Kobun Heat
Member
I am offended at this thread's quite frankly unethical conflation of puff pastry and cream puffs
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The Games Journalism Thread: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
- Thread starter Nirolak
- Start date
The Polygon Threshold
FaintDeftone
Junior Member
I can't believe I gave that stupid Polygon Rock Band article a click.
AcademicSaucer
Member
Do polygon still make things like this
http://www.polygon.com/features/2014/2/10/5373586/mr-byte-indie-king-of-peru
?
Maybe you should write an article about that.
Taken at face value, the editorial stance (I'm assuming one was actually made in this instance, though I obviously cannot confirm) appears to be: acknowledgment of known quantity with slight changes that appear to be for the better; target audience therefore mostly informed as to content of this next iteration in what was an incredibly popular franchise/genre; willingness to deviate from preview expectations as there is no other real "value" here.
I haven't regularly read preview coverage in years, but I hope it's greatly improved from ye olde print days. Otherwise, it'd be odd to criticize this one piece in a sea of mediocrity...uniform, check-the-boxy, and palate-pleasing though it be.
D
Deleted member 126221
Unconfirmed Member
Wow thanks, that looks super interesting. I'll read it tonight.
Delusibeta
Banned
Imbarkus
As Sartre noted in his contemplation on Hell in No Exit, the true horror is other members.
I miss Russ Pitts.
charlequin
Banned
Yeah, I don't think you'd see this reaction to a preview where someone wove in a story about their own history with rock music or failing at being in a band or something. It's really very specifically the fact that his "something different" hook was "I don't care about this because I'm too cool to care" that's so offputting.
harsh but fair
I would still be upset reading it, I rather he described what he found troubling with the games it self instead of what he's drinking and where his granny live
BUNTING1243
Banned
I'm not sure if this is completely within the confines of this thread but I think this is insanely weird:
Polygon seems to be doing all of their E3 videos over Skype. Which is...weird. The animated bumpers seem to be exactly the same as the ones last year as well.
For how massive their E3 coverage was last year in comparison, the fact they don't even seem to have a camera guy at this E3 is pretty disappointing and somewhat concerning? Are they not doing well?
Polygon seems to be doing all of their E3 videos over Skype. Which is...weird. The animated bumpers seem to be exactly the same as the ones last year as well.
For how massive their E3 coverage was last year in comparison, the fact they don't even seem to have a camera guy at this E3 is pretty disappointing and somewhat concerning? Are they not doing well?
Eh, I am actually in favour of Media people just embracing the internet and absorb all their information through the lenses of the camera, as long as they have some people at E3 doing impressions and interviews. Giantbomb actually touched on that subject very deeply and, I remember Alex saying that, sometimes you actually learn more about certain games from far, rather than being there.
I am more offended of their coverage actually. Their impressions seems very PR like without any injections of opinions and impressions, the interview asked just boring questions that stemmed from a certain checklists and there is no enthusiasm nor humour.
BUNTING1243
Banned
Yeah, definitely. I think Giant Bomb streaming themselves watching the press conferences makes a ton of sense over actually going to them. It just seems weird that all their video stuff for E3 seems to be based out of New York, instead of E3 proper. Polygon seems to be in a weird place!
Yeah, there has been quite a few lay-offs there - even recently - so things obviously ain't going great. It's not unusual for an outlet to keep a few editors back to do write ups/post content, but it looks like they've only sent a skeleton crew this year.
It's why the big, splashy, over-funded launch is never a good idea (this doesn't just apply to Polygon) - it sets an expectation which you either keep up or look like a failure. Slow, sustainable growth is a much better way to go.
It's why the big, splashy, over-funded launch is never a good idea (this doesn't just apply to Polygon) - it sets an expectation which you either keep up or look like a failure. Slow, sustainable growth is a much better way to go.
100 % agree. Polygon have cornered themselves in a tight corner from their volition, because they just announced in a rather.... overblown fashion. They do have some characters in their, whom if they just build a community around them, could have gotten places and made them look more viable outlet. Instead they had to start by guns blazing, doing some stupid editorials just to get a headline or two and just formed a negative aura around them, which was the death of them.
I am really interested where they go from here bearing in mind that they had a few lay offs, but that video is not helping. God is it a terrible coverage on Call of Duty game which is by itself is a dry... subject to cover.
