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Fucking game journalism


FredEffinChopin
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I was just going to bitch about this in my status, but Dean set me on a better path.

 

http://techtroid.co.uk/santa-monica-studio-looking-for-testers-for-new-fps-10792

 

It's fun to lead excited gamers into the hands of shady-ass craigslist ads that would extract their personal information under false pretenses!

 

I don't know whether to call this gross but unintentional negligence on the part of the writer for not bothering to examine the listing more than peripherally, or call it intentionally negligent for his using the obviously suspect (at best) posting to write a unique (and false) news story that would bring site hits. Either way, this is the bottom of the barrel when it comes to reporting. From reading the article you would think this i straight fact. I find it absolutely disgusting.

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  • 3 months later...

Polygon Documentary...

 

 

The closest we have to a documentary is a slide I put together on Gdocs with a "how to publish an article, don't fuck up the image sizes" walkthrough.

 

Good write up by a guy from RPS (yeah he kinda has a dog in the fight, but still) http://botherer.org/2012/08/23/polygon-and-the-documentary-that-cured-cancer/

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  • 2 months later...

btw stuff is going down.

 

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-10-24-lost-humanity-18-a-table-of-doritos

 

http://botherer.org/2012/10/24/games-journalists-and-the-perception-of-corruption/

 

http://botherer.org/2012/10/25/an-utter-disgrace/

 

Worth following the various links. Oh and given the edit of the EG article Robert Florence has also since stepped down as a columns writer for EG.

 

Also adds an addition to the whole affair when you take in mind the events of last years GMAS and the media reaction to it.

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By the sounds of it it's a case of "it's not my main job, I'm just not feeling it any more and some of you are going to extreme lengths to prove my point. Sayonara". I think he was pretty exasperated when he wrote the article, MCV/Wainwright reaction just broke the camels back.

 

And yeah the MCV/Wianwright reaction is a classic case of Streisand Effect. Especially since original article mentioned the Tomb Raider twitter thing and now an eye of scrutiny has been brought upon her it turns out she's on Square Enix's freelance payroll(SE publish Tomb Raider). Of course she's listed as working for SE anymore mind. Her reputation is pretty much fucked and she hasn't got a comedy career to fall back on like Florence.

 

Gonna make future gaming events fun to follow. Especially stuff like EG Expo and GMAs :P

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I read the links, actually I just skimmed over some of it. Or read fast without actually trying to understand it. What I got from it was there were companies asking journalists to tweet about their game in the hopes of a PS3 reward. So they did, and now it made them untrustworthy. I get that I guess.

 

However, what's that about Geoff Keighley and the Doritos?

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I don't actually know the origin of the Geoff Keighley and the Doritos, I assume it's from one of his shows he does (we don't get the US game channels over here)

 

Also Totilo weighs in

zLQmg.jpg

I actually thought it fake, but did some googling and turns out it's really totilo and that's really his response :P

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To be fair though, I'm kinda glad Kotaku's not weighing in on this, because, Kirk Hamilton maybe aside, I don't think any of their regular staff are really good at "news" news, per se. The above picture's really unwarranted juxtaposition, especially since the article in question hadn't even been posted at that time (Oct 22, when the Halo thing got posted in that screencap), and while I don't hate them as much as I used to, using that particular image to call them out is more than a tad unfair to them.

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The above picture's really unwarranted juxtaposition, especially since the article in question hadn't even been posted at that time (Oct 22, when the Halo thing got posted in that screencap), and while I don't hate them as much as I used to, using that particular image to call them out is more than a tad unfair to them.

 

I would say it's fair. Totilo says 'this week', and the article is from Monday.

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The image isn't so much the big thing, it's the fact he's dismissed the recent questioning of games journalism ethics/corruption so easily as "tired nonsense". And the fact he wouldn't want to dedicate his "reporters" on the task, while quite happily to have three of them opening up Halo 4 gear.

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  • 3 weeks later...

LewieP, head guy of SavyGamer a UK site for posting deals on games n such posted an email conversation he had with a marketing firm representing Nintendo

http://i.imgur.com/YLvEQ.png (It's kinda big so not gonna embed it)

Makes you wonder eh.

 

 

Oh and there's stuff stirring up with regards to the previous "doritogate" stuff in that MCV have posted a round-up of positive reviews for Hitman (an SE published game, same company one of their writers listed as being employed by in the previous shitstorm), with them listing EG as being "grumpy" for their 7/10 and an outlier, when as many have pointed out plenty of outlets have given it pretty bad review scores.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/critics-delighted-with-agent-47-s-return-in-hitman-absolution/0106621

It has had a fair few updates and tweaks since.

 

Oh n led to this:

http://independently-speaking.com/2012/11/19/the-doubt-is-there/

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Has Lewie actually contacted Nintendo UK to verify that this guy actually does represent them? Because having SEO in his signature just looks like someone desperate to get people to sign up for whatever dodgy adclick scheme he's got going, and getting his spiel published would certainly grant them a foothold. And you know that SEO people never actually read the sites that they randomly target. I'm surprised they got Lewie that far to be honest, I'd have expected him to just laugh in their face and tell them to take a hike.

 

As for MCV, oh boy, seems they can't do anything right these days. Thing is, since they're industry-centric instead of consumer-based, they've got all the PR people on their side, so they've had people from different companies taking their side and attacking John Walker and the like for (rightfully) calling them out on their bullshit.

 

In other MCV news, I heard they quietly let Lauren Wainwright go. Unsurprising after "Doritosgate" really, but for MCV to step from one hot mess right into another, doesn't bode well for them at all.

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They didn't get him that far, it was clear from the start it wasn't for him. Just with the recent stuff going on I think he felt it worthwhile just exploring how far down the rabbit hole it goes. And got more than he bargained for in the pre-wrote article. Also these guys don't seem like random shitty SEO company. http://www.mecglobal.com/our-work/case-studies/sony-computer-entertainment-america-playstation/

 

Yeah MCV has just been terrible today, especially taking to Twitter like it has done. I'm a bit like Mike Rose in the whole "the doubt is there", and before now it'd just seemed like silliness and mostly focused on the somewhat naive Wainwright, but now she's gone and this stuff is not only continuing but amplified so much worse makes you realise it's the whole MVC network. Whcih kinda sucks cos MCV is a sister publication of Develop and I like Develop.

 

Huh, hadn't heard about Wainwright. I had seen her posts still going up in MCV the days following. I guess they held off until it was quiet enough to just take her out back.

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