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Putting the Ly into Polygon, Crecente: "Oh, that I saw"

Pie and Beans

Look for me on the local news, I'll be the guy arrested for trying to burn down a Nintendo exec's house.
Its important to note that Crecente didn't plagiarise since he apparently contacted the same source who has just repeated the same info John Walker sourced from him days beforehand. The "Lie" is Crecente trying to feign knowledge of Walker and his piece. Bullet point version ahoy:
A summary of the Walker / Crecente stuff for those who hate or cannot read Twitter.

9th March

12th March
  • Kotaku discovered the ability to play SimCity offline for 19 minutes.
  • John Walker of RockPaperShotgun originally broke the story citing a Maxis insider who said the EA servers don’t really do anything: "The servers are not handling any of the computation done to simulate the city you are playing. They are still acting as servers, doing some amount of computation to route messages of various types between both players and cities. As well, they’re doing cloud storage of save games, interfacing with Origin, and all of that. But for the game itself? No, they’re not doing anything." Eurogamer, GameSpot, Kotaku and others ran with the story.

13th March

14th March

16th March
  • Walker posted an interview with Azzer who confirmed the claims of the Maxis insider: "The SimCity servers are not doing any calculations that could not be done on your PC, even for an entire region single player offline mode, let alone just the city you are in...All the server sends to your client, is some very basic data about each city...they are trying to handle all of the saving server side ("the cloud") which is bogging them down constantly."

17th March
  • Brian Crecente of Polygon posted a link to the RPS interview and said he was in the process of reading the interview and Azzer’s YouTube notes. He then sent both EA and Azzer questions based on the RPS findings.

19th March
  • Crecente posted an interview with Azzer who confirmed the claims of the Maxis insider: "It's not possible that EA servers are 'offloading' calculations (simulations) for your city, which it works out, and then sends to your client… Not at all. Your client simulates your city, and your client simulates all of the 'fire trucks from another city' type stuff too. Your client does that all. EA servers do not do any processing that your client is incapable of because our 'computers aren't powerful enough." The articles were kinda similar.
  • In a number of deleted comments Crecente said the original source of the story was the Lucy Bradshaw interview from a week and a half ago despite posting no original article in the meantime. He also said this story was entirely original and took 3 days of fact-finding to prepare.
  • Crecente said he had no knowledge of either RPS article and the source of the story was actually the Reddit post, not RPS, but that "I'll have to go check them out" and Walker was "doing good work".
  • When shown the article that originally broke the story – the one from the 12th – he said "oh, that I saw" but maintained Reddit as the source, not the story from the 16th which he didn't see. He said he started working on his story on Sunday, the day after RPS posted it and the day he read it.
  • All comments on the Polygon article either citing RPS as the source of the story or criticising Gies for attempting to discredit the RPS story that Polygon were now running were deleted. Polygon then added a link at the bottom of their story to the one from RPS on the 16th.
  • Folk on Twitter accused Crecente of plagiarism. Walker defended him.
  • After things calmed down Crecente maintained he didn’t lie. When shown his link to the RPS story he said he "only scanned it", but it inspired him to contact Azzer.
  • Walker has since been made aware of the tweets and various posts on GAF and responded to Crecente by saying "Brian, you lied at long and painful length, making me look like a fool. I'm too angry to discuss this tonight."

After this classic:
74p3tZx.jpg

the SimCity shitstorm rolls on but with new questions of game journalism ethics.

Today Brian Crecente publishes a fascinating new news story entitled
"SimCity modder says game doesn't appear to offload significant calculations"
several days after John Walker and RPS broke that news with this totally not new article:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/201...r-tells-us-offline-regional-play-easily-done/

Twitter fight ensures because thats how things are done in this profession (now with added 17th March Whoopsie to start):
fullz3xfj.png

Polygonatitagain.png

polygonatitagainpart2.png


Dust settles, apologies made, Polygon article now links to RPS.

User RobbieH then decides to sift that tweetbag and finds this glorious nugget:
betterrqrwb.png

So... a lie has been made here somewhere along the line.

Meanwhile Arthur Gies continues his campaign against discrediting all future critique of videogames because you should make a SimCity before you say mean things about one:
SQ0QKWX.jpg


Polygon heres my advice:
GKAT975.jpg


[special thanks to RobbieH for wrangling tweets back into an acceptable timeline and also bullet point dis shit]

Edit: more tweets. I have them for you:
xtET5rQ.jpg

The defence rests at "I only scanned it, yer honour!"
 

enzo_gt

tagged by Blackace
I don't understand why everyone was implicating Polygon in this entire debacle in the first place when it pretty much just was eagies not knowing when to stop.
 
