Hey, uh, has this ever happened? (McElroy: GAF has actively tried to fool the press)

It IS why I follow Game|Life more than Joystiq or Kotaku. I was kind of put off by the childish Metroid Prime 3 lacking online story, and seeing his other crap along with finding out he is ALSO the dance-with-Skyrim guy really make me glad I didn't put too much stock in Joystiq over the years, and Kotaku... I mainly just didn't like they apparently ran with a giant MGS4 spoiler before release along with some other questionable stories, but they definitely have some good writers.
 
blame space said:
reviews are there to make a reviewer's experience known, not to guide a potential purchase.
Click to expand...

It's more complicated than that.

You wouldn't say that of a consumer report on a vaccum cleaner, for example.

The problem is game reviews contain two components: consumer product review and criticism and videogames are one of the only products that have both elements.

For instance, there is no real need for a consumer product review of a film or a music CD because it obviously works as expected. They don't typically have errors or glitches or usability issues.

Meanwhile most people don't need or want a reflective, subjective perspective on alarm clocks or vaccuum cleaners. They want an objective report on functionality.

Games are the one area where both of these types of reviews are in play, though. In my opinion, a good game writer probably has to keep both in mind (though not necessarily weigh both equally) when reviewing games.
 
I think posting that GIF and video repeatedly is poor form, you guys. Its clearly a bit.
 
blame space said:
right but how does a reviewer review that when they aren't given access to it, or don't even necessarily care about it?
Click to expand...

Like I said, it should raise suspicion if a certain version isn't provided, even when requested. Which should have at least been mentioned along with the reviews.
 
Mama Robotnik said:
Thanks for that, I've quickly whipped up an extended GIF in case anyone tries to play the out-of-context card again.

iENEbhX0FdkFF.gif


All the more infuriating that he's championing a game that was unplayable for PS3 owners and sold using misleading reviews based on 360 code. Such disgusting sycophancy. If gaming "journalists" had done their fucking job properly, reviews would have informed purchasers of Bethesda's scandalous behaviour. Instead they awarded the company a veritable orgy of GOTY awards.

That criticism is admittedly aimed at the games journalism field at large rather than this one fellow, but his dancing with the game is indicative of such problems.
Click to expand...
Yeah, he should have looked a month into the future to discover that the PS3 version would have problems post-launch and shot a video of himself breaking Blu-ray discs in honor of PS3 gamers instead of spending five minutes shooting a video with the 360 version designed to make people laugh.
 
I have ruminated upon this and decided thusly:

The length and venom of this thread are not a statement about the members of GAF, as some are saying, nor is it necessarily a statement about what an ass McElroy is.

I think that many of us are very frustrated with both the industry and in turn, the people who cover the industry. When something like this happens, all that frustration comes to the forefront.
 
Glix said:
I have ruminated upon this and decided thusly:

The length and venom of this thread are not a statement about the members of GAF, as some are saying, nor is it necessarily a statement about what an ass McElroy is.

I think that many of us are very frustrated with both the industry and in turn, the people who cover the industry. When something like this happens, all that frustration comes to the forefront.
Click to expand...
It's something nearly everyone has an opinion on and on a forum as big as GAF, any thread with a broad enough topic will blow up to 10 pages in no time.
 
Yep. Blame it on GAF. When you spend most of your time getting rumors from GAF, you have every right to blame GAF when some of them are bound to be joke posts, right? What's funny is that if they read the posts following the rumor, most of us would already call it bullshit and laugh at the idea that it will get picked by some website, only to watch it happen.
 
This whole situation makes me feel sad for the actual games journalist, and the enthusiast journalist here on GAF.
 
Melchiah said:
Like I said, it should raise suspicion if a certain version isn't provided, even when requested. Which should have at least been mentioned along with the reviews.
Click to expand...

Back when I reviewed Arkham City I requested the 360 version for review. They gave me the PS3 version instead. I guess I should have assumed that there might have been something wrong with the 360 version and stated it in my review.
(yeah I know Arkham City came out before Skyrim)

ReturnOfTheRAT said:
A wedding band? someone puts up with him when comes home?
Click to expand...

He's probably a decent guy when he isn't playing the fool online.
 
Does anyone remember when CheapyD challenged a listener to come up with a fake rumour and get it picked up by the blogs?

6sQmi.jpg


Now those were good times.
 
firehawk12 said:
Does anyone remember when CheapyD challenged a listener to come up with a fake rumour and get it picked up by the blogs?

6sQmi.jpg


Now those were good times.
Click to expand...

