From what I understand, the judge ruled that it wasn't defamation for Jobst to call Mitchell a cheater but saying he drove Apollo Legend to suicide was too far considering he didn't have a lot of reason to believe this: it was mostly based on online rumors about an apparent out of court financial settlement between Apollo and Mitchell which never existed. What probably drove the nail in the coffin is that Jobst did edit the video later to remove the claim, but after Mitchell sent legal action, he republished the original video. This might have felt vindictive to the judge. Now, Jobst did eventually ask Apollo's family for the facts, remove the claim and publish a retraction about a month later, but perhaps the judge thought this was too little too late.
I don't agree that Mitchell's reputation was harmed as he brought attention to the video multiple times, but it's hard to argue against the facts: Jobst said something he wasn't sure was true, and when he learned it was false he kept it up anyway.
AFAIK the entire lawsuit was about Jobst falsely accusing Mitchell of driving Apollo Legend to suicide and then not properly retracting it (Jobst buried the retraction at the end of an unrelated 30 minute video). The reason why Mitchell's cheating was brought up in the trial was that Jobst's side were attempting to say that all reputational harm Mitchell suffered during that period was caused by cheating accusations, not Jobst's suicide accusations (as if being accused of cheating at Donkey Kong is equivalent to being accused of driving someone to suicide). Mitchell was able to prove this was false by producing emails from events that specifically said that they weren't hiring him due to Jobst's suicide accusations.
Additionally, Jobst kept making videos berating Mitchell during the course of the trial, which seems to have pissed off the judge. From the decision: "Mr Jobst’s attitude seems to me to have been one of, “Well, if I’m going to be sued,
I may as well go for broke and damn the consequences.” Far from being evidence of his bona fides, I consider his conduct to be reckless and to show no regard for the truth or for the effect of his video on Mr Mitchell and his reputation."
> Jobst's side were attempting to say that all reputational harm Mitchell suffered during that period was caused by cheating accusations
The cheating and the other lies and the rampant lawsuits. I agree with that causing almost all the damage. I hadn't even heard of the particular badly substantiated piece among the real stuff.
> (as if being accused of cheating at Donkey Kong is equivalent to being accused of driving someone to suicide)
...no, not as if that. That is not part of the argument.
> Mr Mitchell said that John Weeks was the organiser of an auction of the world’s
largest collection of pinball and arcade gaming machines. Mr Mitchell had an
agreement with him to host the auction for a fee of $50,000. After the publication of
the video, Mr Weeks cancelled the agreement, apparently because of the negativity
surrounding Mr Mitchell as a result of the video. Mr Mitchell later received an
email from Mr Weeks confirming that cancellation, in which he said:
> "As per our previous conversation, I apologize for our decision to withdraw our
agreement with you to host you at our auction due to the allegations from
Karl Jobst that you played a significant role in Apollo Legend’s decision to
take his own life. We made the decision strictly for business reasons and I do
not feel personal discontent with you, but the negativity brought by the claims
presented too large a risk to us strictly from a business perspective."
> Mr Mitchell recalled that another person, Ryan Burger, who had booked him for
three separate events, cancelled all three and has not since booked him to appear at
any events. Mr Burger also sent him an email cancelling the third event, saying:
> "Due to the toxicity and negativity brought by Karl Jobst’s claim that you
played a role in Apollo Legend’s decision to take his own life, Old School Gamer Magazine feels compelled to withdraw its $5,000 per weekend paid
appearance offer also for the Midwest Gaming Classic.
I had hoped that this would have faded by now so we didn’t have to cancel
this event similar to Des Moines Gaming Classic and Planet Comicon
appearances that we had withdrawn earlier this summer, but I think it’s best
that we allow some time to pass given the current climate."
> Whether or not the reasons given in those emails were true, the withdrawal of the
offers demonstrated a harmful effect of the video on Mr Mitchell’s reputation and
the receipt of the emails affected Mr Mitchell’s personal reactions to the video.
