Game Journalists Are Incompetent Fuckwits: Archive

Game Journalists Are Incompetent Fuckwits

April 2011

44 posts

Kotaku would like to remind you that it's April... →

So, y’know. News, and all that.

“Raptr, a game tracking and social platform for currently only Xbox 360 gamers,...”

– GamrFeed, Jeanine Celestin: Proof that Marvel vs Capcom 3 Gamers Are Pretty Hardcore [March 24th, 2011] Yes, well, this is quite easily proven to be a load of bollocks by actually going to Raptr’s website where you will see icons for, amongst other things, Xbox Live, the PlayStation Network,...

Bashcraft posts irrelevant shit about a prison,... →

A prison guard at Chiba Prison was given the sack for chatting with one of the inmates about casual rubbish like Manga and video games. That’s it! Or at least that’s what Bashcraft would like you to think is it, considering that’s the central focus of the story. Only one sentence is given over to the guard’s rather more serious crime: “he told inmates the family names...

March 2011

142 posts

Excuses, Excuses #1: Blame the Press Release

Occasionally - not often, but sometimes - I get emails from game journalists attempting to justify their half-arsed regurgitation of press releases and stuff wot they read on other websites. Slightly more often than that I get emails from journos insisting that I fuck off, or place an ever-increasing number of penises in my mouth. Generally the journos who try to defend their position are...

G4, GamePro and GamrFeed get caught being stupid →

I don’t usually read Reddit because that sort of site doesn’t appeal to me. Cloudsourced ontent aggregates that collect links and then invite people to comment on them have always struck me as exceptionally dull affairs, and most users of such sites appear to make one or two quick comments to express their ill-considered opinions on the matter before farting off into the sunset...

“Valve fans have many questions but have received no answers. When’s...”

– Gamezone, Stuart MacDonald: “Hang in There” for More Gordon Freeman [March 30th, 2011] Yes, Portal 2 may not be out yet for another couple of weeks, but what about Portal 3?

Sometimes - not always, but sometimes - I am an idiot. That is all.

“Sadly, right now it’s only scheduled for release in Japan, but I can only...”

– G4TV.com, Stephen Johnson: River City Ransom 2 Coming To WiiWare This Summer [March 25th, 2011] G4’s own Stephen Johnson, seen here portrayed by Paul Giamatti, signs off another news post about an exciting-looking Wii game with the old “dust off the Wii” gag. Oh ho ho!...

Idiot breaks 3DS. Other idiot writes about it. →

Yes. Kotaku is there. Kotaku is there, right there, to tell you about some daft sod who accidentally broke his shiny new 3DS. They’re there to let you know that some unfortunate bugger did his spangly-wangly new handheld some damage. They’ve realized the groundbreaking depth of this story and leapt at their computers to bring you the hard-hitting news that some fella’s fucked up...

“Amazon is already pretty well known to gamers given the fact that they give a...”

– PlayStation Lifestyle, Joseph Peterson: Amazon Tackles Madden 12 With $20 Credit [March 27th, 2011] Actually I think Amazon is probably better-known for being the biggest internet retailer of all time anywhere ever. Although I could be wrong. Also! Although Madden is the king of football...

Destructoid posts video confirming what we already... →

Yes, the 3DS is region-locked. Oh no! This is hardly breaking news. But wait, that’s not all - Dale claims in the headline that he’s confirmed Japanese games won’t work on US system when, of course, he’s tested a US game on a Japanese system and assumes it won’t work the other way around. I mean yes, that’s a pretty sound assumption to make, all things considered, but the body of his post doesn’t...

“It could also be argued that this commercial, featuring Serena Williams...”

– Kotaku, Michael McWhertor: Can Serena Williams’ Ass Interest You In Some Top Spin 4? [March 21st, 2011] Stay classy, Kotaku.

Apologies for that last, now deleted post involving dinoasaurs and Noah’s Ark. I’d intended to reblog that over on my personal Tumblr, but the Tumblr admin panel has been a bit screwy and, for reasons unknown, has taken to changing the “Post to” setting back to the default even after I’ve changed it to something else. Anyway, it’s moved now. Apologies for the...

Another misleading headline from CVG: Silent Hill... →

(Alternative title to this post: “Another misleading Silent Hill headline: CVG Edition”) Right. So. Yes. Aha! Remember what Silent Hill: Downpour art director Radek Marek said to Xbox 360 Magazine Italy? No? Well I’ll just pop it here in the post: At the moment there will be no multiplayer modes in Silent Hill: Downpour, but Konami are investigating a separate chapter devoted...

The Sixth Axis have news about Silent Hill:... →

Well no, as it turns out. Their article read with this headline: Silent Hill: Downpour To Feature Multiplayer? But then once you actually read the news post this stunning revelation is made known: In a recent interview with XBOX 360 Magazine Italy, Silent Hill art director Radek Marek fired up the rumour mill when asked whether Downpour would include a multiplayer component. Marek...

A few people have written to me to let me know that this piece about the GAME/GameStation-exclusive Kollector’s Edition of Mortal Kombat isn’t actually a duplicate because, haha, it details the specifics of the European Kollector’s Edition which apparently differs from the US edition. And, on that note, you’re right. The European version is different. But this is the good...

GameInformer presents "Five PC Gems That You May... →

I’d like to present an alternative name for this article: Five PC Games That We’d Rather You Bought For Consoles Because GameStop (For Whom We Are Basically a Publicity Rag) Makes Far More Money From Console Sales Than It Does For PC Sales, Which Have More Or Less Been Completely Taken From Us Them By Services Like Steam And Impulse. Hm. Not quite as punchy, but it’s definitely...

