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John Walker's anti-BS SimCity news articles.

B

BolognaSoup

Member
Pie and Beans said:
Posted in the Games Journalism! but since this is where the discussion sprouted from:

My personal fave tweet is the argument that only the most desperate of defence forces resort to when all other avenues are spent:

Why? Because now if Gies ever criticizes any feature of a game in an article, review, or otherwise (Vanquish jank, etc) you can direct him to this tweet and why he isn't making games. Although with all ball-licking this exercise has entailed, I have no doubt he'll be working some community manager job as "part of the industry" within 2 years.
Click to expand...

Holy crap. That is a new low for him.
 
C

CoffeeJanitor

Member
TheSeks said:
If you knew who some of these people were before they made Polygon, you knew not to expect anything radical.

"It is known." And all that. The entire staff is mostly a joke.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I don't understand why people are surprised that the site isn't that different than your average game news source.
 
A

Anton Sugar

Member
Knew Arthur was a dick since those Polygon documentary vids. Glad he's getting exposed.

ib2yDwCf1qEIGY.png
 
D

Derrick01

Banned
TheSeks said:
If you knew who some of these people were before they made Polygon, you knew not to expect anything radical.

"It is known." And all that. The entire staff is mostly a joke.
Click to expand...

Yeah I remember when we had the thread about them coming together I said "it's like they tried to find almost every gaming media person that I cannot stand and group them in one place". So am I surprised at the things they've done since Polygon went up? Not really.
 
U

unbias

Member
Derrick01 said:
Yeah I remember when we had the thread about them coming together I said "it's like they tried to find almost every gaming media person that I cannot stand and group them in one place". So am I surprised at the things they've done since Polygon went up? Not really.
Click to expand...

Those are normally the ones at "a higher mental level", so they are harder to understand...and stuff.
 
F

flyinpiranha

Member
animlboogy said:
One of the wittiest people I ever met worked with me at a game store, so obviously jobs have nothing to do with how interesting or intelligent someone is. The difference here is that Elliot sent in samples that were good enough to get him a job when nobody knew him. The Blockbuster thing is someone getting an in because they knew a guy.

This is as personal as I'll get with this whole Gies thing: I was an art major for a year, and I met a lot of guys with his exact personality type. Humorless, obsessed with image, always right about everything in their own minds. That kind of personality has no place in journalism, but it is pretty good for getting jobs you aren't qualified for. I really don't think this guy has much respect for the medium.
Click to expand...

Spot on. I mean, you have to start somewhere right? But it should be merit and your work that lands you the job, not only "who you know".

I personally have nothing against him (or didn't before). I enjoyed his posts about the next gen as everybody was speculating but his handling of this situation has really shown his true colors. He doesn't respect others who work alongside him (or rather "below" him) and he doesn't seem to respect gamers at all. We're the consumer, he's a journalist, he's supposed to be helping us understand this medium and reporting choices made by the companies selling us products, not berating us when the opinion isn't inline with his own and above all, to have some respect for those opinions when they differ.

Honestly, he seems like a pissed off retail shop employee who calls people "fucking retards" behind their backs because they don't "know" as much as him, not somebody who should be an editor of a website.
 
R

RobbieH

Member
RPS top, Polygon bottom.

"The SimCity servers are not doing any calculations...All the server sends to your client, is some very basic data about each city"

"It's not possible that EA servers are 'offloading' calculations (simulations) for your city, which it works out, and then sends to your client"
Click to expand...

"All the server sends to your client, is some very basic data about each city – how much power they have available, how much spare fire trucks, you know – that sort of stuff. Your client then just goes 'oh there's XXX power spare from city Z.' It’s that simple."

"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."
Click to expand...

"Most of the processing work is probably their attempts at anti-cheat stuff, checking a city doesn’t do… something… at an unrealistic speed."

"But I can't tell you what the server does by itself (eg. cheat checking, gathering global statistics on all cities, things like that), I can only take some decent educated guesses there. For instance, Cronin says he couldn't tell us if the servers are looking for cheaters by calculating if a city is growing abnormally large in a short period of time."
Click to expand...

"I’ve analyzed all of the data calls to and from EA servers – all of the APIs, every request for data, and all of the data that comes back"

"He said he wrote a short script that logs every request for data SimCity makes to the EA servers and the data it receives back and every bit of data it sends to those servers."
Click to expand...

"You build a town that has lots of power and water (water is a consumable just like coal) and spare fire trucks. This is all processed by my client, not by the server."

