From the article archive
The Gauntlet Has Been Thrown Down, Mr. Skarka
Gareth-Michael Skarka thinks he's all that and then some. He, in his own mind, is one of the important people in role playing; and you, the Gaming Outpost reader, and I, a Gaming Outpost writer, and the other writers and the staff of this site, don't matter. I have listened to him rant and rave and watched him be offensive for the sake of giving offense, and stayed out of his flame wars as much as I was able. But I cannot recall when he has ever been kind, or positive, or encouraging, or thoughtful, toward anyone. I have at least ten years on him, yet he is the old curmudgeon; he is the one who looks down on the rest of us, the peons in this kingdom in which he is one of the nobles.
I pause to state that this article was not requested nor suggested by anyone at Gaming Outpost; that I did not ask permission or clear this with them; that they have had no input in this article--and that it is not in any way to be taken as their opinion or responsibility. They are not paying me for this; it is my opinion solely.
I could understand if it were just me against whom he takes his condescending attitude. After all, I'm a bit unconventional, a misfit even among misfits. I don't do conventions, I don't network with other game manufacturers to any serious degree, I'm not on the major industry lists or a member of GAMA or the RPGA, my game isn't carried by the big hobby distributors--I don't do things the way they're done. And although I don't think he's ever liked or respected me, we did have a bit of a tiff when I, relying only on the fact that I earned a Juris Doctore with honors and think I understand contract law pretty well, having gotten honor grades in it, perceived within the words of one of his articles a license to expand upon his RPGnet 52 Pick-up game series in any way that did not involve selling copies of his work, and so did free adaptations to encourage Multiverser players to use his ideas for Multiverser worlds. He, relying apparently on his superior education, said that those words were not a license, were not intended to be a license, and that no one in the industry would have perceived a license in them no matter what conclusion might be reached by a court of law. So if he wants to look down on me for that, fine. And if he wants to attack my religion (as he has done, publicly, in these forums), that's not a problem--it's been attacked by far better over the centuries, and he's not going to do it or me any harm.
And the last time I looked, Multiverser was available through not less than twenty-four online book dealers; there is more than one way to get a game to the public.
But he has recently attacked Gaming Outpost; he has declared the site dead, and stated that it has been mismanaged and destroyed by the operators. He has in the process offended me again--suggesting that my articles were not worth reading; never mind that the current Gaming Outpost subscribers seem to think they are, if I wrote them they must not be very good because I'm not an industry insider, or whatever it is.
As of this writing:
- Embraces, 16 votes, 8.5 rating
- Believable Nonsense, 10 votes, 8.3 rating
- Stitches, 10 votes, 7.8 rating
- Sentience, 7 votes, 9.86 rating (Only one vote was not a ten--and it was a nine)
- Motivation, 8 votes, 8.80 rating
- Edison, 11 votes, 7.55 rating
- Names, 10 votes, 8.80 rating
But Gareth has a long history of bad blood with Gaming Outpost. When he was writing Underworld, he agreed to do a game design column here, at the same time that John Wick was doing one for Orkworld. But then he got offended that he was not being paid to write his series, when in fact at that time no one was being paid to write any series or columns here, and moved his column to RPGnet (there was no pay there, either)--where he republished all of the entries in the series up to that point, so that Gaming Outpost visitors who wished to continue the series would have to go to RPGnet, but RPGnet visitors who wanted to read the earlier entries would not have to go to Gaming Outpost. He said it was all a misunderstanding; but he didn't come back.
That is, he didn't come back until Gaming Outpost was offering three cents a word to columnists. He had just been offered something like that by I-RPG, a site that was somewhat secretly preparing to go live with five paid professional columnists (among whom he and I were both listed, which is how I know he was)--and the site closed before it opened. I don't know how he came to write for Gaming Outpost again; I offered them the column I had prepared for I-RPG at the terms I-RPG had offered me, and they accepted it. I can't say that they accepted it solely on my reputation; I sent them the first three as samples. Perhaps they accepted Gareth's work based on his reputation; I'm not privy to that. But his Relevant Conundrum debuted a few days after my Game Ideas Unlimited, and pulled more readers.
