Kotaku: Go to Hell.

[Marek]

Here's Kotaku's entire post on a recent comment by Will Wright so you don't have to visit their crappy site:

Will Wright: "Scenius." Kotaku: "Go to Hell."

Will Wright is a genius at making games I don't want to play. Someone should slap that blurb on his next Wired cover.

However, I know there's a great deal of awed sighing when Will Wright comes by and talks about his game Spore. I saw it at GC06. I stifled ponderous yawns only looking down the blouse of the bouncing German girl before me.

Anyway, apparently, Will Wright streamed a video of him playing Spore over the internet earlier today, and The Last Boss watched and managed to captue some details of most of it. My favorite thing? This:

Spore patents new gaming word: Scenius - the genius of a group of people

I've slammed Harvard froshes' testicles in door jams for less pretentious portmanteaus than that. Florian Eckhardt

So, basically, a famed designer and an all-star team are working on a game that took balls to even attempt, and which promises to introduce countless innovations and experiments that will push gaming forward. Kotaku's response?

"plz, stop being so pretentious.

Also, I looked at some boobs."

BURNNNNNNN.

I don't know who the person is who wrote that shit but he clearly needs to look in the mirror and admit to not liking video games. The fact that he based the entire post on just one bullet point sentence shows a lot, too. What makes it even more depressing is that he might have gotten paid for writing that post.

Sigh.

[Spaff]

Florian Eckhardt

An annoying tosser with a stupid name to boot. Way stupider than mine for instance, even if fit is easy to take the piss ¬¬

[Moosferatu]

The comments on that post are quality.

[Roderick]

It's easy to understand what happens here: it's a typical anti-reaction to the positive hype surrounding Spore. This sort of thing is very common. It's forgivable, unless you starting posting it like a journalistic truth, in which case you are a tosser.

I've got my own pet peeves through an anti-hype-reaction as well on for instance Final Fantasy 7. I'll not miss a chance to bash it, but at least I've got the selfawareness to understand I'm being a tosser at those times

[Salka]

"So I looked down a girls blouse instead"

Fuck off you little shite.

Spaff made a very good point once, that kotatu is basically the video game version of The Sun...

For Americans who don't know what the Sun is (do you even have Tabloids over there?)... it's basically the Newspaper version of Kotatu...

[Redwall]

Yes, we have tabloids (and I also know what The Sun is), although I'm not aware of anyone who actually reads them. Most of them are about celebrities and aliens anyway.

[gfoot]

Ours are mostly about women's hair blowing in the wind and their puppies dangling in the street.

[Wrestlevania]

“Look at me! Look at me!! LOOK AT ME!!!”

No.

[toblix]

Well, I think Spore looks pretty boring, so I'd probably also choose staring down some lady's cleavage given the choice.

I wouldn't post that on a gaming site, though.

Okay, but I wouldn't get paid for it.

[ThunderPeel2001]

The problem isn't really that the author thought Spore looked boring, but rather that s/he made no attempt to explain why, and instead just resorted to pathetic childish insults.

Any journalist who posts: "Will Wright is a genius at making games I don't want to play" and think they are making some sort of interesting point that the rest of us are interested in, should have their fingers repeatedly broken so they can't type anymore (or at least until their ego is deflated).

What makes it all the more worse (as if it wasn't already far below any basic journalistic standards), is that Will Wright is the creator of some of the most popular games ever made... meaning that most of the people reading his comments do want to play his games... meaning that above quote is even less interesting/relevant/news worthy (if that's possible) to his/her readers than it would have been if it was about, well... just about anyone else!

It's interesting to see the "vocal minority" bash Will Wright, though!

[Twilo]

I agree with Florian Eckhardt

[manny_c44]

Florian Eckhardt is coding in the attic above me

[miffy495]

Florian Eckhardt is raping manny_c44

(that is what we're referencing, right?)

[n0wak]

See now? See what kind of posts and threads we had to deal with in the vast internet wilderness when you guys shut down these forums? Please don't do it again.

Kotaku? More like Ko-fuck-you.

[toblix]

Okay, what are you referencing?

[Intrepid Homoludens]

So, Marek and company, have you guys actually written to Kotaku to ask what this Florian fellow's credentials are to gamedom? Does he have a degree in journalism? A university degree period? Has he done extensive research into the conceptual history of games and explored the territory of games theory?

