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[EviLore]

Twitter arguments, universally painful to read.

 

[FACE]

I still have no idea how twitter is supposed to be read.

 

[Cosmonaut X]

I still have no idea how twitter is supposed to be read.

As little as possible.

 

[Nibel]

Twitter arguments, universally painful to read.

It's called.. Tweef (tweet + beef)

 

[Cosmonaut X]

It's called.. Tweef (tweet + beef)

Too close to "queef". Perhaps "Bitter" would be an acceptable alternative?

 

[DaBuddaDa]

Darn, Brian C.'s pleading ignorance and level headed responses stopped this from getting good. Maybe Aegies could learn from him.

 

[Zaph]

Gies either has a terrible memory or is being deliberately obtuse.

 

[FACE]

As little as possible.

 

[Nibel]

Too close to "queef". Perhaps "Bitter" would be an acceptable alternative?

Beef, Tweef, Queef - they all have one thing in common: nothing but hot air

 

[PogiJones]

Gies either has a terrible memory or is being deliberately obtuse.

 

[bishoptl]

...really?

 

[inky]

Gies either has a terrible memory or is being deliberately obtuse.

Dat short term memory loss. Man needs a doctor asap.

 

[Azull]

Dat short term memory loss. Man needs a doctor asap.

Funny cause he was helping sessler to find one, they should go together.

 

[Wallach]

Gies either has a terrible memory or is being deliberately obtuse.

Give me a break, this guy is such a liar.

 

[Neuromancer]

Gies either has a terrible memory or is being deliberately obtuse.

 

[Derrick01]

^ Nothing like a media member ripping another media member for having an anonymous source :lol

 

[Lactose_Intolerant]

Dat short term memory loss. Man needs a doctor asap.

He's might have to try the memento solution

 

[benny_a]

LOL Polygon missed that the story originated from RPS even though in the twitter post Gies posts a response that he could only have made if he had read the story.

 

[JABEE]

Gies either has a terrible memory or is being deliberately obtuse.

The Polygon Technique

1. Write Smug Story or Tweet

2. Get Bombarded with Criticism

3. Pick out hate speech to retweet to paint yourself as a victim

4. Reach out to offended party like naive child asking a question

5. Go back to surfing Reddit and NeoGAF for stories.

 

[Banana Kid]

All this drama is just making me more and more disappointed about how Polygon's turned out.

You were supposed to save game journalism!

 

[Sir_Crocodile]

Arthur really seems to like it on Bullshit Mountain

 

[Neuromancer]

Twitter arguments, universally painful to read.

I believe the feeling associated with it is called 'wahjah.'

 

[Rapstah]

All this drama is just making me more and more disappointed about how Polygon's turned out.

You were supposed to save game journalism!

You were the Chosen One! It was said that you would destroy the EA, not join them! Bring balance to the Game Journalism, not leave it in darkness!

 

[Zaph]

LOL Polygon missed that the story originated from RPS even though in the twitter post Gies posts a response that he could only have made if he had read the story.

It's worse than that...

I could be wrong, but I read "get a lock on sourcing" as "yeah you had an 'inside source' but we didn't really believe you so we didn't run the story".

Amazing how oblivious the Polygon staff are, it's a real talent.

 

[Cosmonaut X]

I could be wrong, but I read "get a lock on sourcing" as "yeah you had an 'inside source' but we didn't really believe you so we didn't run the story".

Amazing how oblivious the Polygon staff are, it's a real talent.

Reads like it, just gussied up with military jargon to make it sound sexier.

 

[FStop7]

The Polygon Technique

1. Write Smug Story or Tweet

2. Get Bombarded with Criticism

3. Pick out hate speech to retweet to paint yourself as a victim

4. Reach out to offended party like naive child asking a question

5. Go back to surfing Reddit and NeoGAF for stories.

It truly is New Games Journalism.

 

[Team Filler]

Reading those tweets, just...wow. Polygon really is a den of cunts.

 

[corn_fest]

Apparently:


Essentially people donated towards a podcast and Arthur used some of that money to buy a laptop, since he had no money at the time to buy a system that would allow him to talk about games. Never heard about it, I don't listen or care about RebelFM so I don't know how true it is.

I'm sure someone will explain the situation better with some actual sources.

Not quite. They did buy a laptop, but that was for podcast mixing.
The controversial purchase was a gaming PC for Tyler so that he would have something to talk about on the podcast. It's been a while since I listened, but he did end up talking about PC games a lot, from what I remember... though whether that was a good use of donation money is still debatable.

 

[VeryGooster]

Good fucking lord.

 

[phisheep]

Hello you ridiculously lovely people.

I wanted to step in (I wanted to do so on Saturday night too, but you live in a walled garden with the intercom unplugged) and say a big thank you.

