I'm actually glad you posted this. The guy's got a level of hate from some in the Atlus-following community that borders on Matt Wardian, and though hateboners like that usually have a basis in reality, I decided to dig a bit deeper for curiousity's sake. KIA's argument that he might be involved in malfeasance? That's their thing. I care only about the fact that he has an agenda and he's willing to push that shit.
And in that regard, I've been pleasantly surprised.
I've done additional research since the last post, digging through old stuff, and it heavily suggests that Nich was less someone outright drinking the Kool-Aid and more someone who's toed the line out of necessity and doesn't really buy into it. In fact, disregarding the fact that he was on NeoGAF. the sperging over Senran Kagura, and
this fucking shambles wherein he argues that Social Justice Warriors aren't real and that "games are expanding" (the same canard we've seen quite often by now):
He has relatively little modern stuff to directly tie him to the usual suspects. Color me surprised, considering that these people are usual a labyrinthine spidernest of interconneced relationships. Don't get me wrong, it's not like he hasn't both fessed up to his being for SocJus and backing the usual lunacy to some degree:
Just a reminder,
we know the Brianna Wu one was bullshit.
But then he'll go and say something like this and you are forced to take pause a moment:
What I've gathered from all this crap is that he isn't as much of a shit as some of the others we've seen. He's less an out-and-out shill and someone who's just following along because on some level, he believes the hype. I no longer think that he's quite as indicative of the bigger problem like many suspected, but abusing the good will and trust of others is how the usual suspects tends to get a foot in the door, and given what's been going on, people have every right to be worried about the slippery slope that presents, even if he isn't directly involved with that shit.
That said, he's doing himself no favors with some of the crap we've seen out of his account recently. The fact that
he's threatened to block anyone who asks him about his work for Nintendo isn't doing a damned thing to ease the minds of those who think he's part of the problem, and it's only going to get worse if that accusation of malfeasance has any actual fruit to it.
Gaming politics is a fucking awful game, man. It's almost as bad a game as Twitter.