It’s been a long time coming, but Kotaku have made a version of their site that features gaming news exclusively - Kotaku Core. Finally, a version of the site that doesn’t bombard you with irrelevant bullshit about Japan, or medical science, or whatever!
Still, our good friend Stephen Totilo appears to have absolutely no idea why people have been asking for this very thing. In the post announcing Kotaku Core, Totes writes:
Kotaku Core readers will only see stories about video games themselves. You won’t see stories about the culture surrounding video games. You’ll see more stories about products, fewer stories about people; more stories about what a game company wants to sell you next, fewer feature stories, fewer stories about crime, politics, life and death.
Right, yeah, no. Look, people weren’t complaining about the posts that looked at game culture. Those are fine. I don’t have a problem with those. It’s posts like this one about a man who died kind-of sort-of near an arcade in Japan, or this one about a man trying to hold up a Toys R Us with two plastic lightsabers, or this one about Alec Baldwin using Twitter. These posts have nothing to do with gamer culture. You’d have to have suffered serious cranial trauma to think that posts like these somehow relate to videogames.
(The first person who suggests the lightsaber thing should get a pass because there have been Star Wars games gets a free umbrellenema, which is exactly what it sounds like.)
Congratulations on finally doing the right thing, Kotaku, but a sincere, wholehearted Fuck You for entirely missing the point of why people have been asking for it.
Kotaku: “32-Year-Old Homeless Man Found Dead Outside Japanese Arcade”, January 4th, 2012
It is terrible that a person died, and it’s certainly even more unfortunate that they were homeless, but the sheer coincidence that their passing occurred within a mile of a Japanese videogame arcade does NOT equal an automatic, relevant post for a gaming
blogtabloid.Not only does this article have not a goddamned thing to do with gaming, the games industry or “gamer culture” (is that really even a thing anymore?), but as a commenter pointed out on this unrelated GameJournos post the other day, the one Kotaku visitor who managed the courage to speak out against this story was subsequently and swiftly met with vitriol and backlash from the readership hivemind who, no doubt, are the very reason this kind of shit is still accepted as appropriate coverage.
Were you under the delusion that Kotaku would, in any way, become less shit than it was under the watchful eye of new Editor-in-Chief, Stephen Totilo? Boy, don’t you feel embarrassed.
(OK, to be fair, it was probably misguided the think any change whatsoever would come in the first couple of weeks — it’ll likely be many months before we see any noticeable differences, if they’re coming — but still. Way to kick off the new year, Bashcraft.)
I am genuinely worried about Bashcraft’s obsession with Japanese erotica.
Hooked Gamers, Mark Barkley: Microsoft Unveils New Xbox 360 SKU [Dec 27th, 2011]
Oh no! Microsoft have opted not to include a costly accessory in a new bundle for a territory in which the console has traditionally performed exceptionally poorly! This is shocking news! I am genuinely surprised!
![Kotaku, Stephen Totilo: Super Mario Bros. 2 Was a Tiny, Tiny Influence on Super Mario 3D Land [November 22nd, 2011]
This whole thing is hilarious, from the poorly-researched body to the “update” at the bottom. Exactly what point do you think it proves, Totilo? Because whatever point you think you’re making, I’m not seeing it.
Totilo asked me at E3 this year, a slight emotional quiver in his voice, if he looks incompetent to me, if what he was doing looks incompetent. I look at posts like this, Stephen, and I can only think… yes. You do.
[Thanks to @LiquidPenguins for pointing this to me via the Something Awful forums.]](http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lv3al9DZst1qaim7mo1_500.png)
Kotaku, Stephen Totilo: Super Mario Bros. 2 Was a Tiny, Tiny Influence on Super Mario 3D Land [November 22nd, 2011]
This whole thing is hilarious, from the poorly-researched body to the “update” at the bottom. Exactly what point do you think it proves, Totilo? Because whatever point you think you’re making, I’m not seeing it.
