Ryan Burger’s response

Howdy folks! I’m still in the process of writing a post mortem on the Karl Jobst / Billy Mitchell legal battle. Terribly unfun work, but someone has to do it. (And yes, I will be frank about mistakes made by myself and Karl.) However, speaking of mistakes, as I was writing that, something came up which doesn’t fit there, but is worth disclosing. And while it’s short compared to my usual fare, it is a liiittle too long and complicated to retroactively insert into my review of the Barlow ruling, although it is totally relevant to passage [452]. I try not to make individual posts about every item that comes along my desk, but I’d say this is a special case.

You see, in April, when I pounded out my lengthy dissection of Judge Barlow’s rancid enema of a judicial opinion, I completely blanked on the fact that I actually did hear from Ryan Burger way back in September!

Ryan Burger (seen above) is the founder of a publication called “Old School Gamer Magazine”. Ryan also was the alleged author of one of the two conspicuously dubious emails Billy Mitchell claimed to have received, citing event cancellations that may or may not have happened, both using the same “a role in Apollo Legend’s decision” language. In the case of John Weeks, John was apologizing to Billy for supposedly cancelling his appearance at an event where Billy actually did appear, by way of an email sent days after the event had concluded. Per Billy, this somehow cost him $50,000, lmao.

You may also recall that, during “Day 1” of the trial, I was only able to scribble down short passages from both emails as they were displayed to the court. But Barlow’s ruling offered us, the insatiable public, the full text of both emails. Here, for reference, was the Ryan Burger email to Billy, informing him of the cancellation:

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so we didn’t have to cancel this event similar to Des Moines Gaming Classic and Planet Comicon appearances that we had withdrawn earlier this summer, but I think it’s best that we allow some time to pass given the current climate.

Per footnote 298, this email was sent on October 2nd, 2021. As I was teasing this apart, I was like “Wait, isn’t Midwest Gaming Classic an April event?” But no, in 2021 it was held in November, probably owing to pandemic lockdowns. This string of supposed cancellations is interesting, though. “Planet Comicon” was in August. There is no such thing as the “Des Moines Gaming Classic”, but Ryan probably meant the “Iowa Gaming Classic” held in Des Moines in July. Would Billy really have attended all three if not for Karl’s video?

Now, when Ryan’s name first came up in all this, I immediately thought “He sounds familiar from somewhere”. As I said, Ryan Burger is the head honcho of “Old School Gamer Magazine”, and a die-hard Billy loyalist. Here you see them palling around, back before Billy’s several non-cartoon related lawsuits:

Indeed, that was exactly where I recalled Ryan’s name from. In April 2018, days after TG and Guinness banished Billy Mitchell’s cheated scores, Billy issued a brief video response from a hallway at Midwest Gaming Classic (which is how I know it normally occurs in April). You know, the video where Billy assured everyone that “everything will be transparent”, and other lies:

Currently, the channel it’s uploaded to is called “Old School Gamer Magazine and More”. But when the video was first released in 2018, the channel was titled simply “Ryan Burger”. So obviously, dude loves promoting his friend.

But here’s where we get to the part I forgot about. When I got home from covering the Australia trial in September, I looked on the ol’ Interwebs and found public email addresses for both John Weeks and Ryan Burger. And so, I sent them both inquiries about these alleged cancellation emails. After all, wouldn’t it be crazy if they had nothing to do with this? Hey, with how much Billy Mitchell lies, you never know. It’s worth asking.

For clarity of disclosure, here’s the exact message I sent to Mr. Burger:

Damn, even my emails are hella long! I sent a similar message to John Weeks, and never got a response. However, to my surprise, I did indeed hear back from Mr. Ryan Burger of Old School Gamer Magazine! Here’s Ryan’s message, in its entirety:

For those of you who don’t want to (or can’t) read the text in-image, here’s the relevant portion:

Yes we withdrew the appearance offer we had made for him to appear at a show when these allegations came up and wanted to wait things out until things cooled off. Billy as is a fantastic promoter of the retro gaming community and wish I didn’t have to withdraw the other opportunities that I was working for him because of BOTH the Twin Galaxies allegations that were being made and the terrible things that Mr. Jobst alleged. I feel both are very hurtful of a person and the alleged suicide of a gamer based on Mr. Mitchell was the worst of the two because that is attacking him as a person even more than the competitor that TG tarnished.

