Totally Not Corrupt Professional Objective Gaming Journalism DRAMA

[Brotherman Bill]

^ yea the above really tells us why gaming journalism is so shit: Fanboys demand it to be. Seriously, the Notch fanboys thinks that somehow those questions were over the line or "biased" or whatever. http://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/28dz59/notch_responds_to_polygons_biased_questions_like/

It's like asking a muslim whether Allah does good, the very question gets you stoned.

 

[Renegen]

They were biased questions.

 

[DalekFlay]

I'm all for tough questions in interviews, but not "tough questions" that are actually presumptive, biased and designed to leave the person answering in a defensive position. That's not interviewing, that's preparing a click-bait article.

 

[Jick Magger]

Yeah, the wording alone makes it obvious. First question starts out somewhat decently (though it's basically a straight 'yes or no' question that any good interviewer should try to avoid) through the rest of it the interviewer acts as though he's gonna be making the next Frost/Nixon interview and goes completely on the offensive, with really condescending wording that make it extremely obvious that he isn't here to try and actually hear Notch's side of the story ("...a bit unfair", "Why not just leave them alone?"), while at the same time indirectly insulting the man by accusing him of condoning fraud. Notch just acknowledged that Colin wasn't there to actually listen to him or actually write about Notch's view on the EULA; he was gonna write yet another article about how the EULA was a terrible decision and how Notch is a greedy fat fuck for daring to do it, and shut it down as quickly as he could beyond just not responding.

 

[Cadmus]

what...notch is a dirty neckbeard and the questions were ridiculous, I don't see how any kind of journalism ever had a chance there

 

[DalekFlay]

As usual the best response to all of this would be no response at all, but people cannot into internet.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

He probably thought it would be better to just post it before Polygon Guy had a chance to turn him into an uncaring corporate overlord.

Rob T ‏@Tarpo 12 h
@notch why is "we don't want you charging to sell shit we created" so difficult to grasp?

Heh. Notch was pretty civil really, he could just have replied with this.

 

[Brotherman Bill]

They were biased questions.

They were very moderately edgy questions. In real journalism, the edge in them would be obscured by background noise.

Also in real journalism, you try to confront the parties with the claims made by the other, to allow them to answer them. But you guys seemingly think this is being "biased", which is one part of why game journalism is so shit...

Really, I had no idea we had notch fanboys on the codex. Much shame.

 

[tuluse]

They were very moderately edgy questions. In real journalism, the edge in them would be obscured by background noise.

Also in real journalism, you try to confront the parties with the claims made by the other, to allow them to answer them. But you guys seemingly think this is being "biased", which is one part of why game journalism is so shit...

Really, I had no idea we had notch fanboys on the codex. Much shame.

Question #4 is not real question. It's the equivalent of "when did you stop being your wife herostratus?"

Also, notch answered all the questions, so I don't see what the problem is.

 

[Brotherman Bill]

Nnnnnno, it's the equivalent of "ppl say your policy will have this bad effect, do you think it will have this bad effect?" Again, real journalists ask questions like this all the fucking time and no one takes any notice.

Who the fuck is notch?

Minecraft creator and neckbeard extraordinaire

 

[Zewp]

There's nothing wrong with having questions in an interview that put the interviewee on the defensive, but when you've got 5 questions basically pushing an agenda like this then you're doing something wrong. The intent behind these questions was clearly not to get information, it was to write another scathing click-bait article to get the notch-haters to click on it.

The interviewer might as well have said "Why are you doing this you're killing Minecraft servers you greedy pig", because that's what his "interview" amounted to.

 

[Infinitron]

Reworded: http://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/c...nds_to_polygons_biased_questions_like/cia6qr4

These are questions I don't mind answering, and if anyone is curious:

What do you think about the blog posts and efforts to explain Mojang's actions?

I was hoping it would calm things down, but it seems to just have made things worse. People less stressed than me tell me this doesn't have to be a bad thing. Hopefully we can reach some better results now that it's being talked about instead of people breaking the rules in silence.

Some people think that changing this policy so late into Minecraft's life is unfair. Just as many disagree. What do you think about policy changes on a game that has been out for so many years?

For the last several years, these have been the rules. People didn't realize or chose to ignore that they were building the businesses around something that breaks the rules. The "new rules" we've added adds new ways for people to be able to run legitimate servers and still make money, for the people who want to not break the rules. Hopefully this includes all big companies.