Yeah, it does seem cheap of them! I wonder who actually go for them for E3 coverage when you have bigger outlets doing bigger things.
Futurematic
Member
Ouch. Yeah if they don't have a budget for E3--which are the biggest traffic days IIRC for gaming websites--they are dead/dying.
Which is, well, I dunno. Great features, but they stopped doing most (the ones they still do are good) of those and fired the guy in charge. They keep a few McElroy brothers employed, I suppose: Monster Factory is fun and so was much of the Besties before they tossed that too (neither as good as MBMBAM, so no big deal). It's nice having many of the worst game journalists confined to one site, I suppose, but that's not much of a justification for Polygon continuing to exist.
Of course in this day and age I'll back most things that gives people jobs better than mcjobs, so no glee when Polygon gets moved into The Verge or what not, but Polygon was always about bad hires and wasted potential (sigh). Actually that might be happening, look at The Verge's E3 2015 hub page:
- When I played Star Wars: Battlefront, the Empire won by Bryan Bishop
- The past, present, and future of Xbox according to its head of publishing by Chris Plante
Polygon, at this point, needs a massive overhaul. (All of Vox, really, but that's because their business model is failing.)
Delusibeta
Banned
Considering all of those rumours of Comcast planning on buying out Vox, I suspect their business model is "patch up the cracks until the cheque clears". Polygon's E3 coverage is a pretty damn big crack, though.
So I've been saying a lot of twitter support for Tales of Tales, a company I never heard of. First time I heard of them was the neogaf thread.
I then saw some tweets of support for the devs by people who work for video games sites, and game devs and then saw Jim Sterling posting this on twitter.
Sorry for quoting so much of his message on twitlonger, but I felt I needed to post all of the quotes in order to help get Jim Sterling's point across.
http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1smpivi
My own personal opinion is that Tale of Tales made the game they want and the market didn't respond to it. That there are people trying to push a narrative of journalistic gate keeping is odd and I wonder if its just people in the games media responding to the situation or if they truly feel that a company deserves a certain amount of good press.
I then saw some tweets of support for the devs by people who work for video games sites, and game devs and then saw Jim Sterling posting this on twitter.
Sorry for quoting so much of his message on twitlonger, but I felt I needed to post all of the quotes in order to help get Jim Sterling's point across.
http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1smpivi
My own personal opinion is that Tale of Tales made the game they want and the market didn't respond to it. That there are people trying to push a narrative of journalistic gate keeping is odd and I wonder if its just people in the games media responding to the situation or if they truly feel that a company deserves a certain amount of good press.
RockTurtle
Member
Jim is a smart guy.
Gameboy415
Member
I just stumbled on a ridiculous example of bad games journalism that spans dozens of sites:
On/around May 25th, dozens up sites started putting up articles stating that Lords of the Fallen: GOTY Edition would be released for PS4, XB1, & PC on June 26th.
I prefer to buy 'complete' versions of games whenever possible so I decided I would try to sell my unopened copy of the PS4 Limited Edition and eventually replace it with the GOTY Edition.
It occurred to me that I hadn't heard anything about it since the initial articles went up and, considering the GOTY Edition is supposedly releasing tomorrow, I did a bit of research:
-it isn't listed on any US shopping sites
-it isn't listed on Steam
-there is no mention of a GOTY Edition on the official site (http://lordsofthefallen.com/) nor its associated Twitter/Facebook accounts whatsoever
Confused, I did a quick Google search for 'Lords of the Fallen Game of the Year Edition' and started cross-checking the facts.
Most sites that reported on the GOTY Edition had simply posted some carbon-copy story with a link to another gaming site as their source (most linking back to an article on Gamer Headlines) and a quip about how the game doesn't deserve the 'GOTY' moniker.
I kept searching and came across this article on LazyGamer.net, which cited German gaming site PlayFront.de as its source.
I dug a bit deeper and discovered there actually is a GOTY version being released....only in Germany!
[Amazon Germany Link]
It's absolutely ridiculous that dozens of game sites (including IGN, Destructoid, & PC Gamer) reported that the GOTY Edition would be released in the US with no actual proof. Hooray for fact-checking!
On/around May 25th, dozens up sites started putting up articles stating that Lords of the Fallen: GOTY Edition would be released for PS4, XB1, & PC on June 26th.
I prefer to buy 'complete' versions of games whenever possible so I decided I would try to sell my unopened copy of the PS4 Limited Edition and eventually replace it with the GOTY Edition.
