Kotaku and Polygon admit shady practices

Source: http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Polygon-Kotaku-Revise-Their-Policies-Amidst-Controversy-66962.html

 

Hmm, very interesting. Though they both seem to be in the wrong, at least Kotaku is actually disabling writer contributions. Now if only those were the only problems with those sites...

 

The content is still going to be the same ol' clickbait shit and I'm going to keep avoiding those sites, but the very obvious nepotism is apparently gone.............or replaced with less blatantly obvious nepotism.

 

I don't hold most tech journalists in high regard because they end up usually sounding like advertisements. It doesn't help that they also get free swag from the companies they're supposed to report on.

 

Both of these I can agree with. Kotaku gets flak, but Polygon doesn't let you criticize them in their website at all. You have to email them for complaints, and I bet it goes into their spam folder. Reddit is often full of manchildren, and it compromised their message for me. The shitstorm they unleashed over this was sometimes misogynistic, but they had a point about this dilemma.

 

Both of these sites lost credibility a long time ago. It's actually amazing that there's still people checking these for any sort of news or reviews.

 

The problem is that much like SJW don't represent the majority of women the manchildren don't represent the majority of men, but these 2 groups of extremists are loud enough to drown the voices of any dissenters.

As for polygon, I recall a handy-j type article they did basically repeating one of the mass effect devs rant on the muhsogyny of modern games. Apparently this oxygen thief didn't think that a super-sexy-not-at-all-like-real-women-soldiers female model for shepard that could swing both ways and go lezzy since the first game ("no gay shepard CUZ DAT IS FOR FAGS!" was his logic I guess) whose crew included an alien that needed a hazmat suit so they gave her a skin-tight one that really showed her ass, an entire race of blue aliens that look like supermodels and are totally cool with sleeping around, and a robot that can take any form and chooses that of a superhot silver girl with boobs like a pornstar and a cameltoe was totally not offensive to women at all.

I repeat: the guy who built a robot with a cameltoe accused other devs of being misogynistic. The universe can only take so much facepalms before it explodes.

Then again the women who designed moxxi from borderlands critcized dragon's crown character designs. The pot calling the kettle black....

 

Kotaku writers are mentally deficient and Polygon writers have their heads so far up their own asses they're in their chest cavities.

"Ryse sucks because the villains are gay!"

Yes, despite the fact that no relationship interests were portrayed for the bad guys, because they have flamboyant voices (I guess?) they must be gay, and Crytek must be waging war on gay people.

Surprised they haven't gotten that Anita goofball to write for them.

 

This ^^^

 

Hilarious how saying x.com is inferior, when resorting to using language that isn't fit for print on toilet paper.

 

Also relevant

 

I'm sorry but I can't let this stand. Tracey Lien is one of the nicest people in games journalism and I can confirm she does not, in fact, have her head anywhere in the vicinity of her arse.

The rest of them, maybe, but not her, and not some of the other writers I know who've written freelance stuff for Polygon.

 

inb4 someone plays the "but they're bloggers not journalists" car-


...Goddammit.

 

"Wee r bluggrs" is such a cop out. They get all the perks of a journalist and want to dodge the responsibilities.

 

Honestly put, it is rather ridiculous with the amount of swag and other shit given to their staff in general.

I have actually been a writer and an assistant to an editor (and subsequently got roped into doing some tech/IT support for him) with a magazine (well, actually a magazine publisher as I did a few things across a couple of different magazines) and my duties also included writing coinciding web articles for further detail to what I had written for the physical issue. As I've also done some online pieces in the past for video games, I also ended up having to write gaming articles. Particularly for one of the animal magazines, Nintendo provided a few tester copies of the games. These review copies had to be sent back and/or were collected by a rep, anything else (shirts or anything else) ended up getting given to staff with children that weren't involved in that particular issue as it wasn't permitted otherwise.

Editor often got swamped with freebie stuff to the extent that the guy just ended up donating practically all of it or threw it in with the competition prize boxes. The only things I recall taking home were baseball caps or extra bags of dog treats when we were outside doing some photo shoots and that was typically only due to a sponsor of the event we were including coverage on. Even then, the dog treats were also testing to see if my own dogs with sensitive stomachs' could eat it... and my Mother would happily take any baseball caps I ended up with when I went to visit.

Honestly put, I get more enjoyment handling charity articles (or animal rescue) ones from personally volunteering with charities in the past and in any of the articles I've written.... Aside from having a spelling correction the one time, never had to put up with the same sort of shit I got when I used to do pieces on particular games/genres/consoles. It really is quite a clusterfuck.