He wrote sixteen columns between June 6 and September 26; he missed one week in August. Three of them were entitled Why Gamers Suck, and they were not the only ones to rail against the fans in this hobby. Perhaps he did it just to make people angry. Or perhaps he has to complain to have anything to say at all. He also included (in his word count) his current reading and listening interests, as if being a role playing game author gave him some credibility in those fields as well. And he was paid for these columns; he certainly didn't buy a yacht with the extra money--but he was for a moment one of the elite few people in the world who could say that they were paid regularly to write content for someone else's web site.
Of course, so was I. So was Seth Ben-Ezra. Maybe Gareth is upset because he thought he was going to be ranked with S. John Ross and Jonathan Tweet and Monte Cook, and instead he got Alex Knapik, Jack Spencer, Aaron Powell, and, perhaps worst of all, M. Joseph Young. Almost from the beginning he complained that we were beneath him; that the site should have gotten better talent, better writers, bigger names. I don't know why those big names didn't come. Perhaps they were afraid of the subscription experiment; perhaps they just didn't think three cents per word was worth their time. But from the beginning Gareth took the attitude that Gaming Outpost didn't stand a chance and wasn't going to make it because we didn't measure up to his level.
I never saw it. I won't say it was bad work; his just wasn't better than any of the others. I regularly made positive forum posts about articles by the others, but I could never think of anything positive to say about Gareth's work. I came to his defense once when someone complained that one of his articles was too similar to something in RPGnet's vault; but as someone with five years experience in radio including many artist interviews, I didn't find his four interview columns particularly interesting or well done; his game ideas weren't terribly original; I read all of his columns, and never came away feeling like he'd done much work on them. Maybe that was all three cents a word was worth. I thought then that he was just waiting to be proved right, and making no effort to prevent the disaster he fortold. He must have noticed that the other columnists talked up each other's work; he regularly talked it down (not mine, that I recall, but Alex and Jack for certain and I think some of the others). He reported at one point someone in the industry commenting to him that he was the only thing Gaming Outpost had--but instead of suggesting that indeed there was something worth reading in Seth's or Aaron's or even my work, he in his arrogance just acceded.
The subscription experiment did not go so well. As with any business venture, it was assumed that there would be steep initial losses followed by a gradual recovery as more subscribers joined--but as often happens, income did not increase as rapidly as needed, and the site was soon out of money. Aaron announced to the authors that the contracts would be paid for another thirty days, but that he wouldn't hold anyone to them who didn't want to write for that time. An alternative profit sharing system would be installed thereafter, in which we were invited to participate. Gareth immediately stopped writing. He said that he had decided never to write any more free articles, since he makes his living as a writer. I guess he can't be faulted for that; but he could have written those few remaining articles, and tried to do some good with them--Gaming Outpost did promise to pay for those, even if they had to dig into their own pockets to do it, and it might have put them in a better place now.
So I dare to say that if Gaming Outpost is failing today, it is as much Gareth-Michael Skarka's fault as anyone else's; and perhaps more so. And if, as I think, Gaming Outpost still has a future, it is in spite of him.
I would like to think that Gareth will respond to this in a civil and decent manner, perhaps writing an article for you to read here on this site. But I don't expect it. He will tell you it's because he doesn't write articles for free anymore, or perhaps that there's no point to writing for Gaming Outpost when it isn't going to be here much longer. Even now he could help this site recover; but he's not interested in helping anyone--he only insults, derides, and offends. In fact, if he does answer this article, it will probably be a diatribe laced with insult, a temper tantrum for which he feels he, as lord of the manor, is quite entitled. So it's probably better for all of us if he just keeps his promise not to bother us anymore.
M. Joseph Young is a regular columnist here at Gaming Outpost, author or co-author of several products in the Multiverser line, and a favorite target of Gareth-Michael Skarka's insults.