Something tells me he feels that because he, himself, does not care for Will Wright and Spore, the rest of the world should not also. Furthermore, he has chosen to not expound on his stance, as most any competent journalist - games or other - should and usually does.

Perhaps we should enlighten him on this, and on his lack of expertise on gamedom.

[Oath]

That's a really extravagant way of telling him to shut the hell up.

[Twilo]

Something tells me he feels that because he, himself, does not care for Will Wright and Spore, the rest of the world should not also.

I would like to see the train of thought that is behind this.

Frankly, the response to a critical (and rather bloggish) post about Spore and Will Wright (and it's not even very critical) in here is rather absurd. Childish, even.

Kotaku has a number of correspondents, some of whom are looking forward to Spore. When there is a Spore demo in the US, the US guys go to it and some of them like it. This was a demo in Germany; Eckhardt lives in Dublin so he was the one who went to the demo.

Spore isn't "all that" anyway, I don't see why it seems to get special treatment or overboard defense.

[Roderick]

Quite simply, this incident is now serving as an example. A lightning rod that attracts all our gripes with bad journalism.

[Jake]

A lightning rod that attracts all our gripes with bad journalism.

Actually, Kotaku contains no examples of bad journalism because Kotaku contains no journalism to speak of.

(for the record, most all of thumbs != journalism either)

Barfing out an opinion about something you read elsewhere onto your website without bothering to actually fact check anything, cite sources, or correct your stories when people point out that you posted something inaccurate = a diary, not a news source.

There is such a thing as journalism that contains a strong voice, an attitude, a message, a sense of humor, even an opionion, but that's not what Kotaku is doing.They're like Randy Newman in that one episode of Family Guy, just singing about whatever he sees. That's not reporting the news or being a journalist, it's just being a writer who happens to hold the value of their own random opinions in perhaps too high regard.

I personally think Kotaku is entertaining in that they sometimes include links to fun distractions and little cheezy cultural bits that they've found online - an amusing distraction from work - but that's it. What bothers me is that so many people seem to read Kotaku and Joystiq as news when really they're just outlets for random dudes to pompously spew out random garbage describing what their eyes happen to be looking at at any given moment, without bothering to let those images stop by their brain first.*

* Kyle Orland's posts on Joystiq usually break this rule, but he's one exception.

[Wrestlevania]

I personally think Kotaku is entertaining in that they sometimes include links to fun distractions and little cheezy cultural bits that they've found online - an amusing distraction from work - but that's it. What bothers me is that so many people seem to read Kotaku and Joystiq as news when really they're just outlets for random dudes to pompously spew out random garbage describing what their eyes happen to be looking at at any given moment, without bothering to let those images stop by their brain first.

I used to like the stuff Brian Crecente posted on Kotaku.

I binned their RSS when they suddenly seemed to go hell-for-leather on the tabloid crap at the start of this year though.

[Tanukitsune]

If Kotaku is the Sun, the which site is the Weekly World News?

"Two Headed Baby marries BatBoy!":mock:

[Marek]

Frankly, the response to a critical (and rather bloggish) post about Spore and Will Wright (and it's not even very critical) in here is rather absurd. Childish, even.

You missed the point. It's not about liking or disliking Spore and/or Will Wright.

[SpiderMonkey]

This whole thread can be summed up with "Don't feed the troll", tbh. One can only presume Kotaku has stolen Jack Thompson's rhyme-book.

I don't really think it's worthy of a response, except to note that "making desperate attempts to ensure everyone knows you're too cool for mainstream tastes" has been a core part of my understanding of the word "pretentious" for the best part of a decade now.

[Twilo]

You missed the point. It's not about liking or disliking Spore and/or Will Wright.

Well you can understand why I might have missed the point considering that you pretty much said the guy musn't like video games because he doesn't appreciate the hype-machine around Spore.

Other than that, I don't think there's anything wrong. Kotaku isn't IGN or Edge or anything; it's a frequently updated collection of links to interesting things on the internet framed with some little paragraphs which would ideally be entertaining to read. Maybe he missed the mark with the comment on the German lady's bust (even though it was probably meant as a criticism of the whole booth babe phenomenon), but he's right to jump on the "Scenius" thing. Personally, I don't think it's a pretentius coinage as much as silly Sony-style marketroid babble.

Spore is the most hyped game I've seen since Black & White. It's not magic or special or anything new. I probably won't get it, Eckhardt probably won't get it and if I was in the same position as Eckhardt is, I probably would have written something pretty similar. Which I would then frame around a link to the video.