Game journalism backlash - the microcosm theory

[playingwithknives]

Being a douche on camera is unwise. (the TFC fan in red)

[Telefrog]

The “f— her right in the p—” prank has been happening to reporters across North America for two years.

Why that phrase in particular? Do they just mean anyone saying something rude to female reporters?

[CLWheeljack]

Why that phrase in particular? Do they just mean anyone saying something rude to female reporters?

Looks like a stupid (manufactured) blooper reel viral thing:

"Fuck Her Right in the Pussy" Is the Worst Hoax of the Next 15 Minutes

[Busbecq]

Interesting. I bet he will get his notice pay when he sues.

[Aleck]

Anyone else think at first “why are there Team Fortress Classic fans at a soccer game? And who knew TFC fans were an identifiable subgroup?”

At least for once it’s not about gamers behaving badly, but just about people behaving badly.

[Desslock]

As founder and CEO, Brad can pretty much structure his income as he wants - he could pay himself a huge salary, and pay taxes on that, or he can pay himself a minimal salary and let that money accrue to the company and take that money as capital gains as the owner of the company.

Except he can’t just “take it as a capital gain” - the value of his stock may increase, but it’s difficult to realize that value until the stock is sold which, in a private company, could easily never happen in your lifetime.

[Brad_Wardell]

I suspect your income is structured that way for tax purposes however.

No. I simply invested my earnings over time to the point where I no longer needed to work.

Personally, I think capital gains should be taxed at the same rate as labor.

[Brad_Wardell]

It means he suspects Brad was paid with stock options, rather than income, in order to reduce his tax liability.

Wouldn’t do me any good as I already own it.

Essentially over the past 20 years I would take profits and invest most of it back into the company and then some of it I would invest in a diversified portfolio. Eventually, the income from the portfolio (the S&P 500 was up 28% in 2013 example) was far more than I would ever need to live on.

I still work for Stardock but only for enjoyment. All its profits now just go back into the company and to its employees.

It’s one of the reasons why Stardock is still independent. There’s nothing I could be offered now to sell it.

Anyway, getting back to the point, you still can become very wealthy in this country through hard work and shrewd financial decisions. A little delayed gratification goes a long way.

[Pyperkub]

Glad to hear it Brad! Keep making interesting games - I have a bunch of Stardock games and I’m really looking forward to my first taste of GalCiv.

[Juan_Raigada]

Anyway, getting back to the point, you still can become very wealthy in this country through hard work and shrewd financial decisions. A little delayed gratification goes a long way.

While I have no doubt this is true in your case, and was definitely true around 30 years ago, statistics and data show very clearly this is, very quickly, becoming less and less likely for most people who could access the top 10%. There will always be a very small amount of individuals that rise through hard work, but this was also so in 18th century France, and that was an extremely unequal and unjust society.

Im not claiming everybody should be able to become wealthy (that’s an utopia) only that the ideal state was that of the 50s-80s I. The USA, where a majority of the top 1% by income (although a minority of the population) reached that status through work and with little inheritance, but that’s quickly no longer the case. While the split might still favor former laborers, the tendency is very clear, given the huge amount of data presented.

I don’t think ever the top 1% by wealth has been majorly constituted of people attaining that wealth from work. But that’s a different issue that can be countered if the top 1% by income do it through wage income.

And yes, taxing both capital gains and rent income as wage income would indeed help stop the tendency, by extremely limiting the rate of return from income due to capital and rents versus overall economic growth (a return equal to the overall economic growth does not change the situation in either direction)…

[Kemper_Boyd]

I think that the original statement has been lost here (total shocker, right?).

There is a significant distance between being a millionaire and being a 1%-er. I realize that millionaire used to imply great wealth, but it is three orders of magnitude below what I would consider the more reasonable, modern definition of great wealth - billionaire.

Half of US households are pulling in low, six figure incomes, so millionaire is now sort of a stretch goal rather than an unobtainable ideal.

[Dan_Theman]

I think that the original statement has been lost here (total shocker, right?).

There is a significant distance between being a millionaire and being a 1%-er. I realize that millionaire used to imply great wealth, but it is three orders of magnitude below what I would consider the more reasonable, modern definition of great wealth - billionaire.

Half of US households are pulling in low, six figure incomes, so millionaire is now sort of a stretch goal rather than an unobtainable ideal.

Okay, first off: “millionaire” is an individual, not a household.*
Next, the median household income is just over $50,000. That means that the typical earnings of the entire household for the US are significantly less than low six figures. A $100,000 household income would place you in approximately the 80th percentile. So one fifth of US households are bringing in at least low six figures.