"According to his information, Cronin believes that a person's computer is doing all of the simulation for the city as well as handling the simulation of things received from other cities in a region, like spare water or an extra fire truck."
Click to expand...

"All the server did was tell me 'X fire trucks available, Y water available, Z power available, from city with the name ABC,' as a raw list of values."

"Cronin says he believes the servers are essentially functioning as go-betweens, handing off a raw list of what's available from other cities in a region, like water, power and spare fire trucks."
Click to expand...

"No processing is done on the cities you aren’t currently playing on – they simply freeze in time and provide a fixed set of values of 'resources' that the currently played city simulates...When you log back on, your water levels will be exactly as they were when you last logged off, because EA’s servers were NOT doing any processing, and my client only affects the city I am simulating."

"Cronin says the way the game works currently is that the moment a person stops playing a city, that city essentially becomes frozen in time. A city's resources are only depleted and a city is only affected when it is actively being controlled by the owner of that city, he said."
Click to expand...

"They could make an entire region single player offline with absolute ease. It would be as simple as coding in a switch saying, 'Is this person playing single player? Take the power values of each city from local memory instead of ask for it from the server instead.' For an offline mode, he continues, 'instead of asking EA servers how much power is available from a fellow city in the region, it will simply have it in memory, as a small handful of values from another city.'"

"An offline mode, Cronin says, could be created by allowing a person to maintain all of the cities in one region, freezing the ones not currently being controlled. The computer could track all of the data locally if all of the cities in a region were controlled by the same player on the same computer, allowing the game to cut out the need to pass information to a server and then back to the local computer, Cronin said."
Click to expand...

fullz3xfj.png


EDIT: So, I went back through Crecente's tweets to see if he mentioned the RPS article at all. And...

betterrqrwb.png
 
P

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.
So either Crecente is either a liar or so incompetent at internet news collecting he somehow managed to miss the RPS article smackdown circus and keep up to date on it despite being one page one of GAF all week. His ONE JOB.
 
B

Borgnine

MBA in pussy licensing and rights management
Neuromancer said:
Click to expand...

I feel like I'm the only one who ever defends Arthur and Rebel FM when I come across podcast shitting threads, I honestly like the show and like listening to Arthur. But wtfffffffffffffffff man, just stop. This right here is too much.
 
M

Mairu

Member
Neuromancer said:


I don't even understand this. By this logic how can he be a reviews editor for a site that covers video games? Any criticisms from any of his reviewers towards any games are invalid, because they should be out there making their own games!
Click to expand...

I like Polygon's feature articles but I'm not sure I can take the site seriously anymore with a statement like this
 
Kadayi

Kadayi

Banned
Uthred said:
Johns stuff is good when he's "on" e.g. most of the stuff in this thread. But I think he's gotten caught up in his online persona, before hand his stuff could be strident but generally a decent read but over the last few months a lot of it has turned into biased rants where he'll interpret games or events in extremely questionable ways simply so he has something to rail against. A number of the other authors on the site have followed suit and I think its lead to a decrease in quality for the site overall.
Click to expand...

Pretty much agreed. I find him hit and miss a lot (and I've been a regular at RPS since it launched). Occasionally he strikes gold, but more often than not he'll jump to a misplaced conclusion and then look for the evidence to support it, versus question the validity of the initial assumption in the first place which is at least for me kind of a key requirement of 'good' journalism.

He's taken on the mantle of 'consumer advocate', but often to the extent that he's not always really paying real attention to the facts at times. I thought it was frankly embarrassing a good few months back having banged the drum at any given opportunity about the tyranny of Ubisoft's always on DRM he secured an interview with them only to have it pointed out that they'd ceased using it over a year ago. Surely if you're that passionate about a subject, you'd be keeping tabs on it no?

Also he very big on anthropomorphizing the big publishers and personally I kind of think that's pretty unconstructive, because it simply engenders that 'Boo hiss, everything would be great in the land of games if only it wasn't for all these big publishers funding all these AAA titles' zealot mindset circle jerk and that's a dead end (kickstarter isn't the future, it's just an other option for a certain bracket of games). Do publishers make mistakes? Constantly, and they should be called on it (as in this case), however at the same time there's no point holding grudges against corporations because they're not human. Half the posters at RPS these days tend to want to tell you why they're not going to buy a game at times (I've not bought an EA game since they shut down Bullfrog!!!). It can be a real hive of negativity at times.