What caused you to make this change in policy?

First of all, people think we changed the rules to make them worse. We didn't. There were some way more lenient rules back in alpha when I was working alone, but that changed a long time ago into the too restrictive rules we had up until recently. The changes we made were all allowing people to monetize. Just how we think streaming and youtube are important for the community, we think running a server is something important that we want to allow, and the changes only happened because this got discussed.

How do you think some servers, which have previously thrived on the old policies, will react? Do you think they'll be alright after the change?

I feel sorry for the ones to based their business around something we don't want Minecraft to become (ie a game where you pay for gameplay). Unfortunately, these were the rules since before they started their business, and hopefully they will be able to transition into something in line we don't disallow. My gut feeling is that most should be able to survive the changeover.

What different advice would you give to new servers as well as old servers to make for a more smooth transition into this new policy?

This is very difficult to give a general response to, as all servers have different setups. Perhaps "talk to your players". I would appreciate not telling the players that there are new rules, though.

​

 

[Renegen]

Nnnnnno, it's the equivalent of "ppl say your policy will have this bad effect, do you think it will have this bad effect?" Again, real journalists ask questions like this all the fucking time and no one takes any notice.

Who the fuck is notch?

Minecraft creator and neckbeard extraordinaire

You know what real journalism is? Real journalism would've been to do some research with the server hosts and find out how the decision affects them and then bring this knowledge to Notch, asking what his reaction is and whether he anticipated it. Instead they went "lol, Russian hackers will now have access to kiddie porn, why Notch?"

 

[Drax]

Nnnnnno, it's the equivalent of "ppl say your policy will have this bad effect, do you think it will have this bad effect?" Again, real journalists ask questions like this all the fucking time and no one takes any notice.

Who the fuck is notch?

Minecraft creator and neckbeard extraordinaire

You know what real journalism is? Real journalism would've been to do some research with the server hosts and find out how the decision affects them and then bring this knowledge to Notch, asking what his reaction is and whether he anticipated it. Instead they went "lol, Russian hackers will now have access to kiddie porn, why Notch?"

Exactly, good journalism is sharp and , not edgy and confrontational.

 

[Delterius]

I really love Play4Real articles.

Spoiler

Ben Kuchera Says People Should Describe His Articles as Unreadable Pieces of Garbage Instead of Clickbait
by Jack · June 17, 2014

Saddened by the use of “clickbait” as a word, Polygon editor Ben Kuchera says that people should no longer use that word to describe his articles. Instead, they should use more colorful phrases like “unreadable piece of garbage” or “unintelligible nonsense.”While it is still unclear if the recent Polygon departures are a result of layoffs, one thing remains certain: Ben Kuchera still has a job. And he has defended his right to this job and also defended the quality of his articles with the above tweet. We should respect that. Too many gamers take the easy way out of simply describing his articles as “clickbait” when they could be much more harsh in their rhetoric.

Here is a sample of the articles he has written in the past few days:

• Destiny’s worst bit is one of our favorite actors, and we’re worried
• Game of Thrones has burnt down most of its own structure, and that’s a risky move
• Why a cat? Because everyone can identify with the character.

So we have to be fair, not all of his articles are clickbait. Some of them are just plain asinine. Remember, I’m pretending to be a person who actually went and read something off of Polygon willingly because the articles seemed interesting.

Destiny’s worst bit is one of our favorite actors, and we’re worried
Destiny is a highly anticipated game so anything potentially bad is alarming to fans of Bungie. But the title doesn’t give enough context as to what it is. It turns out that Peter Dinklage sucks at voice acting. Of course, it’s just voice acting. If the rest of the game is great, does it really matter how it sounds? Of course, we can’t talk about gameplay on a site about video games, that’s just stupid.

Game of Thrones has burnt down most of its own structure, and that’s a risky move
Speaking of games, this is about Game of Thrones the video game, right?

Why a cat? Because everyone can identify with the character.
This isn’t so much clickbait as it is stupid. Curiosity might lure the cat into clicking this article which has such a strange title. It turns out that it’s about an indie game called Night in the Woods which stars a cat. The game is a platformer that looks very generic. But this article is not about the gameplay, it’s about the main character who’s a cat which is apparently pushing the boundaries of video games. Now that’s an article.

