That’s not particularly new I know, but it’s not everyday a presidential candidate decides to take on the geek nation…
It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman’s memory of war from the comfort of mom’s basement
Wow, way to be retarded. This is from McCain’s official blog site. Impressive. Michael Goldfarb (the original poster of quip) did try to take it back later with this:
If my comments caused any harm or hurt to the hard working Americans who play Dungeons & Dragons, I apologize. This campaign is committed to increasing the strength, constitution, dexterity, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma scores of every American.
Apology for idiotic comment or not, Lum deftly states the realities of the situation:
Someone needs to let Granddad McCain know that since he left the military in 1937, quite a few of today’s Generation Kill actually not only play Dungeons and Dragons - THEY PLAY MMOs. One of the things Sanya Weathers made a point of doing at Mythic (you know, when not disparaging McCain’s memories from her mom’s basement) was making sure that military DAOC players deployed to Iraq had all their subscription worries taken care of. You know, since they had other things on their mind and all, like bullets.
But, you know, it’s typical of the pro-McCain Sarsparilla and Goofy Golf crowd to disparage a fellow politican’s reputation from the comfort of Karl Rove’s basement.
Ok, so Goldfarb takes a shot at the internet geeks in general and then realizes that’s probably not the best idea in today’s culture. As a matter of fact, since McCain has no idea how the internet or technology in general works, you’d think Goldfarb would be trying to bring them into the fold, not alienate them. That takes the cake for this months You’re Just Dumb Award™.
Only by a close call did Goldfarb win the award though. Apparently Dennis Dyack is on the move…away from neogaf. He’s been banned. I can’t say I’m incredibly surprised. Dyack, much like some other developers out there, likes shoot his mouth off and make random comments about people and the like when his game/company (or just for shits and giggles) is called into question. It’s both hilarious and sad. Well, more hilarious than anything. It reminds me of things like .plan updates from back in the day.
And while not an asshole (well, it depends who you ask), Bill Roper gave a serious run for the award with his interview on 1UP:
GFW: At what point did you guys feel like maybe you shouldn’t have done the hybrid model? Was it before or after you launched Hellgate?
BR: Before we launched.
GFW: So you already knew…
BR: We knew before we launched. There was enough feedback from people where we realized, yeah, we probably made a mistake. But at that point…the train had left the station.
It does sound like there wasn’t much choice at that point, but there had to be something. It’s lacking in responsibility at best to release a product you know is broken, sell lifetime subscriptions and go around pimping the game and pretending everything is hunky dory even though you knew it wasn’t before the release. I know time/money/resources constraints often lead the way, but Roper and company killed not just his company, but two others (the hosting company and an art company or something like that) when they released a product they knew just wasn’t up to snuff. They put countless people out of jobs, including themselves, and disrespected a lot of people by releasing a knowingly b0rked game.
What Would Matt Do: There you have it. The internet is still full of idiots and while my heart goes out to all of the people that lost their jobs with Flagship going down, I can’t have that much pity for Roper himself or his top level guys that knew. I’d pretty damn upset if I had been working there and they released the product in such a state.