Jobst's team argued that the suicide accusation didn't cause any damage because Mitchell's already poor reputation and the other claims he made in the video meant that it couldn't be harmed further. The judge pointed out in his decision that the cheating allegations and the suicide allegations impacted different "sectors" of Mitchell's reputation and that "In seeking to prove that the plaintiff already had a bad reputation (whether as a defence to an allegation of harm to reputation or because of substantially true contextual imputations), the allegedly bad reputation must be relevant to that “sector” of the plaintiff’s reputation that is, or may be, harmed by the imputations proved by the plaintiff." You're right that Jobst's team didn't literally argue that cheating at Donkey Kong is equivalent to being accused of driving someone to suicide.
My main concern would be these seem to be fabricated claims.
Mr Mitchell still was invited to the auction and attended it [1].
Ryan Burger seems to have never invited Mitchel to any events at all [2] prior to the video and yet shortly before the video was posted he invited him 3 times and canceled all of them?
These guys seem to be people that Mitchell has been friends with for very long times so it seems more reasonable to me they'd help him out with an email or two when it's literally at no cost to them. Where's an email from some Stock Brokers convention reneging on an appearance deal or a merchandise supplier asking him to find a new supplier?
That said, IIUC Australian is not as loose as the US is when making verbal claims about other people so claiming "Billy caused Apollo to kill himself" is a much weaker claim to make then "Billy is happy Apollo killed himself".
While I don't disagree, issue is that this is something that was Jobst's responsibility for presenting to dispute Mitchell's evidence of having been harmed due to the allegation to have driven someone to suicide.
It's disappointing to Jobst credibility, especially since I remember Jobst hyping up/bragging about the court case as an easy slam dunk for Jobst.
As I said in my post below, Jobst went a step too far and inferred that he was responsible for somebodies death. That is a lot worse reputation than a cheater at video games and a serial lier.
Yeah, I haven't been following the specifics so much, but you can't just call someone a murderer over and over and expect to not get sued. I am still sorta surprised that Billy won though considering that he's essentially a public figure and has an already negative reputation. I suppose calling someone a murderer is a step too far though. Australian laws are probably a little different than America's too.
Interesting that Mitchell won his case against Twin Galaxies. It sounded like the expert testimony supporting his claim that the video defects could occur from a "malfunctioning cabinet" was not believed by anyone knowledgeable in the Donkey Kong/and MAME community but seemingly was believed by the judge?
Billy paid a fraud expert, whose whole business is apparently providing fraud opinions, but that seemed to have tipped the scales (mentioned in TFA). Very unfortunate outcome.
Well, the silver lining for Jobst in all of this is that he did build his YouTube channel (partly) on ranting about Billy, and that might be worth more than what he paid here.
"Barlow found Mitchell did have an existing reputation as a cheat and for suing people who alleged he was a cheat, and found that Mitchell had expressed joy when he believed – incorrectly – on an earlier occasion that Apollo Legend may have died. But Barlow found Jobst had severely damaged Mitchell’s reputation and caused distress."
Honestly, this judgment makes no sense to me. Mitchell was an absolute joke before Jobst's video and is still an absolute joke today. There is no way Jobst "further damaged" Mitchell's reputation.
He was known as a dick and a cheat before, Jobst went a step too far and inferred that he was responsible for somebodies death. That is a lot worse reputation than a cheater at video games and a serial lier.
I met Billy Mitchell briefly in 2015 at the now defunct Museum of Pinball in Banning, CA. He was promoting the world record for most people playing pinball simultaneously we participated in. I asked him about his depiction in the documentary and he replied something like "it's all true" with a lot of smirk and theatrical swagger. I got the impression he was a ruthless self promoter in all things he does, with his sauce business and his public ego and all the theater around the videogame records and most of what he was doing was all kayfabe as a heel, to use a wrestling term.
Later he handed off a high level game of Ms. Pacman he was playing to me in good fun. He really is very good at the games. (I didn't last long). People are complicated.
I'm half inclined to believe that all the controversy is part of the persona and the self-promotion. Andy Kaufman demonstrated it pretty well, the world love to hate a bully and they'll pay for the privilege.
Unfortunately it is not an April Fool's joke, but it should be.
