I’m a big fan of dancing in many forms. I also really like Harmonix games, so info about the Dance Central line tends to catch my eye. This Kotaku article is titled “On Playing Dance Central 2 While Male”. Now, I expected a bit of ridiculous gender role stereotyping about how silly guys look playing the game, but here’s the first half of the article:
Recently my friend, who for this article we’ll call “Dan,” was over at my apartment for beers and video games. We’d gone through most of the big fall releases—I showed him some craziness from Saints Row: The Third, got across the gist of Catherine, and played some (shockingly fun) split-screen Modern Warfare 3 spec-ops. The Kinect had gotten a go as well, and we’d laughed our way through several levels of Gunstringer and gotten our asses kicked by the surprisingly difficult Child of Eden.
“You know, I’ve got Dance Central 2 here, let’s play that!” I said, pointing to the shiny, colorful box of Harmonix’s Kinect-only dancing game.
“Sure,” Dan said, though in retrospect he was doubtless entirely unsure what he was getting himself into. And so we played Dance Central 2, two dorky bros in the mid-afternoon, standing in front of the TV and swinging our hips to “Toxic” and “Bad Romance.” It was funny, it was dumb; it was uniquely uncomfortable.
After we played for a little while, we took a break to have a beer and Dan remarked to me, “Man, that game is kind of uncomfortable for straight guys!” (I’m paraphrasing—he said it much more thoughtfully than that.)
I agreed, because I knew what he meant—I mean, one plays Dance Central by dancing. It requires an entirely different sort of physical interaction than most other video games. It was as though Dan and I had been sitting around pondering what to do and one of us had said, “You know what? Let’s go dancing together, just you and me!” Suffice to say, that is not something either of us would likely ever suggest. We’re fairly boring.
This was not about being male. This was about being gay. The game made them uncomfortable because as straight men, they shouldn’t be dancing, especially not dancing in the presence of other men.
He goes on to lift quotes from a Gamasutra article (and a very good one, talking about the unique connection the game brings to your sense of identity and self-expression), but never ties it in with the issues of his sexuality that made him uncomfortable in the first place. If he wasn’t shooting something from a car window or doing something else undoubtedly male, he got unsettled because then it was kind of gay. The article is just littered with terminology that supports his straight identity - the games he lists at the beginning (Saint’s Row, MW3, the extremely hetero Catherine), the break after playing Dance Central to have some beers…
Later, he says that he feels uncomfortable about it because he’s “straight-laced” and isn’t prone to expressing himself through dance. And that’s a cool thing that the Gamasutra article hits on. But almost everything in his article that’s not just reviewing his source is instead giving off the impression that dancing is gay.
Read the Gamasutra article, and I think you will see that Kirk Hamilton either missed the point or expressed it really poorly.
I don’t hate Kirk Hamilton - in fact, I don’t hate anyone, despite what you may think - but if he were to fall down the stairs breaking his arms and legs in the process I’d have a tough time feeling sorry for him.
NAS’ response is right on the nose. I wish I’d written it. Nicely done.
MCV says they have informants from both Sony and Microsoft stating that both companies are going to reveal their next consoles during E3 2012.
Just stop for a second; think before you write. Even if you do have exclusive information on consoles that are due to be announced, companies can pull back their announcements at any time if they see it isn’t feasible for the corporation, making you–as a source–look illegitimate for now-untrue rumors.
—QUOTED FOR TRUTH - WouldYouKindly.com, Drew Bergmark: Rumors: Don’t Believe the Hype [January 10th, 2012]
This man knows what he’s talking about.
VG247: “Rumour – Disney Epic Mickey 2 going co-op, multi-platform”, January 3rd, 2012
According to the preserved text, presented in full below, the sequel to the 2010 Wii exclusive is due in northern autumn, will release on PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360, and feature split screen co-op play. The second player will take control of classic Disney character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.
