Game Journalism Fart Sound: 2012 Edition

The only time Leigh Alexander was funny was when she drunkenly said Activision paid $775,000,000 to rent out the Staples Center on the 2010 E3 Bombcast.

And flashed everyone watching the live stream.

Well to be honest if you are watching the Bombers on video you've already seen worse horrors.

The funniest thing about that whole "three quarters of a hoojillion dollars" episode was actually watching/hearing the other podcast people first peer through their own haze of alcohol to make sure that it was indeed a ludicrous statement, then tactfully try to get her to back down from it. Well, some of them.

Edit: Just watched the clip again on YouTube and I forgot how funny "I declare that to be an illegal amount of money!" was. I really should work that phrase into more conversations.

I think she's making fun of Robert Scoble?

She did one on how to be a video game journalist earlier on that was better.

Is there a new movement of silicon valley tech-hipsters trying to launch game companies much as they would web 2.0 companies like BLERGSTR♥ that I'm not aware of? Maybe via Kickstarter or on iOS? Because that's what I guessed the target was.

More like eSports fart sound 2013. The editorial by Evan at PCG linked below is pretty good.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/01/16/editorial-does-esports-understand-journalism/

I wish I could say I am shocked, surprised, or even mildly taken aback.

I hadn't heard about the leaks (and gee, wouldn't it be nice if there was some way for PC Gamer to link to those articles or something? oh, if only that was possible) but yes, one team claiming that journalists shouldn't break stories ahead of them because it costs them potential advertising / eyeball-based revenue is an interesting defence.

As someone who followed pro SC2 for a while, you should not expect anything coherent to come out of the mouth of Greg "Idra" Fields or Geoff "InControl" Robinson. InControl also loves to go off on people (Slasher in particular), so I wouldn't take this as a statement of EG's management.

They were accompanied by the EG ceo and argued along the same lines as him. So you propably should.

I must have missed something:

Why are these guys opinions important? Cos they play a lot of SC2? Fuck em in the ear

They're made important by the large amount of gamers who follow them due to their skill in playing. Much like athletes this often doesn't translate into actually knowing shit but provides them with lots of opportunities to share their opinions nonetheless.

For instance, while the editorial Adam linked is absolutely in the right about the situation, I'd be amazed if it had more views than the cast it criticized.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...rs_Guild_video_game_nominees.php#.UPhNWyfoQy4

Yeah...the WGA seems to be a bit of a joke.

Jesus, yeah. And this was actually a pretty damn good year for video game writing!

What.

Aren't these the awards where you're only eligible to be nominated if you're a subscription-paying member?

Yeah, which is why they tend to always be shite.

I don't know about the other titles, but I do know that 007 Legends was written by a guy that's actually a member of the WGA. Pretty shady.

Yeah, I guess the above might make sense then.

It's the gaming industries version of "Who's Who Among American High School Students."

Some guy pretends he's working at Microsoft and contacts several websites to give them information about the next Xbox. They bite : http://x-surface.tumblr.com/post/41282771026/x-surface-dont-believe-everything-you-read

Everyone who's interested in this kind of thing should read Ryan Holiday's Trust Me, I'm Lying about stupidly easy it can be for a PR person to manipulate a story by getting published in lower order blogs that in turn are used as sources for blogs and news sites all the way up the chain.

And he's absolutely correct in that a lot of people are very happy to keep it working like that, because all that's important are ad revenue and eyeballs.

The first site that ran with it, Pocket-Link.com, which I've sure as hell never heard of before, is a little pissy.

They added this to their original story.

We're not the only ones that are dumbshits!

We end most stories with 'this may be a load of crap'. That way we never have to actually double-check anything.

And even more we like to publish rumours and hearsay, cos it gets sweet, sweet clicks!

Guys. Guys. The real victim here? It's you. And that ... that's the saddest part of all. D;

If you can't trust anonymous tips on the internet, who CAN you trust?