It occurred to me that I hadn't heard anything about it since the initial articles went up and, considering the GOTY Edition is supposedly releasing tomorrow, I did a bit of research:
-it isn't listed on any US shopping sites
-it isn't listed on Steam
-there is no mention of a GOTY Edition on the official site (http://lordsofthefallen.com/) nor its associated Twitter/Facebook accounts whatsoever
Confused, I did a quick Google search for 'Lords of the Fallen Game of the Year Edition' and started cross-checking the facts.
Most sites that reported on the GOTY Edition had simply posted some carbon-copy story with a link to another gaming site as their source (most linking back to an article on Gamer Headlines) and a quip about how the game doesn't deserve the 'GOTY' moniker.
I kept searching and came across this article on LazyGamer.net, which cited German gaming site PlayFront.de as its source.
I dug a bit deeper and discovered there actually is a GOTY version being released....only in Germany!
[Amazon Germany Link]
It's absolutely ridiculous that dozens of game sites (including IGN, Destructoid, & PC Gamer) reported that the GOTY Edition would be released in the US with no actual proof. Hooray for fact-checking!
Dragon Puncher
Member
That's some good detective work, sites cross reporting shit without cheaking original sources seem to be the norm these days. In a weird way I gotta respect the fact that Lords of the Fallen Goty edition only comes out in the country were it won any goty awards.
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
lol indeed, was wondering who the hell gave this game a GotY...
Kinda bumping this from the grave; but saw something and was curious as to Jason's take on it (since from my understanding, Totilo comes from a journalism angle)
https://twitter.com/aegies/status/174621746039754752
Basically, it's Arthur Gies saying that because he is enthusiast press, his coverage can be defined by personal moralistic standards.
Thoughts?
EDIT: Found tweet itself rather than archive link - replaced link.
https://twitter.com/aegies/status/174621746039754752
Basically, it's Arthur Gies saying that because he is enthusiast press, his coverage can be defined by personal moralistic standards.
Thoughts?
EDIT: Found tweet itself rather than archive link - replaced link.
Fantastapotamus
Wrong about commas, wrong about everything
My thought is: Why link some weird archive version of Twitter?
was having trouble trying to find the tweet on twitter itself initially
Google-fu comes through here though...
https://twitter.com/aegies/status/174621746039754752
Futurematic
Member
If Gies says the sky is blue, I'd go outside and double check. Frankly he's such a bad faith actor that discussing anything he raises is morally troubling to me.
(Edit, sigh: he should add the disclaimer: as long as my employer is ok with it. Being a member of the enthusiast press doesn't gives him that freedom, that's just Polygon. If he continues to convince sites to hire him, he'll quickly learn the difference or he'll stick to people that let him say whatever he wants to say.)
(Edit, sigh: he should add the disclaimer: as long as my employer is ok with it. Being a member of the enthusiast press doesn't gives him that freedom, that's just Polygon. If he continues to convince sites to hire him, he'll quickly learn the difference or he'll stick to people that let him say whatever he wants to say.)
Maiden Voyage
Gold™ Member
Enthusiast press has more grey areas than traditional journalism for sure. I don't believe Gies was saying that any ambiguity is up to the author's personal morals in every situation. It's hard to tell with something like twitter because ideas are hard to encapsulate in 140 characters or less.
What are your feelings on the matter?
I'm not one to defend Gies or Polygon, but it's really hard to say anything one way or another about that quote without any context. What luxury is he referring to in the tweet, and what do you mean by "personal moralistic standards"?
Polygon (and by extension Gies) is enthusiast press, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be held to proper reporting standards. So long as they are in a position of notability, and have the potential to mislead people with inaccurate reporting, the should be expected to do due diligence in fact checking and impartiality standards, and should absolutely be called on it when they fail.
But that doesn't mean they need to act like emotionless robots factually reporting on news with no personal input. Especially in an industry where actual news is so tightly guarded, commentary and individualist perspectives are all that really set a press release apart from an article published about a piece of news (which is why I'm constantly dismayed that a number of games writers will sometimes simply run a press release through a thesaurus and treat that as content, but I digress). At the end of the day, if a writer's personal views are of interest to their audience, I don't see why they should hold back from sharing them.
There is certainly a balance to be struck between personal perspective and accurate reporting, so as not to mislead an audience or become the story. But I don't see why it needs to be treated as black and white.
