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Decline Where did all the gatekeepers go?

mondblut

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There were never any gatekeepers. You can't effectively gatekeep people out of engaging in a hobby, especially one supported by a company that wants to make profit, which means selling more product.

I remember the days when e.g. metalheads would beat up unworthy posers. Alas, Roguey is right. When it comes to our thing here, showering them with ridicule on an obscure forum is the best we can do. That boat has sailed away when we didn't team up to forcibly kick out MTG players out of stores dedicated to tabletop RPGs.
 

vonAchdorf

Arcane
Joined
Sep 20, 2014
Messages
13,465
No one can gatekeep someone from playing a single player computer role playing game. What can happen is that companies can target ~broader~ markets and those groups will discuss these games in their own spaces.

Before the internet, you could decide with whom you shared your disks and for whom you copied them.
 

IDtenT

Menace to sobriety!
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Divinity: Original Sin
No one can gatekeep someone from playing a single player computer role playing game. What can happen is that companies can target ~broader~ markets and those groups will discuss these games in their own spaces.

Before the internet, you could decide with whom you shared your disks and for whom you copied them.
Once a random on the internet sent me a CD with the first three X-Coms on. I was like 13. My parents were like wtf is this mail addressed to me. They were very concerned. :lol:

I've been on the internet way too long...
 

IDtenT

Menace to sobriety!
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Divinity: Original Sin
Of course I just had to have that memory now after I moved and threw out a bunch of old writable CDs a week ago.

Would love to go back and see what was on that disk. I think I might have got it for Settlers 2 specifically, but I can't fully recall. Might have been for Constructor.

:negative:

The contact was from an abandonware site.
 

NJClaw

OoOoOoOoOoh
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Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture
"Gatekeeping" in the world of videogames only refers to epic gamers saying that people who play Current Year Candy Crush™ aren't real gamers. Nothing else. Assigning other arbitrary meanings to the expression and then getting surprised that they don't hold up to scrutiny in the real world doesn't make any sense.
 

Ulfhednar

Savant
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Valhalla
Well the Greek City States gave way to the Roman Senators who got knifed by the Caesars (or was it the other way around...) who eventually lost control to the Church. Then the Catholics told the Orthodox to fuck off, Martin Luther stapled some words to a door and the Protestants moved to America. Americans eventually recognized that Protestants were no better than the Catholics when they tried to tell kids that playing DnD was Satan-worship, and the kids got revenge by putting DnD on their computers. Then the internet happened and Amazon Jeff owns everything. Western Civilization is collapsing now, but old school RPGs can be purchased in discounted bundles.
 
Joined
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Messages
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RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In
Gatekeeping exists alright.

It just doesn't work.
It demonstrably does and that is why in video games and print you see an ideological heterodoxy.
You can't effectively gatekeep people out of engaging in a hobby, especially one supported by a company that wants to make profit, which means selling more product.
You can turn that hobby into something else, an extension of a culture war.

Sure if you own a company you can just not hire retards. This is not what they mean by Gatekeeping. They mean old grognards being mean to new players and by that not letting others enjoy the hobby. Gatekeepers are a boogieman designed to shut-down all the valid critique from the loyal fans. Normally when you are enjoying a hobby for 30 years of something and someone comes and makes stupid changes and you speak against them it makes them look bad. An old expert who knows something particularly well is bashing on something so it must be bad since he knows his stuff. Gatekeepers were designed to turn this around and paint them as oppressors. It's Lefardism 101.
 

J1M

Arcane
Joined
May 14, 2008
Messages
14,616
As an aside, for those who think this ideological filter does not impact indie devs, have a look at the requirements and categories for grant money/startup loans for interactive media in your state.

Sure, anyone can start a little project. But your direct competition literally has access to free money that you don't. Unless you do what the gatekeepers of that funding want to see.
 
Joined
Dec 12, 2013
Messages
4,229
Sure if you own a company you can just not hire retards. This is not what they mean by Gatekeeping. They mean old grognards being mean to new players and by that not letting others enjoy the hobby. Gatekeepers are a boogieman designed to shut-down all the valid critique from the loyal fans. Normally when you are enjoying a hobby for 30 years of something and someone comes and makes stupid changes and you speak against them it makes them look bad. An old expert who knows something particularly well is bashing on something so it must be bad since he knows his stuff. Gatekeepers were designed to turn this around and paint them as oppressors. It's Lefardism 101.


I am amazed how you correctly describe how corporations and their marketing and PR departments (journos) manipulate conversation to gain more power over everyone else and then you blame everything on people who fight against said corporations. This is a mindbending contradiction.
 

Ismaul

Thought Criminal #3333
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Nothing's coming through my gate, you hear me? I want none of that shit.

Well, except for actual shit. I gatekeep everything but real shit, that can come through. I'm not one of those weirdos, ok?
 

Ash

Arcane
Joined
Oct 16, 2015
Messages
6,235
Gatekeeper here, I suppose, though not necessarily with classic cRPG as my focus. More just anything pre-mid 2000s. I used to gatekeep on various mainstream forums, but was often the only one among a sea of casuals, which led to my being estranged and joining the KKKodex only to preach to the choir or bash the storyfaggots. I'm just glad that there is at least one domain online that recognizes the significant superiority of classic pre-decline game design. You'd think it would be a more widespread understanding though given how obvious it is. People are just either dumb as fuck or inexperienced in gaming history sadly.
 

Hag

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Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming!
The only real gatekeeping I've met was on Linux forums, where newcomers were routinely told to rtfm and fuck off.
When I see the sorry state of Linux right now, I don't think its was much of a success.
 

OSK

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The only real gatekeeping I've met was on Linux forums, where newcomers were routinely told to rtfm and fuck off.
When I see the sorry state of Linux right now, I don't think its was much of a success.

Linux is better than it's ever been! I have a massive game library I can play so I don't have to dual boot with Windows anymore. A few years ago I couldn't say that.

The people who gatekeep Linux like the current state of Linux and want to keep it the way it is. They're usually either highly-technical power users and/or smug assholes who want to use their choice of OS as a way to gain nerd cred. They don't want to see their OS dumbed down for the masses and they're sick of Windows midwits who want Linux to be exactly like Windows but free.

Personally, I'm not a fan of gatekeeping Linux. For specific distros I think it's fine. But I think beginner-oriented distros like Ubuntu should exist. A larger userbase results in better hardware and software compatibility.
 
Joined
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Just goes to show that gatekeeping doesn't accomplish anything, right?

"No! You can't have this! You aren't good enough!"
-This is how you destroy the very thing that you love. They will grow to resent you, and hate what you preserve. They will fight against it, and destroy it.

If instead you learn to include them, and show them why you love the things you love so much, then maybe they will learn to love and preserve them too.

When has it ever been the opposite?
You're forgetting one thing, and that's that some people are miserable by nature, and inflict that misery on others for shits and giggles. You do not have power to change people for whom professional therapists' and psychiatrists' efforts are useless. That is your overinflated ego talking.
 

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