> Donkey Kong champion wins defamation case against Australian YouTuber Karl Jobst
The title sounds as if he is still recognised as a Donkey Kong Champion, where clearly in the first sentence:
> A professional YouTuber in Queensland has been ordered to pay $350,000 plus interest and costs to the former world record score holder for Donkey Kong, after the Brisbane district court found the YouTuber had defamed him “recklessly” with false claims of a link between a lawsuit and another YouTuber’s suicide.
They describe him as a former world record score holder, but don't go as far as to state that it was revoked based on allegations of him cheating.
I don't think that Karl did $350k+ worth of damages to Billy, to be honest I wasn't really aware of the suicide allegation anyway.
They did show Mitchell delivering a frogger(?) arcade machine so a senior could practice for a tournament, which was nice. I think it was an extra in the dvd.
Billy to my mind is a bit annoying but he’s a mild “villain” in the documentary. I mean it’s video game high scores and very compulsive people..
You should definitely watch documentaries, as long as you first watch Orson Welles's masterpiece F for Fake as a pre-req. That or Abbas Kiarostami's Close Up. Then you are free to watch as many documentaries as you please.
Highly recommend Summoning Salt in general. I never thought I'd find video game speed runs, records, etc, interesting, but his videos end up being very entertaining. His pacing, tone, and the way he works in music are very effective.
This is surprising to me. Karl's commentary seemed like it would be protected speech, at least in the United States. I'm unfamiliar with Australian law though.
Libel is a much harder threshold to meet in the US, but if one could prove that Jobst falsely claimed that Mitchell "expressed glee when he heard that Apollo Legend had committed suicide" and that he knew it was false, you might be able to successfully sue in the US, as well, for the reputational damage.
> Barlow found Mitchell did have an existing reputation as a cheat and for suing people who alleged he was a cheat, and found that Mitchell had expressed joy when he believed – incorrectly – on an earlier occasion that Apollo Legend may have died.
A point of clarification: the defamation case wasn't about Karl Jobst accusing Billy Mitchell of cheating. It was about Jobst claiming that Mitchell was responsible for Apollo Legend's suicide.
A professional video game player, a professional YouTube person and a $400K lawsuit? It hurts my brain realizing that these people have so much money at stake. Why the hell did I get two degrees and grind actual employment making actual things for 25 years?
For every professional YouTube person and professional video game player there are thousands upon thousands of aspirants who don't get lucky and who can't support themselves that way. It's like game development: Notch got lucky and made it big, thousands of indie studios either just eke out a living (like Jeff Vogel's Spiderweb Software), or don't even manage that.
You’re spot on about the chances in a hit-based industry.
That said, Jeff Vogel has spoken at length [0] about how he’s stayed in business for 30-ish years with a middle class lifestyle. Including the lean times.
I think it’s pretty inspirational that there’s a way to make game development work if your primary goal isn’t getting rich, but to have a comfortable life and enjoy what you do.
>Why the hell did I get two degrees and grind actual employment making actual things for 25 years?
Likely because you didn't dedicate yourself to learning video production and weren't good enough at playing video games to sell yourself as some sort of professional video game promoter. I'm not sure why you think either of these guys work any less hard than you do.
They may work hard, but it‘s hardly productive. I mean Jobst just self-immolated like 3yrs of his income, meaning if it sticks he‘ll likely be paying for at least a decade, and I‘m not sure Billy has produced anything of value aside from the occasional drama.
Because perhaps you chose the "safer" route of trying to get a job instead of choosing the more risky route of any sort of building something(s) and selling it, be it a product, skill or yourself.
And that’s a major win for his family, good on them. For Billy though, it‘s not clear if he works for their business in some way or if he‘s the “gamer of the century” full time.
You gotta have "it" (Epic Faith No More) to have millions of people tune into you on YT. I make technical videos but I'm not a Michael Reeves for ex.
edit: I will say though, you don't have to make those ADHD type videos with screaming and quick cuts. There are other technical youtubers that are slower like Applied Science, Great Scott, 3 blue 1 brown, etc...
>edit: I will say though, you don't have to make those ADHD type videos with screaming and quick cuts. There are other technical youtubers that are slower like Applied Science, Great Scott, 3 blue 1 brown, etc...
This, you can make make good content and people will watch it. What a lot of aspiring youtubers don't realize is that good production (sound, lighting, animation, video quality in general, etc.) goes a long ways towards helping people find your content engaging. Luck is necessary too, but most of the big youtubers work a lot harder than those of us working normal 9-5s.