So let’s be fair. It’s hard to get attention in a world where everybody has the ability to speak their mind about anything. You need to have exciting article titles in order to get people interested. Everyone does it. Kuchera’s right, clickbait is an overused term that could apply to almost anything. So let’s take his advice and just tackle the content for being complete garbage or ignore him altogether. Something we could all do.

 

[Sodafish]

What do they expect? This is the buzzword generation after all. Nonetheless it's an accurate buzzword and clearly the truth hurts.

 

[Brotherman Bill]

Nnnnnno, it's the equivalent of "ppl say your policy will have this bad effect, do you think it will have this bad effect?" Again, real journalists ask questions like this all the fucking time and no one takes any notice.

Who the fuck is notch?

Minecraft creator and neckbeard extraordinaire

You know what real journalism is? Real journalism would've been to do some research with the server hosts and find out how the decision affects them and then bring this knowledge to Notch

And how do you know he didn't...? To me it sounds a lot like he got those questions from conversations with pro-minipayment servers.

I don't know all that however, but still your argument is rather stupid because all those questions seemed relevant enough and were journalistic enough by themselves. Just look at notch's reply that infinitron pasted, those questions were trivial to give a good answer to if you just put your mind to it and not reading them like the devil reads the bible like an xbox fanboy reading the PS magazine.

 

[Ranselknulf]

They a valuable part of the ecosystem,

What your advice to them be?

And more questions from Colin Campbell.

https://twitter.com/notch/status/478958614959640576

So that journalist guy was basically asking why a game company doesn't want them to set up servers with in game item shops for a game they don't own? He didn't even deserve a response.

I can sort of understand operating a emulated server as an "educational experience" and financed by donations but running your own private server as a business charging people without permission seems wrong.

 

[Gerrard]

Why don't all companies just upload all their trailers for free on YouTube and just ignore a crappy middleman like GameTrailers?

Because Youtube is a piece of shit? For months now I have to reload every other video I open because it gets stuck loading.

 

[Infinitron]

Is YouTube killing the traditional games press?

Good article at Gamasutra.

 

[Kem0sabe]

The revenue streams from Twitch and Youtube game channels are just too good to ignore. A well monetized gaming channel is a lot more attractive prospect than having to deal with a dick editor who adjusts your content to fit any one agenda.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.polygon.com/forums/meta/2014/6/18/5821182/the-road-ahead

The road ahead
By Christopher Grant on Jun 18, 2014 at 12:57p @chrisgrant


This month, we lost some of our team. This includes Russ Pitts, one of the founding editors of the site, along with Tom Connors and Adam Barenblat, two of the most talented and hardest-working people we had. These decisions are never easy, and Russ, Tom and Adam are people I have considered, and will still consider, friends.

We never thought starting a video game outlet in 2012 (has it been that long already?) was going to be easy and we've learned a lot in the last two years. We learned that there's an incredible opportunity to tell in-depth stories about the people — both fans and creators — that make video games what they are. But we've also learned exactly how hard it is to do that with consistency and how much appetite there is for that kind of coverage.

We're very proud of the feature writing and video work we've done, but producing that content is expensive and requires that all (or at least nearly all) of those pieces are smash hits. When you're publishing two to three pieces like that a week, bringing in the audiences day in and day out is tougher than we'd imagined it would be way back in 2012. Lesson learned.

Will Polygon still make incredible features? We absolutely will. What will change is the frequency.

We need to find the right balance of interest and resource expenditure, so we can continue to produce the kind of longform work that you've come to know us by, while making sure that, when we do, you never want to miss it.

Polygon is growing. We beat our previous monthly high (November, fyi, thanks to the dual console launches) in March and again in May, and June is on track to be our best month ever. According to Comscore, Polygon is now the fourth largest gaming outlet, behind IGN, Gamespot and Kotaku. And we did it in less than two years. In order to keep growing, we need to think critically about our work and continue to challenge ourselves, even when it's hard.

Thanks to all of you, both caustic and kind, who've given us your feedback over these two years. We hope to keep learning from you, entertaining you and informing you for a long time to come.



-Chris Grant, editor-in-chief

 

[80Maxwell08]

Wasn't Russ Pitts the escapist guy who tried demanding money from the Extra Credits charity to help fix their artist's leg then was revealed to not have paid 8-10 people?

 

[Angthoron]

Is YouTube killing the traditional games press?

Good article at Gamasutra.

Article name is funny though, something comparable to "Is pornography killing traditional sex?"

 

[DragoFireheart]

Gaming press will never go away.

Bad gaming press will easily die out though.