Hot Coldman
Banned
Really? This is what is classed as a "leading" gaming press website?
They're only considered "leading" because:
a) they trumpeted themselves to be something big,
b) everyone swallowed that bollocks,
and c) money
Really? This is what is classed as a "leading" gaming press website?
Too bad it's so transparent.Twitter is perfect for people of Gies' temperament. Instead of having to create their own strawmen, they have an endless supply of people who will volunteer for the position who they can then highlight to their followers - "See, this is the kind of person who doesn't agree with my position!"
This makes NeoGAF sound like some goofed up version of Reboot where you have giant Denis Dyack faces instead of the purple game cubes.We're approaching a Dyack event, I think.
I, for one, am shocked that a former Kotaku EiC is involved in shady dealings.
I get what you're going for but Crecente's Kotaku was rarely "shady", more just incompetent/clueless
I usually just hide in the shadows--sniffing glue and thinking of new ways to take on Reginald Heuwurth, CPA--but this post, and its ilk, has pushed me to comment.
With my copious amount of free time, Im usually wont to read every post of a thread, followed by pressing half-cooked pancakes to my bare chest the goopy, puss-like pancake batter burning straight to my heart. It is literally the only way I can feel alive any more
*sigh*
The universe.
Where was I?
Having read every post and considering every point and counterpoint, I think I have some advice for those of you in here who want to improve what is going on at Polyglotnal Pimpernalgynal Po-po-po-poooo the interactive entertainment criticism teepee. Instead of getting too deep into this forum/twitter echo chamber, why not write to some people who will listen to interested, involved readers that are polite and articulate in their complaints? No, noIm not talking about writing to Waylon Jennings. Hes dead.
Writing to the executives at Vox Media (or any other company that has a lack of the professionalisms) and pointing out what is going on with some of their employees, in a very public place on the internet, will get some attention. Claiming that your views dont represent the company while using the company's identity to represent yourself is not some wicked force field. Force fields are wicked on their own.
Anyway, the reason you do this--instead of starting at the EIC--is that the EIC at many of these publications is akin to a clueless manager at a PayLess ShoeSource. His employees are yelling F-off, you dimpsy nerdburgers! at customers, and he just tells them to quiet down because he cant concentrate on sexting his girlfriend in Quebec. Shoes are called chaussures in French Canada, you know.
If you write something like Dear Mr./Mrs./Ms./Hyperion, I would like to bring to your attention some unprofessional behavior by your employees. I only have a month to live! Send rice. Godspeed! these suits will likely take note, and at mosttake ACTION. Not Schwarzenegger Get to da choppa! high action, but some action that will hopefully brush these guys back from the edge and plop them into whichever reality cashes their paychecks. Dont demand anyone be fired. Dont urge everyone to Wang Chung tonight. Just point out that this unprofessional behavior might be hurting their brand. Excluding governments, this method will often get someones attention.
Thats it really. I know my reply is long, but I have been sliding around in the dark corners for soooo long. And the pancakes, man... they dont understand my needs.
Thanks for the entertaining threads!
Hey, Don Johnson! Im looking for a heartbeat, too, buddy!
You know, there was a period of time as a writer where I posted a series of inane, naive crap that only embarrassed me and everyone around me. What did I do in response?
I went on hiatus.
Far be it from me to judge my peers, nor ask them to perform an act of redemption which was, in hindsight, overt, but this is getting ridiculous. Someone needs to do something. I don't know who or what, but someone and something.
These two tweets, combined, are really quite sad. John was fully prepared to take Brian's word for it, thank him for the RPS credit on the Polygon article and put the issue to bed (even defending Polygon with multiple "they didn't plagiarise" tweets), but alas, Brian has the ethics of a tabloid reporter.
Haha, wait, they ended up not crediting them after all? What the fuck? Are they trying to perform collective suicide?
When keeping it real goes wrong.
Septimus said:Haha, wait, they ended up not crediting them after all? What the fuck? Are they trying to perform collective suicide?
