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A conversation with a gaming journalist

Claw

Erudite
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The center of my world.
Project: Eternity Divinity: Original Sin 2
Vault Dweller said:
- A PM from Robur marked "Please don't post this" (that was before Patrick even showed up at the Codex, so the title doesn't reflect my PM posting habits).
Why.. why would he do that? Clearly, his request is already intrinsic to the concept of a PM. Therefore, it was redundant. It seems Robur meant to insult you by implying you don't understand this. I say ban him! :evil:
 

Mr Happy

Scholar
Joined
Jul 15, 2006
Messages
574
Futile Rhetoric said:
Mr Happy said:
I disagree with the general consensus.
Cunt.

I find your assesment of my argument inadequate, unethical, and totally unproffessional in the context of this discussion and/or all related discussion.
 
Joined
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Messages
3,608
Mr Happy said:
Way to dodge the main points made in my post, weaselfuck.
Oh no, I've won every argument. Don't believe me? Tough. I don't have to prove it to you. I'm a professional weaselfuck, thankyouverymuch.
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
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Messages
28,024
Koby said:
@VD - we have this new weasel tag and NN seems to be doing a lot of weaseling, I think it is a much better idea then banning, just saying.
Weasel it is then. It would have been a shame to ban an aspiring indie RPG developer anyway (didn't know that before).

http://www.garagegames.com/blogs/49499/12669

So, why don't you tell us about your game instead of bitching & complaining all day?
 

aries202

Erudite
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Mar 5, 2005
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Location
Denmark, Europe
elander_ said:
aries202 said:
And please remember that here on Earth, it is necessary to have a job to get by as we all have obligations to our family, our children or maybe have an obligition to our bank as we own a house, and need to make the house and car payments each month.

No kidding Sherlock. Also remember that here on Earth ethics in journalism is something that was introduced by professional journalists and gaming journalists aren't special human beings above the rest. Should we pretend that game sites who are being unprofessional and misleading gamers are now a good thing for gaming and not criticize them? Are you saying that lying to the public by giving a 10 score where a 7 score would apply is good because people can feed their families? If i think this way then i would not be posting here.

I'm working as a teacher. And as a teacher I sometimes have to do something that goes against my nature, both as a teacher and a sentient human being. I have to grade the students performance in class, so I do it, but I'm not happy about it. But I'll do it, because if I don't I am going to lose my job.

You don't have to tell me how the teacher job works - i'm a univ student and i have teachers in my family. If you think your job is bad then maybe you should see how it works in my country. It's the government who creates politics to pressure teachers to put as many graduated people as they can on the market, and they close their eyes to the way teachers do this. Voting in a different party is the same thing. So nobody can change things unless teachers themselves.

I was just trying to describe how the world works and that maybe not all gaming journalists have the luxury of being able to as idealistic as you would like them to be. It is fine to be very idealistic but people, (including me as a teacher) also need to be able to pay the bills, so yes, often it is (or so it seems) a choice between being very idealistic or doing what the man upstairs (yor boss) asks you to do. And if you, as a gaming journalist, refuses to do a preview or review and perhaps also make the preview, or review, a little more positive than the game deserves, then out the door the gaming journalist(s) go.

I'm not in way, shape or form condoning this behaviour, and I think it shouldn't be this way, but in a capitalistic society in which money rules the world, so is the reality of things.
 

elander_

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Messages
2,015
Maybe they don't have much choice but they always have one. When someone accepts and defends this as a normal situation then it is wrong. Anyway i'm not discussing how the system should be healing i'm only pointing out the symptoms.
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
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Messages
28,024
aries202 said:
I was just trying to describe how the world works and that maybe not all gaming journalists have the luxury of being able to as idealistic as you would like them to be.
Well, maybe corrupt cops don't have the luxury to be as idealistic as we would like them to be. Or malpracticing doctors. Or some other lying weasel who causes harm because he has a family or two to feed and money to make, and it's not really his fault for not having the luxury to be honest.
 

Naked Ninja

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Trying to win on technicality? While one can definitely carry a private confidential conversation, PM is a good way to get attention of and talk to poster X without making redundant threads. Proof? Let me take a look at my PRIVATE message box:

Yes, PM is a good way to carry on a 1 on 1 conversation without redundant threads. Your point however was "Why did Patrick expect it to remain private?" While certainly people can send you PMs without any expecation as to keeping it secret, the problem comes in when you just assume they are of that opinion. Since it is called a "private" message, if you are going to err, in this case you should err on the side of caution, ie that the sender assumes private = private (since you asked, are you sure you can do maths?). You can't assume a private message wasn't expected to remain private. This is where simply asking him before hand would have been the ethical thing to do. Especially once you realised he had expected it to be so. But you just carried on regardless, because you wanted to.

And there have already been people who said they didn't get what you are saying. What's your point?

My point is that you wanted to ban me unless I proved it to *you*.