VG247: “Marketing survey suggests Disney’s assessing interest in Epic Mickey 2”, August 27th, 2011
Possible gameplay details listed included optional split-screen co-op with Mickey and Oswald The Lucky Rabbit, and the formats listed for the game were Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360.
CVG: “Epic Mickey 2 going multi-platform with co-op?”, January 3rd, 2012
According to the newsletter Epic Mickey 2 will be “available for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii” and a second player can get in on the action, with the painting ability given to one player and the thinning ability to the other.
CVG: “Disney survey reveals Epic Mickey 2 - report”, August 28th, 2011
According to the report, the game will have a two-player split-screen option with Mickey and his brother Oswald The Lucky Rabbit playable, while Mickey’s paint and thinner powers make a return.
It’s being lined up for release on Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3, claims the source, making no mention of 3DS, Vita or Wii U.
There are a handful of different ways CVG and VG247 could have approached wording this story (just Google it, and see what other sites did last week), and of course they chose the one which makes them continue to look uninformed/oblivious/lazy/incompetent at their jobs.
In the case of VG247 — not linking to, including tags, or acknowledging that they covered the topic half a year ago, and that it featured nearly identical information.
For CVG — wording their headline as an unnecessary question, when the answer is not only present in the source material and thus in the very article itself, but also, again, in their prior coverage from last August.
Sigh. Happy 2012. Off to a great start.
Oh, lord.
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!
CVG: Xbox 720: Why it’s already here [Dec 26th, 2011]
You used a better name right there. “The next Xbox”. Not only is it less shit, it’s… actually, that’s all you need it to be. Less shit.
Please stop using lazy, lazy names for things that haven’t been announced yet, game journalists. Please. This is me, literally begging you to stop being shit, just once, just in this one tiny area. C’mon. It’s Christmas.
N4G seem to think that Examiner.com’s list of 2011’s platform-exclusive games is an opinion piece. Which is a bit silly, isn’t it boys and girls?
Destructoid, Ian Bonds: Review: Mortal Kombat: Arcade Kollection [September 10th, 2011]
This is, in fact, not true - Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 was only made available for the 360. Mortal Kombat II, meanwhile, was released on the PlayStation 3, although like UMK3 it was pulled after Midway went out of business [Edit: I am informed that MKII is still available on the PSN Store, although why at this point is beyond me.] [Edit II: I am also informed it has, in fact, been taken down and I was right in the first place. Vindication!]
How’s your Sunday going, by the way?
![GamePro, McKinley Noble: Is Steam Finally Coming to Microsoft’s Xbox 360? [September 9th, 2011]
It’s takes seven seconds to research this, people. That’s not even seven seconds in a row. That’s accumulative. Come the fuck on.
Update: Just had a brief Twitter conversation with McKinley. He now knows about the 360 support links in the Left 4 Dead/Orange Box manuals for the 360, but he’s decided he’s not going to update the post. He thanked me for the critique, though, which was nice. Isn’t that nice? I think it’s nice.](http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lra93pybdc1qaim7mo1_500.png)
GamePro, McKinley Noble: Is Steam Finally Coming to Microsoft’s Xbox 360? [September 9th, 2011]
It’s takes seven seconds to research this, people. That’s not even seven seconds in a row. That’s accumulative. Come the fuck on.
Update: Just had a brief Twitter conversation with McKinley. He now knows about the 360 support links in the Left 4 Dead/Orange Box manuals for the 360, but he’s decided he’s not going to update the post. He thanked me for the critique, though, which was nice. Isn’t that nice? I think it’s nice.
Destructoid, SixthAxis, Escapist Piss Their Pants Over “XBOX Support” Option on Steam Support Site, Forget That Valve Have Published 360 Games
It’s easy to get carried away, isn’t it? So easy to get carried away that you can forget basic information. Information that should already be floating around with the rest of the random assortment of sewage in one’s head.
“Xeroxeroxero” at The Sixth Axis let him/herself get a little carried away when it was brought to their attention that the Steam Support pages include an “XBOX Support” option on their support page, and Destructoid and The Escapist jumped on the story. Holy shit! Could Steam actually be on its way to the Xbox? Is Gabe Newell’s wet dream of a Steam in every home, a Combine on every television finally coming true?