In any job where you say your opinions of things in a manner which suggests you think others might agree, there's a lot of hostility in response. So while I'm very blessed to receive some lovely emails
here and there, the overall balance does tend to weigh on the side of hate. Hearing that there was a thread about my coverage in here made me think, "Uh oh."

But what an amazing surprise! The very kind things people have said have meant a lot to me, and I'm incredibly pleased that my grumbling has proved at least cathartic for others.

However, I'm quite sure that all the mean things you've said about Gies means if he's at GDC, he's going to snap my neck. The man's a tank. So at least you made me smile before you got me killed.

Oh, and what Htown said right near the start is absolutely true. It IS awful that my SimCity posts should be considered anything particularly unusual. Let's hope such things stand out less and less in the future.

Cheers people - it's much appreciated.

John W

Welcome in John, good to see you. Keep up the good work and all that. There's (nearly) always sanctuary here.

 

[Ghost Dad the Whip]

how did a.gies get to where he is now when we all know that Dirty T was the real standout of rebel FM

 

[WrenchNinja]

Holy shit, this fucking site

 

[Neuromancer]

I could be wrong, but I read "get a lock on sourcing" as "yeah you had an 'inside source' but we didn't really believe you so we didn't run the story".

That's my read on it too.

"We didn't reblog your piece because we don't trust you but hey... great story"

 

[BolognaSoup]

Apparently:

Arthur met Anthony (Chufmoney from GFW podcast) from a previous job. It was Tower Records I think, and they became roommates. Anthony worked his way up at 1up and finally got placed on the 1up/GFW podcast from what seems Shawn Elliot liking him and getting him on. Arthur wasn't working in the game press at this time.

When 1up exploded in January 2009, Nick Suttner, Phillop Kholer, and Anthony formed RebelFM the same week. Arthur kind of lucked out here because he was Anthony's roommate, so he got on this podcast that had a ton of interest in it at first because of the 1up layoffs. It also had alot of listeners. I believe it was even number 1 on overall itunes podcasts, a huge feat for a gaming podcast. They also raked in the money. They accepted donations as the "ex-1uppers" who were mistreated and laid off, and made at least 10k, probably much more.

Essentially people donated towards a podcast and Arthur used some of that money to buy a laptop, since he had no money at the time to buy a system that would allow him to talk about games. Never heard about it, I don't listen or care about RebelFM so I don't know how true it is.

I'm sure someone will explain the situation better with some actual sources.

My God what a moron. I can't believe I even recently thought he was an ok dude. I never followed the Polygon stuff at all and didn't know this donation story either. Over the last couple months though it started to dawn on me that the guy was constantly an arrogant dickhead on RebelFM with a persistent hollier-than-thou attitude for almost every subject. I thought it was weird how every time talk of next gen hardware came up, I could almost see everyone in the room turn their heads and stare at Arthur while he bestowed upon them his deep insider knowledge of not only what the hardware was, but exactly how it worked and exactly how graphics tech worked. I wondered "What are this dude's credentials to supposedly know all this stuff?" But then just a few episodes ago when someone started to ask more questions about some fancy kind of anti-aliasing or tessellation or something or other (I don't really know anything about this stuff) and he clearly didn't know what he was talking about and the subject was quickly changed. I'll have to go find that bit.

John, if you really want to get under his skin, just ask if he wants to discuss any mobile platform games.

Also, that's pretty funny about how he got his "in." It's pretty telling. They said on their last podcast that they worked at Blockbuster together. Maybe Tower Records too I don't know, but definitely Blockbuster.

 

[corn_fest]

how did a.gies get to where he is now when we all know that Dirty T was the real standout of rebel FM

Yessss. Tyler is the fucking best. I still remember episode 8 when he and Robert Ashley were first on as guests. Good times.

 

[ClosingADoor]

Some game journalists should really take a step back from Twitter. If you want to make a point, make an editorial about it on your website where there is room to explain your arguments. This is just embarrassing to read...

 

[RedNumberFive]

So Arthur went from working in a Tower Records and defrauding podcast listeners to become editor of Polygon? That's an impressive demonstration of the "fake it till you make it" strategy.

 

[RobbieH]

It's worse than that...

I could be wrong, but I read "get a lock on sourcing" as "yeah you had an 'inside source' but we didn't really believe you so we didn't run the story".

Amazing how oblivious the Polygon staff are, it's a real talent.

• Walker breaks the original story citing a Maxis insider.
• Polygon rubbish source.
• Other major outlets (Eurogamer, GameSpot etc.) run the story citing the original RPS article.
• Walker confirms the original story on Saturday citing a modder named Azzer.
• On Sunday Crecente started working on the same story citing the same source as Walker. Even the quotes are similar.
• Crecente runs the story a week late giving no credit to RPS stating it's an "original story spurred by a comment Lucy Bradshaw made to Polygon in an interview we did with her more than a week ago" (a story Walker used in one of his articles and cited Polygon) while Gies appears oblivious to the original abuse.