Totilo asked me at E3 this year, a slight emotional quiver in his voice, if he looks incompetent to me, if what he was doing looks incompetent. I look at posts like this, Stephen, and I can only think… yes. You do.
[Thanks to @LiquidPenguins for pointing this to me via the Something Awful forums.]
Brian Ashcraft: Asking the difficult questions, and then answering them in the first sentence of his own goddamn article.
It’s difficult to take anything Kotaku has to say about Dead Island’s “Feminist Whore” thing seriously when hours ago they posted a photo gallery of Japanese women licking door knobs.
Although that may explain why their coverage of the news is limited to a “matter of fact” news post with none of their customary editorializing.
Spend any time in a major Japanese urban center and you’ll see him: the silver-haired, lab coat-wearing mascot for the Akahige Pharmacy. This ain’t your typical pharmacy. That’s okay, because Senran Kagura isn’t your typical game.
The female characters in the 3DS game have giant breasts.
—Kotaku, Brian Ashcraft: When You Need Help Getting It Up [July 4th, 2011]
Wow, a videogame with giant breasts in it? Unheard of!
Kotaku, Brian Ashcraft: The Bomb Threat Sent from a PlayStation 3 [June 24th, 2011]
Firstly, this quote can be parsed down to “this incorrect statement is incorrect”, which is fucking redundant.
Secondly, Bashcraft has reached this conclusion based on the three examples he gives - the first, a 19 year-old boy who used his PlayStation 3 to post an online threat to bomb the Hiroshima railway station; the second, a 15 year-old boy who threatened to go on a random stabbing spree in Shinjuku train station by making a post via his Nintendo DSi; and the third, a 19 year-old who made the same threat as the 15 year-old who, interestingly, was the aforementioned 15 year-old’s brother.
Three people, I’m sure you’ll agree, does not an adequate sample size make.
What Bashcraft is doing here is making a blanket assumption about the people of a nation based on the actions of two people. Some people might be inclined to refer to such an attitude as “racist” - indeed, it’s not a stone’s throw away from assuming that black people are all muggers and thieves, or each and every American is a fat, self-involved arsehole.
I’ve decried Bashcraft’s previous posts about Japan as “dimishing diminishing” the country’s achievements by fetishizing its more bizarre cultural aspects, but this is the first post he’s made that is outright incendiary. Bashcraft should be ashamed for writing it, and Kotaku should be ashamed for publishing it.
[Corrected minor typos.]
Kotaku, Brian Ashcraft: The Highs of Zelda, the Disappointment of 3D [June 19th, 2011]
Yeah! Why the fuck would Nintendo want to bring new, unique ways of playing games to customers? I mean, it’s not like it sets them apart from the competition or anything.
It may come of no surprise to you to learn that this article starts off by talking about a Japanese idol who bought Ocarina of Time 3D. Bashcraft has a formula, and he daren’t deviate from it.
Every time Kotaku mentions the Japanese earthquake they seem to do it in such a distasteful manner that it achieves the impossible and actually lowers my opinion of the website as a whole. People have died, a rabbit was born near the Fukushima nuclear power plant without ears which has raised concerns about the actual levels of radiation released by the plant back in March, but none of that shit really matters because some Pokémon branded noodles now have to use slightly different ingredients.
For fuck’s sake, Bashcraft. Spend fifteen minutes just looking at yourself and the work you produce. By placing a magnifying glass on these aspects of Japanese culture you aren’t simply sharing something about a foreign land to those who live elsewhere. You’re fetishizing it, placing a distorted emphasis on niche aspects of the culture, in turn feeding the stereotype that Japan has nothing to offer but vending machines selling used knickers, giant robot statues, and models doing incomprehensibly bizarre things. By writing about these things, occasionally remembering to write about something else like spring blossoms (as if no other country in the world has trees that turn pink in the spring), you diminish the other things Japan has accomplished, that the country has to offer. Your work is the equivalent of a Women’s Rights blog that devotes 95% of its content to how big Shadi Sadr’s tits are.
Personally I think there is no greater insult to a country you claim to love so much.
