Author Topic: Totalbiscuit passed away yesterday, 24th of May  (Read 12918 times)

Offline Misery

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Totalbiscuit passed away yesterday, 24th of May
« on: May 25, 2018, 01:23:14 am »
Since I know some of you that have mentioned you follow him (and I think Chris has spoken with him directly a few times?  Correct me if I'm wrong on that one), I just figured I'd drop this here, in case some of you might not have heard this yet.  I have no idea if any of you follow gaming news all that much.

Anyway, here:

https://www.polygon.com/2018/5/24/17392456/totalbiscuit-john-bain-obituary


I honestly don't know what else to say here.  Never know how to deal with something like this.  He will be missed.

Offline Draco18s

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Re: Totalbiscuit passed away yesterday, 24th of May
« Reply #1 on: May 25, 2018, 11:56:27 am »
Yeah, saw someone mention it on the Discord server a little while ago.

RIP

Offline TheVampire100

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Re: Totalbiscuit passed away yesterday, 24th of May
« Reply #2 on: May 25, 2018, 12:37:35 pm »
I never really was into this guy or nor did I follow his reviews but I acknowledge his success and that he was a great gaming journalist, something which becomes quite rare in days of clickbait and uneducated gaming journalism where people play games 15 minutes and simply write somethign down because it is their job.

What he suffered should no one experience but sadly it happens very often.

Offline Logorouge

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Re: Totalbiscuit passed away yesterday, 24th of May
« Reply #3 on: May 25, 2018, 01:03:46 pm »
Heard it on Discord. Rest in peace.

Offline Coppermantis

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Re: Totalbiscuit passed away yesterday, 24th of May
« Reply #4 on: May 25, 2018, 07:13:18 pm »
His video on A Valley Without Wind was the first one that I ever saw, and from there he introduced me to so many other games I've enjoyed. Never thought he'd be gone so soon. RIP.
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Offline x4000

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Re: Totalbiscuit passed away yesterday, 24th of May
« Reply #5 on: May 25, 2018, 08:09:47 pm »
I saw, and was devastated. I'd been just feeling I'll about his condition for a week or so back in mid April when the other announcement came out about his deteriorating condition and partial retirement. He was 2 years younger than me, with an older child than mine, and the whole situation just really hit too close to home.

After his passing, this is what I wrote: https://www.reddit.com/r/cynicalbritofficial/comments/8lwz4v/totalbiscuit_has_passed/dzjaz01/

Ohhh... shit. So soon. That was way too fast.

I was just listening to him and Genna playing The Sims 4 in their 3 part youtube series from one twitch session. It was the first time I'd seen it, and it was hilarious as well as really sad because they had no idea what was coming just a few years from then.

I consider John a friend. I don't know if he considered me one, because he played things close to the vest. He did some videos about my work, including two animated co-optional podcast episodes and a couple of WTF Is videos. We exchanged emails a few times, but he was always so very businesslike because he wanted to be professional, I always thought. I respected that immensely, but at the same time it made me sad because like so many here I feel like he would have been an awesome friend. I always figured maybe someday.

The one time he broke professionalism was the first time I even heard of him. My company was having financial trouble, and I posted about that. This was 2010. Amongst many people offering support, some random youtuber guy I had never heard of got up with me. I had no idea who I was speaking with, or the sort of clout he did and later would wield.

But his email to me, out of the blue, really has been a comfort whenever I've had rough times since then (and there have been plenty). He said, verbatim, "I am not okay with you struggling. Not at all."

You know what? Ever since this cancer thing started up, all I could think of were those words, and how I felt the same way back toward him. I haven't been okay with this at all. But unlike him helping me, there hasn't been a damn thing I could do for him.

I've tried to pay it forward instead, and I'll continue to do so in the coming years. I hope we can all take however he touched us and continue his mission. Whether that's in consumer rights, exploring off the beaten path, or just being candid without being an asshole about it.

John, you will be missed. Genna, if you ever read this, please just know this is but a drop in the bucket of what your husband did for so many people. Yes he was an entertainer, but he was also so much more.
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Offline Wingflier

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Re: Totalbiscuit passed away yesterday, 24th of May
« Reply #6 on: May 27, 2018, 04:09:52 pm »
Not sure if this is appropriate but there was some backlash to the acknowledgement of TotalBiscuit and the celebration of his life by many prominent gaming sites across the the internet.