"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 – how much power they have available, how much spare fire trucks, you know – that sort of stuff. It’s minor, and it’s sent as raw numbers. Your client then just goes ‘oh there’s XXX power spare from city Z.’ It’s that simple."

"The server side calculations are all, frankly, rubbish. Every bit of it. The only 'good' they do at the moment is for a multiplayer region – they are just a way for my city to tell your city how much power I have spare, and update that data every few minutes while I play. A middleman of sorts."

Matching the information we received from our Maxis mole, Azzer explains that the only other role served by the servers – beyond the obvious "fluff and guff" as he calls it of invites, chat, leaderboards, etc. – is to prevent cheating. "Most of the processing work is probably their attempts at anti-cheat stuff, checking a city doesn’t do… something… at an unrealistic speed."

"It's not possible that EA servers are 'offloading' calculations (simulations) for your city, which it works out, and then sends to your client," Azzer Cronin told Polygon. "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.' EA servers do no complex calculations 'on our behalf' that it then passes the results back to us and that our clients need to run the game."

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.

"I can tell you what your (computer) is doing, and thus what the server isn't doing," he said. "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."

lol polygon

 

[ChosenPredator]

twitter is literally the bane of some of these guys existence, they really should stay off of it.

 

[Quentyn]

Crecente just added a link to the RPS story, but also deleted the shitstorm that was going in the comments.

Edit: It was their community manager Shaun McIlroy not Crecente

 

[Neuromancer]

• Walker breaks the original story citing a Maxis insider.
• Polygon rubbish source.
• Other major outlets (Eurogamer, GameSpot etc.) run the story citing the original RPS article.
• Walker confirms the original story on Saturday citing a modder named Azzer.
• On Sunday Crecente started working on the same story citing the same source as Walker. Even the quotes are similar.
• Crecente runs the story a week late giving no credit to RPS stating it's an "original story spurred by a comment Lucy Bradshaw made to Polygon in an interview we did with her more than a week ago" (a story Walker used in one of his articles and cited Polygon) while Gies appears oblivious to the original abuse.

lol polygon

Good recap, thanks.

 

[HoosTrax]

Crecente just added a link to the RPS story, but also deleted the shitstorm that was going in the comments.

Wouldn't be the first time that Polygon has censored their comments section for non-spam posts.

 

[TheSeks]

All this drama is just making me more and more disappointed about how Polygon's turned out.

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.

 

[Htown]

• Walker breaks the original story citing a Maxis insider.
• Polygon rubbish source.
• Other major outlets (Eurogamer, GameSpot etc.) run the story citing the original RPS article.
• Walker confirms the original story on Saturday citing a modder named Azzer.
• On Sunday Crecente started working on the same story citing the same source as Walker. Even the quotes are similar.
• Crecente runs the story a week late giving no credit to RPS stating it's an "original story spurred by a comment Lucy Bradshaw made to Polygon in an interview we did with her more than a week ago" (a story Walker used in one of his articles and cited Polygon) while Gies appears oblivious to the original abuse.

lol polygon

this is pretty disgusting

 

[Nibel]

Revolutionary ignorance

 

[Quentyn]

Personal attacks. Yeah right

 

[rakhir]

This is really dissapointing all around.

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.

Well, Phil Kollar is a good dude, i liked his gameinformer stuff. And they have some great features. But overall... yeah.

 

[Gannd]

I wonder how many Polygon writers wish they never produced that silly "documentary" now. They set them selves up for this and they have no one to blame but themselves. Of course, the $500,000+ in revenue that documentary generated was totally worth it to Vox media.

 

[ebullientprism]

Absolutely shameless.

I thought my opinion of Polygon was as low as it could get. Good to know they can sink even lower. At least its entertaining.

I like how RPSs original article comment is an "Update". As if Polygon did their own journalistic work and then just happened to find out after writing this article that RPS had done the same thing earlier. Total scum.

Edit New thread worthy? Polygon rips off RPS article more or less. Tries to pass it off as their own hard work. Gets caught, deletes negative comments and appends the RPS article as an update.

 

[zam]

The amount of denial coming from Gies is hilarious, why can't he just admit he was wrong? Instead he chooses to go on the defensive and tries to paqint himself as a victim in all of this.

To John Walker and all the fine people at RPS, keep doing what we are doing. It's a sad state that there aren't more people like Walker in games journalism. As in, you know, actually doing some journalism, not just regurgitating whatever the publishers say, instead of asking questions and calling them on their bullshit.