Who the hell is Evil Ed?

Didn't you read the article? He's the God of Videogames...

He's got a videogame site and possibly a TV show in the work. Visit his site.

www.eviled.com

From his section on "Girls."

"Ha! We play video games and never leave the house, what do we know about girls?"

Heh.

Anyway, the article's not really about games, but about Evil Ed. It's just a good read. It won't shed any light on the gaming industry.

Wow, this is a very negative article. Almost like those old-school "60 Minutes" features-- the ones where they're given carte blanche inside the target corporation on the assumption that it will be a positive article, then it turns into a dramatic expose.

wumpus http://www.gamebasement.com

But "Evil Ed" strikes me as the kind of guy who doesn't really believe in bad press. I see he proudly touts the article on his webpage.

How very Jonah Falcon-esque of him.

You know, it's guys like Evil Ed who give the concept of gaming handles a bad name.

But then again he's probably the type of guy who also likes to be called "Evil Ed" in real life. That moves him into a whole different category altogether. I worry about people like this.

~wumpus

Isn't phoenix new times a parody/joke newspaper? Didn't they do the piece on "guns for homeless" or something a while back? (It was a mock piece on an imaginary organization that was giving out guns to the homeless to protect themselves. They fooled even 60 minutes, who asked the "leader" for an exclusive interview)

I haven't visited Evil Ed's site yet, but it sounds like a Mahur.

I drank a few vodka asskicking things with Ed last May. He's a "different" sort of character, and while somewhat entertaining at first, he manages to make everyone around him pretty uncomfortable.

Basically, I'd classify him as an egomaniac with a self esteem problem - and the two aspects create such internal friction for him that he looks like he's about to burst any moment. Now, this isn't to say that he's a 100% bad guy... I'm just saying I recognize parts of myself from when I was 15 or so. It's just that I got beyond it, as I'd hope most of us did. Ed seems suspended in post-pubescent trauma.

Hrm... is it me or does everyone I know who has tried a "web gaming broadcast" have some brand of god complex? Not to this extreme, but at least somewhat. I mean, just because 200 people have seen you on camera over TCP doesn't make you a celebrity. I won't name the certain ex-pseudo staffers who contribute to my opinion on this, but you either know who I mean or not. Granted, they were sociable, but rather self-elevated and aloof.

Now, Tom Chick... he's a damn celebrity. I hope he hasn't forgotten that I get the jeep this year... you HAVEN'T FORGOTTEN, have you Tom?

"I mean, just because 200 people have seen you on camera over TCP doesn't make you a celebrity."


It doesn't? Damn, back to the drawing board...

"I drank a few vodka asskicking things with Ed last May."

Did this come from the "All Your Base" script? What you say?

Amanpour

I've met--or at least seen--Evil Ed at a couple of gaming events. What struck me most about him was that he was wearing the same Samurai Shodown III shirt on both occasions. At any rate, I don't know him well enough and thus shouldn't jump to conclusions, but he seems to be of the mind that what gamers want to see is a wacky guy with sunglasses. I think there's something to be said for the fact that not a one of us in this forum is actually familiar with his work.

As for Aszurom's comment: 'is it me or does everyone I know who has tried a "web gaming broadcast" have some brand of god complex?'

I think the problem is that those broadcasts whose hosts try to come across with their "distinct personalities" inevitably come across this way. I work next to a small group of guys who do our GameSpot Live segment, and they're totally into what they do and totally into games. You'll never see them on camera because they take real pride in their work. It's a different approach to that of a broadcast such as Evil Ed's.

--Greg

"Now, Tom Chick... he's a damn celebrity."

You ask me if I have a God complex. Let me tell you something: I am God.

[Cut and pasted from the IMDB]

-Tom

Ooh, ooh!
That was from some Doctor movie starring Alec Baldwin! I can't recall the name, and I only saw the commercial.

~Andrew

Well, that was my 3/4th drunken take on Mr Ed. Kinda obnoxious, and enjoys getting a reaction out of people regardless of the etiquette involved in doing so... which is I guess why he's got an entourage with him :-)

Rubin and Downs were alright fellas. They were kinda busy with their own crowd, but I got to yak at them a few. Too bad their show was the only thing worth watching on pseudo. I guess they're working on something else right now - the word "Disney" was whispered. I dunno what that means... maybe Scot is going to play Flynn in TRON 2.0 ?

