RIP TotalBiscuit

[Sholos]

Just heard the news that TotalBiscuit finally succumbed to his cancer today. I really enjoyed his content and his devotion to the consumer base of the videogame industry and we will be a poorer community without him. =(

[HasSIn]

I expected this for a very long time, even before his health update from April or the one from last December and yet I am still stunned.

I remember many many years ago I was imagining what it would be like 40 or 50 years later to listen to an elderly TB reminiscing about old video games and be revered as the giant of the video game industry that he was in much the same way Roger Ebert was in the film industry. Alas, that will never happen. Despite some disagreements I had, I will always admire his unwavering advocacy of consumers' rights. For a long time I thought his insistence on calling his critiques first impressions instead of reviews as petty and ultimately meaningless, but eventually I came to appreciate his meticulousness and overall work ethic. He always strove to be as objective as possible despite the work of a critic being inherently subjective. I think it is fair to say that no other critic in the video game industry was as influential and as beneficial as TB.

I guess it's time to re-watch the Terraria series. :smallfrown:

[gooddragon1]

Just heard the news that TotalBiscuit finally succumbed to his cancer today. I really enjoyed his content and his devotion to the consumer base of the videogame industry and we will be a poorer community without him. =(

I didn't even know he had cancer. Really brings the feeling of mortality. I remembered watching some of his videos.

[factotum]

Sad news. :smallfrown:

[Giggling Ghast]

33 years old. F***ing cancer. :smallfrown:

[Bartmanhomer]

I expected this for a very long time, even before his health update from April or the one from last December and yet I am still stunned.

I remember many many years ago I was imagining what it would be like 40 or 50 years later to listen to an elderly TB reminiscing about old video games and be revered as the giant of the video game industry that he was in much the same way Roger Ebert was in the film industry. Alas, that will never happen. Despite some disagreements I had, I will always admire his unwavering advocacy of consumers' rights. For a long time I thought his insistence on calling his critiques first impressions instead of reviews as petty and ultimately meaningless, but eventually I came to appreciate his meticulousness and overall work ethic. He always strove to be as objective as possible despite the work of a critic being inherently subjective. I think it is fair to say that no other critic in the video game industry was as influential and as beneficial as TB.

I guess it's time to re-watch the Terraria series. :smallfrown:
I never heard of him and my condolences to his family and fans. What I heard that he has so many haters. What was the disagreements you have with TotalBiscuit?

[Wraith]

I never heard of him and my condolences to his family and fans. What I heard that he has so many haters. What was the disagreements you have with TotalBiscuit?

John "TotalBiscuit" Bain was well known for being opinionated, stubborn, often abrasive and occasionally aggressive in his expression of a point of view. Many times he involved himself in a particular scandal or conflict in his typically forthright and unashamedly direct manner in a way that antagonised at least one side, if not both - his opinions on the GamerGate business were loud and unsubtle, earning him a number of dedicated enemies across various platforms. (And by "enemies", I mean "people who have actively celebrated his death on social media with memes and 'good riddance'-style messages").

Similarly, many statements made early in his career - before he had properly come to codify his journalistic credentials and his admirably ethical business and personal practices - were dismissed as trolling, which earned him not a little notoriety that was never forgiven in many circles.

That being said.

John Bain was a consummate professional when it came to citing his sources, paying his bills, thanking his contributors and paying credit to those who deserved it and his integrity as a journalist is something that people should be aspiring to emulate for years to come. While not gentle with his words, he never backed down from criticism and instead faced it head on so as to force his critics to make valid points or otherwise prove themselves to be toothless opportunists.
He was also a pretty damn decent human being, having raised more for charity in the last few years than I probably will in the rest of my lifetime, and he shared his influence graciously and generously with other contributors despite the personal cost to himself.

I don't try to paint him as a perfect, idealistic bearer of the torch of great truth, but he was honest and he blazed difficult trails that the vast majority of us would shy away from, both personal and professional. The world in general, and the video games industry specifically, are worse off without him.

Good luck, TB, wherever you go next.

[The Extinguisher]

Im not gonna speak ill of the dead, because mentioning his name on twitter right now will get me hordes of 'mourning fans' to harrass me and put my personal safety at risk.

Yeah sure, its unfortunate that he died in a pretty horrible way. But its pretty heartless to ignore the real tangible harm that this movement, of which he was a key figure of and did nothing to rein in, had on the people it targetted for harassment.

Its okay to be upset, its okay to mourn the loss of life, but can we not pretend that he didn't do some real bad things. Death doesnt absolve.

