Totally Not Corrupt Professional Objective Gaming Journalism DRAMA

It only went on because an admin didn't like the game, was vocal about it and started the thread. That's it. It has been the same thing for like 15 or 16 years now. I have only ever lurked for the news aggregation which these no lifers are better at than anyone else, but the few times I actually read any thread the fellating is endless.

There would be a 50 pages thread of praise, GIFs and injokes if an admin started a thread praising the drinking of urine and all the sycophants would lick their boots and find ways to agree.

It is a bigger horror than any other gaming forum in existence, and it has such a good perception because any dissenting voice is immediately quelled. But as soon as you pay a bit of attention, you realize something is horribly wrong.

 

I'm currently lolling at the january Pc Gamer UK. They're literally bitching about every upcoming big game in their previews and go at it in their reviews. Let's see if it sticks.

Edge meanwhile goes on choking on every dev and publisher cock they can find. Shame, I really used to dig that one.

 

Bullshit, your butt is too raw for that to be the case.

The site is massive, there's bro's that post there as well as the cotton wooled, cliquey faggots. Not to mention there's plenty here who happily shove their noses half way up DU's arse.

 

It is Usenet, and then the IGN forums I was on. The place and some of the posters came up frequently and many posted on there. An elitist circle jerk never had any appeal to me.

You're right that even here there are many who "protect the hive", and a contingent who brown nose, but it's not even close to being on the same level.

And granted this isn't unique to there, if you read say the Rock Paper Shotgun comments many of the same principles apply. The one bothersome thing above all is when the party line is enforced with such rigidity, it leaves next to no room for actual genuine debate and for critical thought.

Maybe that's why our forum is able to see and call horrible trends and games for what they are while most all others get dazzled by hype.

 

Yeah, we've never killed a debate on this forum.

 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkai...e-call-people-who-complain-about-video-games/

 

Someone with less to lose than myself should build a website for International Murder A Games Journalist (with a hammer) Day*


*THIS IS A JOKE, NOT SERIOUS, HI FBI

 

Someone should collect all the articles from some of these Kotaku threads and make one juicy big image summary full of the stupidest things human beings have ever written:
http://archive.foolz.us/v/thread/172717780

 

I still find it hilarious that Forbes of all places has had more monocled gaming articles than 99.9999% of the 'games media'. Getting beaten in the field you specialise in by a business magazine that gives very few shits about the subject area?

Sucks to suck, games journos.

 

I've pretty much moved over to Forbes entirely for gaming news lately. I rarely get the feeling that I'm reading something that was paid for by publishers when I read their articles.

 

Well of course, Forbes deals with companies that actually matter and make money, while to a games journo, EA and Activision seem like financial juggernauts because they can supply a few hotel rooms and free drinks.

That and I figure Forbes pretty much just decided to have a games section, found a guy who's not completely retarded (Erik Kain), and told him to write what he felt like about games. Hell, just looking at his Facebook friendlist shows he's better than most games journos. Instead of PR reps, hipsters, 'us gamers' gamer culture enthusiast types, and hair-dyed internet social justice warrior blog crusaders, you see a fairly normal group of people, even some women that aren't absolute dogs.

 

Oh hi guys, I heard you said that Forbes is like totally awesome source for gaming articles? Yessiree bob:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesw...women-and-video-gamings-dirty-little-secrets/

Here's a little gem from the EA spokeswoman:

You heard that lads? Your mom is a hardcore gamer after that game of Microsoft Solitaire she played in '98 in the office. Also, it is a well-known fact that people that like to eat are great at cooking, and also that all meat packing plant employees love eating sausages.

Because fuck reality, says EA.

 

Yeah, just killing the Forbes circlejerk before it takes off. It's better than most, but there's still promo articles like that on it.

 

The article you have is actually from the 'ForbesWoman' section, not the proper games one, but your point still stands since there's plenty of shit to be found. However, I still stand by what I said, not that Forbes was amazing, but that it "has had more monocled gaming articles" than most games-focused sites. I meant there were more articles that were monocle there (higher than 0 pretty much), not that all of their articles are more monocle. Easily misinterpreted wording I guess, my bad.

