NeoGAF is down after the site owner was accused of sexual harassment/assault.
 

http://www.playstationlifestyle.net/...t-allegations/

It's unreal.

That was the last "big" traditional forum left and even before this it was already going down, it really is the death of message boards.

Gaf hadn't been any good since the early 2010's though, and it's rather poetic that this authoritarian forum go out being guilty of the very thing it blamed everyone else on being.

Good memories from the 00's and even early 2010s though but all forums die.

Wow, wild month for this kind of news.

It's not like it is a first accusation against administrator of said forum.
But it's a first one, where he and his staff were unable to get this **** under the rug.

Apparently, his moderators either were disgusted enough or were just tired of covering his ass and collectively bailed out.

One way or the other, it's one less influential hypocrite.

And it's not like that forum was good either - it was basically like any other gaming community, constant hatred and whining, just about everything. The only difference, that it had a heavy dosage of "keyboard-progressives" lunatics and extremely biased moderators.

The times are changing, people are now being outed over sexual harassment claims, I sense a huge change in policy at the workplace from now and ever.

Don't be surprise when you hear about more claims in some unsuspecting places.

People need to learn how not to sh*t where they eat.

NeoGAF was a trash fire, I've seen a lot of screencaps on social media of people being banned on that site just for a difference of opinion, on anything.

Or, you know. Not be sexual predators in the first place.

I'd been lurking neogaf since 2012 because IGN isn't very active anymore and I needed a place to go to read constant new gaming news. I had an account there but only lasted 3 weeks before I got permabanned. :lol:

But I still lurked there for 5 years from 2012-2017. The whole site literally imploded upon itself. I was there yesterday when it happened, the entire mod staff was de-modded and the owner of the site "evillore" was accused of sexually assaulting women both recently and in the past. The site was in chaos after that, and then they just shut it down.

The weird thing is it was one of the most active gaming forums on the internet. IGN is like a barren wasteland now, and unless you want to step into gamefaqs or /v/ (lol), there's not really any other places to discuss games much anymore.

The entire mod team actually "walked out", so to speak.

Yeah, they all left so as not to be associated with it. I can't see neogaf being brought back with a new owner either, the brand is toxic now. It's the death of the last big gaming forum, plus tons of developers and people in the industry posted there too.

IGN is all that's left now, besides as I said gamefaqs or smaller forum for individual franchises/games. Either that or you have to go to reddit, meh.

NeoGaf was a toxic brand for quite a while now, developers hated them as well as the majority of the gamer comminities. They just lived in their bubble thinking they were still the liked elite community because of their past but look at all the places like tumblr, gamefaqs, somethingawful etc telling refugees to gtfo and they aren't welcome. Developers didn't really post there anymore like the did back in the day since they knew all they did was whine and call them names.

They are just now facing the reality that everyone hated that place and its existence and since that hugbox of NeoGAF of banning anyone who didn't think like they did and erasing any evidence against the site you had all these users who thought the real world worked different than it did, and now that they see that the communities' owner was what they thought they were fighting against they have no place to go since their place is tainted and no other place wants them.

I actually think not being banned from there should be seen as a warning of the user you are :lol: Good memories from that place but just like most couldn't be more glad that its dead as well as its toxicity.

Where do you guys go for gaming news/forums now? All I have left is IGN which I've been at since 1997.

Gamefaqs forums are filled with too many young teenagers/trolls, it's only good for discussion of some individual games and the faqs themselves. You can't discuss anything legitimately on 4chan and the only alternatives now is reddit which I find awful to read or just social media.

I know there are several smaller gaming forums for individual franchises and stuff like that, but I can't think of any other big gaming boards anymore.

1997? Wasn't it called N64.com back then? How did IGN go from a N64 website to a full blown gaming website?

I get my gaming news from video game related threads and sections in different forums, including this one. usually when big news come a thread is made or someone shares a link with that info in a thread.

I don't bother reading official reviews of videogames anymore. i just ask people I trust who are into those games for their thoughts on them. I also don't buy or read gaming magazines anymore, unless my brother happens to buy the latest edition of Edge. That mag is always worth a read.

I stopped using IGN during the gamecube era, when they introduced the paid IGNinsider. I get most of my news from Twitter, I don't follow gaming sites but a few people who retweet the articles that I'd be interested in so my content is already curated.

Having a place to discuss? I just use the drome or venture to /v/ or /vr/ if I want more discussion, forums are a dying medium as we've gone through in two other threads, I wish there were as many places as 10 or 15 years ago but the world has moved on from message boards.