Odd that this shows up on HN now, when I just started watching Karl's videos this past winter. It's a small internet.
Anyhow, I wonder how much the degraded components would affect Donkey Kong and whether similar degradation could account for Todd Roger's record for Dragster.
I also hope that other people Karl has called out aren't gonna go after him now, because with the financial loss and emotional grievance he's gonna be dealing with it would be hard to fend off additional lawsuits.
In the dragster case, we don't have anything like video proof of the supposed record.
There was an effort to examine the source code of the game and determine a theoretical best time which has been matched but not exceeded.
To explain Todd's record would require some alternative way of having such a score such as proving he played on a prototype/alternate version of the game at the time he claimed to have set his record.
Do note that this case has 0% to do with cheating in video games. The judge listed 5 'imputations' made by Karl which seem to be the main points/infractions and cheating, donkey kong, etc do not appear there.
The scope of the judgement is related to Karl's statements about Billy's interactions with Apollo that ended up to be untrue.
> He accused Mitchell of cheating, and “pursuing unmeritorious litigation” against others who had also accused him of cheating, the court judgment stated.
Twin Galaxis purposely created a seperate 'legacy' leader board to put his scores on, so that they were able to give him back his scores as part of a settlement without actually reinstating his score on to the proper leaderboards.
Very little because it's clear Mitchell aggressively sued and/or threatened to sue both Twin Galaxies and Guinness to an egregious extent and the reinstatements were minimal, reluctant and only done to finally get him to stop the constant legal harassment.
Frame by frame analysis by multiple independent experts of the videotape of Mitchell's Donkey Kong record clearly shows he cheated. I don't think anyone (who isn't Mitchell, his lawyers or few friends) has any doubt Mitchell cheated and has repeatedly lied about it.
It’s conman vs conman, Karl is a liar who tried to profit off of a suicide. Ironically, as bad of a person Billy is, Karl is actually far worse, given both his pickup artist past and this lawsuit.
From what I understand, the judge ruled that it wasn't defamation for Jobst to call Mitchell a cheater but saying he drove Apollo Legend to suicide was too far considering he didn't have a lot of reason to believe this: it was mostly based on online rumors about an apparent out of court financial settlement between Apollo and Mitchell which never existed. What probably drove the nail in the coffin is that Jobst did edit the video later to remove the claim, but after Mitchell sent legal action, he republished the original video. This might have felt vindictive to the judge. Now, Jobst did eventually ask Apollo's family for the facts, remove the claim and publish a retraction about a month later, but perhaps the judge thought this was too little too late.
I don't agree that Mitchell's reputation was harmed as he brought attention to the video multiple times, but it's hard to argue against the facts: Jobst said something he wasn't sure was true, and when he learned it was false he kept it up anyway.
Edit: fixed timeline, which is documented here: https://perfectpacman.com/2024/09/20/karl-day-4/
AFAIK the entire lawsuit was about Jobst falsely accusing Mitchell of driving Apollo Legend to suicide and then not properly retracting it (Jobst buried the retraction at the end of an unrelated 30 minute video). The reason why Mitchell's cheating was brought up in the trial was that Jobst's side were attempting to say that all reputational harm Mitchell suffered during that period was caused by cheating accusations, not Jobst's suicide accusations (as if being accused of cheating at Donkey Kong is equivalent to being accused of driving someone to suicide). Mitchell was able to prove this was false by producing emails from events that specifically said that they weren't hiring him due to Jobst's suicide accusations.
Additionally, Jobst kept making videos berating Mitchell during the course of the trial, which seems to have pissed off the judge. From the decision: "Mr Jobst’s attitude seems to me to have been one of, “Well, if I’m going to be sued, I may as well go for broke and damn the consequences.” Far from being evidence of his bona fides, I consider his conduct to be reckless and to show no regard for the truth or for the effect of his video on Mr Mitchell and his reputation."
> Jobst's side were attempting to say that all reputational harm Mitchell suffered during that period was caused by cheating accusations
The cheating and the other lies and the rampant lawsuits. I agree with that causing almost all the damage. I hadn't even heard of the particular badly substantiated piece among the real stuff.
