Totally Not Corrupt Professional Objective Gaming Journalism DRAMA

[Dexter]

How do people not see what shills PAR and Polygon are? I mean, they can recognise that all the others are shills, but somehow they don't recognise the shilling when PAR and Polygon do the exact same fucking thing?

They have changing review scores:
http://www.polygon.com/2013/3/4/4051444/simcity-review
http://www.polygon.com/2013/10/29/5040656/battlefield-4-review

Review consoles and give them scores:
http://www.polygon.com/a/ps4-review
http://www.polygon.com/a/xbox-one-review

They are making documentaries about themselves with $750.000 offered by Microsoft, which is obviously not bribe money:

Spoiler

And have hard-hitting Editorials:
http://www.polygon.com/features/2013/5/24/4341042/the-queer-games-scene

Spoiler

Anthropy is perhaps the most well-known of these alternative voices. Her numerous critically acclaimed games — such as Mighty Jill Off, Calamity Annie, Lesbian Spider Queens of Mars and, more recently, the autobiographical Dys4ia — often repurpose traditional game mechanics in unique and provocative ways. "I'm really good at luring gamer nerds in, then surprising them with a discussion about gender," she says with a sly smile. "I think making things that look like video games and play like video games and are very 'video gamey' video games is a really good way to trick people into becoming more enlightened, educated human beings."

http://www.polygon.com/features/2013/12/2/5143856/no-girls-allowed

They're really, really special and awesome.
http://www.accelerated-ideas.com/ne...gon--the-worst-gaming-journalists-around.aspx

 

[Night Goat]

Spoiler

She looks like she's been luring nerds in and eating them.

 

[Average Manatee]

wat

wat

 

[Tehdagah]

I will miss the time when the videogame media had no politicians trying to push their agenda.

 

[DalekFlay]

Poor Ben Kuchera, maybe he will stop writing about games now. We can only hope.

And yeah Polygon is the Jezebel of gaming.

 

[retardation]

The Guardian joins the small-dicked gaming journalists' quest to turn West into a gay version of Sudan:

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/gamesblog/2013/dec/06/ryse-breasts-video-games-physics

 

[PlanHex]

"At one place I worked, the breast physics went totally out of control. We put the game on a 'soak test' - where we'd leave it running overnight to see if it remained stable. When we came back in the morning the breasts were literally as big as the entire world."

They should have just released the game right then, they'd have been swimming in money!

 

[Tommers]

It's ok, games journalism has evolved.

http://www.objectivegamereviews.com/gone-home-review/

It's all going to be OK.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Objectivereviewgames? Sounds like Truth of Arstotzka or whatever. You know, the sites or medium that call themself real, honest or competetive and truth is - they're another cog in gaem jurnalizm machine, another clown in the circus.

 

[Multiple Sarcasm]

Genre | Adventure, Interactive Fiction, Art

First four words, and the reader already knows all he needs to know about the game. Eat your hearts out, Codexian reviews.

 

[J_C]

Obviously if you call yourself *objective*game reviews, than you must be objective. There is no such think as objective game reviews, as people have different preferences, and like different things about a game. The only objective things are the obvious bugs.

 

[Hobo Elf]

I can't wait for Art to become a mainstream video game genre used by all. And you know it's coming. This way devs can make pure shit without any kind of effort and just say it's 2deep4u art. The simians will love it.

 

[Multiple Sarcasm]

Obviously if you call yourself *objective*game reviews, than you must be objective.

Graphics: 3D
Sound: 5.1
Gameplay: Yes

Score: Game / Game

 

[J_C]

I can't wait for Art to become a mainstream video game genre used by all. And you know it's coming. This way devs can make pure shit without any kind of effort and just say it's 2deep4u art. The simians will love it.

It is already here.

 

[Brzęczyszczykiewicz]

I can't wait for Art to become a mainstream video game genre used by all. And you know it's coming. This way devs can make pure shit without any kind of effort and just say it's 2deep4u art. The simians will love it.

