I think a certain number of people are just sick and tired of seeing the 1UP circle jerks on GAF heighten year after year. The folks at 1UP and EGM are your standard "games journalists" who write opinionated reviews, previews, and news articles that can be found anywhere else on the internet or via friends. They are nothing special; the only reason why people seem to think they are is because they have no one else to fill that spot in their lives.
Let's do a round-up of the sickening moments of GAF <3's 1UP history:
- An alarmingly large volume of people proclaiming that "weekends are here!" when a certain 1UP podcast was released weekly. To a normal person, the arrival of a weekend doesn't consist of spending almost 2 hours listening to a group of people chatter on about video games. There comes a point where the boundary of reality and weirdness has been crossed and the incessant glorified reception to these podcasts on GAF was definitely crossed.
- Certain reviews released by 1UP were heralded as gospel, opinions were proclaimed as the second coming of a supreme being, personalities were clashed together over who's opinion was better than who's.
- The, almost bordering on stalker-status, tag of "Mangod" onto Shane Bettenhausen. I don't know the guy, never heard him talk or read anything he wrote. But the animated gifs, jpgs, and "MANGOD STATUS CONFIRMED!" posts really went over the top. Add up a tally of posts from this single thread about the ongoing status and whereabouts of Mr. Bettenhausen and I'm sure they'd number in the very high hundreds. C'mon guys, he is just a regular person who has a hobby of gaming and seems to have relatively strong opinions - now you're resembling the women who buy those celebrity magazines week in, week out.
- A 100+ page on the demise of EGM and a major culling of the herd at 1UP. Another gaming magazine folds under, a website is internally redesigned from the ground up by the new owners... and yet we have this thread sitting its fat arse periodically on page 1 or page 2 of GAF ever since it happened. You'd think the world had ended and the audience of posters in this thread were stranded on the Moon as they watched their homeworld blow up.
Whether you support or hiss at the notion of donations is another kettle of fish because I've seen things like this happen on a yearly basis in the translation and hacking scene within older games and they usually end up at the depths of the ocean lost and never found. It might be different this time because there are personalities here that people have obviously latched onto but who can tell for certain. The truth remains however that the first thing these guys should have done was worry about finding a new job, not bother themselves setting up websites and procuring devices to continue on with something that was in their past occupation - the retort to this is that the fans demanded it but ultimately isn't your livelihood a tad more important than fan reception?
Maybe Chris Kohler was right all along in his
Mr. Creepy Fascination With Ziff-Davis skit. It's time to get a grip on reality boys.