The Real Game Awards, Part 2: Oh sweet baby (Inc.)

Historian Kevin Impellizeri shares a story of a video game controversy to his friends: Kate Lynch and Andy Hunter. We continue our look at The Real Game Awards, the alternative gaming awards show/business venture of former Screw Attack co-founder Craig "Stuttering Craig" Skistimas. This time around, we take a closer look at their "Worst Game Journalist" category and the moral panic over Sweet Baby Inc., a small, Montreal-based games script doctoring company/possible corrupt shadow organization manipulating all of video games. 

Topics discussed include: the horrors of body type B, getting mad at games that don't exist, the long legacy of GamerGate, how a former DeVry recruiter turned his obsession over Alyssa Mercante into a lucrative YouTube channel, and Kevin inadvertently stumbles upon the grift.

Read Umberto Eco's influential 1995 essay "Ur-Fascism" here: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fascism.

For an introduction to KiwiFarms and LOLcows, check out the Behind the Bastards series "A Terrible Story about the Internet": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA6Mrt5OPfE.

You should also check out Kristin L. Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars (Yale University Press, 1998): https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300085549/fighting-for-american-manhood/.

More info, including show notes and sources at http://scandalousgamespodcast.wordpress.com.