Garple

(IGN.com)

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This offends me.

That somebody was paid to write this offends me.

Recently, there's also been a "Should Diablo 3 have been an FPS?" on Gamespy (essentially IGN, now, despite Ryan Scott's best efforts), and a "What Nintendo could learn from Catherine" on IGN proper.

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Yeah, it's sad, but it's entirely possible the writer wasn't exactly looking forward to this either. At the extreme ends of the site popularity spectrum (low and high), there's a lot of pressure to write things that are going to generate the quickest hits from attention-grabbing headlines and easy quotes.

Not saying IGN doesn't pretty much suck these days (though their guides are often still somewhat useful), just trying to make the point that it's entirely possible the writers of such articles cry themselves to sleep.

At this point, I would probably be willing to write a not too dissimilar article if it would finally get people to start paying me properly.

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The byline on that Dark Souls eats Skyrim article reads Casey Lynch. Which means that the writer must have been looking forward to the article, because Casey Lynch is the editor-in-chief at IGN. I usually don't like to shit on IGN, but that article was complete garbage. Lynch has done little to impress me since becoming the EIC, including this terrible review of Gears of War 3 with choice quotes like:

- "shoehorn a bro-motional lump in your throat in the process"

- "Shakespeare this ain't, and Gears 3 struggles at times with its forced attempts at heart-string pluckery"

- "Cue the attendant grimaces, bro-vado and non-stop X-TREME one-liners."

- "It's not Gears of War and Peace, people!"

- "Overall, a few keg-o-rator moments (who gathers around a watercooler to talk about Gears?) will stick with you from the campaign."

Y'know, it's really hard for me to tell who Lynch thinks this game is for and what he thinks about the quality of the writing.

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The byline on that Dark Souls eats Skyrim article reads Casey Lynch. Which means that the writer must have been looking forward to the article, because Casey Lynch is the editor-in-chief at IGN. I usually don't like to shit on IGN, but that article was complete garbage. Lynch has done little to impress me since becoming the EIC, including this terrible review of Gears of War 3 with choice quotes like:

- "shoehorn a bro-motional lump in your throat in the process"

- "Shakespeare this ain't, and Gears 3 struggles at times with its forced attempts at heart-string pluckery"

- "Cue the attendant grimaces, bro-vado and non-stop X-TREME one-liners."

- "It's not Gears of War and Peace, people!"

- "Overall, a few keg-o-rator moments (who gathers around a watercooler to talk about Gears?) will stick with you from the campaign."

Y'know, it's really hard for me to tell who Lynch thinks this game is for and what he thinks about the quality of the writing.

I clicked on the link... That review was unreadable. Not just because of the use of words but the formatting and punctuation was pretty offensive too.

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"brothers; to the end"

Wow. I mean, I know it's a typo, but come on guy.

Also, I mean, isn't he coming to the whole "Gears is for bros" thing a little late? No spoilers here but I thought GOW3 was the least bro-friendly yet and by far the most interesting one in terms of actually trying to tell a story.

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I can't tell if we're shocked that this kind of publication exists and is successful, or if we're just acting as observers of culture at large.

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"brothers; to the end"

Wow. I mean, I know it's a typo, but come on guy.

Actually I think he might have used the semicolon there because he was doing a comma separated list, and a semicolon is sometimes used as a kind of nested comma in a comma separated list to distinguish that this is still a discrete item that just happens to have a pause in it.

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I found Jeff Green's response to this fairly amusing.

I guess this is a month-old controversy now, but this guy is editor in chief?

I am actually a gaming journalism purist and refuse to waste my time on sites that don't respect their readers.

I don't read Kotaku (they are all terrible people), 1up (they fired everybody), or Gamespot (the Kane & Lynch thing). Now I get to add Gamespy to the list of sites I will never visit again.

IGN? Comparatively, it's quality games journalism!

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Gamespy is IGN.

1up is too now, for that matter.

It's worth saying that there's still individuals on all of those sites still doing quality work, but... Egh...

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I don't read Kotaku (they are all terrible people), 1up (they fired everybody), or Gamespot (the Kane & Lynch thing). Now I get to add Gamespy to the list of sites I will never visit again.

Exactly the same here, and for much the same reasons (I don't even like to click on a Kotaku link, even if it's an interesting story).

About the only large sites I still read are RPS, Destructoid and Eurogamer.

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Mike, you realize that IGN has the editor-in-chief that wrote the atrocious Gears of War 3 review I linked to earlier in this post and Dark Souls eats Skyrim's Face piece of total garbage?

IGN is great at buying or making sites and completely lobotomizing them. They bought TeamXbox, then fired the Founder/Editor-in-Chief Shockwave not too long after. They merged with GameSpy, then fired the EIC Will Tuttle (which eventually led to his whole former team leaving or being fired as well). They created a podcast for gamer women called "Girlfight", then fired the host and creator of the podcast Nicole Tanner. They bought a site called "What They Play" which provided information to parents about games they buy for kids, then fired EIC Dana Jongewaard and eventually 404'd the site (essentially undoing all the work on that site, including ratings for over 10k games).

It's completely disgusting.

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Mike, you realize that IGN has the editor-in-chief that wrote the atrocious Gears of War 3 review I linked to earlier in this post and Dark Souls eats Skyrim's Face piece of total garbage?

Oh. My. God. That must be one of the most idiotic acts of game journalism ever commited.

My hatred for IGN: renewed and amplified.

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