TB apparently had some enemies, one of whom was lead Blizzard developer Harrison Pink, who was an open supporter of Shane Butler, whose Twitter handle is "Shaneopolis".

Shane tweeted something defamatory about TB the day after his death, Harrison Pink supported the tweet, and the rest is history.

This folks, is why you don't speak ill of the dead.

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Offline Misery

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Re: Totalbiscuit passed away yesterday, 24th of May
« Reply #7 on: May 27, 2018, 06:09:35 pm »
Yeah, similar thing happened here:

https://segmentnext.com/2018/05/26/david-cooks-celebrate-totalbiscuit-death/


Honestly it's bloody depressing to see anyone actually acting like that.  But I'm also baffled anyone would be that bloody stupid.  This guy probably just ended his own career by pulling that one, or whatever was left of it, by doing that.  Nobody is going to want to have anything to do with him now.

Really, people can sink so freaking low.

Offline TheVampire100

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Re: Totalbiscuit passed away yesterday, 24th of May
« Reply #8 on: May 28, 2018, 11:22:31 am »
Big personalities like TotalBiscuit make obviously enemies during their lifetime when they review games and criticize them. This is of course their job but some people don't take this well, especially when those people have such a big following. This can lead to the downfall of a video game because the followers will do their thing and bring down the game.
It gets really personal for the guys on the lossing sides because it is something they shaped and they think TB (or other revewers) are responsible for the loss in sales.

What really upsets me is that they don't have the backbone to say this while he is alive but simply crawl out of their cracks and gaps when he is dead and he cannot defend himself anymore.
What makes this even more horrendous, those people simply say "I bet now I get harrassed by his followers for saying this" as "idiot protection shield". You either say soemthing to him for his horrible actions and he will claim his point proven or you don't and he can go off free. Of course this will not actually protect him (therefor idiot protection) but these guys think it will and that it will prove them right.

It's really sad that people cannot man up. maybe the reason your game was not well received was not because of the review but because it lacked the enjoyment for players?

Offline Coppermantis

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Re: Totalbiscuit passed away yesterday, 24th of May
« Reply #9 on: May 28, 2018, 03:07:36 pm »
maybe the reason your game was not well received was not because of the review but because it lacked the enjoyment for players?

The dumbest part is that among the games that Crooks worked on and TB allegedly criticized were Mass Effect 3 and Andromeda. For ME3, TB mostly criticized its DLC model that I don't think Crooks had anything to do with, and for ME:A, TB was one of the few critics who actually had a somewhat positive impression.

And it's not like he was alone in his criticisms of those games.  He was just one of the biggest names in the business, which made him an easier target for ire. It's a real shame.
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Offline x4000

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Re: Totalbiscuit passed away yesterday, 24th of May
« Reply #10 on: May 29, 2018, 06:21:13 pm »
I've heard some indie developers rage about him in private, mainly because he gave criticism of their game in a humorous fashion, I think.  First of all, nobody likes having their game criticized or outright panned. 

Secondly, nobody likes it when the person doing so is doing so from "on high," so to speak, as a really major force in the industry with no real external check or balance against them (I would argue that popular opinion was a check and balance and that if the reviews were not good or were just trolling devs, his popularity would not have been so high; but these are talking points I've heard.)

Thirdly, and perhaps most damningly, people like TotalBiscuit and the RPS crew have taken it upon themselves to be -- gasp -- entertaining rather than clinical n their reviews and other coverage.  This can feel downright disrespectful if it's a game you've poured hundreds or thousands of your life into creating, and I'll admit that in some of the Valley coverage that RPS did, I got pretty pissed but kept it to myself.  Even TB's video on Valley, which were recommending it and made me a lot of money, took some jabs at it that made me mad at the time.

Somewhere since 2011 I guess I figured out what these folks are up to.  Basically the humor isn't disrespectful at all -- it's the tool of the trade.  It's why a given youtuber is watched and another is not.  Same for written sites.  The humor has to be paired with keen insight and other instincts and talents, but there are some "dry, clinical" versions of TB and RPS that basically will never be as popular because they do unfunny, insightful deep dives.  TB mostly didn't do super deep dives, except on industry topics, and his humor was a Python-esque way of talking about serious and insightful topics in an absurdist manner.

