#nick calandra

[purrpletartan]

Jack violating Nick's personal space, part 2. Yes, he did it twice. LOL

[purrpletartan]

Jack violating Nick's personal space to talk about a game from PAX West that no one else, but him, cared about. Part 1. lol

[gaykarstaagforever]

I think a lot of this OtherFrost / Nick Calandra Second Wind drama is less about high crimes, and more about Nick being an asshole in general, and Frost and other young creatives getting mad that they let him take advantage of them.

That said, given Nick's professional history alone, it's obvious that he's bad at his chosen profession, and the kind of guy who makes the absolute worst decision for the stupidest reasons, a good 60% of the time.

And if any of the rest of this is true, he isn't even selling out for anything good. A free trip to Iceland and a $100 swag bag? A $2000 gamer chair he hated that he immediately got rid of? Corporate connections at fucking THQNordic? Dude.

I also like the part where he sold one of his websites for less than $10k, then had to whine at his new corporate overlords just to get a salary of $85k. ...And that only lasted a couple of years, then that inevitably fell apart and he was back to scrounging.

The state of video games journalism is dire. This is a $200 billion global industry, but we figure out which games we want to play from corporate showcases and random streamers, so the people trying to do serious reviews and analysis are warping review scores just so Activision will send them food. It sucks, but such is life. They need to admit games criticism is now like literary or film criticism, a solely academic thing no one is going to pay you very much to do.

Because the alternative is a bunch of guys with big journalism school loans, desperately back-stabbing each other and being shady for a tiny piece of a very small pie. ...And they all have to have second and third jobs anyway, because you can't live on this.

Nick is more a cautionary tale of what happens when someone has tons of ambition, but what they hope to achieve is kind of shit in the first place.

Manage a Target and do a podcast on the side, guys. Your dreams are outdated and the pressure of that is driving you all mad.

And YES, he hits Yahtzee a little here, as a selfish guy who just wants to get paid to do art, to the point that he actively takes zero interest in the business that is being done with his stuff. Like he knows he could make more going indie, but he wants someone else to handle all the legal / business stuff and pay him a salary / healthcare. Which is pretty much the impression I always have had of him.

Is that bad? I...don't know. There is an argument to be made in favor of that. And going hard on a guy for NOT being greedy or ambitious is kind of weird. I guess the biggest problem is that it seems he refuses to step up and speak out when shit behavior is going on, because he literally does not care so long as he gets paid? Which, if true, is shit. There is certainly a moral responsibility here since he is a legal part / co-owner of the business, whether he likes it or not.

You don't get to play the awkward smol bean artist too pure for this world, after this many years profiting from it. Like, grow up, dude.

[jodjuya]

Frost's exposé on Nick Calandra's cartoonish ineptitude is so incredibly damning.

Calandra is the poster-child of petite tyranny. The only things he knows how to do is be a weasel, have bad ideas, tank projects, obfuscate financials, feel resentment, harbour insane grudges, refuse accountability, skim off the top, be stubborn, throw people under the bus, micromanage, cyberstalk, create ""hostile work environments"", not take criticism, and be unhealthily addicted to twitter.

If you stand up to him, then that's attacking him, and so he's justified in getting back at you.

If you don't stand up to him, then that's proof that you're secretly plotting revenge against him, and so he's justified in preemptively 'striking first'

Like, hooooooooo boy! he's one of THOSE people! okay!

Must have enjoyed snacking on lead paint in his childhood or something. Grown ass man with all the ethical maturity of a sulking snot-nosed brat. Dude needs a Stop Being Such A Little Bitch intervention, where all his friends and family gang up on him together to bully him into going to therapy so he can learn that "Gaslight Gatekeep Girlboss" is not supposed to be genuinely aspirational. What a fucking muppet. Embodies the Dunning-Kruger effect like it's his life's calling.

Second Wind Group had SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much social capital and community goodwill behind them, and this debacle is going to torpedo them dead in the water. I can't see Nick bowing out with any kind of dignity, and I hope to god he doesn't scuttle the organisation out of sheer pettiness.

[thenightgaunt]

Yahtzee Croshaw and Nick Calandra did a video about the new project and explain what went down at The Escapist.

[pixelpoppers]

I’ll be completely honest with you. Even though I cover video games for work regularly, for a long time now I’ve had a hard time sticking with the games that interest me, of which there are a lot. I know many people have this problem where you start a game, aren’t immediately hooked, and then drop it a few hours later. For a long time I attributed this to stress, over having too many games to play and just being unable to keep my mind focused on one thing at a time. With so many games to cover and pay […]

Internalizing that there's a "right" way to play games can ruin your ability to enjoy them.

In this op-ed, Nick Calandra writes about how adhering to others' ideas of how several prominent games should be played was ruining the games for him. Once he let himself "set [his] own parameters for how [he] wanted to experience [them]" he was able to play in the ways that made the games fun for him.

Players have different needs and tastes. We should be willing to dismiss authorial intent in crafting our own experiences and we shouldn't gatekeep others from crafting their own.