Again, I don't think Gies or Polygon are some bastion of integrety. But without understanding what your particular issue is with that tweet, it's hard to understand why it's a big deal.
Also, that tweet is 3 years old. If we're digging up old tweets to show that Gies is bad at his job, there is a lot better material, and more recently as well.
I have zero context for this and don't really know what it's referring to, so I don't have much of a take here. (I'm also not super interested in giving commentary on people's tweets!)
Blargh - I am bad at twitter linking - basically someone asked whether he gets to apply more (personal) morality to his work because it's enthusiast press rather than straight newspaper (non-opinion) press; and he responded in the affirmative. Which makes sense to a degree - if you're covering something because you like it; you probably won't cover it if you don't like it.
It's more or less a moot point - but just for the sake of completion - I think (I hope?) I got the conversation.
Reading through it - it sounds probably like a FGC related series of tweets -
Eh, I tend to get my news from GAF for the most part - if I don't like an author or writer at a site, either I'll avoid the site entirely or just avoid their articles. Unless Gies was the author of that infamous Mario Kart pie - I am fairly apathetic to it. Only writer I know of at Polygon itself is Ben Kuchera, who I met several times when he was doing the Penny Arcade Report. Cool dude; fun guy to talk to.
The interesting thing to me is the shift towards more personality based..journalism? news? opinion? that the entire field has gone through - be it Bill Simmons w/ Grantland (though not a perfect analogy) or ala Giantbomb / Glenn Beck / insert media personality here. I never saw it primarily as a "enthusiast press" only thing over the last few years - which is why the tweet stuck out to me (the personality / entertainment-ish push pays the bills ultimately). It feels like people sort of want news in one of two ways currently - either perfectly neutral (which is pretty hard to do) or someone who agrees with them reaffirming their viewpoints and view of a given event. Don't think that falls under just enthusiast press. Though I guess he could be meaning that he doesn't have to cover a potentially newsworthy event if he doesn't want to.
Hence I was curious as to whether a place like Kotaku (which would fall under this concept of "enthusiast press" being in gaming, but have a strong journalistic background) would think about it. If a particularly odious group (to the author at least) accomplished some neutral or beneficial major thing or were involved in some major event in a non-bad fashion; what are the journalistic rules / principles / thoughts (if any) on that? As a layman I would think "I don't care for said group, so someone else can talk about that event". Just wondering if it is different for journalists, and by extension, enthusiast press.
Imbarkus
As Sartre noted in his contemplation on Hell in No Exit, the true horror is other members.
I generally like most of the work by Patrick Klepek, but I think there is a decent point to be made that he could have mentioned some of his prior relationship with management at Iron Galaxy, in a footnote or something at the end of his WB Whistleblower article about their knowledge of the broken state of the PC version.
I'm in favor of holding publishers accountable, they are generally the ones making the decisions to ship games broken and then are mysteriously absent to address the PR backlash the developers bear. It was a fair article to all concerned, but for a reader and viewer who has witnessed all the chumminess, it reduces the article's credibility a bit.
Just, like, my opinion, man.
EDIT: Hey since Polygon and Mr. Kuchera have to take such a pasting all the time I thought I'd point out "The Good" in this beautiful article he did. My kids are almost grown but he very much captures something using gaming imagery and allegory that has a lot of truth to it. http://www.polygon.com/2015/7/6/8900975/telltale-games-parenting
I'm in favor of holding publishers accountable, they are generally the ones making the decisions to ship games broken and then are mysteriously absent to address the PR backlash the developers bear. It was a fair article to all concerned, but for a reader and viewer who has witnessed all the chumminess, it reduces the article's credibility a bit.
Just, like, my opinion, man.
EDIT: Hey since Polygon and Mr. Kuchera have to take such a pasting all the time I thought I'd point out "The Good" in this beautiful article he did. My kids are almost grown but he very much captures something using gaming imagery and allegory that has a lot of truth to it. http://www.polygon.com/2015/7/6/8900975/telltale-games-parenting
More_Badass
Member
Not sure if this is the place to ask, but I don't feel it's worth a separate thread and this seems like perhaps the best place: has anyone here written for Destructoid? Thinking of doing some freelance writing for some larger sites, and thinking of which ones to reach out to...
What's the thought on writing for bigger sites versus personal blogs and smaller sites? On one hand, I like being able to focus on indies, but on the other, I like having a louder voice/larger reach.
