~ archived since 2018 ~

ERON Gjoni Needs help to put a nail in the coffin of gag orders for restraining orders.

wazzup987

September 22, 2015

35 upvotes

/r/MensRights

Download the post

Want to save the post for offline use on your device? Choose one of the download options below:

PDF TXT EPUB

Post Information

Title	ERON Gjoni Needs help to put a nail in the coffin of gag orders for restraining orders.
Author	wazzup987
Upvotes	35
Comments	13
Date	September 22, 2015 8:56 AM UTC (10 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/3lwynv/eron_gjoni_needs_help_to_put_a_nail_in_the_coffin/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/eron-gjoni-needs-help-to-put-a-nail-in-the-coffin.970888 https://theredarchive.com/post/970888

Comments

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points7 points 10 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]Spidertech500 4 points5 points6 points 10 years ago (20 children) | Copy Link

[–]OoGhiJ_MIQtxxXA 8 points9 points10 points 10 years ago (19 children) | Copy Link

You can read the post in its entirety here, but basically, Eron's girlfriend at the time was emotionally abusive and cheated on him by sleeping with a bunch of video game journalists/industry people in order to get exposure and positive coverage for a video game she created.

When people read the story and began to question the ethical problems that would arise due to something like this happening, his girlfriend ran a smear campaign painting herself as a victim and managed to obtain a restraining order and a gag order against him, forbidding him from speaking on the subject while embarking on a huge publicity tour glorifying herself.

Gjoni lawyered up and fought all of that, and now his ex-girlfriend wants to vacate the restraining order and have everything dismissed quietly now that he's serious about the legal fight. He's asking more funding to continue fighting the case and set a standard for similar cases in the future so people won't have to suffer through what he did.

[–]Spidertech500 4 points5 points6 points 10 years ago (15 children) | Copy Link

[–]tudelord 3 points4 points5 points 10 years ago (14 children) | Copy Link

[–]OoGhiJ_MIQtxxXA 4 points5 points6 points 10 years ago (13 children) | Copy Link

[–]tudelord -2 points-1 points0 points 10 years ago (12 children) | Copy Link

[–]RedditorJemi 2 points3 points4 points 10 years ago (11 children) | Copy Link

[–]tudelord -2 points-1 points0 points 10 years ago (10 children) | Copy Link

Sorry, this just seems really specious to me. Depression Quest is a choose-your-own-adventure-looking text-based game made in Twine with a message about depression. Say what you will about whether you like it, but tell Steve Jackson that doesn't count as a game. Shit, games made in RPG Maker doesn't require much if any programming skill, either. If your measure of a game is how hard it was to make, then that's a really poor metric.

The article sourced in the article you sourced is a bullet list of games. It was one of 2 other games that got "top billing," and by that I mean Grayson literally just mentioned three titles separately at the top of the article and said nothing more, and said no more afterward other than a 50-bullet list that included them in title only. The point of the article wasn't even a review so much as "Steam greenlit 50 more games, including these three which are interesting."

If mere friendship necessitates disclosure then most news reporting would be unethical.

[–]RedditorJemi 2 points3 points4 points 10 years ago (9 children) | Copy Link

Sorry, this just seems really specious to me. Depression Quest is a choose-your-own-adventure-looking text-based game made in Twine with a message about depression

From Twine.org:

"Twine is an open-source tool for telling interactive, nonlinear stories.

You don't need to write any code to create a simple story with Twine, but you can extend your stories with variables, conditional logic, images, CSS, and JavaScript when you're ready."

In other words, almost no coding required.

Say what you will about whether you like it, but tell Steve Jackson that doesn't count as a game.

Steve Jackson makes tabletop games.

Shit, games made in RPG Maker doesn't require much if any programming skill, either. If your measure of a game is how hard it was to make, then that's a really poor metric.

So I gather you've played Depression quest and really liked it?

