Game Journalists Are Incompetent Fuckwits: Archive

Game Journalists Are Incompetent Fuckwits

December 2010

339 posts

On the subject of DR2: Case West

I’ve received a lot of messages saying that Case West will be DLC for Dead Rising 2, not an Xbox Live Arcade title. Usually when people contact me in droves to correct me it’s because I’ve made a mistake. This time, however, I’m right. Capcom have confirmed Case West is a standalone title being released via XBLA, not a DLC expansion for the game. And let’s be honest...

Anonymous asked: Even though Gawker is supposedly making the effort to be "more than a blog", it seems pretty obvious to me that they don't care about being a good institution of journalism. Notice how the reasons they give in most of the sections of the article is for either expanding their audience or increasing revenue. In other words, all they care about is the cash and page views that come...

“The “Case West” DLC for Dead Rising 2 is coming out next month. It...”

– G4TV, Stephen Johnson: Dead Rising 2: Case West DLC Coming Next Month [November 30th, 2010] It’s an XBLA title, not DLC. Although I suppose XBLA games are technically DLC… hmmm. I must ponder on this.

NASA finds life on moon orbiting old Sega console →

Oh, wait. Wrong Saturn. Easy mistake for Kotaku to make, I suppose.

November 2010

287 posts

Join the GJAIF Steam Group. Betray your family and... →

I’ve made a decision: From this month onwards I will pick one random person in the GJAIF Steam group who will receive a random (and, importantly, cheap) indie game. The winner will be selected on the 15th of every month. How insufferably nice of me. If you want to be in with a chance of winning a random indie game, join the group now.

Gawker's apparently making a commitment to move... →

I’m linking to a cache of the Lifehacker version of this post, but it’s on every Gawker site today - including Kotaku. Does this signal the end of Kotaku’s “other people have reported it so we’ll just report it again but louder” blogging style? Are their writers going to have to (hngh!) actually do some work? Shudder! In all seriousness, I’m very...

Anonymous asked: I've observed the funky vector of the Stacked coverage aftershock. Everyone is looking at the vid and seeing a perfect fit for the PC—what with the recent renaissance of small experimental blah blah blah—then looking closer and seeing no PC love from Double Fine.

Schafer himself has directed people toward the DF FAQ, as recently as last week, as a reply to the...

Anonymous asked: Regarding the IGN Top Disappointments of 2010 list: I see no problem with the article. Most of the games on that list are sequels (In fact, ALL The games on the list are sequels with Kinect and Playstation Move being hardware). If you read the article, many of the explanations agreed that while the game might have been good, it did not meet expectations of what fans wanted it to be, i.e., a...

Don't expect much from me this Tuesday

I’ll probably spend most of the day plowing through Super Meat Boy. Might even post some of my exploits on the intertrons, if you’re lucky. Or not. Feel free to recommend the site for Tumblr Tuesday, even if it has been mostly troll questions and snarky answers these last few days.

[Submission] CHAIN CHAIN CHAIIIIIIIN, CHAIN OF...

Reader-submitted content follows, with some minor edits for formatting: Double Fine has a Q&A on their website. A few questions on the Q&A are newish, but the ones we’re concerned with here aer two in number, and according to Wayback Machine, have been on the site since September 2007. It’s nearly December 2010, and Eurogamer goes ahead and posts this. The problem is that in...

Anonymous asked: With all the GT5 stuff, maybe you should make another site called "Game Developers are Incompetent Fuckwits"

Anonymous asked: Seems to me like GT5 has unleashed the dogs on what's really going on inside the various publications we're familiar with. N'gai shared a keynote on EDGE that briefly detailed what we often perceive as (un)desirable from a game review, and as I reflect on what I read, it's become apparent that there really is no proven criteria for a well-composed review. So how do we draw the...

Anonymous asked: "Certainly there needs to be better ethics."

Ha! Don't make me laugh. Talking about ethics when you have a website devoted to nothing but insulting people and calling them fuckwits.

Debunking the GT5 "tiered damage" theories

A number of people have been in touch with me to let me know that, actually, Gran Turismo 5 doesn’t have a tiered car-damage system and nobody pulled the wool over anybody’s eyes. In fact GT5 director Kazunori Yamauchi recently tweeted that improved car damage will be patched into the game at a later date, something confirmed by a rep from Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. As well...

Anonymous asked: Not a question, but the factual data on Brain Age 3 posted on Gamezone was correct - oddly enough, 2010 was the reported date. The fact that everyone just assumes the date was a slip of the tongue and that it's for 3DS is the real problem.