I personally go to the escapist, also sucks what happened to Neogaf I enjoyed the Toonami community over there

It's kinda mindblowing that you once had to purchase a monthly plaid subscription on IGN in order to be able to quote or post images on IGN forums.

IGNinsider still exists but I don't think many people subscribe to it anymore.

Man, that takes me back. I remember when IGN made almost all their boards subscription only, I think that only lasted for a year though. All the boards were made free again after everyone complained.

IGN was heavily active during the PS2/Gamecube/Xbox era. All the gaming boards had tons of new threads and posted, and then The Vestibule and all the individual gaming boards like the Zelda board, Pokemon board, Resident Evil board, had tons of activity.

It was sometime around 2010, the late PS3/360 and Wii era, that IGN's activity started to decline. Over the last 7 years IGN has become a ghost town. There's still new threads every day of course, but it's a shadow of what it once was. I think it was the rise of social media in the late 2000's that killed off IGN.

What a shame. I have so much fond memories of a teenager on IGN and how active the boards were from 2000-2010 or so. I reached 100,000 posts on IGN way back in 2006. That was over 10 years ago now.

What sorta killed the IGN Boards is actually rather simple. I twas a big board update made around 2009 or so when they forced people to log in with their e-mails instead of their usernames or something. A lot of older users already didn't use the e-mails they had used to sing up to IGN originally and thus had to either make new accounts or decided to just say "screw it" and left the forums forever. Also, after that update was made, IGNinsider wasn't really a must have anymore in order to improve your experience with IGN. Anyone could have an icon now, quote other uses, post images, etc.

IGN admins had conducted a survey/poll before enacting this update, so that users could state their position... The "no" won by a landslide. They saw it was a bad idea from the start. yet IGN still did it. basically there really wasn't anything wrong with the boards, but yet IGN insisted on making changes... which ended up doing more harm to tis activity than good. So yeah, whenever I see someone here saying the Drome needs an update I'm like "nonononono". Why fix what isn't broken?

And ofc, social media blowing up around 2010 worldwide plus websites like Reddit being founded also didn't help matters either.

Back then every property had its own sub-forum there. Remember the TMNT one? It was fun discussing the newer 2k3 episodes there.

Next to The Vestibule, GTA and SmackDown had the most active boards iirc. I don't think GTA and SmackDown boards still exist there, though.

The Vestibule is still a quite active board but all I see there these days is everyone trying to act like a political expert.

I just feel bad for all of the victims involved.

My thoughts and condolences are with all of the victims. I wish for their safety, recovery, and well-being. No one deserves to go through that much pain and misery. :(

I also feel sorry for the people who genuinely liked NeoGAF. I imagine that most were unaware of the situation.

Still, they don't deserve to have their website go down.

That's the question I am trying to solve now.

Most of the NG discussions were shitstain, but they actually were very fast in delivering various news. Now, I guess, I resort to checking some Twitter feeds from sites like IGN and...I dunno.:ohwell:

I imagine that the Harvey Weinstein scandal and the #metoo movement inspired many people to come forward to tell/voice/discuss their own experiences with sexual harassment/assault and rape.

Companies might change/update their policies on sexual misconduct, and will probably take the victims more seriously.

The Escapist is apparently in dire straits at the moment as well, albeit not for the same situation.

Like, there is a huge thing going on right now with sexual harassment all over the place and...the only thing people care to discuss is how ****ing message boards and cartoons like Loud House are affected. Jesus Christ, people.

This topic is specifically about NeoGAF closing.

If you want to discuss those events in general - create a new topic for this. What's the problem?

I hope so, but the next couple months are going to be telling. It depends on if people keep coming forward and people keep talking about it even if the news cycle moves on. Half the time, that's what they're waiting for.

Seems like a lot of old neogaf users are returning to IGN. There's a neogaf thread on the vestibule right now. I think it was also obvious a lot of the reasons IGN lost its activity was so many people left to go to neogaf, now they're coming back.

The others will probably go to reddit or /v/ or wherever. I could never just use something like twitter for gaming news, that's awful. I need a site and forums to navigate.

Never cared much for neogaf. Only knew the name. Was it even a good place for gaming discussions?

There was a lot of good gaming news posted and it was the most active forum. The hate neogaf gets is the political side of it, but I never ventured outside the gaming sections much so I never saw it. There were also a lot of good threads on various cartoons/anime/movies, etc.

I discovered a lot of new movies to watch thanks to some threads there. They had active threads for all cartoons and anime too, like Dragonball Super, etc.

Political discussion? that's what made lots of people get tired of IGN boards, mainly The Vestibule, in the last few years as well.

I've only read a few NeoGaf threads so I'm not very familiarised with the website.

