Totally Not Corrupt Professional Objective Gaming Journalism DRAMA

[tuluse]

Today I learned to steal if what you steal isn't very good.

Nice to know.

 

[felipepepe]

Today I learned to steal if what you steal isn't very good.

I thought everyone at the Codex learned that with Fallout 3...

 

[villain of the story]

They both steal here:

http://www.pittsburghstar.com/index.php/sid/215777087/scat/3ad589a2237b8bda

Obsidian was at one time working on a sci-fi RPG called Backpsace, which had time travel elements...

RGGWatch

Kotaku has news about a new Obsidian game called Backspace. It was a time traveling sci-fi ARPG that a small team at Obsidian worked on for a while before getting shelved.

Gamebanshee

While I have to admit that it seems unorthodox to me that an internal pitch that went nowhere would get exposure on a major website, this is what has happened to Backspace, a time traveling sci-fi action-RPG that a small team at Obsidian worked on for a while before getting shelves.

It is not so similar like Infinitron tries to make it.

You are correct, it's not similar. It's identical.

Isn't it amazing that the Watchwitz Gestaposters prove what shameless and spineless assholes they are every time you give them an opportunity?

 

[AngryEddy]

My lawyers can beat up your lawyers.

 

[CreamyBlood]

If the watch is too lazy to write their own lead-in blurb they should just say something like, "found this at gamebanshee" (or whatever other sites they copy blurbs from) and quote the whole thing, including the blurb.

If a hundred newspapers are covering the Presidents Speech or something, they'll all make a blurb with their own spin on it and quote the exact same thing. Not one of them will actually read someone else's blurb, copy it and pass it off as their own. It's just insulting. I'd be annoyed.

Not sure why this is so difficult to understand.

 

[RK47]

..... fuck china.

 

[villain of the story]

China adds their own spin on products they copy and mass-produce: carcinogenic toxic materials

 

[Ninjerk]

China adds their own spin on products they copy and mass-produce: carcinogenic toxic materials

Gotta love when a problem takes care of itself. If only Fallout 3 came with a mouth-pistol.

 

[Haba]

From Haven & Hearth / Salem forums

I really hope you do something about your insecure, unprofessional, inadequate moderators before giving Salem a second go. Half the reason you're not with Paradox anymore is because I had a few chats with the higher-ups about your company's blatant support of racism, bigotry, and homophobia.

I get that you guys are pretty laid back but surely you're intelligent enough to see what a detriment to your financial success your forums moderators are (or will be, should you try your hands at Salem again).

I mean really, how much interest do you think you'll get when images like this surface around the web? http://i.imgur.com/qBJPypu.png

Shape up, please. I really don't want Salem to fail a second time but your unethical community moderation is going to cause you problems. I'd really hate to pass this kind of filth along to my buddy Rod Breslau at Gamespot for review purposes.

On the other hand, get some new moderators that actually have experience and know what they're doing - instead of some angsty teenagers with power trips - and maybe your next Salem trailer can get featured on the front page of Twitch.tv, or perhaps a very favorable review will show up on Gamespot and IGN.

You know... hypothetically.

Do you honestly believe for one second that I care in the slightest about what some corporate industry website or other, where your political connections and a blowjob can supposedly get me a good review, writes about anything? I find it comedic to the point of tragedy that you even dare speak of professional behavior and in the same breath imply that I can accrue political favor or disfavor with dark and shadowy powers-that-be by doing or not doing something or other.

In the spirit of professionalism your shitty e-mail goes on the forums for teh lulz.

Seatribe does, for the record, not condone or in any way lend any support to the (lack of) principles (of) liberalism, jacobinism, illuminism or any other sort of crypto-marxist newspeak designed to undermine the fundamental tenants of Christian civilization through the processes of ideological subversion. The company believes in freedom of speech, a healthy sense of humour, and the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.

God save the King.

r00fles!

Luzur what is it with you Swedes and your kings...

 

[abnaxus]

Brandon Sears?

 

[Kane]

internet is for porn attention whores

jorb's a dick though that got it up the ass by pederasts (that also happen to be libruls) in his childhood.

 

[evdk]

Who's this Brandon Sears guy supposed to be?