Those were good times. Kotaku got really, really pissed off and blamed CAG and said they trusted the site to post credible news, even though it was just on some user blog.
 
PK Rockin.' Wow, this is my first taste of Mr. McElroy's "professionalism." Class act and glad to know to just avoid his pieces from here on out. And I always wondered what the origin of "goofy spinning dude with game gif" was, SMH. Blaming GAF for crappy game "journalism" and it's our fault when they farm forums for rumours, riiiight.

I met Patrick ten years ago at E3 2002 in front of one of the Mario Sunshine demo booths when he was still eXxy on GAF and we chatted about the game a bit, nice guy all around.
 
Honestly - as a member of the Dev community for more than 6 years - I trust in GAF's collective opinion more then any game journalist...

That said - Klepick and Giant Bomb as a whole do awesome work.... Top of the class IMO.
 
I saw Justin tweeting about Gaf earlier today or yesterday, and it does bother me. So, I have always liked the McElroys, I think they're funny, I like and respect their reviews, and I think they cut through a lot of the unfair bull shit in the industry. I also think that they're willing to let themselves be gamers, and like games, and get excited over games. People post the thing with Justin and Skyrim spinning, but that's unfair... he did it himself for that reason, and it was funny and silly, and fuck it, I was that excited about Skyrim too.

SO. This all being said, I really like all of the McElroy brothers, I follow them, listen to their podcasts, and enjoy reading them.

BUT.

Justin makes me mad with how he criticizes NeoGaf, mostly because he treats Gaf like it's a forum of idiots or like we're the IGN Off Topic forum or something. Here's why I've liked Justin: Because he's most like a Gaf poster on a major videogames website. Gaf posters are way more intelligent than the average videogame commenter on any website, we have great original discussions, and, fuck, news breaks here first.

But, what really bothers me, is that back six months ago or so, Justin was posting anti-gaf things on Twitter which, whatever, it happens, but at the same time, his cohorts at Joystiq were very obviously just running articles sourced from Gaf. Or, there was one layer of websites breaking it up. Basically, Gaf would have a news story and like 6 hours later, Joystiq would run basically the same thing. Now, Justin was on his way out at Joystiq, but it still soured me.

So, I like Justin McElroy and his brothers, I enjoy what they do, but I think he just shouldn't comment about NeoGaf because he's entirely wrong whenever he says anything about this place, and basically, almost all of his videogame news comes from this forum. I also resent his criticisms of Gaf posters, or things like "I wouldn't say anything if I couldn't show my life's accomplishments without a Battlenet authentication." Like, I'm a pretty successful person, I have great things in life, a great career, seriously good job, basically everything I could want, but I also like playing videogames and even commenting on a videogame forum. He has a job because of the passion of people like me, not to mention that his websites gets most of their news from the people on this forum, so it irks me when he resents successful videogame fans simply because we post on a forum... And, especially, a forum that happens to be the best videogame website on the internet.
 
Mama Robotnik said:
Thanks for that, I've quickly whipped up an extended GIF in case anyone tries to play the out-of-context card again.

iENEbhX0FdkFF.gif


All the more infuriating that he's championing a game that was unplayable for PS3 owners and sold using misleading reviews based on 360 code. Such disgusting sycophancy. If gaming "journalists" had done their fucking job properly, reviews would have informed purchasers of Bethesda's scandalous behaviour. Instead they awarded the company a veritable orgy of GOTY awards.

That criticism is admittedly aimed at the games journalism field at large rather than this one fellow, but his dancing with the game is indicative of such problems.
Click to expand...

It was a joke. I don't see why people here can't understand that. I thought it was hilarious when he did it because, hell, I wanted to do the same thing I was so excited for Skyrim. I like that Justin McElroy lets himself be a gamer, and it's a shame that so many people get mad at him for that.
 
This thread has been caught in an ouroboric loop of idiocy since the gent from The Verge came in and posted about how he did do some modicum of research on the supposedly leaked MS presentation.

There has been literally nothing new added to it since that point, and the folks posting in McElroy's defense would do good to read through the whole thing from the beginning rather than adding the same short-sighted childish comments that've been repeated ad nauseum since the start.

And I've only made it worse in making this post. UGH.
 
Mama Robotnik said:
Thanks for that, I've quickly whipped up an extended GIF in case anyone tries to play the out-of-context card again.

iENEbhX0FdkFF.gif


All the more infuriating that he's championing a game that was unplayable for PS3 owners and sold using misleading reviews based on 360 code. Such disgusting sycophancy. If gaming "journalists" had done their fucking job properly, reviews would have informed purchasers of Bethesda's scandalous behaviour. Instead they awarded the company a veritable orgy of GOTY awards.