> (as if being accused of cheating at Donkey Kong is equivalent to being accused of driving someone to suicide)
...no, not as if that. That is not part of the argument.
I recommend you read the decision if you're interested in this subject: https://www.queenslandjudgments.com.au/caselaw/qdc/2025/41/p...
> Mr Mitchell said that John Weeks was the organiser of an auction of the world’s largest collection of pinball and arcade gaming machines. Mr Mitchell had an agreement with him to host the auction for a fee of $50,000. After the publication of the video, Mr Weeks cancelled the agreement, apparently because of the negativity surrounding Mr Mitchell as a result of the video. Mr Mitchell later received an email from Mr Weeks confirming that cancellation, in which he said:
> "As per our previous conversation, I apologize for our decision to withdraw our agreement with you to host you at our auction due to the allegations from Karl Jobst that you played a significant role in Apollo Legend’s decision to take his own life. We made the decision strictly for business reasons and I do not feel personal discontent with you, but the negativity brought by the claims presented too large a risk to us strictly from a business perspective."
> Mr Mitchell recalled that another person, Ryan Burger, who had booked him for three separate events, cancelled all three and has not since booked him to appear at any events. Mr Burger also sent him an email cancelling the third event, saying:
> "Due to the toxicity and negativity brought by Karl Jobst’s claim that you played a role in Apollo Legend’s decision to take his own life, Old School Gamer Magazine feels compelled to withdraw its $5,000 per weekend paid appearance offer also for the Midwest Gaming Classic. I had hoped that this would have faded by now so we didn’t have to cancel this event similar to Des Moines Gaming Classic and Planet Comicon appearances that we had withdrawn earlier this summer, but I think it’s best that we allow some time to pass given the current climate."
> Whether or not the reasons given in those emails were true, the withdrawal of the offers demonstrated a harmful effect of the video on Mr Mitchell’s reputation and the receipt of the emails affected Mr Mitchell’s personal reactions to the video.
Jobst's team argued that the suicide accusation didn't cause any damage because Mitchell's already poor reputation and the other claims he made in the video meant that it couldn't be harmed further. The judge pointed out in his decision that the cheating allegations and the suicide allegations impacted different "sectors" of Mitchell's reputation and that "In seeking to prove that the plaintiff already had a bad reputation (whether as a defence to an allegation of harm to reputation or because of substantially true contextual imputations), the allegedly bad reputation must be relevant to that “sector” of the plaintiff’s reputation that is, or may be, harmed by the imputations proved by the plaintiff." You're right that Jobst's team didn't literally argue that cheating at Donkey Kong is equivalent to being accused of driving someone to suicide.
My main concern would be these seem to be fabricated claims.
Mr Mitchell still was invited to the auction and attended it [1].
Ryan Burger seems to have never invited Mitchel to any events at all [2] prior to the video and yet shortly before the video was posted he invited him 3 times and canceled all of them?
These guys seem to be people that Mitchell has been friends with for very long times so it seems more reasonable to me they'd help him out with an email or two when it's literally at no cost to them. Where's an email from some Stock Brokers convention reneging on an appearance deal or a merchandise supplier asking him to find a new supplier?
That said, IIUC Australian is not as loose as the US is when making verbal claims about other people so claiming "Billy caused Apollo to kill himself" is a much weaker claim to make then "Billy is happy Apollo killed himself".
[1]: https://www.desertsun.com/story/life/2021/09/24/museum-pinba...
[2]: https://www.google.com/search?q=Ryan+Burger+Billy+Mitchell
While I don't disagree, issue is that this is something that was Jobst's responsibility for presenting to dispute Mitchell's evidence of having been harmed due to the allegation to have driven someone to suicide.
It's disappointing to Jobst credibility, especially since I remember Jobst hyping up/bragging about the court case as an easy slam dunk for Jobst.
>I don't agree that Mitchell's reputation was harmed
Agreed, but only because his reputation is so bad, that pretty much any slander wouldn't make it worse.
As I said in my post below, Jobst went a step too far and inferred that he was responsible for somebodies death. That is a lot worse reputation than a cheater at video games and a serial lier.