Think of me less as a Forbes circlejerker and more as an Erik Kain cocksucker, though I'm sure he's written something derp at some point. I've only read the articles linked to me on the Codex. In fact, the only game site I go to without being linked to is the Codex. Well, RPS too, but that's for laughing at their earnest social justice crusade, not actual game news.

Also I've decided to look at the Facebook friendlist of any games writer before reading their shit, since it actually seems like a decent derp detector. Oh man, getting to judge people based on their social circle without having to interact with them first, I love this next-gen cliquishness.

 

Ah well yeah, it definitely has more good articles on it than more or less the rest of the mainstream combined. Still, it's sort of amusing, they simply offer a point of view that is reasonable, it's not groundbreaking controversial journalism, it's not super-contrarian, it's really very much stating the obvious. And yet, compared to the rest of gamejourno scene, it's actually almost ground-breaking. Amazing stuff really.

And yeah, it's good to have people write about the industry that don't soil their panties as soon as someone from a company they adore pats them on the head. In fact I wonder why more people like that don't work in the industry, but then again, I think they know better than to do so. Of course, the EA spokeswoman article is also fairly enlightening in that respect - like games? How about reviewing them? Oh, you review games? How about some free games and peripherals, maybe a signed t-shirt? Wheeeeee! Everyone's a gamer! Wheeee!

 

Who would give them work? There is no demand for actual critical opinions in gaming PR press.

 

Critical opinions in general are not very welcomed. Remember, when criticizing, you are offending important, respected people!

 

Small, niche sites ran by people with similar tastes to yours are the only way to look for new media content these days.

 

Well they say old people need a hobby to keep the brain active... Ideal games journalist is someone doing it to pass the time after they retire from a real career. Preferably one where they've gone on plenty of business trips and various activities that ensure they won't be impressed by publisher bribes. Bonus is that they'll have seen years of the decline and will be a cynical bastard as a result.

...Any Codexers retiring soon?

 

Most Codexers have already retired... from society.

 

Worse. They've found that obesity in men actually passes on health problems to their kids (as in it affects the genetic material during conception - not just a matter of being a crap social influence on your kids diet).

 

Actually, I do. Non-gaming media is shrinking, and a lot of well-trained, motivated and university qualified journalists are either getting downsized or jumping ship. Their number one destination is PR, as they get paid a fuckload more for doing much easier work (if you want an analysis of that, there's an excellent website by an ex-radio-journalist-turned-PR-exec called The Failed Estate).

It won't be long - if it hasn't happened already - that the average PR flak is a far more qualified/experienced journalist than the wannabe writers in the gaming media. At that point, the PR folk simply won't need gaming journos: the sites and magazines will still be there, but it will be a collation of dressed up press releases. Just the corporate PR folk and a token editor or two to put them together and wack a forum up next to them.

 

Brofist on the praise for Forbes game reviews. I find that the further removed a publication is for the game industry, the more likely it is to give well-researched and critical game reviews. NY Times is another one that's aware of how how games have declined - it's useless when reviewing traditional rpgs, but they've got a guy who's a full bottle on UO, Thief, SS, Deus Ex etc.

 

There's always horrific circular logic when it comes to criticism these days, my favourite of course being the Catch 22 of You can only criticize it if you've played the whole game/Well if you played the whole game then you must've enjoyed it. It's too easy for gaming 'journalists' bottleneck the critics down and try to pass them off as a vocal and/or unpleasable minority (the recent and aforementioned "People only hate DmC because they changed the hair" debacle comes to mind), and they can get outright hostile to anyone who doesn't march in tune with them. Seriously, the amount of venom I've seen these people spew at whomever they don't like is unprofessional to say the very fucking least.

Really, it all leads back to my earlier criticism of the internet as a public sphere. There is no room for objectivity, people go to Kotaku, read whatever article they find about how whichever game of the month they should buy, get it, then circlejerk in whatever Reddit or Gamespot or whatever threads they have about how great it is while constantly going back to Kotaku to make sure that, yes, they are correct in thinking that this game is great any everyone who says otherwise is an entitled troll who hates the main character's change in hairdressers. At least places like /v/ maintain some self-awareness on just how shit everything is while the codex is a similar sort of shit, just on the opposite end of the spectrum with a healthy dose of cynicism and awareness of just how bad things are declining.