As for myself, I've got my equipment pretty much together now - I could start doing a show any day. The problem is time. From the experimentation I've been doing, in order to get proper game footage and then edit those segments into a broadcast properly takes me about a week - plus or minus a few days. If I wanted to give up gaming to do a show about it, I guess I could :-) I do still want to do the occasional thing, but I just really got into the challenge of being able to capture and process gaming footage. Took a while to figure out how to get it to look professional... now I have to figure out how to do it easier and keep it looking decent.

Greg, while I'm on that subject - if I wanted to play 20 questions with one of the gamespot live production people, who should it be? Preferrably someone who has the time and patience to chat a bit about how to clean up what I'm doing.

You wouldn't believe the amount of crazy gamer calls I'd get as a tech support person (for Mediaone and AT&T). I had one guy, almost like Evil Ed, proclaim that Total Annihilation teaches true tactics, and is the game "God plays these games." He really was NUTS. He called because of the usual bad/no connection speed or whatnut...

After I got him back online with his cable modem, he ridiculed me because he said my handle "sucked" for TA. I mentioned to him that I liked the game alot. . . and then he said, "Hey you want to play some TA?" "I'm at work" I said, "So what." I actually played him after work. .. he easily beat me...but then he kept emailing me at work, "tell your co workers ill beat all there asses." . . .i just ignored him...
but he eventually played quite a few of my coworkers. . .

anyhow, Evil Ed is NOT uncommon...I didn't even tell you about the woman who called and cried real tears because she got discconnected from her UO game and was losing all her stuff. unbelievable.

etc

"I had one guy, almost like Evil Ed, proclaim that Total Annihilation teaches true tactics, and is the game "God plays these games."

Ha ha - I love hearing stories about whackos. If I could, I'd have an Evil Ed story every day. Keep 'em coming.

Well I have my Everquest stories from work, some guy kept complaining it was the cable modems fault he couldn't get into certain dungeons (Cazic Thule dungeon specifically)! He was too afraid to call Verant but thought it OK to complain to my old job ... sheesh. And then, no joke, HE STARTED WORKING FOR US! Ended up being a early twenty year old kid...did installs for cable modem...was weirdo. He got REALLY jealous one time when he found out a new coworker (real nice guy) ended up having TWO level 50+ characters. He was like, "bah Everquest isn't that good anyway...plus Fennin Ro is a REAL server...blah blah blah" and coming from a guy who played the game like his whole time off of work. He also really smelled bad. . . kinda sad, he wasn't too bad of a guy.

also, i remember one caller to a coworker who wanted to avenge a PK in UO so he asked a coworker who was a bigtime UO anti pk to logon and help him AT WORK. and he did ... sheesh.

btw, that TA guy was real nuts. I'm not joking when this guy called almost 2-3 times a week belittling our whole support staff and then out of nowhere always asking to take us on in an RTS game...mostly TA.

the usual crazy calls i got though were ppl who just HAD to get on the internet, and were not on (or had bad connection), and generally just screamed...and i mean SCREAM at me. sheesh... or an old lady who though her pc was broken, ended up she just didn't have her monitor on. or a same type of granny who couldn't connect to EBAY...EBAY WAS the internet for her. . . anyway i have TONS of tech support call stories hehe

etc

Bub said:

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Ooh, ooh!
That was from some Doctor movie starring Alec Baldwin! I can't recall the name, and I only saw the commercial.

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You want a crazy guy story? Okay Mark...

Back when Quake was all the rage, a bunch of guys from Papyrus and I would go down to the Cybersmith in Harvard Sq. and enter their weekly Quake tournament. It was $10 to get in and if you won you got $30 in free time on their network.

The Papyrus boys would spend nights after work working on their fragging skills on their LAN, and I was limited to dial-up. So they'd roundly kick my ass every time. I didn't really mind, I had a good time, and we went out drinking and retelling war stories afterwards.