What I did wasn't unprofessional because my job is to give my readers an accurate picture of the gaming industry: games, developers, companies, publishers, and the gaming media. I'm sure that Bethesda thinks that it was very unprofessional of me to state a year ago that Fallout 3 is neither turn-based nor isometric, but unlike Patrick's job, my job is not about always creating positive impressions and helping AAA companies to sell more copies.

You could have done it without posting private messages. Hell, it didn't sound like Patrick wanted the core information kept secret. Did you ask him if you could post up Gamespys policy on reviewing Indie Games for the discussion of your forum members? Or even if he could do it himself? From the looks of it he was simply pissed off about the way you went about it, taking his private correspondances and posting them without asking. So Gamespy doesn't review indie games because most of them are unprofessional? Oh no, what a dirty little secret! From what I've seen he is indeed correct. It might mean he never reviews my game? Well so be it, I'm not going to be an ass about it.

Oh, and it would indeed have been unprofessional if you had stated as fact that F3 was going to be neither turn based nor isometric. Because you hadn't seen it at that point. You predicted it would be so, based on knowledge you had at the time and statements made by Bethesda. Predictions aren't unethical.

Now, the ethics claim. You claim that I did something that's morally wrong (if you are talking about professional ethics, then see the paragraph above). I maintain that it wasn't and file it under "public service" - the public has the right to know what the gaming industry doesn't want to tell them. Passing to the public only official statements and carefully orchestrated, often approved preview and reviews is unethical. I'd say that journalism is about sharing with the public what other parties don't wish for the public to know, be it an informative, honest review, inside information, or an image of a gaming journalist.

You sure he was upset that you passed on their policy about indie games? Or was he pissed about the way you handled his private conversations? You sure he wouldn't have told the forum if asked publicly? You haven't "scooped" a factory secretly polluting a towns water supply with toxins here. It doesn't seem like there a conspiracy to hide this information. The problem I have is just in the way you went about it.

Did I cause Patrick any harm? No. Like I said, it was a harmless conversation that you've blown out of proportion. Did I damage his reputation at the Codex. No, he damaged it himself. At GameSpy? No. Other than showing his bias and inability to handle arguments, he didn't reveal anything that would put his job at jeopardy.

Agreed, you caused him no harm. None whatsoever. Like I said, when you act in an unethical manner you damage your own repuation, no one elses. You probably could have achieved exactly the same result without giving him the proverbial finger. Its this whole Codex policy of "Basic courtesy = bending over and taking it" childishness.

And my only motivation for posting all this has been because I just thought it was a shitty thing to do. Maybe to people who don't give a damn about ethics it would seem like I would need another motivation, but I don't.

But anyway, an entire weekend of this has been enough, I'm tired of it. No more, I'm done. Weasel tag it is then, whatever.

...changing gears...

Yep, been working on my RPG for about 2 years now and its finally approaching something worth showing online. And I have recently been thinking about posting up info about my game here. Been putting together some copy and a few pictures to go with it, since I've been working on the art lately. The GUI still looks like utter shite though.

At the very least posting here should serve as a trial by fire. :lol:
 

kris

Arcane
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Oct 27, 2004
Messages
8,835
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Lulea, Sweden
Naked Ninja said:
You see how silly it comes out when you don't use the shorthand? He should have asked you to keep his private message private so that you would know he wanted it kept private? Come now, thats really weak. Private message. It has no other meaning besides private message. If you chose to disregard that meaning, well, hooray for you, oh ballsey one. But don't come with this "I don't understand why he believed it should have been kept private?" nonsense.

Sending a private message is in no way different than having a conversation between two persons, just like being in a chat room is not way different than being in a group conversation. (in this context). I must with that view disagree with you about it being unethical to share the information unless explicitely told so. I for sure do share information I have been told in conversations with other people all the time.

Of course also measured by "the contents" of that conversations, just like I said before. But any measurement of content will be incredible subjective.
 

Kraszu

Prophet
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Poland
Naked Ninja said:
Gamespy doesn't review indie games because most of them are unprofessional? Oh no, what a dirty little secret! From what I've seen he is indeed correct. It might mean he never reviews my game? Well so be it, I'm not going to be an ass about it

What is stopping them from reviewing indie games exactly?

1) That they can publish pm, haw many secret information you have to be send before you review the game? Should information on what game journalist will review and what not and why should be secret to readers? Haw is that ethic?

2) Haw does they not review any they could not send pm if they are so scared about revealing those information and just send pm that say that they want to review game (when it go gold) those information aren't secret right? Better yet post it on they forum and not be in danger of they pm being published.
 

Amasius

Augur
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Thanatos
Naked Ninja said:
This isn't a scale of 1 to 100. Either he acted ethically or not. Black and white.You can't act half-ethically.
Naked Ninja said:
On or off, black or white.
Its evident that he is suffering gravely under QIS (Quixotic Idealism Syndrome), curable only through a heavy dosis of life experience.
 

Naked Ninja

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Nonsense. You're simply mistaking ethical standards with the degree to which individuals choose to act upon them.