[Elanasaurus]

Im not gonna speak ill of the dead, because mentioning his name on twitter right now will get me hordes of 'mourning fans' to harrass me and put my personal safety at risk.If people on Twitter can put your personal safety at risk, I think you've put too much you into Twitter.
:elan:

[Zendy]

Im not gonna speak ill of the dead, because mentioning his name on twitter right now will get me hordes of 'mourning fans' to harrass me and put my personal safety at risk.

Yeah sure, its unfortunate that he died in a pretty horrible way. But its pretty heartless to ignore the real tangible harm that this movement, of which he was a key figure of and did nothing to rein in, had on the people it targetted for harassment.

Its okay to be upset, its okay to mourn the loss of life, but can we not pretend that he didn't do some real bad things. Death doesnt absolve.

What are talking about?

[The Extinguisher]

If people on Twitter can put your personal safety at risk, I think you've put too much you into Twitter.
:elan:

If youre choosing to ignore the actual harm that has been done by harassment mobs via twitter then i have no idea what to tell you.


What are talking about?

TB was a prominent figure in gamergate, a harassment campaign aimed at women in gaming, specifically game development and journalism. And while he never participated in the harassment himself (to my knowledge at least) he certainly pointed his following who was doing the harassment at people he disagreed with

[Poiuytrewq]

Isn't he the one who wished another dude to get cancer and die? Kind of ironic that he died of cancer, just to show how the universe works. Be careful with what you put out to the universe, it may come back to bite you later.

[Razade]

I was never a fan of his honestly, and certainly found a lot of his critique to be...well. Not aimed at me. We just liked different things in gaming for different reasons. That said, 33 is only a year older than me and man does that scare the crap out of me. Cancer is a brutal monster and we should be working to iradicate it in its various forms.

While I also don't truck with the idea of not speaking ill of the dead (because some people should have ill spoken of them



TB was a prominent figure in gamergate, a harassment campaign aimed at women in gaming, specifically game development and journalism. And while he never participated in the harassment himself (to my knowledge at least) he certainly pointed his following who was doing the harassment at people he disagreed with

Beyond anything else, this is just so dishonest it warranted me saying something. Painting Gamergate as this big hit piece against women and female game developers and journalists is just...startlingly one sided and fatuous. Gamergate was a lot of things with a lot of people with a lot of agendas and it's certainly true that some people were what you're claiming the whole movement was. But to say it was just that. To paint it as this monolith of anti-female sentiment by a bunch of people isn't just a gross mis-characterization, it is well poisoning to the extreme. Especially because there was a not-insignificant female population within the Gamergate movement. You'd either have to deny that on its face (people have), claim that all the women were fake and were really just men (lots of people have) or were Uncle Toms (yet more people made this claim) to even scratch the surface of your assessment to be valid. Your identity politics is showing and it doesn't look good.


Isn't he the one who wished another dude to get cancer and die? Kind of ironic that he died of cancer, just to show how the universe works. Be careful with what you put out to the universe, it may come back to bite you later.

He apologized for this. A lot, actually. Is it ironic...sure...but acting as if he did something beyond the pale and got his just desserts is just karmic masturbation at this point. If everyone who ever made a claim like that got cancer and died at a terribly young age then we'd be a much smaller population of people.

[McDouggal]

If youre choosing to ignore the actual harm that has been done by harassment mobs via twitter then i have no idea what to tell you.

The block button exists for a reason. As does physically stepping away from the internet. If mean comments on the internet, even a lot of them all at once, can endanger your health, then you should probably not be on the internet.

I get death threats online on occasion. I usually laugh it off. Sometimes I'll block the person, other times I won't bother.


TB was a prominent figure in gamergate, a harassment campaign aimed at women in gaming, specifically game development and journalism. And while he never participated in the harassment himself (to my knowledge at least) he certainly pointed his following who was doing the harassment at people he disagreed with

When GG started, it was an attempt to reign in some of the excesses of the game journalist clique, where they would promote the games of their friends without disclosure. IGN had been a joke for years, and Polygon and Kotaku had swung hard into that territory as well. Almost nobody who was super into gaming used game reviews from the big websites as anything except bias confirmation.

All that GG wanted was for the journalists to adhere to the SPJ Code of Ethics (https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp). This is especially important for hobbyist press, where there is an increased likelihood that the journalist has friends on the dev team or access they don't want to lose. Gamergate could've started and ended in 72 hours if they had come out and said "We will do that in the future, here is our updated ethics and disclosure policy." That is what TotalBiscuit fought for, and he followed that code in all of his review videos.