I usually just hide in the shadows--sniffing glue and thinking of new ways to take on Reginald Heuwurth, CPA--but this post, and its ilk, has pushed me to comment.
With my copious amount of free time, Im usually wont to read every post of a thread, followed by pressing half-cooked pancakes to my bare chest the goopy, puss-like pancake batter burning straight to my heart. It is literally the only way I can feel alive any more
*sigh*
The universe.
Where was I?
Having read every post and considering every point and counterpoint, I think I have some advice for those of you in here who want to improve what is going on at Polyglotnal Pimpernalgynal Po-po-po-poooo the interactive entertainment criticism teepee. Instead of getting too deep into this forum/twitter echo chamber, why not write to some people who will listen to interested, involved readers that are polite and articulate in their complaints? No, noIm not talking about writing to Waylon Jennings. Hes dead.
Writing to the executives at Vox Media (or any other company that has a lack of the professionalisms) and pointing out what is going on with some of their employees, in a very public place on the internet, will get some attention. Claiming that your views dont represent the company while using the company's identity to represent yourself is not some wicked force field. Force fields are wicked on their own.
Anyway, the reason you do this--instead of starting at the EIC--is that the EIC at many of these publications is akin to a clueless manager at a PayLess ShoeSource. His employees are yelling F-off, you dimpsy nerdburgers! at customers, and he just tells them to quiet down because he cant concentrate on sexting his girlfriend in Quebec. Shoes are called chaussures in French Canada, you know.
If you write something like Dear Mr./Mrs./Ms./Hyperion, I would like to bring to your attention some unprofessional behavior by your employees. I only have a month to live! Send rice. Godspeed! these suits will likely take note, and at mosttake ACTION. Not Schwarzenegger Get to da choppa! high action, but some action that will hopefully brush these guys back from the edge and plop them into whichever reality cashes their paychecks. Dont demand anyone be fired. Dont urge everyone to Wang Chung tonight. Just point out that this unprofessional behavior might be hurting their brand. Excluding governments, this method will often get someones attention.
Thats it really. I know my reply is long, but I have been sliding around in the dark corners for soooo long. And the pancakes, man... they dont understand my needs.
Thanks for the entertaining threads!
Hey, Don Johnson! Im looking for a heartbeat, too, buddy!
This should be posted at the top of the OPA summary of the Walker / Crecente stuff for those who hate or cannot read Twitter.
9th March
- Arthur Gies of Polygon took to Twitter and offered up this nugget: "if you don't work at maxis and insist simcity could be updated to be offline, you literally don't know what you're talking about."
- Polygon posted an interview with Lucy Bradshaw who said "With the way that the game works, we offload a significant amount of the calculations to our servers so that the computations are off the local PCs and are moved into the cloud. It wouldn't be possible to make the game offline without a significant amount of engineering work by our team."
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 dont 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, theyre doing cloud storage of save games, interfacing with Origin, and all of that. But for the game itself? No, theyre not doing anything." Eurogamer, GameSpot, Kotaku and others ran with the story.
13th March
- Gies was made aware of Walkers source which he attempted to discredit.
14th March
- Both RPS and Polygon ran the same story citing the same Reddit source named Azzer who ran the game offline indefinitely.
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 Azzers 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 didnt 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."
tl;dr: RPS posted everything first, Polygon rubbished it, Crecente saw the story and posted the same story with the same interview with the same source 3 days later, lied about the original source of the story and never seeing the RPS articles, was found out, kept lying, was found out again, changed his story, was found out again and changed his story again.
This should be posted at the top of the OP
I am a 30 something, lifelong gamer. I read up on gaming news every single day, multiple times a day.
All this thread has made me do is want to check up on Polygon's website. I'd never been there before. I may have seen a reference to it in passing but hardly cared.
And now I am curious.
As they say, bad publicity is still good publicity.
Not defending them, I just find that funny.
I am a 30 something, lifelong gamer. I read up on gaming news every single day, multiple times a day.
All this thread has made me do is want to check up on Polygon's website. I'd never been there before. I may have seen a reference to it in passing but hardly cared.