Just because someone steals a car, that doesn't imply the laws regarding theft don't exist, only that the thief has chosen to disregard them.

Likewise, all the quoting of incidents of people acting unethically in the work place implies nothing whatsoever about the ethical standards themselves, only about the individuals. That they have chosen to disregard ethical behavior for their own gain.

You cannot be half ethical any more than you can tell half-truths. Either it's the truth or not. Anything else is a comforting euphimism.
 

Section8

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Wardenclyffe
What is stopping them from reviewing indie games exactly?

More time involved for very little return. I can't see content about unknown indie titles attracting readership, and the indie developers aren't going to advertise on their site. So why spend ~20-40 man hours on something that gains you nothing?

The only way I could see it benefiting them is if they used a site like Fileplanet as a point of sale for indie releases and took a share, thereby giving them a vested financial interest in spreading the word and glorifying indie releases.
 

Kraszu

Prophet
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Poland
Section8 said:
What is stopping them from reviewing indie games exactly?

More time involved for very little return. I can't see content about unknown indie titles attracting readership, and the indie developers aren't going to advertise on their site. So why spend ~20-40 man hours on something that gains you nothing?

Yes I mean in context of unprofessional indie developers, how it stop them. NN actually think that they are not reviewed becouse indie developers are unprofessional.
 

Naked Ninja

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Thats what Patrick said in his PM dude.

Why is it hard to imagine that professionals don't want to work with unprofessionals?
 

JoKa

Cipher
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Nov 22, 2006
Messages
689
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Nordland
Naked Ninja said:
Thats what Patrick said in his PM dude.

Why is it hard to imagine that professionals don't want to work with unprofessionals?
do you believe it's just that? no monetary interests involved?

and concerning professional/unprofessional: getting money for doing sth =! being good at sth

just saying...
 

denizsi

Arcane
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bosphorus
AnalogKid said:
I'm not much of a dick licker (aside: no really! Some of my best friends are faggots...), but I'd just like to point out that robur is not the same person as everyone's favorite sideshow weasel freak. They have shared the same "side" of some arguments, but as DU mentioned, robur at least seems like a relatively rational, sincere, SANE person.

Thanks for notifying me of this. I've assumed that the two were the same person: Patrick. In this case, the last part of my last post goes to d-something, and my apologies to robur. However, that's only for the last paragraph. I've taken note that he read my post and chose to reply to only that paragraph, ignoring the more substantial previous paragraphs, with a question. That doesn't speak good for his credit.

robur said:
Could you back your claims about me and what I said up for a sec? Where did I arrogantly talk about the things you described?

Read above.

robur said:
Wir können uns auch gerne in Deutsch oder Französisch unterhalten - ich glaube nur nicht, dass ich Dich dann überhaupt verstehen würde.

I don't understand why you needed to say that.. in German, but whatever.

Naked Ninja said:
Exaggerating? This isn't a scale of 1 to 100. Either he acted ethically or not. Black and white.You can't act half-ethically. And I'll say ethical or unethical if I feel like it, arguments over semantics are dreadfully dull.

This was his response to this:

Amasius said:
I think that everybody here agrees that it was rude to post the PMs, but is that a good reason to start another Codex drama? He is exaggerating dreadfully.

Let's see. Amasius: we agree it was rude, but NN is exaggerating the situation. NN: You can't rate the rudeness on a scale.

If that's not retarded, then I clearly don't know what is. He's doing his routine either by deliberately taking things out of context or simply by misreading them. For one, I'm all for his ban, at least for a short time. There are times he writes some substantial posts, in quite reasonable manners (which leads me to believe that he's being an asshole on purpose at other times), but that trade off isn't worth taking his shit all the other times. I'd also say that less tagged people Codex has, more power to the tags. We just can't keep tagging people forever.
 

Naked Ninja

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No you twit. There are degrees of unethical behavior, definately, but they all fall into the greater category "unethical". None of the degrees of unethical behavior can be categorised as "ethical".

Perhaps a maths inspired logical model. The set (union)of all unethical behaviors does not overlap at all with the set (union) of all ethical behaviors. You cannot have a form of behavior stradling both sets. Understand? No? Lets try simpler.

There are different shades of red, but no red can be classified as yellow. Does that make sense? Have I made it simple enough? I can't really make this any simpler.
 

MF

The Boar Studio
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Developer
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Messages
892
Location
Amsterdam
Naked Ninja said:
There are different shades of red, but no red can be classified as yellow. Does that make sense? Have I made it simple enough? I can't really make this any simpler.

Reality can't be modeled to mathematical absolutes, except for when you abstract reality. There are many different shades of yellow and green, but half the people call chartreuse yellow, and the other half calls it green. And what would you make of orange? It's a roughly equal shade of yellow and red.

Now, you've abstracted reality when defining what is ethical and what is not. That's fine, but don't expect your conversation partner to have intuitively done the same thing.
 

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