As far as TB himself, I may not have liked his content or him personally, but I respected him. That man was arguably part of what brought PC gaming out of the dark age of "Yet another bad console port" and into the golden age that we have in the PC market today. His videos made many an indie dev a success, because if TB recommended a game, it was a good game. He was a trailblazer, being the first video game reviewer on Youtube to really make it big, and he did it without the help of an established network.

[The Extinguisher]

Beyond anything else, this is just so dishonest it warranted me saying something. Painting Gamergate as this big hit piece against women and female game developers and journalists is just...startlingly one sided and fatuous. Gamergate was a lot of things with a lot of people with a lot of agendas and it's certainly true that some people were what you're claiming the whole movement was. But to say it was just that. To paint it as this monolith of anti-female sentiment by a bunch of people isn't just a gross mis-characterization, it is well poisoning to the extreme. Especially because there was a not-insignificant female population within the Gamergate movement. You'd either have to deny that on its face (people have), claim that all the women were fake and were really just men (lots of people have) or were Uncle Toms (yet more people made this claim) to even scratch the surface of your assessment to be valid. Your identity politics is showing and it doesn't look good.




When GG started, it was an attempt to reign in some of the excesses of the game journalist clique, where they would promote the games of their friends without disclosure. IGN had been a joke for years, and Polygon and Kotaku had swung hard into that territory as well. Almost nobody who was super into gaming used game reviews from the big websites as anything except bias confirmation.

All that GG wanted was for the journalists to adhere to the SPJ Code of Ethics (https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp). This is especially important for hobbyist press, where there is an increased likelihood that the journalist has friends on the dev team or access they don't want to lose. Gamergate could've started and ended in 72 hours if they had come out and said "We will do that in the future, here is our updated ethics and disclosure policy." That is what TotalBiscuit fought for, and he followed that code in all of his review videos.


it really only takes the most basic of googling to figure this out. the 'movement' started out to harass a particular game developer, and then grew out toward gamers of all stripes that suspiciously weren't straight white men. Sure there was non straight white men in the movement, but a nonzero amount were fake (it pretty easy to spot usually) and its not like people are not capable of buying into their own oppression. There may have even been people there that came at it from a legitimate complaint about games journalism, but that was only ever a front for a harassment campaign that ended peoples careers, threatened people's life and livelihood, and in at least one case, caused a transgender game developer to kill herself


The block button exists for a reason. As does physically stepping away from the internet. If mean comments on the internet, even a lot of them all at once, can endanger your health, then you should probably not be on the internet.

I get death threats online on occasion. I usually laugh it off. Sometimes I'll block the person, other times I won't bother.

look, even if were putting aside the actual issue of cyber-bullying (which we shouldn't its an incredibly important issue and just saying 'get off the internet' is embarrassingly tone deaf), harassment mobs online lead very quickly to tangible danger. there are countless stories of people having to leave their homes for their own safety because their addresses get posted. bomb threats getting called in whenever a prominent feminist gamer speaks at an event. swat teams getting called on people who are statistically more likely to be killed by police.

John Bain, and men like him, have done actual tangible harm to the people around him and the video game industry as a whole is worse as a result of his actions. That cannot and doesn't get to be swept under the rug just because he died.

[kitanas]

[QUOTE=The Extinguisher;23100994]it really only takes the most basic of googling to figure this out. the 'movement' started out to harass a particular game developer[/QUOTE ]

Ok, as someone who watched gamergate start, this is a flat out lie. It is a convenient lie for the gaming news sites, which is why they promote it, but that makes it no less a lie.

Reading the rest of your post, I am genuinely curious where you learned about gg. Did you read about it on gaming news sites? Interacting with anti gg people? Interacting with pro gg people? Were you around when it started?

[factotum]

Ah, the old "TotalBiscuit was a misogynist/transphobe who hated women in gaming" argument, was wondering if that would show up here. Quite apart from the fact he explicitly distanced himself from that part of GamersGate--he was only ever about the ethics in games journalism side of things--you might want to look at what Laura Kate Dale (@laurakbuzz) says about his death on Twitter, considering she's actually a trans woman who also happens to be a games journalist.

[LaZodiac]

She's...very much not transphobic, that's the wrong word for that entirely.

I've seen Biscuit's tweets, he made some pretty anti trans jokes. He's said some pretty ****ty stuff regarding that subject. He's a ****ing moron when it comes to FPS and NEVER walked that back. I don't know if he walked back the other things, but from the sounds of it he didn't. But again, I don't know for sure. I only know what I've seen.

It will always suck to die that early in your life, but I'm not going to begrudge people from being happy about it. I don't think they should be but it's not my place to say that when he's hurt a lot of people.

[factotum]

She's...very much not transphobic, that's the wrong word for that entirely.