And now I am curious.
As they say, bad publicity is still good publicity.
Not defending them, I just find that funny.
Good to see that Polygon maintains the exact same journalistic standards as old Kotaku: have no integrity, lie/deny when called out, delete all dissenting opinion from site. I always figured that was Crescente. Glad to see I wasn't wrong.
The guy is an embarrassment.
Where did DeadlyCyclone go? Must have gotten his memory back.
Huh? People need to read my posts if they think I'm 100% backing anyone. I just like their feature stories. The Sim City review thing is a mess and this new Crecente thing is interesting to say the least.
Twitter is working against Polygon. They need a PR department. Or a filter.
I skipped a few and got bored of searching as of your posts from three days ago or so.
Also 30 something, lifelong gamer, reading gaming news every day, multiple times a day.
Occasionally popped by Polygon to read a review or if someone linked to something interesting. Won't bother any more.
We cancel each other out!
As long as you only scan it.
Wow, someone got bored. As you can see by my posts I enjoy some of their content but was questioning whether sites should knock of review points for issues that come to light after they review. Is that wrong to question? Maybe the way I posted it seemed in Polygon's defense, but I'm really up in the air on the issue. Should they have waited to review the game? Should any game with a form of multiplayer have the review delayed until after the game launches? That was my question.
I think he's being sarcastic...
Also 30 something, lifelong gamer, reading gaming news every day, multiple times a day.
Occasionally popped by Polygon to read a review or if someone linked to something interesting. Won't bother any more.
We cancel each other out!
I'll still read the features, since polygon mostly pays well-regarded freelancers or features staff who are separate from the "personalities" in the news/reviews/previews section to write them. I like that they go in-depth with stuff that doesn't get a lot of coverage. The rest of the site I ignored in the past, and will continue to ignore in the future.
You mean that this guy
And his entire outfit are slimy scumbags who will lie to make a dollar?
You don't fucking say.
Stop reading Polygon.
No, you were caught in undermining how much you're defending them. Redefining the only part you haven't been caught in being wrong about yet as the important aspect of your argument - leave that to Gies. That's what he does.
I never really took a "side." I said I enjoy Polygon and mentioned their features a few times. Never did I say Polygon was 100% right during the Sim City thing, nor have I even really commented on this new Crecente thing. If you look at those posts he highlighted in a few I was asking a serious question of whether reviews should be held until after launch for games with online components, but I think people took that as me backing Polygon because of my earlier "I enjoy Polygon" statement. I was actually curious on the review issue. Oh well.Devils advocate means you don't actually support the position you're taking.
Thanks for the summary, it's very well explained and has all the relevant links. Kudos to you!A summary of the Walker / Crecente stuff for those who hate or cannot read Twitter.
9th March
- Arthur Gies of Polygon took to Twitter and offered up this nugget: "if you don't work at maxis and insist simcity could be updated to be offline, you literally don't know what you're talking about."
- Polygon posted an interview with Lucy Bradshaw who said "With the way that the game works, we offload a significant amount of the calculations to our servers so that the computations are off the local PCs and are moved into the cloud. It wouldn't be possible to make the game offline without a significant amount of engineering work by our team."
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 dont 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, theyre doing cloud storage of save games, interfacing with Origin, and all of that. But for the game itself? No, theyre not doing anything." Eurogamer, GameSpot, Kotaku and others ran with the story.
13th March
- Gies was made aware of Walkers source which he attempted to discredit.
14th March
- Both RPS and Polygon ran the same story citing the same Reddit source named Azzer who ran the game offline indefinitely.
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 Azzers 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 didnt 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."
tl;dr: RPS posted everything first, Polygon rubbished it, Crecente saw the story and posted the same story with the same interview with the same source 3 days later, lied about the original source of the story and never seeing the RPS articles, was found out, kept lying, was found out again, changed his story, was found out again and changed his story again.
Apparently Crecente used to write about crime, etc. for newspapers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Crecente
Just came in to say this is a fantastic post. 10/10. I hope you are getting paid to write for a living.