 

[DwarvenFood]

The problem isn't that it's a crime. The problem is that it's extremely lame. Copypasting GameBanshee's two sentence summaries of articles, really? If they can't be bothered to read the news they're posting and comment about them on their own, why not just...not post so much news? There have been times in the past when the Codex had very little newsposting, for instance, and it wasn't a huge disaster.

The master of copy-pasta has spoken

why not just...not post so much news?

 

[Luzur]

From Haven & Hearth / Salem forums

I really hope you do something about your insecure, unprofessional, inadequate moderators before giving Salem a second go. Half the reason you're not with Paradox anymore is because I had a few chats with the higher-ups about your company's blatant support of racism, bigotry, and homophobia.

I get that you guys are pretty laid back but surely you're intelligent enough to see what a detriment to your financial success your forums moderators are (or will be, should you try your hands at Salem again).

I mean really, how much interest do you think you'll get when images like this surface around the web? http://i.imgur.com/qBJPypu.png

Shape up, please. I really don't want Salem to fail a second time but your unethical community moderation is going to cause you problems. I'd really hate to pass this kind of filth along to my buddy Rod Breslau at Gamespot for review purposes.

On the other hand, get some new moderators that actually have experience and know what they're doing - instead of some angsty teenagers with power trips - and maybe your next Salem trailer can get featured on the front page of Twitch.tv, or perhaps a very favorable review will show up on Gamespot and IGN.

You know... hypothetically.

Do you honestly believe for one second that I care in the slightest about what some corporate industry website or other, where your political connections and a blowjob can supposedly get me a good review, writes about anything? I find it comedic to the point of tragedy that you even dare speak of professional behavior and in the same breath imply that I can accrue political favor or disfavor with dark and shadowy powers-that-be by doing or not doing something or other.

In the spirit of professionalism your shitty e-mail goes on the forums for teh lulz.

Seatribe does, for the record, not condone or in any way lend any support to the (lack of) principles (of) liberalism, jacobinism, illuminism or any other sort of crypto-marxist newspeak designed to undermine the fundamental tenants of Christian civilization through the processes of ideological subversion. The company believes in freedom of speech, a healthy sense of humour, and the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.

God save the King.

r00fles!

Luzur what is it with you Swedes and your kings...

Swedes/northerners in general have always been royalists for over a 1000 years, heck i know lots of people that want the king to take over again so we can put our politicans against a wall.

and as we all know Swedes have been in their mightiest when led by Hero-Kings.

also it could be some sort of mantra that has developed over a long time being ruled by social-demoracy, if the only thing you desire is out of reach, maybe if you say it enough times it will come true?

 

[Brotherman Bill]

http://www.playstationlifestyle.net...ter-vg247s-official-policy-of-bad-journalism/

vg247 reports news, doesn't cite the proper site, doesn't edit it even after being asked to do so.

 

[kazgar]

http://www.vg247.com/2013/10/03/battlefield-4-declaration-of-attendance-at-dine-with-dice/

sounds hellish, though tasty, the restaurant who catered is a pretty good one.

 

[Blaine]

http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1ol3sh/i_am_igns_reviews_editor_ama/

 

[Clockwork Knight]

He's being honest. He said it's not that hard to tell when you're being "encouraged"; he didn't say it's not that hard to resist.

 

[Melan]

Since most "game journalists" are interchangeable early 20s people who can be hired and fired at will, and don't possess any genuinely valuable skills, it is no wonder they can be both pressured and corrupted easily. If you are working under shitty permatemp conditions, there must be a huge temptation to at least get something out of it. There is this unskilled nobody right from the street, and they are wined and dined by skilled corporate whores (the same people, except with a few more levels in Bullshit Artist). Of course they will buckle.

 

[Brotherman Bill]

I never liked the meme that gaming journalists are being bribed. That shit is unnecessary and complicated. They are just natural spitlickers brought up in a natural spitlicker culture.

 

[Jaedar]

I never liked the meme that gaming journalists are being bribed. That shit is unnecessary and complicated. They are just natural spitlickers brought up in a natural spitlicker culture.

For some reason, it seems that people would rather gamejournos be corrupt and competent than good but incompetent.

Not sure if optimist or pessimist.

 

[Micmu]

I'm surprised that "game journalists" still exist, why not let publisher's PR and marketing people write and publish a "review" directly and be done with it. And I wouldn't be surprised if that already does happen.