Gone home already won some awards.

 

[Hormalakh]

This thread's conclusions are something I suspect most of us have felt for a very long time and have known with certainty almost as long.

As amusing as the corrupt failures of journalism are, the real question is what to do as a result of this knowledge. Do we continue ignoring gaming news sites and only being aware of products other Codexers mention? Do you start your own game review site to get free vacations? etc.

you pirate the game. play it. if you think it's worthy, you buy it.

you do this until games become decently good or they start making demos again.

 

[Hobo Elf]

I can't wait for Art to become a mainstream video game genre used by all. And you know it's coming. This way devs can make pure shit without any kind of effort and just say it's 2deep4u art. The simians will love it.

It is already here.

It's not already here until I can go to the store and buy Art games from the Art shelf next to the Action games shelf. This is still very much just something labelled by a few pretentious indie devs, artfags and "journalists". I'm talking about giants like EA producing and making "Art games".

 

[Zewp]

But but but! Aren't all games art?

Spoiler

 

[Gragt]

But but but! Aren't all games art?

Spoiler

I wouldn't have a problem calling all games art. There is good and bad art after all.

 

[Tommers]

Everybody does know this site is a pisstake yeah?

 

[Brzęczyszczykiewicz]

After the first instance, a Reaper tells the player that the Reaper plan is incomprehensible to humans. At the end of Mass Effect 3 the player can comprehend the Reaper’s plan by engaging in dialog with a character.

 

[Spectacle]

After the first instance, a Reaper tells the player that the Reaper plan is incomprehensible to humans. At the end of Mass Effect 3 the player can comprehend the Reaper’s plan by engaging in dialog with a character.

The ME story could have been so much better if they had kept the Reapers as Lovecraftian monstrosities. Nobody ever wonders or cares what Chutulhu's motivations are. It's pretty damn obvious that they were just making this shit up as they went along, with no real story outline.

 

[Zewp]

Well, I don't think the original idea was to make a game past the first one. On its own, the first provided a pretty conclusive ending to the reaper saga. Sovereign was dead so he couldn't awaken his reaper brethren. but then EA saw money so Bioware had to derp a way into getting the reapers to return anyway.

 

[Jick Magger]

The ME story could have been so much better if they had kept the Reapers as Lovecraftian monstrosities. Nobody ever wonders or cares what Cthulhu's motivations are. It's pretty damn obvious that they were just making this shit up as they went along, with no real story outline.

This is kind of the problem when you introduce lovecraftian monstrosities to be your overarching big-bad in a series of stories. H.P. Lovecraft never really intended for Cthulhu to be more than a monster of the week in one of his short stories, and thus decided to play fast and loose with its motivations. Because honestly, nobody really cares too much about the motivations of the monster in a one-off horror story; nobody ever criticised John Carpenter for not explaining The Thing or Michael Myer's motivations, and the latter actually was actually diminished as a character when they did decide to explain it in Halloween 2 and Rob Zombie's reboot.

When you're dealing with a series of stories, all of which are connected and follow the same characters, then you'll essentially be shoving that question in their faces over and over and over again to the point where you'll basically have to answer it at some point down the line. You're basically setting yourself up to fail.

 

[Grunker]

But but but! Aren't all games art?

Spoiler

I wouldn't have a problem calling all games art. There is good and bad art after all.

The discussion is irrelevant anyway. Is Papers, Please an awesome experience with thematic relevance and technical brilliance? Yes. OK. Then who the fuck cares what you call it?

It's that whole "what is an RPG?" discussion over again. I dunno. Never did know. I just know I like games with stats and tactical combat and maybe some exploration and cool dialogue that the world reacts to. Maybe you like something else.

Broad definitions for anything is relevant, but ultimately the question isn't "are games art?" but "should gaming be taken seriously?" When 99% of what gaming produces is juvenile bullshit, I'd say the answer is pretty obvious. Not that that matters to my personal enjoyment of the medium.