These guys are clowns, I agree, but maybe they should get their own thread, a la Doritos. I feel like talking about them a ton is almost lending them credibility.

Not bitching about the validity of the topic, btw.
 
Oh, this thread I saw.

With all this backlash they're getting do you reckon they'll address it somewhere like on I dunno their website polygon.com (please donate now ;_; )?

Bets on whether they'll be gracious and professional or stubborn and boring.
 

Ruprit

Member
I don't understand why everyone was implicating Polygon in this entire debacle in the first place when it pretty much just was eagies not knowing when to stop.

Because with Crecente’s recent tweets and the instances of Polygon’s moderators deleting comments it’s becoming ever clearer that the core is rotten.
 
Oh, this thread I saw.

With all this backlash they're getting do you reckon they'll address it somewhere like on I dunno their website polygon.com (please donate now ;_; )?

Bets on whether they'll be gracious and professional or stubborn and boring.

Please, their parent company has something like $140 million in VC.

That pays for a LOT of smugness.
 

King_Moc

Banned
Is that what this Crecente guy actually looks like? He looks like a pretentious dick. He should be thrown to the wolves just for that.

Also, Gies' tweet. Is "As a games writer...", a qualifying statement that also means "I speak in fluent shit?"

I hate pricks that tow that line. That you can't be a critic unless you've also done the thing yourself.

"Hey man, i got this new album".

"Any good?"

"I've no idea. I've never recorded one myself, so am unable to give you any sort of opinion on it. Sorry!".

What a dick.
 
Oh, this thread I saw.

With all this backlash they're getting do you reckon they'll address it somewhere like on I dunno their website polygon.com (please donate now ;_; )?

Bets on whether they'll be gracious and professional or stubborn and boring.

I think this is a sign of what direction they're going to take on this:

ArthurandMatt.jpg
 

Ath

Member
I can't think of any newly launched gaming website that has done so much to destroy its own credibility in such a short space time. It seems like every month or two there's something new. At this point it doesn't matter to me how good some of the rest of their features are, I just cannot trust Polygon.
 

border

Member
What was Arthur Gies' reaction to Polygon posting an article that contradicts his whole stupid SimCity stance?

I'm going to guess that it wasn't "you literally do not know what you are talking about."
 
Polygon has to be the worst site right now.
Edit: Also, I hate Crecente because he cursed me out in an email. I was a little rude too, but still fuck that guy.
 

Derrick01

Banned
Whoa, lets not get carried away now. Then again, whatever method of repression your using is pretty effective so it's probably for the better.

Kotaku has been slowly getting better for a while now. Polygon has been this bad since they started just about.
 

Cartman86

Banned
So besides Gies tweeting that people who aren't working at Maxis don't know what they are talking about what else has he done that gets people so pissed at him? I've noticed it in the past.
 

Pie and Beans

Look for me on the local news, I'll be the guy arrested for trying to burn down a Nintendo exec's house.
What was Arthur Gies' reaction to Polygon posting an article that contradicts his whole stupid SimCity stance?

I'm going to guess that it wasn't "you literally do not know what you are talking about."

If you even dare trawl his twitter account you'll find the classic where he triples down on his position by stating that the "multiplayer wouldnt be available offline, so its not fair to say SimCity is playable offline". I am not actually joking (although a little paraphrasing because honestly all I see is tweet captures when my eyes close)
 
Kotaku has been slowly getting better for a while now. Polygon has been this bad since they started just about.

That's been the weirdest thing. I've started to actually look at Kotaku lately and they've had some really good content and Polygon who I thought would destroy everything has been on a downward slide since they actually started.
 

JDSN

Banned
Does Crecente practices magic? He sure looks like he does.

I love how he pretends that he hasnt read Walker´s interview....while re-tweeting it 3 days ago. Guy cant even lie good, now its time to follow the " Polygon Protoc of Dickery"

1. Commit act of idiocy.
2. Get called out about it.
3. Point out minority being offensive and play victim.
4.Rinse and repeat.
 

unbias

Member
So besides Gies tweeting that people who aren't working at Maxis don't know what they are talking about what else has he done that gets people so pissed at him? I've noticed it in the past.

Ya, I'm curious to, since I've only ever paid attention to him or poly, their start up video sounded incredibly pretentious and was never a fan of any of the staff, so I ignored them. I only started caring when they started acting like any inside source they didnt find wasnt worth noting.
 
So besides Gies tweeting that people who aren't working at Maxis don't know what they are talking about what else has he done that gets people so pissed at him? I've noticed it in the past.

It all seems to stem from this story, which I initially heard about when people were laughing at the Press Reset trailer.
 
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