 

[Dexter]

I never liked the meme that gaming journalists are being bribed. That shit is unnecessary and complicated. They are just natural spitlickers brought up in a natural spitlicker culture.

Except it's both or rather all of the above combined depending on who you are dealing with, incompetency, low moral fibre and ambition to make money and be pampered by PR. Sometimes separate, somestimes all in one package.
Dno if I have posted this before but this thread is like 44 pages long so here goes again: http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Games/Interviews/larian_studios_pt1/

“In general it’s not that outspoken. Sometimes it is; I’ve seen examples of it. But it’s probably not the norm. Although, and I’m not going to mention the magazine (it’s a fairly big one), not sooner than I’d just done an interview with somebody [recently] was the advertising manager talking with us on the phone a couple of hours later about how many pages we’d wanted to buy, etc. So it does happen like that.

Public relations is all about creating the perception around a game, which does cause problems. You see situations where the guys going to review a game are invited to go to Venice, and they’re going to spend a half hour with the game and a week in Venice in a five-star hotel. It’s going to be extremely hard to be extremely negative about it.

I’ve seen a PR manager in action for one of my games make a 79 an 81. And it cost him a lot of money; it cost him full page ads over multiple titles, but he managed to, and it had a big impact on the sales of the game.”

Or this here from the Editor-in-Chief of 1UP from a long while back: http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=6228583

“My industry pisses me off.

I was a little suspicious of the cover choices one of our competitors was making, so I checked in with a contact of mine from a major game publisher. “Yes,” he confirmed. “We can pretty much get whatever cover we want from that magazine. All it takes is for us to meet with the publisher, promise that we’ll buy some ads, and discuss the details from there.” So…that magazine’s cover stories are for sale. Great.

Recently, some publicists for another game company were lamenting the fact that they couldn’t get any coverage on a certain, very high-profile website out there, because they weren’t advertising with that site. To get stories written up on their games, they’d have to start spending the bucks. More editorial coverage for sale. Wonderful.

Sadly, I’m not making this stuff up.
I have no stake in these two situations, so why should I care so much? Because even though they’re competitors, they affect my business and my reputation. Why do so many mainstream newspapers and periodicals command respect? Because they don’t act like the idiots I referred to above. But how will gaming journalism, a relatively new field, gain any credibility when certain prominent outlets or even entire publishing groups whore out their editorial integrity (if I can even call it that)?”

Personally I feel that it hasn’t gotten better since then, but gradually worse, I can’t prove it of course, but that’s just my arbitrary feeling about it, which gets stronger every time a game like Dragon Age 2 (which objectively has lots and lots of design issues) scores in the high 90s on certain publications and other games like Mass Effect 3 that have apparent issues to many fans (even if they like it), get the 100% or 10/10 GOTY awards in as much as 75 publications if Ray Muzyka is to be believed…

Or the case of the drunk games writer that came up some time ago: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=495020
http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Fu...Publishers-Paid-Review-Scores-More-47988.html

And the classic: http://www.joystiq.com/2007/11/30/rumor-gamespots-editorial-director-fired-over-kane-and-lynch-rev/

 

[Machocruz]

The main problem I have is that most game journalists are not experts on games. A serious, respected film critic is an expert on film history and theory. They know all the significant developments and accomplishments that have happened, in any decade, any genre. Compare to typical game reviewer for whom modern RPG is "revolutionary" "sets a new high bar," even though it does nothing more than games that came out 20 years ago. If they don't know anything about Ultima, they are absolutely not fit to make any declarative statements about where some new open-world RPG sits in the pantheon, or whether it belongs at all, or what new standards the game has set. Try going into a film forum and claiming Gangster Squad sets a new bar for cops and robbers or gangster films but you haven't seen Heat, Goodfellas, White Heat, etc. You'll get roasted. Yet such ignorance is acceptable when it comes to games.

So before the money or Doritos are even put on the table, the vast majority of reviewers are useless to me at best, beyond reporting the technical facts.

 

[Ninjerk]

I never liked the meme that gaming journalists are being bribed. That shit is unnecessary and complicated. They are just natural spitlickers brought up in a natural spitlicker culture.

For some reason, it seems that people would rather gamejournos be corrupt and competent than good but incompetent.

Not sure if optimist or pessimist.

Who is accusing them of being competent?