Anyway I'm not saying don't read the man. I'm just saying don't take everything he says as gospel.
 
G

Globox_82

Banned
Told you months ago Aegis is an ego tripped prick.
Was attacked back than, glad that people finally see the real picture.

Guy is so full of himself, it's sick. Douche^1.000.000
 
D

Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
Man, this just keeps getting worse for Polygon.

I wonder if Crecente will delete that tweet.
 
M

MThanded

I Was There! Official L Receiver 2/12/2016
Borgnine said:
I feel like I'm the only one who ever defends Arthur and Rebel FM when I come across podcast shitting threads, I honestly like the show and like listening to Arthur. But wtfffffffffffffffff man, just stop. This right here is too much.
Click to expand...
I like the arthur and anthony dynamic on Rebel FM too. Don't even know what he is defending at this point though. He should really just stop talking. At some point you have to admit you are wrong and move on.
 
T

TheSeks

Blinded by the luminous glory that is David Bowie's physical manifestation.
And saved the page as HTML complete in case he does delete it. Dunno where to upload the saved page (that I'm sure he'll say is "manipulated"/"doctor"ed) though.

Whoops, meant to edit this in.
 
G

Globox_82

Banned
Neuromancer said:


I don't even understand this. By this logic how can he be a reviews editor for a site that covers video games? Any criticisms from any of his reviewers towards any games are invalid, because they should be out there making their own games!
Click to expand...

yeah "just do it", you tell em boy. man you are so cool, you "just do it" and don't give a shit about anything. You are such "just do-er" it's sick. Nike will pick you up.
Arrogant ass.

You heard it folks. You don't like Uncharted 3? Well fuck it, and "just do it"! I am going to "just do it" and make Shenmue 3. Thanks for inspiration ageis
 
P

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.
Globox_82 said:
You heard it folks. You don't like Uncharted 3? Well fuck it, and "just do it"!
Click to expand...

The irony being here that GAF'ers and other enthusiasts went to NaughtyDog post release to fix the busted aiming.

Crecente putting the LY into Polygon.
 
H

Htown

STOP SHITTING ON MY MOTHER'S HEADSTONE
Neuromancer said:
Click to expand...

I don't...

this person literally just told everyone that, as a game critic, he didn't think criticism of games from non-developers is fair.


1. Arthur Gies, what do you think your actual job is?

2. You have now entirely undermined the credibility of every piece of content you will ever write.
 
Y

Yaboosh

Super Sleuth
Htown said:
I don't...

this person literally just told everyone that, as a game critic, he didn't think criticism of games from non-developers is fair.


1. Arthur Gies, what do you think your actual job is?

2. You have now entirely undermined the credibility of every piece of content you will ever write.
Click to expand...

No no no.

He is talking specifically about telling a developer how to develop a game, not critiquing the game they made.

Edit: As a brewer, it is like the difference between someone telling me why they do or do not like a beer I made versus telling me I should ferment at this temperature or that temperature. You don't know how my brewery works, don't tell me how to run it. You know what my beer tastes like, tell me and others whether it tastes good or not. One is valid, one is arguably stupid/pointless/pompous whatever.
 
J

jordn613

Unconfirmed Member
MThanded said:
I like the arthur and anthony dynamic on Rebel FM too. Don't even know what he is defending at this point though. He should really just stop talking. At some point you have to admit you are wrong and move on.
Click to expand...

I always felt like Arthur talks down to Anthony (not surprising) and it bothers me. Anthony seems like a really good guy, and he's been in the business longer than Arthur, yet somehow Anthony gets left behind at IGN and (as far as we know) wasn't invited along to Polygon. Anthony deserves more respect and the fact that Arthur was able to stand on his shoulders and seemingly leave him behind is lame.
 
R

rabhw

Member
EviLore said:
Separate thread warranted for Polygon ethics, maybe?
Click to expand...

I think so. It would help remove their shittyness from the context of an "RPS vs. Polygon", and simply highlight the facts. It's really not about RPS, it could be any site or writer.

Pretty straightforward and damning thread, considering how careless and brash Polygon employees seem to be with their tweets.
 
R

Rapstah

Member
Is Crescente actually doing what it looks like here or is he secretly arguing something slightly different than what it seems like, like Gies? Lying like that, so close to the original thing, is some serious mythomaniac stuff.
 
U

unbias

Member
EviLore said:
Separate thread warranted for Polygon ethics, maybe?
Click to expand...

