Hmm, I wasn’t going to comment this because I didn’t find anything that was actually worth attention. The drama has risen without many actual reasons. Krones wrote down some good comments and I tend to agree more with him than with Aggro Me.

No biggie. “Being biased” is the what makes things worth reading. Opinions. These are biased by definition and they are interesting because of that. Because they aren’t generic and they “belong” to someone. Rant sites and blogs are pretty much the same. The more personality they have, the better. They can be successful because they offer different points of view and, as Krones wrote, if you disagree you can just read something else.

I’m proud of being biased and I still have the right to be imprecise, make mistakes and rant about what the hell I want or praise what I think it’s worth praising. Then I can go back and make precisations or change my mind. I’m unpredictable because I’m totally allergic to any form of control and at the end what is worth is that I’m being simply honest. The fact that some opinion are superficial or imprecise is again because they are being an honest point of view. Not absolute, categorical judgements. Opinions and discussions are valuable when there aren’t constraints and censorship. When the writer isn’t threatened or under external pressure.

Penny Arcade bashed Blizzard in many other occasions. They ranted about the classes, they ranted about the servers, they ranted about the raid content. They are popular because they represent rather well the public opinion. What they think about SOE is pretty much what everyone else is thinking, explicitly or not. They just gave it visibility. Their recent comments describe the way many people see SOE.

If I had wrote that, noone would have noticed. What’s the point then? The point is that they are popular and what they say gains legitimation because of their popularity. They build consensus and gain power and relevance because of this consensus. Lum’s site, back then, moved along the same lines, he didn’t draw comics but he was a wonderful writer who could put the thoughts of the majority into words. We all read Stan Lee’s comics. “With great power, comes great responsibility”.

Penny-arcade have some of that power and that responsibility, but you cannot blame them because they are successful and voice people’s opinions with too much “candidness”.

That they are highly biased towards Blizzard was already largely obvious but I see their relationship with them more as the consequence of this bias than its cause. Again I don’t find this odd, they are representing the opinion of the majority. I say this because I roughly share what they wrote and can see from where it’s coming.

What I find hilarious is that this whole thing with Gabe talking trash about EQ2 happened just after they the polemics about corporate shills and “guerilla marketing” (ref link).

Well, isn’t that pretty much what they are already doing? Their conspiracy theories seem to have backfired :)

Then I have to say that Aggro Me isn’t much different from PA. He has criticized the SOE in many occasions as PA did with Blizzard but it is obvious that he appreciates their work and that he is “biased” about it. Actually I think SOE keeps him in MUCH more consideration than Blizzard with PA. I’m sure many SOE’s devs read and like his site, he is doing a rather good work. I wouldn’t be surprised if at some point he finishes to be hired at SOE pretty much as it happened back then with Moorgard.

So the real point is… WHY I’M GETTING NOTHING?? I WANT THE SHINY THINGS TOO! EVERYONE IS SELLING OUT, I WANT TO SELLOUT TOO!