Yeah, I haven't been following the specifics so much, but you can't just call someone a murderer over and over and expect to not get sued. I am still sorta surprised that Billy won though considering that he's essentially a public figure and has an already negative reputation. I suppose calling someone a murderer is a step too far though. Australian laws are probably a little different than America's too.
> and when he learned it was false he kept it up anyway.
That fact alone loses him this case. Re-uploading a video you yourself had edited/removed makes it all but impossible to claim you didn't know.
Interesting that Mitchell won his case against Twin Galaxies. It sounded like the expert testimony supporting his claim that the video defects could occur from a "malfunctioning cabinet" was not believed by anyone knowledgeable in the Donkey Kong/and MAME community but seemingly was believed by the judge?
He didnt win, they settled out of court.
https://www.ign.com/articles/billy-mitchells-donkey-kong-rec...
By all accounts it would have been a very interesting trial had it actually gone ahead.
Billy paid a fraud expert, whose whole business is apparently providing fraud opinions, but that seemed to have tipped the scales (mentioned in TFA). Very unfortunate outcome.
Well, the silver lining for Jobst in all of this is that he did build his YouTube channel (partly) on ranting about Billy, and that might be worth more than what he paid here.
"Barlow found Mitchell did have an existing reputation as a cheat and for suing people who alleged he was a cheat, and found that Mitchell had expressed joy when he believed – incorrectly – on an earlier occasion that Apollo Legend may have died. But Barlow found Jobst had severely damaged Mitchell’s reputation and caused distress."
Honestly, this judgment makes no sense to me. Mitchell was an absolute joke before Jobst's video and is still an absolute joke today. There is no way Jobst "further damaged" Mitchell's reputation.
He was known as a dick and a cheat before, Jobst went a step too far and inferred that he was responsible for somebodies death. That is a lot worse reputation than a cheater at video games and a serial lier.
I met Billy Mitchell briefly in 2015 at the now defunct Museum of Pinball in Banning, CA. He was promoting the world record for most people playing pinball simultaneously we participated in. I asked him about his depiction in the documentary and he replied something like "it's all true" with a lot of smirk and theatrical swagger. I got the impression he was a ruthless self promoter in all things he does, with his sauce business and his public ego and all the theater around the videogame records and most of what he was doing was all kayfabe as a heel, to use a wrestling term. Later he handed off a high level game of Ms. Pacman he was playing to me in good fun. He really is very good at the games. (I didn't last long). People are complicated.
I'm half inclined to believe that all the controversy is part of the persona and the self-promotion. Andy Kaufman demonstrated it pretty well, the world love to hate a bully and they'll pay for the privilege.
I’m glad I scrolled to see this. Really appreciate the insight thanks.
>There is no way Jobst "further damaged" Mitchell's reputation.
There should be a legal class of people where it's acknowledged that nothing you say about them damages their reputation any worse than it already is.
The US has the "libel-proof plaintiff".
https://www.haynesboone.com/news/publications/the-libel-proo...
Unfortunately it is not an April Fool's joke, but it should be.
> Donkey Kong champion wins defamation case against Australian YouTuber Karl Jobst
The title sounds as if he is still recognised as a Donkey Kong Champion, where clearly in the first sentence:
> A professional YouTuber in Queensland has been ordered to pay $350,000 plus interest and costs to the former world record score holder for Donkey Kong, after the Brisbane district court found the YouTuber had defamed him “recklessly” with false claims of a link between a lawsuit and another YouTuber’s suicide.
They describe him as a former world record score holder, but don't go as far as to state that it was revoked based on allegations of him cheating.
I don't think that Karl did $350k+ worth of damages to Billy, to be honest I wasn't really aware of the suicide allegation anyway.
> it was revoked based on allegations of him cheating
Twin galaxies settled out of courst and reinstated his scores, albeit on a newly created 'legacy record database' instead of the actual leaderboards.
So officially he was a world record holder at some time in the past, although everybody and their dog knows he cheated.
The movie The King of Kong is a good intro to the sordid side of the world of competitive arcade gaming.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King_of_Kong
This is one of the greatest documentaries I have ever seen. The story is so intriguing, interesting and entertaining. Highly recommend.