I know, I must have had the word on the brain. I've corrected it now. Would you care to link to these anti-trans tweets TB has made?

[LaZodiac]

{scrubbed}

[Strigon]

Well, I'll go on record and say that I was a big fan of TB, and I'm deeply distressed by his passing.
Not only did he made entertaining content - many a time I watched him review a game I had no interest in - but he was also the only games critic I actually put any stock in. There may be others who are trustworthy, but I've yet to find them.

When he recommended a game, I knew it was a darned good game. Even if I knew I wouldn't like it, I've never seen him recommend a bad game, and even more impressively, he often recommended games he didn't like because he could separate his own opinions from the objective quality of the game.

If I ever made a game, even if it's a top-down perspective or a city builder, I shall include a field of vision slider in his honour.

[McDouggal]

Sure thing. I'll be honest I really only know the one, but still. (https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/c_fit,f_auto,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/wq0rw1uhj0vdfqsazgfk.jpg)

Do you understand the concept of satire?

[AuthorGirl]

Is a mourning thread going to turn into a political/personal dumpster-fire and get locked now?

Because that would kind of suck.

[JadedDM]

Reading the rest of your post, I am genuinely curious where you learned about gg. Did you read about it on gaming news sites? Interacting with anti gg people? Interacting with pro gg people? Were you around when it started?

Dude, I was there for the whole thing. I watched it unfold in real time. The whole thing started because some guy posted a massive screed about his ex-girlfriend online, accusing her of sleeping with game journalists to get good reviews on her game. The reviewers she allegedly slept with never reviewed the game in question--the reviews do not exist. And yet to this day, there are still people who insist it does.

[Goblin Slayer]

{{scrubbed}}

[Comrade]

Do you understand the concept of satire?

Not that the tweet was the most egregious sample of transphobia ever, but seriously, transgender people asking for their gender identity to be respected is a really stupid damn thing to satirise. Satire is supposed to draw attention to real social problems so they can be improved, not be used as a thinly-veiled excuse to make fun of marginalised people.

It's also low-hanging fruit. He might as well have made a 'har har, I identify as an attack helicopter' joke.

[factotum]

I genuinely hope nobody here posts one badly-worded tweet to a friend and then gets beaten up for it for the next three years, because that's what seems to have happened there. Reminds me of the Microsoft guy who posted on Twitter to a friend of his that the XBox 360 still existed if people without reliable Internet connections wanted an XBox (this was when they were proposing the XBox One should be an always-online system), and lost his job over it.

[JadedDM]

{{scrubbed what was being replied to}}

[Rynjin]

That is not a thing.

It absolutely was a thing for a while. It seemed like everybody on Tumblr had their own unique and oh so special pronouns they needed to be called, and if someone dared respond to them without checking their profile first the hate mob would descend from all sides to doxx and harass them.

If you really think that never happened you weren't paying attention to that corner of the internet circa 2013 to 2015 or so.

[JadedDM]

Transgender people are one of the most oppressed minority groups around. It's actually legal to murder them in most states (I'm not kidding, google 'trans panic law') and they have a massively high suicide rate from all the abuse heaped on them.

I assure you, nobody would ever pretend to be one. It's absurd to even suggest it.

[Rynjin]

You underestimate the urge of young teenagers to draw attention to themselves in a consequence-free environment. The anonymity of the internet gives all the upsides of pretending to be someone you're not with very few of the downsides, particularly on a website whose culture has evolved so it very much has your back without question.

It's also not just people pretending to be trans, it's the "otherkin" (which I haven't seen much of recently, guess the trend died down) that got most of the flak. Self-identifying as animals or fantasy creatures and coming up with their own pronouns to be used. That's how the whole "I sexually identify as an attack helicopter" meme started, and is the context involved in this tweet.

I have no doubt you are correct: most people would not even think to pretend to be trans...in real life. But everybody has their own little personas they put on on the internet, especially at a younger age. Hell, this user name essentially used to be my alter ego, a mantle I put on when I went online that let me be someone more confident and cool than I really was, so I even get where it comes from, and it really was a very strong trend in certain niches of a website for a good few years.

Mocking it may be in poor taste, sure, but shouldn't be something thrown in a man's face years later. Particularly not a face with eyes closed and body interred.

[rigsmal]

Moving away from TotalBiscuit's cultural politics, his consumer advocacy standpoint nonetheless was greatly impactful in the industry, as was his dedication to finding non-AAA gems and bringing them to light.

He will be missed.

[Haruki-kun]

The Winged Mod: Locked for review.

EDIT: Thread will remain locked after review.