i enjoyed discussion on the video on retro game price manipulation but i kind of think there are a lot of facets to this particular issue. i watched it and felt similarly a little weird about the response to the video. but in my opinion the speculation in the markets around retro games has been really ridiculous to watch. while obviously i don’t believe in policing who is allowed to consume or buy games, i reserve the right to very much look down on anyone who is making big money off a speculative bubble (and that includes WATA, Heritage Auctions, NFT people, art market people, etc). it may be legal but watching private companies get into this stuff and kind of create their own self-contained market on art and culture does suck. it may be the norm but it still sucks. it’s worth thinking about how all these youtubers contributed to the higher and higher valuing of retro games though.
one other thing to mention (which i’m assuming is what is hinted at when Frank says “white nationalism”) is Karl Jobst is like a long time Goldeneye speedrunner and has been open with a handful of other Goldeneye speedrunners (especially RWhiteGoose) of being more or less “alt right” in the past, and very much publicly performing that. though i guess he’s been not putting that out in the open much anymore as his youtuber career as grown. i don’t really get the “white nationalism” thing from the video itself, but the point that it part of this like aggressive policing of a hobby is a good one. Karl is obviously an unreliable narrator here.
though somehow someway i feel a lot less bad for WATA/Heritage Auctions than i do for gamergate’s targets… so i kinda take issue with the comparison there being made by Frank, given the wildly varying level of vulnerability of the targets.
but anyway even the video itself brings up the point that that’s happened in other markets… it’s just that seems to be tripping the hardcore gamer/collector base online which is very mobilized in certain spaces. i think these people are going to be disappointed when they realize that all their emotional appeals against this stuff is not going to prevent the fact that there are next to no regulating mechanisms to prevent this. i do think the retro game market is an interesting small slice of this larger issue, though this is far from any kind of objective take on it but more of a kind of weird Judge Judy emotional appeal. but it’s a bit like a sort of legal cosplay in the way it acts like this is some kind of horrible exception to the system and not just the system functioning as intended.
tl;dr i honestly can understand why people would be upset of the idea that some moneyed interests have taken over their hobby and turned it into a gold rush. i think you can pretty safely say that there are reasonable reasons why people don’t like this without making QAnon comparisons or whatever. i’m not saying they shouldn’t know better, but i understand why some people have the emotional attachments they do. but this is what capitalism does. which is why capitalism suxxx. but a lot of those people would never admit to that - they would never grow as people or learn to exist outside these bubbles and have a greater broader awareness of history and culture. so they have to find ways to make this thing seem like this great big horrible exception to the rule that must receive divine punishment in order for them to feel better about everything.
also i just wanna repeat again that we should please not pretend some people with resources being harassed because they tripped into a really mobilized/often reactionary space is the same thing as gamergate though. it’s not!