It's actually the example I give on why one should not watch documentaries. It's extremely misleading (without actually lying):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24944741
(I mean yes, Billy is a jerk for sure, but the documentary was way out of line).
They did show Mitchell delivering a frogger(?) arcade machine so a senior could practice for a tournament, which was nice. I think it was an extra in the dvd.
Billy to my mind is a bit annoying but he’s a mild “villain” in the documentary. I mean it’s video game high scores and very compulsive people..
I should watch it again.
You should definitely watch documentaries, as long as you first watch Orson Welles's masterpiece F for Fake as a pre-req. That or Abbas Kiarostami's Close Up. Then you are free to watch as many documentaries as you please.
Make sure to follow up with the much lesser known Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade
It covers a lot of the same material but gives a much wider context about that whole retro gaming scene which is shown in King of Kong
There's another with the same vibe for Tetris. I believe it's called fistful of quarters. Not nearly as good, but great soundtrack.
The youtube channel Summoning Salt made a great video that covers the history of Tetris world records: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOJlg8g8_yw
Highly recommend Summoning Salt in general. I never thought I'd find video game speed runs, records, etc, interesting, but his videos end up being very entertaining. His pacing, tone, and the way he works in music are very effective.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecstasy_of_Order:_The_Tetris_M... ?
That's the one I meant, great soundtrack. So I'm confusing names with something else.
Fistful of quarters was the subtitle of King of Kong
it needs a sequel to cover the last 7 years.
18
This is surprising to me. Karl's commentary seemed like it would be protected speech, at least in the United States. I'm unfamiliar with Australian law though.
Libel is a much harder threshold to meet in the US, but if one could prove that Jobst falsely claimed that Mitchell "expressed glee when he heard that Apollo Legend had committed suicide" and that he knew it was false, you might be able to successfully sue in the US, as well, for the reputational damage.
Judge agreed that Mitchell had expressed joy.
> Barlow found Mitchell did have an existing reputation as a cheat and for suing people who alleged he was a cheat, and found that Mitchell had expressed joy when he believed – incorrectly – on an earlier occasion that Apollo Legend may have died.
Billy Mitchell wins more in court than video games. Maybe he should have picked a different career growing up.
Or it shows that court is just a different type of game, and that he's good at games.
Although the judge saying he should have asked for more than $50k shows that maybe the grinding/stubbornness matters more for winning than the points.
A point of clarification: the defamation case wasn't about Karl Jobst accusing Billy Mitchell of cheating. It was about Jobst claiming that Mitchell was responsible for Apollo Legend's suicide.
A professional video game player, a professional YouTube person and a $400K lawsuit? It hurts my brain realizing that these people have so much money at stake. Why the hell did I get two degrees and grind actual employment making actual things for 25 years?
For every professional YouTube person and professional video game player there are thousands upon thousands of aspirants who don't get lucky and who can't support themselves that way. It's like game development: Notch got lucky and made it big, thousands of indie studios either just eke out a living (like Jeff Vogel's Spiderweb Software), or don't even manage that.
You’re spot on about the chances in a hit-based industry.
That said, Jeff Vogel has spoken at length [0] about how he’s stayed in business for 30-ish years with a middle class lifestyle. Including the lean times.
I think it’s pretty inspirational that there’s a way to make game development work if your primary goal isn’t getting rich, but to have a comfortable life and enjoy what you do.
[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=stxVBJem3Rs
>Why the hell did I get two degrees and grind actual employment making actual things for 25 years?
Likely because you didn't dedicate yourself to learning video production and weren't good enough at playing video games to sell yourself as some sort of professional video game promoter. I'm not sure why you think either of these guys work any less hard than you do.
They may work hard, but it‘s hardly productive. I mean Jobst just self-immolated like 3yrs of his income, meaning if it sticks he‘ll likely be paying for at least a decade, and I‘m not sure Billy has produced anything of value aside from the occasional drama.
Because perhaps you chose the "safer" route of trying to get a job instead of choosing the more risky route of any sort of building something(s) and selling it, be it a product, skill or yourself.
Presumably because your parents didn't own a restaurant business.
>Presumably because your parents didn't own a restaurant business.