Is there enough there on its own to garner any real discussion? Seems polygon does a very good job at creating controversy around specific things. Without those things, I'm not sure how popular talking about them would be(specially since it would pretty much be a thread dedicated to Arthur).

I originally was going to break it up, but it seems it is all related to Athurs dumbass stubborn pride, in regards to dismissing Walkers source(or his hypocrisy with the exclusive crap). Most of the BS seems to be surrounding Arthur.

I do think an Arthur topic would be quite popular...just even though I dont like him, I personally dont want to create a topic, with just about pointing out his stupidity.
 
P

peanutbutterlatte

Member
Htown said:
I don't...

this person literally just told everyone that, as a game critic, he didn't think criticism of games from non-developers is fair.


1. Arthur Gies, what do you think your actual job is?

2. You have now entirely undermined the credibility of every piece of content you will ever write.
Click to expand...

Maybe we got lucky and it's his covert way of resigning from the profession. Just jumped in to read what was going on and... wow. Is he fishing for a position at EA or something as ball cleanliness maintenance...?
 
R

rabhw

Member
unbias said:
Is there enough there on its own to garner any real discussion? Seems polygon does a very good job at creating controversy around specific things. Without those things, I'm not sure how popular talking about them would be(specially since it would pretty much be a thread dedicated to Arthur).

I originally was going to break it up, but it seems it is all related to Athurs dumbass stubborn pride, in regards to dismissing Walkers source(or his hypocrisy with the exclusive crap). Most of the BS seems to be surrounding Arthur.

I do think an Arthur topic would be quite popular...just even though I dont like him, I personally dont want to create a topic, with just about pointing out his stupidity.
Click to expand...

At this point Arthur just looks like a bit of a douche. Crecente's conduct on the other hand...whatisthisidonteven
 
J

JABEE

Member
unbias said:
Is there enough there on its own to garner any real discussion? Seems polygon does a very good job at creating controversy around specific things. Without those things, I'm not sure how popular talking about them would be(specially since it would pretty much be a thread dedicated to Arthur).

I originally was going to break it up, but it seems it is all related to Athurs dumbass stubborn pride, in regards to dismissing Walkers source(or his hypocrisy with the exclusive crap). Most of the BS seems to be surrounding Arthur.

I do think an Arthur topic would be quite popular...just even though I dont like him, I personally dont want to create a topic, with just about pointing out his stupidity.
Click to expand...

It appears to be a systemic problem at Polygon if everyone leading editors on different sections of their site lie and feign ignorance in the face of criticism and controversy.
 
U

unbias

Member
JABEE said:
It appears to be a systemic problem at Polygon if everyone leading editors on different sections of their site lie and feign ignorance in the face of criticism and controversy.
Click to expand...

True, but it all seems to come back to the original argument, Walker and teh stupid crap Arthur started with his EA defense force. The ethical delema of the other guy from polygon just seems intrinsically related, to me. Still though, Arthur alone would probably be quite popular, and I'd post in the topic if it was there. I just dont wana be the guy to dedicate a topic to, essentially, slamming the fuck out of Arthurs stupidity. Because he would rule a polygon topic.
 
A

Ath

Member
It seems every couple of months that Polygon do something incredibly dodgy, so I think a new thread dedicated to cataloguing Polygon's various misdeeds could be useful. I still find it hard to believe that Gies is still digging a huge hole for himself even now, you'd think anyone would just throw up their hands and say "Sorry, I got this one wrong". I don't even know what to make of Crecente flat out lying like that. After all the fanfare and hubris they had about redefining Games Journalism, just seeing crap like this just shows it's the same old stuff. I agree they've had some great longform articles, but I just cannot trust anything they review.
 
P

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.
Not sure if I can be arsed but I feel topic title should definitely be "Putting the LY Into POLYGON: ______" if one does get made. I fully expect some ferretting Crecente "j-j-j-just because I read it doesnt mean I love you or anything!" getout.
 
K

Kill Your Masters

Member
Htown said:
I don't...

this person literally just told everyone that, as a game critic, he didn't think criticism of games from non-developers is fair.


1. Arthur Gies, what do you think your actual job is?

2. You have now entirely undermined the credibility of every piece of content you will ever write.
Click to expand...
But he is a games writer as he mentions. So in that case it's completely ok cause you know, writers and developers have so much in common. They write stuff.

So ridiculous.
 
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