That criticism is admittedly aimed at the games journalism field at large rather than this one fellow, but his dancing with the game is indicative of such problems.
Click to expand...

That video came out before the PS3 issues had been exposed. How is he supposed to know, upon first receiving his own copy of the game, that the PS3 version would have framerate problems after dozens of hours played? C'mon son.

The video is nothing more than the culmination of a running joke at how everyone was so hyped for Skyrim, especially Justin. I used to listen to the Joystiq podcast a lot so I got it immediately. I thought it was hilarious.

But ffs even if he was 100% serious you still need to settle down. my god.
 
As someone who works at a well respected game website, I find it ridiculous that McElroy is making such baseless accusations. There are more interesting things to tweet about, like the recently revealed "PlaystioNext" console leaks.
Not to derail, but omg able to stream pc games!!
 
Wario64 deserves a bigger paycheck by the verge/polygon than his 6 polygon followers.

The amount of blog post generated from GAF by these gaming blogs are astounding. They get paid to read GAF.
 
EmCeeGramr said:
I have always wondered why so many writers for the industry have such... contempt for the people who share their interests. I mean, yeah, there's a lot of nasty subcommunities and unfortunate examples of stereotypes come to life on the internet. Duh.

But there's this air of superiority that a lot of them seem to have, where anybody who uses the magical entity known as "The Internet" (which is definitely not same as the internet they make their livings on and use to communicate their thoughts every day) is beneath them and can be disregarded as ignorant rabble.
Click to expand...
It's not just writers for the gaming industry.
 
I wouldn't expect a real journalist to take something from an internet forum and repost it without verifying it, or, if they did so, to then blame the forum for the loss of their own credibility.

I would expect a gaming forum to go bananas over a 500 page Microsoft document. Some posters called fake, some didn't, some wrote some funny stuff, some didn't. They are hobbyists, not acting in a professional capacity.
 
Mama Robotnik said:
Thanks for that, I've quickly whipped up an extended GIF in case anyone tries to play the out-of-context card again.

iENEbhX0FdkFF.gif


All the more infuriating that he's championing a game that was unplayable for PS3 owners and sold using misleading reviews based on 360 code. Such disgusting sycophancy. If gaming "journalists" had done their fucking job properly, reviews would have informed purchasers of Bethesda's scandalous behaviour. Instead they awarded the company a veritable orgy of GOTY awards.

That criticism is admittedly aimed at the games journalism field at large rather than this one fellow, but his dancing with the game is indicative of such problems.
Click to expand...
Except you've taken it out of context again by ommiting the ending, where it becomes glaringly obvious this video is a joke. I don't see how anyone could listen to him say "goodbye forever" at the end and still believe the whole thing was done in earnest.
 
Oblivion said:
So who's the video game industry equivalent of Bob Woodward?
Click to expand...

It's a good question. One I don't have an answer to, unfortunately. I can paint the wall with names of "lol game journalism" types, but when asked for the opposite, I don't have an answer. I think the environment that these guys work in actively discourages it. Also, they're more critics than journalists.

Instead of the circle jerking we've got going in this thread, perhaps we could get one going on who GAF's favorite critics are. A place people can go to see who "does it correctly." Encouraging that could be far more productive than discouraging this.

Or not. I dunno.
 
PepsimanVsJoe said:
Back when I reviewed Arkham City I requested the 360 version for review. They gave me the PS3 version instead. I guess I should have assumed that there might have been something wrong with the 360 version and stated it in my review.
(yeah I know Arkham City came out before Skyrim)
Click to expand...

Well, haven't Bethesda's PS3 versions often been somewhat shoddy (eg. Fallout)? Which is probably why some reviewers asked for the PS3 version. There wasn't any reason to suspect Arkham City would have ran poorly on 360.
 
FollowSmoke said:
It's a good question. One I don't have an answer to, unfortunately. I can paint the wall with names of "lol game journalism" types, but when asked for the opposite, I don't have an answer. I think the environment that these guys work in actively discourages it. Also, they're more critics than journalists.

Instead of the circle jerking we've got going in this thread, perhaps we could get one going on who GAF's favorite critics are. A place people can go to see who "does it correctly." Encouraging that could be far more productive than discouraging this.

Or not. I dunno.
Click to expand...

I think this thread has established that Klepek is really the only legitimate investigative games journalist.
 
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