“The post makes no mention of [the pricing for the PS3 version of Beyond Good...”

– Nukezilla, Ron Taylor: Beyond Good & Evil HD Comes to PSN in May [March 17th, 2011] The 360 version of Beyond Good & Evil actually costs 800 MSPoints, or $10. Not that there was any real way to look that up or anything.

“War. War never changes- but only because it doesn’t need to in order to sell 14...”

– Ripten, Gavid Bard: RipTen Review: Homefront (PC) [March 17th, 2011] Given the many problems THQ has faced with Homefront since its release I’d argue that this opening line to Gavin Bard’s review of the game is now hilariously inaccurate.

[NSFW] Actor who is prominently featured in PS3... →

…but as there’s a young girl talking about giving oral sex, it’s alright. Right? Am I right? Stay classy, Kotaku.

“First off, I am a huge Dragon Age: Origins fan. I’ve gotten all the achievements...”

– GameFanatics, “Next Jen”: Dragon Age 2 XB360 (Review) [March 18th, 2011] This roughly translates as “I’m a huge Dragon Age fan, and so my score for this game was decided long before I actually got to play it. It’s going to get at least an 8!” Next Jen spends...

Go Make Me A Sandwich shifts from Blogspot to... →

One of my favourite blogs, Go Make Me A Sandwich, has recently made the jump over from Blogspot to WordPress. For those who don’t know, GMMAS looks at the representation of women in videogames, and makes some rather interesting observations. I look forward to your emails about how this is a) nothing to do with game journalism, and b) “mor of that femimism bullsiht”, which I...

And now for something completely different

A couple of days ago, following the “5 is average” debate that took place on the blog, nhaler sent me this commentary. I thought you might like to read it. In no other industry centered around the creation and consumption of media is criticism met with childish aspersions of blame and responsibility: readers get flack, consumers get flack, reviewers get flack, and even websites...

Allow me to offer some clarification about the Joystiq piece, because some people seem to be under the impression that I think that the problem is that Justin used humour in his games coverage. That’s not the case at all. The problem I have is with filler material that serves zero purpose. The “discovery” that a Nintendo 3DS game cannot and will not work in a Nintendo DSi is, I...

Tumblr’s been acting all manner of screwy these last few days. It’s mainly been affecting things behind the scenes - the site hangs in my browser now every time I go to add a tag, which makes the process of actually getting a post on the site take almost twice as long - but today I’ve been experiencing a number of “redirect loop” errors. The guys at Tumblr apparently...

Because it's the sort of thing that has to be done... →

It’s the sort of question virtually nobody is asking, and with good reason - mentally we already know the answer. Nothing happens. At all. But perhaps most insulting is this: we’ve got a detailed walkthrough of exactly what happened after the break. Seeing that on the RSS feed, you’d think “Detailed, eh? Must be a pretty hefty read, considering it’s such a...

[SUBMISSION] The Wii is history to EA... but only... →

Reader-submitted content follows: From Kotaku: EA Games boss Frank Gibeau has called the Wii a “legacy platform”. In other words, an old console. Something that goes next to the PS2 section. Ouch. As a Nintendo fan you get used to people bashing your system at every level of the industry but imagine my surprise when I clicked the source article and the headline was EA Hints at Wii 2, Says...

Apparently the Large Hadron Collider might be the world’s first time machine, capable of sending messages back in time. Fascinating stuff, but until they take that concept and implement it in Large Hadron Collider: The Game, I don’t really expect to see this kind of thing reported on a gaming blog. Except it’s Kotaku we’re talking about, so… yeah, this sort of thing...

Bashcraft would like to remind you that Japanese... →

Look! Look at how brilliant this is! Sony and Nintendo inevitably find their way over to other countries, but this obscure piece of Japanese culture is clearly superior because they donated far more money to rescue efforts! Isn’t Japanese culture brilliant? I bet Bashcraft could go on and on and on and on and on about how utterly fab Japan is. This kind of posturing about who’s...

[SUBMISSION] THQ Stock Price Down 25% because of... →

Reader-submitted content follows: The 7-10 scale isn’t just harmful to the consumer, it also means that companies are sent to die for failing to deliver on an ever-shrinking target for quality. Reviewers have helped to create a marketplace where “good, not great” and “somewhat above average” are both damning statements that can sink a $30-million project. Then these...

Anonymous asked: Don't you think that if IGN's readers felt deceived, they'd stop reading IGN? Don't you think that if IGN was really the fountain of deception you portray it as, it wouldn't be the biggest game site on the web?

Anonymous asked: So your argument is "no you're wrong for assuming" when you're assuming? Again, do you have any empirical evidence that ANYONE has wasted money because of a 7/10 on IGN? That'd be a lot more effective than your straw man arguments.

Anonymous asked: Do you have any empirical evidence that readers are spending that much money based simply on IGN 7/10s, or are you just drawing assumptions? Because it seems a little odd to me that you think somebody is dumb enough to buy a game based on nothing but a "7/10" without doing a single iota of research or external reading. I imagine most readers - even the ones who might not know a lot about...

A question I get asked rather often is “Can you recommend some good gaming sites?”, and the answer to that question is forthcoming in an FAQ I’m currently working on. I should hopefully be posting it some time in the next couple of weeks, barring incident.

hedonistoic asked: I'd just like to say that I'm a casual gamer, so I maybe get 2-3 new games a year. this means that I rarely buy games I don't know about, but when it does come to games that I don't know anything about I will see what reviews it has received. Now, not being a avid gamer I rarely ever read gaming website do when I do go to a website I expect to see a standard system of scoring...