That took some getting used to on my part, and some devs -- indie and otherwise -- never have.  That said, there are other reviewers or content creators out there that use the humor in an abusive way, and I still have a problem with them.  I've never gotten the feeling of that from TB, even watching him "trash" some game.

We definitely shouldn't disrespect the dead for no reason, but there's also a limit to how much we should whitewash someone posthumously, too.  In the case of TB, I don't feel like anything that is being said about him now isn't something that people were saying before he died, too.  Assholes were assholes, fans were fans, and everyone else was somewhere else on the scale.  In that, I am happy.  His legacy seems intact, untarnished by either false praise or false negativity. 

The main thing that I was concerned about was the fact that some people did speak only in private about their dislike of him because of fear of reprisal, and now that he can't "take revenge" for such sleights (not that I think he would have), I figured we'd see some dirt come out in the wash.  As it turns out -- not so much as I'd thought might happen.  That, again, makes me happy.  He did a good job, and it was recognized by most people as such, and that's that.

I'm still getting over the fact that he's gone, but at least the legacy is there.
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Offline Cyborg

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Re: Totalbiscuit passed away yesterday, 24th of May
« Reply #11 on: May 29, 2018, 10:08:57 pm »
(I would argue that popular opinion was a check and balance and that if the reviews were not good or were just trolling devs, his popularity would not have been so high; but these are talking points I've heard.)

What, really? For reference, please see folks who posted (and watched) the Tide pod challenge, other a-holes in the news, etc. Popularity has nothing to do with validating, providing balance to opinions, and so on. Actually, people like watching douchebags who don't know anything, the strange, the outrageous, for no other reason than they are human beings. It's all very disappointing.

Not saying totalbiscuit was a douchebag, but let's not confuse his viewer count for anything more than what it was. In my own personal opinion, even if I disagreed with him, he had one of those "radio voices" with a unique accent from this side of the pond. He was articulate. He was able to look at game mechanics and had a functioning vocabulary to analyze it with beyond a lot of the crap on YouTube. I watched him occasionally for those reasons, but I happily analyzed what he said as he said it, and sometimes I agreed with some points and sometimes I didn't. I'm more worried about the people that take what they see and hear as the script for what they think, which seems to be a hell of a lot of people these days.
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Offline Wingflier

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Re: Totalbiscuit passed away yesterday, 24th of May
« Reply #12 on: May 30, 2018, 04:10:38 am »
^For the record, people's opinions (on games, politics, or anything else) have to be informed by someone. Nobody is an expert in everything (most people are an expert in nothing), and so we defer to those more knowledgeable than us to help us wade through the currents of misinformation, uncertainty and confusion in life.

This isn't inherently wrong, and I assume that unless you live in some kind of windowless hut without internet, you have your own sources of information that you draw from to form your opinions.

The question becomes about whether those sources are valid and worthy, whether they're telling the truth, using reliable sources, reporting the facts, attempting to be unbiased, etc. etc.

When it comes to gaming reviews, this is an area of human experience that is almost completely subjective. I don't really see how you can criticize TB in any way, because he never claimed to be offering anything more than his own personal thoughts and opinions on any given game he was reviewing. He may have appealed to some industry standards like quality of graphics, production value, general level of polish, etc. etc.

Ultimately though, when it comes to gaming people will seek curators that they enjoy listening to and who have similar interests in games as they do, and TB's taste and style appealed to a lot of people. I see absolutely nothing wrong with that.
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Offline Draco18s

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Re: Totalbiscuit passed away yesterday, 24th of May
« Reply #13 on: May 30, 2018, 11:53:01 am »
Ultimately though, when it comes to gaming people will seek curators that they enjoy listening to and who have similar interests in games as they do, and TB's taste and style appealed to a lot of people. I see absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Exactly. I didn't always agree with him and I didn't like the kinds of games he liked, but I was able to enjoy his presentation of a game even if it was one I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole (most of the time, there were a few instances where I was like, "nope, I'm done with this game, next")

 

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