A bunch of kids were also usually there, so you'd have weird things like the guy who developed the physics engine for Nascar getting pummeled by some 13 year old skateboard punk.

So in one match (it was always four at a time) I particularly stunk up the place-- like high score was in the thirties and I had -25. (Damn that lava!) So we're getting up and switching chairs and the final scores are on all the monitors and this twelve year old who was a generally good kid hears me saying that I stunk the place up and he asks what my handle is. So I tell him, and he looks at the screen, and with total honesty and surprise says, "Wow, you DO really suck."

And I lost it on him.

I just went batshit and cursed him up and down and told him that when he had a real job he could judge me on my Quake skills.

And the kid was actually mortified and sorry, and I kept cursing him.

Later that night I realized that I had been a total dick. Here I was, like 30 years old, going off on a 12 year old because he was honest and open enough to just blurt out what was obvious to everyone there.

I figured I'd apologize to him the following week, but he never came back after that.

So there ya go. I'm the whacko.

Mea culpa.

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I figured I'd apologize to him the following week, but he never came back after that.

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Hey Mark, after reading this thread, I think maybe you've got a potential weekly feature or something with the crazy tech support calls and such.

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Yeah, since he doesn't have anything else to do...;-)

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Hm. I was tech support for an online gaming service. Hi-yah!

How about the mom that called in because of the "mysterious" $15,000 charge that had appeared on her credit card. She started really mad, then got really quiet when I asked if maybe she had a 14-or-15-year-old boy. She said yes...and hung up. Another victim of Battletech, that mom...

Then there's the guy who used the one-month free subscription, used all his free hours plus enough others to rack up a $400 charge. he called in, and whenever we tried to explain what the charges were for, he just broke into a chant. "One free month! One free month!" Loser. have a free clue, guys: Don't torque off the guy what has control of your billing status. I can't help you if you won't talk to me.

A taste of EverBreast? We would get calls all the time about (fill in the blank) cheating dog of a (fill in the blank) had somehow masterminded the death of their character in Gemstone III. Now they had died, and lost their gear, and wanted it all back. This is something I loved. Disputes were the province of the companies what ran the games, not tech support. Can you connect to the game to grump? Good for you. Buh-bye.

So many. Ah, there were sooo many. Funny, but I really miss 'em.

Ah, tech support hell, it is such a "grunt" and "thankless" job...I could imagine tech support for EQ or UO...my god the stories they would have. though i think any phone support jobs, particularly with computers, will always have its fair share of loonies...

one guy i had was something out of Art Bell...he kept calling, asklng if out network was Y2k compliant and if we had backup and such...and then he'd rant about the day the world ends "you'll be sorry" stuff...

or the kid who had his college term paper uploaded to the free webserver and complained it was our fault when he turned in his paper late... sheesh. generally most of the bad tech support calls I got were irate customers needing someone to argue with, or someone to belittle, bellyache and yell at.

The most annoying people were arrogant network "i know my computer" admins or the high strung "If i lose money who will pay me" daytraders...these people needed to RELAX, maybe some decaf. though some of the crap we had happen, it was understandable for customers to be irate.

and i actually welcomed most gamer calls, since i could at least "chat" with the customers about sumthin. hehe, i remember chatting with a guy about Icewind Dale and PST as i reinstalled his windows over the phone...we talked for hours about crpg's...

etc

Ha ha -- great stories. Did someone really run up a $15k bill playing Battletech? Jesus, you can build your own giant robot for that kind of cash.

Yep-it was a kid. His folks probably just thought he was playing a new game. They were right-sort of ;-)

Callers like this were usually referred over to billing, where they would try to negotiate a deal that helped out the abused parents, but this one just hung up, and never called back. I kept an eye out for her, so I know.

The really good part was that if they decided to go postal on me for something their little tile ape had done, I could very calmly (and while oozing sympathy) tell them that they could of course take it to court, but that court would involve credit fraud charges being leveled against their kids, since it was the child what stole from them, not The Company. College or Correctional Facility? Academic record or Criminal record? Decisions, decisions...

Really, though, we did have a lot of sympathy for these folks, and usually let them off the hook for 30-60% of what their kid(s) had racked up.