I just think it is an incredible cop out to spend weeks (or maybe months) hyping a game, including a hyperbolic preview that makes such over the top statements, and then have the "out" of saying "ya but we gave it an 8.9! A good score but hardly something bought and paid for!"
Fuck off with that bullshit. They'd have a little more ground to argue if it were at least different people writing the preview and review in question, but if I remember right, Ryan McCaffrey wrote both.
Hey, do you like Dark Souls? For the sake of argument, let's pretend you do. Dark Souls II has looked pretty cool, right? If you were previewing, maybe you'd be excited. Maybe you played it and thought it was worth the hype Dark Souls II gets. Eventually, you get to review it. It's still as cool as it was when you previewed it--but there are some problems, so you can't give it a 9+.
You want to, but you give it an 8.9 instead. Then someone comes along and whines about how you praised it and eventually gave it a 9. AAAAAnd you didn't. Sure, mathematically, the numbers are close, but your scale doesn't work exactly like that.
What's wrong with that situation? Literally nothing.
The only way I can see you getting upset at this is if you don't think that someone's subjective opinion of a game is accurate.
Yes, he probably should have quoted the review and not the preview, but the effect would have been the same
THIS. LITERALLY. DOESN'T. MATTER.
That isnt how it works in the world. He is in demand, what he is in demand for is what his obligations should be. What he did didnt hurt the consumers or his fans, at worst what he did is start shit with IGN. The "misrepresentation" was minor at best.
Uh, yes... yes it is. This is literally what my educational background is in. I know what I'm talking about here.
You act like it's okay for him to have a beef with IGN, and it wouldn't be okay if it was for the consumers and fans. Sorry, no. Misrepresenting a publication is bad, period. Just because it's SUPPOSEDLY not somehow consumers or fans (and fans literally do not matter) being harmed doesn't mean it's okay. And you know what? Misrepresenting a publication
is bad. Telling people "hey, don't listen to those people, because they did something they didn't do" hurts consumers. So yeah. His actions are bad.
These are hyperbolic claims, especially for a preview and a review, the latter which "crticizes" the main complaint against the game, no single player, by handwaving away it's multiplayer "substitute" in the full game.
Hyperbole is a statement not intended to be taken literally. "Believe the hype" is a valid, subjective statement. For instance, I'd be happy to say this about Titanfall, because it really is the most remarkable multiplayer game we've had in years. Maybe you don't think it was, but no one's protecting anyone by acting like high scores and excited previews are a bad thing.
It's not as if Titanfall gives people cancer or something. The game is everything it claims to be. Decrying the scores and response it receives boils down to personal opinion, not consumer advocacy.
Who are you talking about? Joe loved Xbox until they fucked up and lied to his face personally, and he still mainly uses their system, but now he's being counter culture? Titanfall is a game that I am still getting emails about in regards to their E3 awards.
Joe's popularity has been grounded in part due to his anti-establishment stance, usually towards sites like IGN.
And once again you are back to talking about yourself which Joe is not worried about. He is directly challenging publishers for the uninformed and those without the power to do it.
Except that his audience isn't the uninformed, it's gamers. The old ladies buying Titanfall for their grandkids aren't watching this show, and Joe acting as if the high scores this game received isn't valid is just plain silly.
You and Dan are hinging on a small technicality to conflate and confuse the larger issue. The fact that Dan pulled youtube stats to try to belittle Joe shows his actual mentality behind the whole attack.
It's not a small technicality, it's literally the groundwork for all basic good journalism. Cite your sources. Joe screwed up his sources. That's a huge problem.
I'm not saying it's a valid defence, just that Joe's tweets make Joe look bad, while Dan's make IGN look bad.
Joe made a mistake, but Dan should have contacted Joe directly (and not publicly) clearly explaining the mistake (about the preview/review clarification, not the score part).
From the sound of things, Dan did in fact contact Joe before.
Dan reached out publicly because Joe did not correct himself in a timely manner. That's not a mistake, that's wilful.
They're both wrong for acting like asses, Joe's just worse for screwing up a basic journalistic tenet of "CITE YOUR SOURCES."
Since numbers are being used their inherent value, and thereby the length one has travel from one value to the next, are being perceived as the basis for difference.
In this case the difference between 8.9 and 9 is being perceived as abysmal by many reading the values. Of course they get to define their scale, but they should be prepared that it is the consumer that assigns the weight to each number.
Yeah, the review system is a bit dumb. But people focusing on the review scores are missing the bigger point, which is what set Dan off, which is misquotes.