It looks interesting, until you do about seven seconds’ worth of research.
Steam have five titles out for the 360 - The Orange Box, Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2 and Portal 2, and Portal: Still Alive. Of those titles, four are retail releases with paper manuals. I happen to have L4D for the 360, so on a whim I checked out the game manual to see if it offered any support information.
Sure enough, the very last page of the original, US release of Left 4 Dead includes this little bit of text:
This is in the Left 4 Dead manual, from 2008. 2008, people. If we were to look at the manual for the previous year’s The Orange Box I’d be surprised if we didn’t see it there, too. [Edit: Micah from Blistered Thumbs has confirmed that the same text appears in the manual for The Orange Box on the 360.] For context, the entire page from the L4D manual can be seen here.
A little time and, importantly, common sense, and you can avoid posting fucking ridiculous nonsense bullshit. It’s not too difficult! You can do it! The power is yours! Etc.!
1UP.com, Chris Pereira: Mortal Kombat, Baconing, and Street Fighter Mark a Busy Two Weeks for XBLA [August 23rd, 2011]
I just bought a new car. The dealership threw in a bunch of extras - windows, tyres, a steering wheel…
![semprafi:
CVG: “Gears of War 3 ending revealed by Old Spice Guy?”, July 27th, 2011
Computer & Video Games initially intimates to its readers that, shockingly, the humorous and never serious custom Old Spice ads might have just totally spoiled what happens in Gears of War 3! Oh noez!
Except the ending wasn’t ruined whatsoever, and CVG are fully aware of this — as well as the fact that this article is completely pointless — but decided to proceed with the sensationalist angle anyway, fooling those gullible readers into clicking the story’s link.
Sigh.
If Your Headline Ends with a Question Mark, the Answer is Probably No™
[Corrected minor typos.]](http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lp1f35pptj1qa18woo1_500.jpg)
CVG: “Gears of War 3 ending revealed by Old Spice Guy?”, July 27th, 2011
Computer & Video Games initially intimates to its readers that, shockingly, the humorous and never serious custom Old Spice ads might have just totally spoiled what happens in Gears of War 3! Oh noez!
Except the ending wasn’t ruined whatsoever, and CVG are fully aware of this — as well as the fact that this article is completely pointless — but decided to proceed with the sensationalist angle anyway, fooling those gullible readers into clicking the story’s link.
Sigh.
If Your Headline Ends with a Question Mark, the Answer is Probably No™
[Corrected minor typos.]
VG247: “Report – Xbox Soho working on “family entertainment games”, July 26th, 2011
A source close to Develop has said Microsoft’s Soho outfit in London is working on “family entertainment games”, which are likely for Kinect.
Here we have a breaking report from Develop about a topic that— actually, wait. This isn’t breaking at all, or even relatively “new” unconfirmed information.
Xbox Live Studios Soho’s involvement with unannounced Kinect family/casual experiences was already reported on just prior to E3, by Eurogamer:
Microsoft has set up a London Soho Studio that Eurogamer has been told is hard at work on a Kinect game “aimed at the younger audience”.
This is an industry whisper which VG247 happens to have covered, at the time.
VG247: “Rumour – Microsoft to “serve the hardcore” at E3 with Kinect reveals”, May 17th, 2011
Two new studios have also opened and are working on Kinect titles, according to the site: one in Soho, London and another near Microsoft’s HQ in Redmond, Seattle.
I will give Develop a pass on this, since they rarely fall into the traps we continue to point out, and they didn’t address the original report from May.
But VidyaGaeming24/7 — nope, sorry. Can’t do it. Once again, an article pertaining to a subject already covered on a site is written, without mention or link to past and/or related information.
Are the writers lazy? Do they possess the memory capacity of a goldfish? Do they feel readers don’t/won’t keep track of things? All of the above?