Obviously, Ryan’s message didn’t make a huge impression on me, to the point I’d forgotten about it a few months later. This is not to say I shouldn’t take better care to remember these details, even if they don’t move the needle. But hey, it is back on my radar now, and worth disclosing and discussing.

Now… A skeptical reader will notice Ryan never actually confirms whether or not he wrote the text of the email itself – just that it accurately conveys his position. But my email assumed his authorship, so that exact question wasn’t being posed. If this were a deposition, I would definitely press him on that point – “Did Billy’s son write that message for you to send to Billy?”, et cetera. Billy’s friends aren’t always as skillful at unflinchingly lying as Billy is. However, this is not an interrogation. We’re in the real world, so we can assume enough good faith that Ryan is saying, yes, the exact email cited by Billy was from him, and was not fake. Ryan also doesn’t trust me a lot, which is fine lol. FWIW, I do take my (unpaid) work seriously, and while I will sometimes cut publicly sourced quotes from their context (albeit in ways that don’t misrepresent the intention), private correspondence should be handled as Ryan suggested, and he was within his right to insist on it.

With all of that said, you can probably see why this message did not impress me. My first reaction was “Waitwaitwait, did you just confirm the cancellation was over both the TG dispute and Karl’s video? Because that’s not how this was portrayed in the Karl trial!”

Now, if you read a bit more carefully and charitably, you see he’s referring to a series of supposed cancellations, i.e. “the other opportunities”, which he attributes to both factors. One might be forgiven for thinking this is a rhetorical failsafe. “Is this guy focused more on cancellations I attributed to Karl? Will my reply be used to scrutinize cancellations I attributed to TG? Better mention them both!” Somehow, if Billy Mitchell ever decides to sue me for statements I made prior to these alleged cancellations, I suspect my name would retroactively be added to Ryan’s list, justifying whatever damages and distress Billy is claiming in the given moment. But whatever, let’s set aside my hunch there. This choice of language doesn’t mean Mr. Burger was being dishonest in any way.

However…

During the trial, it would seem the situation was misrepresented – by Billy Mitchell no less! (Dun Dun DUUUNNNNN!!!) I offer you the following passage [452], from Judge Ken Barlow’s ruling:

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.

Huh, three separate cancellations! And all three get attributed by Billy, and hence Judge Barlow, to the nefarious Karl Jobst. And the court never does hear or consider Ryan Burger’s testimony of (paraphrasing) “Well, the vicious slander from Twin Galaxies was part of it, too.”

In my review of Barlow’s ruling, I called the Ryan Burger and John Weeks emails “mega-hearsay”. This is why. Billy can testify that he received the email, and that it displayed a given sender. But he can’t – or, should not be able to – testify to the intentions of other people. And that is the case even if those intentions are supposedly spelled out on paper, because the person with direct knowledge of their own intentions is not there to be cross-examined. And yet, as I pointed out before, Barlow’s passage [453] demonstrate his acceptance of Billy’s bogus narrative, hidden behind a disclaimer that reads about as compelling as “I’m not racist but…”

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.

Barlow knows better than this. He just decided not to give a shit, because Billy struck him as such an honest, upstanding citizen.

Once again Judge Ken, thanks for fucking nothing.

If you enjoy reading me trash Bobblehead Barlow, don’t worry, there’s more of that coming next time. But for now, let’s turn back to Mr. Ryan Burger. The other thing that stood out to me was the way he referred to “the Twin Galaxies allegations”. Ryan has his views on Karl Jobst’s comments about Billy; whatever, he’s entitled to his opinion. But… What exactly did TG do that’s so offensive?