Honestly that's kinda the impressive part, most restaurant businesses fail and those that don't usually aren't even that successful.
And that’s a major win for his family, good on them. For Billy though, it‘s not clear if he works for their business in some way or if he‘s the “gamer of the century” full time.
EDIT: Apparently he advertises their hot sauce
You gotta have "it" (Epic Faith No More) to have millions of people tune into you on YT. I make technical videos but I'm not a Michael Reeves for ex.
edit: I will say though, you don't have to make those ADHD type videos with screaming and quick cuts. There are other technical youtubers that are slower like Applied Science, Great Scott, 3 blue 1 brown, etc...
>edit: I will say though, you don't have to make those ADHD type videos with screaming and quick cuts. There are other technical youtubers that are slower like Applied Science, Great Scott, 3 blue 1 brown, etc...
This, you can make make good content and people will watch it. What a lot of aspiring youtubers don't realize is that good production (sound, lighting, animation, video quality in general, etc.) goes a long ways towards helping people find your content engaging. Luck is necessary too, but most of the big youtubers work a lot harder than those of us working normal 9-5s.
> You gotta have "it"
I wouldn't be surprised if the "it" part can be generated by some llm.
My opinion AI generated stuff has some tells
But there are successful channels like Neural Viz though I think that still takes script writing
The main reason is probably that you're totally OK with what you make.
Work in AI, you will finally be paid more
Odd that this shows up on HN now, when I just started watching Karl's videos this past winter. It's a small internet.
Anyhow, I wonder how much the degraded components would affect Donkey Kong and whether similar degradation could account for Todd Roger's record for Dragster.
I also hope that other people Karl has called out aren't gonna go after him now, because with the financial loss and emotional grievance he's gonna be dealing with it would be hard to fend off additional lawsuits.
In the dragster case, we don't have anything like video proof of the supposed record.
There was an effort to examine the source code of the game and determine a theoretical best time which has been matched but not exceeded.
To explain Todd's record would require some alternative way of having such a score such as proving he played on a prototype/alternate version of the game at the time he claimed to have set his record.
Do note that this case has 0% to do with cheating in video games. The judge listed 5 'imputations' made by Karl which seem to be the main points/infractions and cheating, donkey kong, etc do not appear there.
The scope of the judgement is related to Karl's statements about Billy's interactions with Apollo that ended up to be untrue.
He has posted so many cocky videos about how Billy has no chance of winning the lawsuit.
Im really looking forward to his post court update video.
> He accused Mitchell of cheating, and “pursuing unmeritorious litigation” against others who had also accused him of cheating, the court judgment stated.
Case in point!
His records have all been reinstated both by Twin Galaxies and Guinness Worls Records for whatever that's worth.
Twin Galaxis purposely created a seperate 'legacy' leader board to put his scores on, so that they were able to give him back his scores as part of a settlement without actually reinstating his score on to the proper leaderboards.
> for whatever that's worth.
Very little because it's clear Mitchell aggressively sued and/or threatened to sue both Twin Galaxies and Guinness to an egregious extent and the reinstatements were minimal, reluctant and only done to finally get him to stop the constant legal harassment.
Frame by frame analysis by multiple independent experts of the videotape of Mitchell's Donkey Kong record clearly shows he cheated. I don't think anyone (who isn't Mitchell, his lawyers or few friends) has any doubt Mitchell cheated and has repeatedly lied about it.
Not much
How does he finance all these lawsuits?
Per Wikipedia:
"Mitchell's family owns the Rickey's restaurants in Hollywood, Florida, and Pembroke Pines, Florida, and he sells Rickey's World Famous Hot Sauce"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Mitchell_(gamer)
World famous ey? Wonder which world...
His hot sauce sales? (as shown in The King of Kong)
It’s disgusting how much the justice system rewards terrible people. Another conman gets his pay day, and I’m sure the judge got one too.
It’s conman vs conman, Karl is a liar who tried to profit off of a suicide. Ironically, as bad of a person Billy is, Karl is actually far worse, given both his pickup artist past and this lawsuit.
Sorry but in this case it was Jobst fuck up of either not having the evidence of the allegation or him incriminating himself with how he acted.
wow everyone in this story sounds like a piece of shit
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