Tumblr's being dumb

I have two Submissions sitting in my Tumblr inbox, but the ruddy thing won’t let me see them. Annoying. Best way to get in touch at the moment would be email, at least until Tumblr sorts itself out.

Anonymous asked: Those Reuters guidelines are interesting. I don't feel that "Always guard against putting their opinion in a news story" is generally necessary in entertainment journalism due to the nature of the news, but I would love to see some kind of guidelines which gaming sites/magazines volunteered to sign/uphold to the best of their ability, essentially a games journalist equivalent of the...

Anonymous asked: Regarding your post on "Otomedius Excellent"

Considering any retailer can just put up a listing for any game they can think of to what extent can you jounalistically rely on a GameStop listing as a reference. It's noteworthy not doubt, but can you really say "Game X is coming Jan 2011" just because GameStop has a listing? Isn't that the equivalent to...

kierand asked: http://handbook.reuters.com/index.php/Standards_and_Values

Any gaming news site that sticks to that there code?

“Visitors to the London Games Festival this weekend will get a rare opportunity...”

– Fuckwittery of Yesteryear - Kotaku, Mike Fahey: Jade Smells Pretty At London Games Fest [October 23rd, 2007] Men in the industry get stupid nicknames, while women get perv’d on. It’s truly a wonder that they only make up 6% of the industry’s workforce.

“Iconic developer Jade Raymond is heading up development of Splinter Cell 6.”

– I’m sorry, but what exactly is “iconic” about Jade Raymond? Producer - Assassin’s Creed (2007) Executive Producer - Assassin’s Creed 2 (2009) Managing Director - Ubisoft Toronto (2009 - Present) Executive Producer - Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood (2010) That’s an impressive list of games to have...

“Kamiya teases Bayonetta 2 by accident, spunky spunk spunk”

– Jim Sterling there, erudite as always. [Source [NSFW]]

“Now, it’s all change. Gaming-capable PCs are much cheaper, and few new games...”

– NOT SHIT JOURNALISM - Rock, Paper, Shotgun - Alex Meer: Thanks For Screwing The PC Over, Genuinely [November 29th, 2010] Fascinating read, this. Simultaneously (and, in fact, mostly) lamenting the role PC hardware manufacturers have played in the decline of the format, while offering a potential...

“While no details have been revealed at this time, Kawashima has stated that the...”

– Gamezone - Jason Young: Brain Age 3 in Development [November 28th, 2010] - Text-only cache A Nintendo 3DS game coming out this year. Someone gon’ dun fucked up here, and I think it’s Gamezone. It’s so easy to type “2010” instead of “2011”, isn’t it...

It's been a month since Rock Band 3 came out, so... →

A quick Google search reveals that pretty much everybody else in the entirety of all space and time have already posted the trophies, in many cases within a handful of days after the game was released. So what took PSLS so long? I mean, it’s just copy+pasting. Anyone can do that. I can do that. Watch: A quick Google search reveals that pretty much everybody else in the entirety of all space...

Thanks to everybody who has popped questions into my Ask Hole today. I won’t be responding to them, largely because the page is already cluttered with trolls and the like. Oh no! Anyway, I’m open to on-going conversation about Gran Turismo 5, the Heavy Rain/Sherlock thing-that-isn’t-a-thing, and whatever else is on your mind. Best to email me for now. I may share my favourite...

Anonymous asked: Although you're more concerned on professionalism in the game journalism world and not so much the game making world, how do you feel that the developers of GT5 decided to not tell reviewers that a specific feature they so proudly boast about only starts happening at the highest level?
Personally, I think it's unprofessional, especially since it was such a anticipated title - it...

“Otomedius Excellent is a shoot-‘em-up in which barely dressed women fly...”

– CVG - Mike Jackson: Sweet XBLA shmup ‘Otomedius Excellent’ out spring 2011 [November 26th, 2010] Actually Otomedius Excellent is due for a retail release, not an XBLA release. GameStop have a listing for it, as does Play-Asia. Thanks to the tipster who sent this my way.

Anonymous asked: In regards to your post a week ago about BBC's Sherlock and Heavy Rain.
(http://gamejournos.tumblr.com/post/1625090952/as-the-bbcs-new-sherlock-series-makes-wide)
Perhaps you should have done a bit more research before ranting. The show makes direct references to the game, including the origami killer, the title of the game, as well as specific artistic styles. Did you even...