The article sourced in the article you sourced is a bullet list of games. It was one of 2 other games that got "top billing," and by that I mean Grayson literally just mentioned three titles separately at the top of the article and said nothing more, and said no more afterward other than a 50-bullet list that included them in title only. The point of the article wasn't even a review so much as "Steam greenlit 50 more games, including these three which are interesting."

Oh, sorry, you're right. There was a blurb for 3 games. However, only one game from the entire list of games had a screenshot from the actual game itself, and that was depression quest. I guess you're just unusual in your preferences for games, because everyone else who plays it seems to think it's horrible. There's only like <10 branches in the entire game, and I'm being generous here. Each of those branches would have required some kind of conditional I presume. That's 10 conditional statements, to make one game that will get a featured mention on a games list page on Rock, Paper, Shotgun. So yeah, although this basic formula is not guaranteed to apply in every case, in this case it applies perfectly: minimal effort results in a product with minimal value. Of course, in that long list of games on that page, I would expect that virtually every single one had significant effort put into it, and I'm sure they almost all have at least some significant entertainment value. Depression quest did not. So yeah, Nathan Grayson's undisclosed conflict of interest did actual harm to real developers who deserved a real shot at a mention in the writeup.

If mere friendship necessitates disclosure then most news reporting would be unethical.

Are you saying that nepotism is rampant in journalism? And if that's really you're claim, then what's your point? Are you saying people who dislike conflicts of interest in journalism should have to shut up about it? If so well, sorry, no one's going to censor themselves to please you.

[–]tudelord -2 points-1 points0 points 10 years ago* (8 children) | Copy Link

In other words, almost no coding required.

Literally anyone who's homebrewed a campaign for D&D would find that argument completely irrelevant, and they'd be right.

Steve Jackson makes tabletop games.

Nothing to say here, I don't know what your point is. He makes games. So did Zoe Quinn. So it doesn't matter whether or not it's hard to program.

So I gather you've played Depression quest and really liked it?

Why would you gather that? I said the quality of a game shouldn't be based on how difficult it was to make.

I guess you're just unusual in your preferences for games, because everyone else who plays it seems to think it's horrible.

On a related note, what's your opinion on Metacritic?

Nathan Grayson's undisclosed conflict of interest did actual harm to real developers

Even the blurb itself makes no claim that it's good, merely that it stands out. And stand out it does, your own post proves that. Since the article was not a review of anything, and wasn't intended to showcase anything other than a bunch of Steam Greenlight games which are mostly shit anyway, I find this to be a really specious connection to this different question of whether there was a disclosure issue. For example, do you honestly think Nathan Grayson had never heard of/spoken to/attended an expo with any of the other developers in that list? I'd find it shocking if he had met exactly one, ever in his life.

Depression quest did not [have significant effort put into it].

You don't really know that. She didn't code and it's a short game, but there's no way of knowing how much effort went into the final product on Quinn's part. Poetry is easy to write and short, doesn't make it lazy or even bad.

Nathan Grayson's undisclosed conflict of interest did actual harm to real developers

You pointed out there's a picture of a weird-looking webpage-ish game in the article and of no other game, as if to suggest that that means Grayson likes that one best, but in fact it seems to me it's just the weirdest-looking game to come out on Greenlight among the 50 and so it was featured.

Besides, I surmise there's no difference between a lack of disclosure causing the "feature," and Grayson just finding the game weird, as most of us do, and so deciding to feature it as an experimental game trying something new. I keep mentioning this, but he said it's a "standout." Not that it's good. Maybe that means nothing, maybe it does.

Are you saying that nepotism is rampant in journalism?

No, I'm saying reporters tend to network with potential subjects and so it's not a surprise at all that some of them might know each other. If every journalistic outlet were held to the same standard that GG would hold Grayson to, then basically every article in the NYT about a celebrity or politician of any sort would be littered with disclosure. There comes a point where it crosses into the absurd. If Grayson had had a financial or personal stake in the game, then maybe it'd be different, but he provably didn't.

[–]TheDude41 4 points5 points6 points 10 years ago* (2 children) | Copy Link

[–]garglemesh42 0 points1 point2 points 10 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link