• • I think that people often get the household and individual stuff mixed up because it’s surprisingly harder to get the data on the individuals. To clarify, there were 123.2 million households in the US in 2014, but 318 .9 million people. In terms of assets, approximately 10.1 million housholds (again, combined values) had at least $1 million of investible assets excluding their residency. That would put those households at approximately the 92nd percentile.

edit - and for heaven’s sake, why did I respond in this thread? sigh

[Pyperkub]

edit - and for heaven’s sake, why did I respond in this thread? sigh

Because you’re “theman”? :P

[Kemper_Boyd]

That is the kind of stupid thing that I never notice in certain forum names. I always pronounced it in my head as rhyming with semen.

It also took my about a year to get Bill Dungsroman.

[Quaro]

No, not at all.

But that income (between the red and greenline) are still rents (income that comes from capital, not from current work/current productivity). It can be earned rent (gains and income from capital accrued through past work) or inherited rent.

It’s more meritocratic if it’s earned rent (it’s earned through work, after all) but it’s still non-productive income (income that comes regardless of an individual current productivity, which can be zero or not, depending on whether the individual in question, like Brad, still works for no compensation -though I think we can all agree this is an exception-).

Remember we are talking about income, not wealth. It’s obvious that accumulating wealth through labor is meritocratic. The issue is not that previous exceptional productivity gave the top earner a lot of capital, it’s that that wealth is still generating income although no work is being put into it. It’s equally unproductive to society in general as inherited rent income. The wealth is generating more wealth, thus increasing the percentage of income in a society that is not generated through labor (which is what creates inequality and social mobility, since if this happens -much more wealth accumulated than earned- social mobility then becomes obviously much harder and unequality rises).

Also remember that capital gains are the difference between the yellow and the green line. The difference between the red and the yellow are not capital gains, but pure rents (that is, not changes in valuation of capital, like house prices or stock onwership, but money outright paid as either rents or interests on deposits -and other kind of rents-). Overall, capital gains are a very small part of the top 1% income.

Also, accumulated wealth (and it’s associated capital gains) does become inherited after a generation unless the owner gives most of it away (like Buffet or Gates…). It is not usually done, since the income from it and it accumulation is rising (statistically speaking), so savers do outweight spenders/donors.

Edit: also, according to the analisys I’ve read on this and similar graphs, this is far from an apocalyptic graph (it shows a worsening trend but only a bad but not totally nuts current situation, where the society it’s losing in equality and meritocracy, but only recently (and thus people around 45-50 still enjoyed the good times)- although for Europe it’s worse-). It is, though, a warning sign.

On equality and meritocracy. The lower the green line the more equality in income (less percentage of income going to the top 1%. The less difference between yellow and red (or green and red) the more meritocratic (the easier it’s to access wealth through work, as oppossed to through accrued capital). You can see that from the 50s to the 80s the USA was the most equalitarian, while around the early 80s the society was the most meritocratic (at least when talking about the top 1%). It’s also obvious that it is a very different country than during the 50s-80s period now, and that wealth and income (this is about income but wealth graphs are similar) resembles more the pre-war era although it’s not still as bas as the pre-Depression era (even though the tendency is in that direction).

Really appreciate the thoughtful breakdown, thanks.

[Courteous_D]

It also took my about a year to get Bill Dungsroman.

:) I got it pretty quickly, but then could never stop picturing a large Teutonic wargamer wearing a pickelhaube and a walrus moustache.

[CLWheeljack]

So, I can’t be bothered to find the link to reply, but this is in reference to the Boston Magazine article about Gjoni, and the fact that he constructed a 9000 word or whatever Zoe-Post to start this whole thing, which I thought was super weird.

Well, apparently huge, meandering “fuck you” letters are now just going to be a thing in the games community:

League of Legends Pro Quits, Burns Every Bridge On His Way Out

17 single spaced pages. I guess it’s a generational over-sharing thing, combined with youth?

[Telefrog]

17 single spaced pages. I guess it’s a generational over-sharing thing, combined with youth?

I don’t know about that, but adding “lmao” at the end of every poorly worded sentence probably is.

[Aleck]

17 single spaced pages. I guess it’s a generational over-sharing thing, combined with youth?

Psychologically disturbed people have been writing screeds/manifestos together for as long as there has been paper and ink. Generationally, it’s just a lot easier to share nowadays.

[Kemper_Boyd]

Link’s departure from CLG is a grim reminder of how League’s emergent but already enormously popular eSports teams too often often lack responsible forces for proper coaching and management.

The hand wringing of some game journalists makes me laugh.

“No shits were given” is the more appropriate response to this.