It used to have great threads and discussions but eventually off-topic became only extreme-left political discussion and slowly it festered into the gaming section as well, you couldn't go to a topic without plenty of users mentioning how that game hated minorities/women/etc, if you disagreed they banned you so after a few years it got to the point where it was a huge echo chamber where no discussion could be had.

Google some of the bans people got on neogaf and topics users created, it almost seems like a left parody website. Seriously, google some, don't take my word for it, you'll get a laugh.

But yeah back in the day it had a lot of influence and it was great as gamers had voices, when it became all about censoring games that's when users and developers stopped giving a crap about neogaf which is why it became what it became and why most people are happy its gone.

On IGN there is also a lot of political discussion and there are people of different ideologies posting there. IGN doesn't ban people as easily as gamespot and NeoGaf seem to do though.

Well also any new member there who is there under a year if you get banned once its permanent. It's not like other forums where you get a ban for a week or two and get to come back.

I only lasted 3 weeks there and got a ban. Funny thing is I don't even know what I did, the ban screen didn't give me a reason. It's a strict website.

Where? on NeoGaf? I've heard that gamespot forums are known for having nazi mods. I guess NeoGaf is kind of the same?

I like the modding style here in the Drome. Mods cannot ban anyone here. Only Machias and Krang can ban people afaik. And you don't get banned that easily around these parts. Bans here seem to usually be justified.

I'd say, the fact that discussions on NeoGAF has become worse, was not only due to the far-left leanings of some of its members.
It was very typical for a self-contained community, incredible level of self-entitlement coupled with belief in their importance for industry and developers, as well as lack of self-awareness.

Their gaming discussion were barely any different from 4Chan's - they basically had two modes: "This game is the best game in the history of media" and "This game is the absolute pile of dogshit". There was no in-between pretty much.
And what's curious, the games that were highly praised on the forum, during their release, after several months were heavily criticized often for the very things they have been praised or due to some little and petty reasons.

Of course, they were some number of "untouchable" games, that always were praised and some games and characters that always were condemned, to the point that it was really "fashionable" to turn threads about those games and characters into topics with "funny" gifs and stupid "memes" only. Not very different from /v/.

Lunatic-leftists only served as the addition to all of the above, sometimes creating crazy discussions like "Why not give people option to skip boss battles?", "Is it immoral, if developers dare to hide information about their games, after it was leaked?" and the like.

In the last few months, it was fashionable to condemn developers and publishers for every perceived slight. If you was trying to say something good about them - then of course you was corporate shill, who was ready to eat everything that "evil corporates" had to offer. The funniest thing about this, that it was coming from the people who condemned elitism in gaming community. :D
Twice as funny that NeoGAF had some moderators and users who were indeed corporate shill, who allegedly were banning people for discussion of other consoles and games.

So, in the end, NG Gaming Discussion suffered not from "keyboard-progressives", but from elitism, the very thing that people on the forum "fought" against.

Go figure.:roll:

Off-topic discussions were just another can of crazy worms. Now this is where left lunatics were "shining" at their best.

It kind of symbolic that the last thread I have seen on NG was: "Why NeoGAF hated so much on Internet?". Some of the, "keyboard-progressives" come to conclusion that only people who hated NeoGAF were banned users and far-right.
But the final post in that thread could have summed up the whole story of NG in the last few years: "Zero self-awareness: The Thread".

There were also daily Trump threads with people talking about how much they wanted to immigrate to Canada or how they're, "tired of waking up in fear" every morning. lol.

I mean I don't like Trump either, but if you're seriously having mental breakdowns every day because he's President, then yes something is wrong.

Yeah, fear mongering was on the whole other level down there.

Like some, supposedly black users, were seriously saying that there is big conspiracy going on and that absolutely all other races (white, asians and so on) hate all black people.

Hillary boot-licking and hate for everything related to Sanders was also of the charts, as well, as absolute belief, that Trump won only because of Russians and racists.:teek:

I'm surprised that all of this didn't come out sooner, what with the huge emphasis on ethics in game journalism.

Look at this thread on IGN welcoming neogaf refugees. There were also a lot of other neogaf threads on IGN lately:

http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/th...ead.455043203/

LOL, as well as well as people saying, "We did it, Vesti, we got neogaf shut down...time to take out reddit next!"

Only on da Vesti.

Admin of NeoGAF was accused of sexual harassment as far back as 2012. And in July of this years, there was scandal, when it was founded that one of the mods had child porn or something like that.
So much for "highly-intellectual community fighting for equality and tolerance".

Well, they nailed tolerance part at least, just not exactly the right kind of tolerance.:tlol: