horrible person. You need to develop a healthier level of dispassion for other people's creative outlets if these kinds of things offend you. But you also need to step back and realize that condemnation of a horrible act or thought shouldn't be mitigated just because someone else is doing it, or because they're doing it in a creative context, or because you happen to think their other stuff was funny. There's a certain unhealthy tribalism that's associated with the things that entertain us, and it should be avoided, especially when it's making you defend a guy like Buckley.

It's not like we're going to track you down and beat you to death for reading his comics or even finding them funny, but if you think Yahtzee has any less right than the rest of us to make the honest critique of so many of these internet comics as horrifyingly crass, or think nobody has the right to call him on it, the you've really got to take a step back and get a wider perspective. If a good man says a horrible thing, he should be held accountable for that. If a man of low character says a horrible thing, shouldn't he too be?

[Feil]

So, er, why is Tim Buckley a horrible person? I mean, I knew he was a hack, but that doesn't make one horrible.... Have I missed something, aside from his propensity to put too much text in his comics and the latest OH LOOK, PREDICTABLE DRAMA! arc?

[Zixinus]

He could have used a different and/or more generic situation, say having a secondary but prominent character (either now or would have been in the future) dieing for some unspecified reason.

He thought about internet drama and what better example then latest? Surely,I doubt he will go on about Yirmuhah vs Little Gamers or something. People wouldn't get the point then. If I write about say, cases of food poisoning or riots caused by it, you definitly won't cite an example back in the 1600's if you want to get your point across. You cite the latest one, something that people can relate to.

So, when Yathzee was writing the script for his little soapbox video, he deceided not to use an obsecure example but one that is shocking and one well-known.

Also, he DID cite other examples but they were so boring that they were promply ignored.

[Darth Yoshi]

So, er, why is Tim Buckley a horrible person? I mean, I knew he was a hack, but that doesn't make one horrible.... Have I missed something, aside from his propensity to put too much text in his comics and the latest OH LOOK, PREDICTABLE DRAMA! arc?

I would say that it's because of his cavalier attitude towards his ex-girlfriend and the fact that presumably he used the miscarriage as a pretext to drop her, and then years later made a webcomic about it, which comes off as rubbing her face in it.

[DPDarkPrimus]

So, er, why is Tim Buckley a horrible person? I mean, I knew he was a hack, but that doesn't make one horrible.... Have I missed something, aside from his propensity to put too much text in his comics and the latest OH LOOK, PREDICTABLE DRAMA! arc?

He's an egomaniac, treats people like things, and has sent naked pictures of himself to underage girls.

[Feil]

So, er, why is Tim Buckley a horrible person? I mean, I knew he was a hack, but that doesn't make one horrible.... Have I missed something, aside from his propensity to put too much text in his comics and the latest OH LOOK, PREDICTABLE DRAMA! arc?

He's an egomaniac, treats people like things, and has sent naked pictures of himself to underage girls.

Well, that would certainly qualify o.O

[Cycloneman]

Okay, I hate the shit out of Buckley as much as the next guy, but that whole "showing his penis to an underage girl thing" is bullshit. Those pubes belong to "CammyKnoxville" on the Hockey Zombie forums. If you want to go check, you can probably find several references to it there.

But banning anyone who brings it up (or even the forum it was posted on) and anyone who talked about it (even those defending him) is what makes him an asshole.

[Peptuck]

I've made it a point to try and separate Buckley's ultradickery from the webcomic itself and managed to salvage a few laughs from time to time, but the miscarriage arc just did it in for me. I'm extremely tolerant regarding everything I read or play or listen to, but that just killed whatever lingering enjoyment I had for CAD.

Yahtzee's commentary pretty much echoes my sentiments on CAD at this point.

[Braedley]

What the hell Braedley? You expect us to honestly feel bad that one member of the fragmented gaming community badmouthed another one about what is probably the most heinously badly envisioned bit of writing yet--and furthermore than he was singled out for it? Despite the subhuman reasoning the creator gave?

If the only special thing about Yahtzee is his soapbox then all you're angry about is that someone with a megaphone called some other guy with a megaphone a douchebag. But I'll say it too--CAD isn't funny and Buckley is a horrible person. You need to develop a healthier level of dispassion for other people's creative outlets if these kinds of things offend you. But you also need to step back and realize that condemnation of a horrible act or thought shouldn't be mitigated just because someone else is doing it, or because they're doing it in a creative context, or because you happen to think their other stuff was funny. There's a certain unhealthy tribalism that's associated with the things that entertain us, and it should be avoided, especially when it's making you defend a guy like Buckley.

It's not like we're going to track you down and beat you to death for reading his comics or even finding them funny, but if you think Yahtzee has any less right than the rest of us to make the honest critique of so many of these internet comics as horrifyingly crass, or think nobody has the right to call him on it, the you've really got to take a step back and get a wider perspective. If a good man says a horrible thing, he should be held accountable for that. If a man of low character says a horrible thing, shouldn't he too be?

If you had actually read my posts, then you would realize that my problem wasn't that Yahtzee ripped on CAD, but that he did so and didn't say that it was CAD in particular, and then went so far as to say that it could have been anyone that he was referring to. I also never said that I was offended by the video. In fact, I thought that he made a number of very good points. However, if he had said something like "In case you hadn't figured it out yet, I was just referring to a recent plot line from the Ctrl-Alt-Del webcomic." then I wouldn't have nearly as much distaste for what he did. I think it'd also be more in his character, given his treatment of every game revue he's ever done. Making it plainly obvious who you're talking about and then not admitting it is cowardly and asinine. It'd be like the following conversation:
"There's a big software company that makes an operating system and is an evil, evil, monopolistic empire."
"Oh, you're talking about Microsoft."
"I didn't say that."
It's obvious that the first guy is talking about Microsoft, yet he won't admit to it.

I've never said that Yahtzee didn't deserve to critique or even totally tear others apart, but any other harsh critique for anything else (restaurants, hotels, whatever) wouldn't hold back and say something like "The entire industry, except for Hilton Hotels, are terribly flawed because this one unnamed chain, for example, has the following listed flaws and when I stayed there a week ago, there was a foot fetish convention staying there." No, it wouldn't happen. They may hold Hilton Hotels up as the gleaming gem of the hotel industry (unlikely, but that's neither here nor there), but they wouldn't rip on the entire industry and use a very specific example that applies to only one member and then not name them.

There's also the fact that Buckley now has absolutely no recourse available to him. None. He can't say anything that wouldn't make him look like a bigger douche. If he were to say something along the lines of "It's obvious that Yahtzee doesn't appreciate my style of storytelling," then everyone would say "so you're admitting that the recent Zero Punctuation is about you?" And although he may not deserve any recourse, that's still not reason enough not to give him any.

[Praxis]

I liked it, despite how hypocritical it was of Yahtzee to do such a review,

If you paid attention to the review, Yahtzee readily admits to hypocrisy

[Stark]

Ben "Yathzee" Cornsaw (or whatever) is the man responsible for Zero Punctuation, a weekly 5-or-so minute video where he reviews a video game in the most hilarious manner possible, point any little flaw he can find. He's sorta popular. The first post contains the video in question.

He also makes some interesting freeware retro games and is relatively intelligent. Among the gaming community, he's like a zoologist stuck in a pet convention. I think.

Worst description ever. He's a somewhat accurate comedy writer, not a reviewer. His reviews are totally useless if you actually want 'should I buy this game' information, and many of them only work if you've already played the game in question and can laugh along with the absurdities.

He's also quite inconsistent; liking one game for reasons he hated another, simply to irritate fanboys.

[Instant Sunrise]

If you paid attention to the review, Yahtzee readily admits to hypocrisy

I figured that he was heading off people who dragged his old webcomic out and held it up as a "you're no better than Buckley!" example.

[Covenant]

By the way, I realize this is long. I just like hearing the sound of my voice--so don't mind me, I really don't care all that much, but I do think that there's something to be said for the legitimacy of flaying someone who admits to this level of douchebaggery. It's our duty to lay into them so as to demonstrate how unacceptable we as a society find it. But I don't want to do anything to him other than continue to not read his comic, and I'd feel people are allowed to make their own decisions, so I just wanted to add that as a disclaimer that I'm just enjoying the argument and not really getting too invested in the topic. Flame on!

Braedley, I know what you're saying, but it doesn't make much sense to me. It's hardly cowardly to not mention C.A.D. by name in a tirade against nearly ALL webcomics, especially since he's singled it out for criticism elsewhere if sources are to believed. Plus, I'm not sure he really wanted to supply C.A.D. with any extra viewers... I just don't see it. It's not like there's Queensbury Rules of Honorable Comic Criticism that demand you reference them by name, even when that critique is just one of the many levelled against a wide range of targets.

Plus, you're really taking this too much as the "Anti-CAD rant." Since when has C.A.D. used cut-out game pixels for it's characters, for example? There's an unbelievably vast amount of bad comic art that's all criticized in there, not just C.A.D. But if you can think of a more outrageous example of bad taste from a major or minor webcomic (anything outside of the "wretched obscurity" catagory) then, by all means, let's lay it out!

And, honestly, recourse? Goddammit, why should he have any recourse? I know you covered your ass on this line of attack, but c'mon. The way you defend yourself from claims of being a worthless hack is by making better stuff. If I call Buckley a child-raping son of a illegal immigrant, that's something that he could provide evidence to the contrary and make me look like a loon, possibly take legal action. But if I call him a lousy writer who I hate and who drew possibly the least appropriate comic I can remember a mainstream comic carrying--and that his explination for it was incomprehensibly vile--what the hell kind of recourse to that do you require other than clarifying or apologizing for the entire incident?