TG issued a necessary statement concluding the score dispute that someone else initiated, and since they were collaborating with Guinness at the time, they notified Guinness of a change to their leaderboard. And what was that statement? TG had concluded that Billy did not use unmodified Donkey Kong hardware as was required on two of his contested scores. And that’s just about the most thoroughly examined and proven fact in the history of gaming. At this point, if you’re disputing that, you may as well be asserting that the Earth is flat. And TG never pushed it much beyond that conclusion, slamming the door on Bogus Billy and moving on.

Now, us reasonable people in the real world, we all understand that Billy Mitchell cheated. It’s not an accident that Billy insists on elaborate stories of arcade machines while his tapes are littered with MAME transitions. It’s also not an accident that Billy “achieves” world record DK scores in the span of fifteen minutes when nobody’s looking. And it’s not an accident that he and his cronies can’t keep their stories straight about whether deceased people were present as witnesses, or what time of day everything happened. And yet, TG didn’t even accuse Billy of all that. The few facts they felt comfortable acknowledging sufficiently demonstrated the invalidity of Billy’s stories.

“the competitor that TG tarnished”

lmao Give me a break!

I know, I’m preaching to the choir here. But this is the problem with Ryan’s overall account. If Mr. Burger’s going to divorce himself that far from reality, so much that he’s complaining that his “competitor” friend is held accountable for his anti-competitive actions (which, to be clear, Billy has still never acknowledged or apologized for), why should that not affect his credibility? In what universe do you get to plug your ears and deny such overwhelming evidence and still be taken seriously? Why should I believe that the Mr. Burger guy who lies so brazenly to himself wouldn’t also lie to me, or to the world?

In my mind, I think of this as the “Ben Gold principle”. Ben Gold (seen above) is another classic arcade gamer from the ’80s, most known for winning a national arcade gaming competition featured on the show “That’s Incredible” in early 1983. In recent years, Mr. Gold has chosen to remain steadfastly by Billy Mitchell’s side, occasionally attesting to the truthfulness of Billy’s stories, which Mr. Gold would have no personal knowledge of. Now, unlike some of Billy’s old guard, I’ve never heard a bad word about Ben Gold in particular. That ’80s arcade era was rife with cheaters and liars and bogus scores and exaggerations (see Todd Rogers, Steve Sanders, impossible Pac-Man scores, etc.), but I’ve never heard any direct connection of such behavior to Ben. As far as I know, he was legit. And I’d be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt…

except…

Ben Gold’s unwavering defense of the obvious proven fraudster, by itself, erodes his credibility. On that basis alone, I begin to ponder “Hmm, so many other liars and cheaters from that era were elevated. Maybe Ben Gold really was as crooked as his friends.” Blatant cheating obviously doesn’t offend him, so I certainly wouldn’t value his judgment in that matter.

If I were to be as charitable as possible, I could assume Ben is one of those “The scores aren’t as important as the friends we made” guys, which sounds great, until you consider that the cheater still excludes the legitimate competitors from the same fairly-earned opportunity, and that “not being a champion” shouldn’t disqualify a friendship anyway. The broader social irrelevance of video game high scores may in some respects be an argument for why lying about them isn’t a big deal, but it’s also an argument for why it’s so soul-crushingly pathetic to lie about them, and to earnestly maintain that lie for decades.

I could see Mr. Burger as being from the same camp as Ben Gold, although there’s an obvious business relationship there. Still, I’d suspect the party benefitting most from that arrangement is the guy not opening his wallet. Either way, Billy Mitchell launders his reputation through the depleted credibility of those in his orbit. Such is the price of being “friends” with the malignant narcissist, I suppose. I hope the eye contact and firm handshakes he gave you were worth it.

Anyway, that’s all I have for today. Hey, I said this would be relatively short. Next up, I’ll be ripping off the band-aid of lawsuit fallout. After that, I promise we’ll get back to fun stuff. Thank you for reading as always!