What's the thought on writing for bigger sites versus personal blogs and smaller sites? On one hand, I like being able to focus on indies, but on the other, I like having a louder voice/larger reach.
Bigger sites might pay you, smaller ones won't. That's the extent of it, really.
Neuromancer
Member
File under 'Bad':
Rumor CD Projekt RED To Sign A Publishing Deal Or Be Bought By Electronic Arts
http://www.dsogaming.com/news/rumor...lishing-deal-or-be-bought-by-electronic-arts/
Rumor CD Projekt RED To Sign A Publishing Deal Or Be Bought By Electronic Arts
http://www.dsogaming.com/news/rumor...lishing-deal-or-be-bought-by-electronic-arts/
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
It's like they understood they should get "proof" the person was an employee [the proof being something that may or may not be an actual pay slip], but didn't understand that employees don't magically know everything about everything going on... and then totally missed that even in the employee's own words he was just wildly jumping to conclusions by saying "They could only be here for a publishing contract or a buyout and we aren't releasing a game soon so it must be a buyout".
Bolivar687
Banned
In their defense they do say twice to take it with a grain of salt.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
It's bad journalism to publish something you don't believe, and it's bad journalism to believe something crazy. The only responsible report here would have been to say that they heard from a verified* CD Projekt RED employee who claims to have seen EA executives visiting. This is a site who is asking for $2,000 a month on Patreon to help run the site, so it's not like we're talking about fan bloggers here, these are people purporting to be professional.
* I'm also not trusting their verification process.
Fantastapotamus
Wrong about commas, wrong about everything
I'm getting really frustrated with Kotaku again. On the one hand they are really good at tslking about sexism in games....AND THEN they post stupid shit like "Here are a bunch of Nsfw drawings of Quiet as an underaged sexy anime schoolgirl".
Like what the fuck.
Like what the fuck.
Neuromancer
Member
I figured they were at least competent enough to make sure it was a source actually within CDPR, albeit a confused one. But evidently even the proof they used was forged.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...egarding-selling-cd-projekt-red-or-gog-periodCDPR Co-founder Marcin Iwinski said:
Hopefully the writer/site learned something from all this.
CertifiedFP
Member
Gamesradar: "This is it. This is the worst news story about video games ever."
Completely misses the point of the CNN article it's complaining about (CNN: "Video games aren't just for antisocial nerds!") even if the title of it might have been a tad bit not thought out well, complaining about the focus on Xbox in the article's video, even though that video is an interview with one of the Microsoft execs behind the Xbox - And then after that complaint completely ignores how the rest of the article is mainly about the finances of publishers and developers, with two lines at most mentioning consoles.
Whole article comes across as defensive and edgy nonsense that wasn't worth getting offended over with a tinge of fanboyism.
Uh, as for that CNN article though, I'm going to have to agree though that the name of that article was rather unprofessional.
Completely misses the point of the CNN article it's complaining about (CNN: "Video games aren't just for antisocial nerds!") even if the title of it might have been a tad bit not thought out well, complaining about the focus on Xbox in the article's video, even though that video is an interview with one of the Microsoft execs behind the Xbox - And then after that complaint completely ignores how the rest of the article is mainly about the finances of publishers and developers, with two lines at most mentioning consoles.
Whole article comes across as defensive and edgy nonsense that wasn't worth getting offended over with a tinge of fanboyism.
Uh, as for that CNN article though, I'm going to have to agree though that the name of that article was rather unprofessional.
Noticed this today --
There's going to be a properly legit little awards-ey thing for VG journalism.
Here're the nominees:
Please do click the link for a little blurb on each person in the shortlist's work, plus links to notable pieces from each of them.
There's going to be a properly legit little awards-ey thing for VG journalism.
Here're the nominees:
- Jon Bois
- Ian Danskin
- Cara Ellison
- Will Partin
- Rob Zacny
- Carolyn Petit
- Christian Donlan
Please do click the link for a little blurb on each person in the shortlist's work, plus links to notable pieces from each of them.
Delusibeta
Banned
I expect that will eventually turn into as much as a laughing stock as the Games Media Awards are over here.
misses bull
Banned
Really happy to see Ian Danskin on there. He makes fantastic videos
Aw. I find that immediate, no-room-for-a-chance dismissiveness a little dismaying.