Plus, we all know that part was about him. Yahtzee has made harsh comments about C.A.D. before. The practice of editing out most of the Buckley text or simply erasing the last few panels of the comic to improve it is a widespread form of critique/harassment/lulz that's fairly well known--similarly to the "Erase Garfield--or at least all of Garfield's text--from the Garfield comics and it makes them all way better and also way more sad" sort of thing. There's a large and vocal community of people who actively dislike C.A.D. and Buckley in specific, so for him to even think that anyone else would assume there was some other comic handling a Miscarriage plotline would be just nuts.

And if Buckley did say "It's obvious that Yahtzee doesn't appreciate my style of storytelling," I think we would all rightly lampoon him for being an insensitive prick again. There's no justification for that comic, none. Going from comedy to tragedy and then to a random comedy comic, and then back to tragedy... it's deeply insensitive and shows a startling lack of respect for the material. He might as well have handled a rape comic in the same manner, and been suprised at the outcome. Plus, his justification for it was so terrifyingly wrong that it wasn't just an artistic disaster of being unable to handle in any proper way the pain of that kind of an event. That's the real thing--if he wrote that comic because this was something that happened to him or a friend, and it hurt so much and came out of nowhere so fast that he just needed to try to handle and understand it through the lens of his work, and to conduct that internal dialogue externally though his characters, then we would have an awful, horrid comic but a candid look into a wounded psyche. It would be disgusting, but it would have roused sympathy, especially if he also wrote that it was really bringing he and his partner and his family together, and changing his attitude about what it means to be a future parent, and so on.

But instead he gives his "Yeah, I was dating this girl, and I didn't like her that much, just was sleeping with her and being sloppy with the sex because I was like 16 and I didn't want to give up such a good thing. She got pregnant and it was really hard on me, I wanted out but I didn't know what to do--and then she miscarried and that was kinda' the last thing, I couldn't handle all that drama and crying and shit so I walked" story. That story, even without the comic, is horrible. What should have come right after that was "And to this day I regret every step away from her I took--I was a stupid kid, and now older, I know how terrible a thing we did, that I did, and I didn't know any other way to handle this guilt except this kind of a mea culpa. I'm sorry to have let my life dominate a space that you all expect to be about games, fun, and an escape from reality--but I hope you'll be able to look at this as the time that the characters actually grew up a little, just like I'm trying to do." Or something. It's the lack of tact, the history of this guy, as well as the really lousy comic.

I don't like C.A.D. but I honestly never read it and I only hear snippits about this guy. But miscarriage is something that my aunt went through twice, and I can recall the kind of permanent damage that can cause someone's emotions. That he would so tactlessly include it into a plotline simply to erase the "problem" of him inventing a pregnancy is just awful, but his real life actions and his lack of remorse for it are just lousy. So he deserves his five minutes of public shame before we all forget about it and stop caring that much.

[Uraniun235]

Buckley would probably not draw nearly as much ire as he does if he wasn't such a gigantic self-important asshole.

I note with some amusement that the author of the almost-equally-atrocious Dominic Deegan calls Buckley his "buddy". I guess maybe horrible webcartoonists have to stick together...?

[Hotfoot]

Buckley would probably not draw nearly as much ire as he does if he wasn't such a gigantic self-important asshole.

I note with some amusement that the author of the almost-equally-atrocious Dominic Deegan calls Buckley his "buddy". I guess maybe horrible webcartoonists have to stick together...?

I don't see how Dominic Deegan is anything like CAD in the slightest. He's been doing story arcs since near the very beginning, he actually hand-draws his strips, and the guy who makes it is a generally nice guy. I mean, it's not everyone's cup of tea, sure, but there's no reason to make unfair comparisons.

I think it's more the fact that they share the same host, and that he doesn't want to stir up internet dramas.

[Uraniun235]

I didn't say they were the same, I just said DD was atrocious.

[Hotfoot]

I didn't say they were the same, I just said DD was atrocious.

Yet you did equate them in your statement. Even by mentioning them as "together", you draw a comparison which is, frankly, grossly unfair. I happen to like Dominic Deegan, and while it's not perfect, it's not anywhere near what CAD is, and their creators are very much different sorts of people.

Now, I would argue with you about calling the comic "atrocious", but I don't think that this is the time or the place for such a discussion. That you dislike it is fine, but things get messy when you talk about the finer points of what makes a webcomic "good" or "bad", because art is a very subjective thing.

[GuppyShark]

1. who the frag is Yatzee?

Ben "Yathzee" Cornsaw (or whatever) is the man responsible for Zero Punctuation, a weekly 5-or-so minute video where he reviews a video game in the most hilarious manner possible, point any little flaw he can find. He's sorta popular. The first post contains the video in question.

He also makes some interesting freeware retro games and is relatively intelligent. Among the gaming community, he's like a zoologist stuck in a pet convention. I think.

You know, after he ceased his webcomic (which I greatly enjoyed) I thought Yahtzee had disappeared from the Interwebs basically.

It was a thrill to watch his Zero Punctuation videos and be reacquainted with his charmingly educated humour. His freeware adventure games were great too.