Overall this and the other drama is essentially all of the parties' involved fault and it's not the first time that interests have clashed in journalism and it won't be the last but it would be nice if it could be so easily fixed but given the track record of journalism in this industry, it likely won't be.

Unless it's an article written by someone I do actually trust, I don't typically read or watch reviews. I may watch some let's play footage to see if I may like a new title but I've avoided reading the majority of reviews or articles (unless it's more or less a decent, informative interview/piece with some of the harder to contact members of the industry), but that's really it.

Given all of this current drama I wouldn't hold any trust in any online journalists at the current time. At best, check company pages. If in doubt, check trademark databases for hints at new things coming. Check regional magazines that have had company special edition magazines (Famitsu x Capcom special editions for instance) as it's outright stating what one should expect. For multiplatform games, check official console magazines for titles that have not been internally developed or are exclusive/timed-exclusive to their platform.

Make them work to prove their actual integrity and to regain (if they can) the respect of the public and if you know of or can confirm some actually clean journalists and the like, recommend them and get them some more coverage.

I really dislike integrity issues, illegal practices abound everywhere. :/ Not just this industry either.

 

Exactly. Wanna get neat press release kits for an upcoming game and get invited to interviews and panels? Journalists! Want to be absolved of responsibility, intellectual honesty, and overall integrity? Bloggers!

 

The irony is that there were laws that dealt with this, for example 20-ish years ago a channel like foxnews would be impossible because there was a law that said all channels and newspapers needed to showcase both sides of the story at all times, which is pretty difficult to do if your MO is being a blatant racist and xenophobic propaganda tower, like foxnews is.

But "muh rights! muh regulashuns!" got it knocked down, along with a bunch of other laws regulating journalistic integrity and media bias.

And dont get me started with the financial industry, that one got a license to kill from the gipper.

 

Oh, I know. I really don't get what the hell has gone on with your various laws over there. It's truly ridiculous when essentially every other place has regulations set in, unions as well. But oh no, can't have any sort of protective form of non-biased regulations going on!

I was studying law (specifically, criminal but was doing an internship at a firm that tended to specialize in other matters) here and despite the entire office being monitored via building security, I was shocked at how much dodgy stuff was going on at the firm. My last straw was when they tried to get out of paying me (or trying to bullshit me that my pay rate was going to be below the legal amount for the state).... Ended up reporting the firm and quit.

My experience in regards to GameStop/EB Games wasn't much better either. Rampant sexism in the store I was at and multiple staff that have now been rehired at other stores found themselves illegally, incorrectly and unfairly dismissed after I bumped into the regional manager for the state and he was confused as to why he hadn't seen me - was under the impression I was on unpaid leave, not told that I was "fired".

I still do IT and retail work. I haven't touched any law related stuff as I'm intending to move to the US and wouldn't really be able to practice over there. So, now I have to get some other qualifications and I'm just avoiding going back into journalism like the plague. I've gotten good feedback from some test fictional horror chapters so maybe I'll stick to writing in other ways.

 

Fine, then how about this:

Every Polygon writer whose articles I have read have had their heads so far up their own asses they're in their chest cavities.

If it makes you feel better, I don't think I've read anything from those dipshits since the Sonic Lost Worlds review ("The final level is too hard, and there's a limit on lives, this sucks." "MOTHERFUCKER DID YOU NEVER GET TO SCRAP BRAIN ZONE AS A KID!?"), so if she's been writing there recently, chances are I've never read anything by her.

 

How is it surprising? these guys are gaming hipsters, they didn't give a shit about gaming until it became trendy, if you go back 5 years they were playing halo and not even knowing what a genesis was. This people basically create their own backstory, anita gave a clear example when she posed with a pile of used X360 games while on another talk admitting she isn't a gamer and didn't know jack shit about gaming until she decided to go with her shtick.

The fact of the matter is that this people are irrelevant, they are not devs, they are not artists, they are not collectors and they sure as hell aren't members of the gaming community, but the reality is that all this noise and manufactured controversy has made many of these losers famous and with fame comes easy money.

Right now there is an article on the verge/polygon defending anita and attacking her detractors (you know, the real gamers who made this industry) but I wont bother to read it, I wont bother to link to it, and I wont even bother to name the idiot who wrote it because he/she doesn't deserves the pageviews, the notoriety, the revenue or even to be talked about.

The best we can do about these assholes is to ignore them until they can no longer profit from this.