Tony Denis @Dilbert

I’m a former user here on MobyGames that contributed a handful of games, reviews and trivia. If you’re someone interested in joining the site, I must say this:

Don’t. Just don’t. Unless you want to be belittled, insulted and patronized upon by the smug, passive-aggressive veteran mods and newly-joined users who get extremely mad over minor grammatical errors, personal disagreements or even personal preferences. If you’re lucky, maybe you’ll be locked out of the first draft of a game submission because the mod was feeling petty and vengeful that day, or being told you’re ‘mentally retarded’ by a user because you forgot to proofread your game review.

MobyGames has a long history of toxicity and enabling of bad behavior on all of its users and contributors over the years thanks to decades of poor moderation and very lax submission standards and forum rules. From it's humble beginnings all the way to 2020, you got a melting pot of paranoid conspiracy theorists, narcissistic hipsters who thought the site was a blog, trolls that got away submitting crudely-made ‘games’ that, while indeed real, are extremely racist in nature or hardcore pornography, and obnoxious, dogmatic purists who eagerly started flame wars and attempting to dox one another in PMs over if PC was better than consoles. Currently, the site is inhabited by a handful of very vocal mods and contributors who treat game perservation as a competition and will get nasty and horrible if provoked.

You think by reading this, I was just a innocent yet naive contributor that didn't know who was getting himself into. No, I’m complicit as well. Many of the reviews and recommendations I have written are beyond cringeworthy and occasionally downright mean-spirited. I wrote them when I was a bitter, cynical, 3edgy5me teenager and much of my tastes, opinions and writing skills have evolved since then. Then again, take most of the reviews on this site with a massive bag of salt - they range from thoughtful critique to bizarre ramblings.

However, you may also wonder, was every user and contributor on here toxic? A fraction of the users and admins here were genuinely intelligent, knowedgeable people who knew a lot about the history of video games. Unfortunately, they are, and were, outnumbered and intimidated by those users and mods who go out of their way to hijack game submissions and claim it as their own, or harass one another over preferences in games.

Video game preservation is very important in times like these, and credit where credit's due, MobyGames has done spectacularly at perserving games of all stripes, wether it's classic FPS titles or obscure JRPGs. Until the site goes belly up, MobyGames' user base is nothing more but a exceptionally noxious high school clique; always attacking everything and everyone that goes against the grain.