Anonymous asked: You've been posting a lot more trolls recently. Have they suddenly come out of the woodwork on this holiday weekend, or are you just publishing them now because they keep on making the same damn point?

I'm genuinely curious about this.

Anonymous asked: "If it's a waste of time blah blah philosoraptor"

Yeah, just much less of a waste of time, as I have not yet devoted a website to how much of a fuckwit you are (very mature, by the way). I just found your website and I feel I'll most likely forget about it once I start school again after the break, while you'll probably continue to cry about those more...

Anonymous asked: http://gamejournos.tumblr.com/post/1293059105/new-editorial-policy

I wouldn't defend Kotaku on the basis of being a blog, but when you promise your readers to focus less on Japanophilia, more on hard journalism errors, and then break that promise within a month, your readers have every reason to be a little put out. Kotaku isn't short on factual errors and the like, but...

“Its true that it takes a monumental effort to sustain damage in Gran Turismo 5,...”

– NOT SHIT JOURNALISM - gamer.blorge: Gran Turismo 5 reviewers failed Yamauchi’s damage test – incomplete reviews? [November 27th, 2010] Have Polyphony Digital pulled a sneaky double-bluff on game journalists? Oh dear! What a pity! Etc.! This article is mostly not shit - it loses points for having a...

Anonymous asked: "I suppose I get the same sort of giddy thrill in pointing out crappy journalism and deviation from established protocol that you get from sitting in front of your computer sending me hate mail."

Possibly. The difference is that I simply send my thoughts in, where as you actually made an website about something insignificant in order to feel better about yourself.

Anonymous asked: "Oh, hello." Oh, sorry. When I said "more" I was using it in the way that means an addition to what is there now.

So where do you get off telling people what should or shouldn't be on their websites?

Anonymous asked: I kind of hate it when I see people say "what right do you have to tell sites what they are allowed to post" or stuff like that. Nobody is trying to tell sites what they are or are not allowed to post. If I wanted to start a gaming website and then post nothing but pictures of cats, can I do that? Of course I can do that, it's my website, but that doesn't mean that I should,...

Anonymous asked: The most amazing thing about this website is how quickly these alleged professionals immediately resort to namecalling. They don't even try to defend their own product, it likely doesn't even occur to them. This isn't really a question I'm just getting bored of watching Kotaku staff or whomever limply troll your questions on a holiday weekend, but I guess that's the time...

Anonymous asked: So where do you get off telling people what should or shouldn't be on their websites? Personally, I think your website should include more positive examples of journalism.

-Josh Whitner

Anonymous asked: A month or two back I checked to see how many posts [on GJAIF] were useful to me as a reader of gaming news. It was 1%.

Anonymous asked: I notice that the Kotaku article claims the Wii has no must-have game. Do the Super Mario Galaxy titles not count? Or does Plunkett's criteria for must-have titles rule out anything that doesn't have guns and gray graphics?

Anonymous asked: Unfortunately, scores are arbitrary. A reviewer plays a game, writes his review, and then assigns a score based on his personal enjoyment. Maybe Oli really liked other elements so much that they overshadowed the negative parts for his overall impression of the game. His review text gushes about it. He calls it the "Holy Grail" of racing games. To me, that sounds like someone who was...

“A month or two back I checked to see how many posts [on GJAIF] were tagged...”

– senae on Twitter did a little research. Yikes. 10% That’s… that’s quite sizable.

[Submission] Kotaku decides that the Wii is in... →

Reader-submitted content follows, with some minor edits: So this post oozes idiocy. For a gaming news site they do zero research (Really? Kotaku not not doing their research? SCANDAL - Ed.). Without providing any context Kotaku claims that the Wii is on the decline because it’s slowing down from already massive sales and profit? Multiple users are even calling them out on their bullshit. They...

“…this is basically a straight port [of Crazy Taxi on the Dreamcast], so...”

– 1UP: Crazy Taxi XBLA/PSN review [Novemver 26th, 2010] - not a cache link A straight port, eh? What, with the original music and store locations and everything? Erm, no. No it isn’t.

[Submission] IGN's Top 10 Biggest Disappointments... →

While I’d love to say that I did the legwork for this one, it was a(n anonymous) reader! Said reader wrote everything. Which is nice. Update: The submitter forgot to include scores for Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days, which they’ve just sent to me. Huzzah! Cache links for this IGN article: [Page 1] [Page 2] Reader-submitted content follows, with some minor formatting edits: The...