Final word on 'Gamergate: The Card Game' and Onebookshelf

Last week, I expressed concern about the news that Onebookshelf.com (the exclusive distributor of titles from NUELOW Games) appeared to have dropped a product from Postmortem Studios in response to pressure from another publisher. The product was Gamergate: The Card Game, which I talk a little about in this post.

Today, Onebookshelf's Steve Weick sent out an email (which was also posted to Facebook, so you can read it here) about the situation. For me, the most important statements in it were:

"Some publishers also complained about this title, and a few publishers let us know they would not be interested in continuing to work with us if we carried it on our store. We will not allow any publisher to dictate content policy onto any other publisher, explicitly or implicitly. If any publisher ever decides to discontinue business with us because our content policy errs to the side of being too open, rather than restrictive, then we will respect their decision to leave our marketplaces and wish them well. To be clear, no publishers’ comments had any bearing on our decision to discontinue.selling this title."

Good for Steve Weick and Onebookshelf.

A distributor has the right to carry whatever they please, for whatever reasons they please. And no publisher should try to use their business relationship with said distributor as a club to force them to drop products from other publishers.

I can't say I'm completely happy with the end result. My sympathies are with designer James Desborough, but I can't fault Onebookshelf for the decision or their reasons for taking the steps they took. I do fault ANY publisher who approached Onebookshelf in an official capacity and said "pull that, or we pull our products."

I am occasionally troubled by our all-ages comics appearing next to porn comics on the DriveThruComics homepage. But I would NEVER (even if I felt I had the clout) be the kind of jackass who writes to Onebookshelf with threats.

It makes me a little sad that in the industry I love, there are people who are the sort of thugs that do.

More Gamergate Nonsense

Game designer and blogger James Desborough has published #Gamergate: The Card Game through PostMortem Studios. The sell-copy for the game describes it as "by taking the piss out of all sides," something which we delight in here at NUELOW Games. So, that's a plus in James's favor in our book.

Cover art for #Gamergate: The Card Game

A minus against him is the fact it's a game making fun of #Gamergate. I have been disgusted by the various factions in that particular fight for a long time, and Hundal has been bored by them. The only thing #Gamergate confirmed for me is that I am not a gamer (even though I minstakenly identified myself as one for over two decades) and it confirmed for Hundal that she was right to never attend a game convention. The game would have gone completely unnoticed by me and most other people if one of the crusading anti-Gamergate Factions hadn't decided to convince distributor Onebookshelf to drop the game, and other crusaders hadn't decided to beat their chests about how they "stand behind the decision."

NUELOW Games is exclusively distributed by Onebookshelf via their RPGNow, DriveThruComics, DriveThruFiction, DriveThruRPG, and WarGameVault sites. If we ever add a card game to our line-up, we will undoubtedly sell it at DriveThruCards. I have nothing but nice things to say about Onebookshelf, despite the fact that there's no specific category for ROLF!: The Rollplaying Game on their sites. I also believe that they, as a distributor, have the right to carry or not carry whatever products they like. However, NUELOW Games has published (and continues to publish) products that rely on satire, sarcasm, and commentary on current events in politics and popular culture. It is concerning to me that zealots of any stripe can convince a distributor to drop a satirical product because they demand it to be so. If the sell-copy for Desborough's game is accurate, it doesn't sound that different than NUELOW's "Bill Clinton and the Secret City of Women," "The Pimp, the Protester, and the Po-Po" or "Mr. Freedom vs. Blowhard."

There but for the grace of God goes ROLF!: The Rollplaying Game?

I know nothing about Gamergate: The Card Game beyond the cover art and the sell-copy. I am not likely to learn anything more about it, because Gamergate draws fucktards like a corpse draws flies and I want nothing to do with it. But if you're interested in checking out James' game, you can buy it through this website. (You can also read more about it there.)

For even more information, visit his blog here.