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Polygon (internet website)

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Polygon have been running feature articles on their writers and editors homes:

http://www.polygon.c...-brian-crecente

http://www.polygon.c...922/playgrounds

http://www.polygon.c...nds-chris-grant

Responses I have liked so far:

Polygon's staff showing off their enormous freebie-stuffed homes makes me root for these renegades risking it all in the name of journalism.

http://twitter.com/r...651671791616000

Inspired by Polygon, here's my playground, gameshelf and massive collection of freebies:

http://twitter.com/r...56293113495552

Brian Crecente's dedicated gaming room is too big to see the screen properly on his massive telly. poor lamb :(

http://twitter.com/d...51886909087745

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how random is that? Polygon cribs. I'm gaming set up is literally a beanbag and a tele propped up on my xbox and streetfighter fight stick boxes

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I dunno, just seems like a logical extension of features on other sites like The Verge's favorite things/what's in my bag, Lifehacker's how I work, etc. The fact that their work is playing video games is the only difference.

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Did you actually watch the video? Brian is ashamed that he has all that free stuff (that he'll never use), so that's why he put it in his basement. He said he'll probably auction all that shit off for charity or just give it all away at some point.

I mean, I get the whole "it's cool to dislike popular websites" thing, but this is such a petty thing to nitpick.

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Actually, the contrast between what they implied the site would be, and the rewritten press releases and trivial features like this that have occurred, is a pretty big thing to nitpick. Also, slightly hilarious.

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Yeah, I'm sure they'd be successful if they only published original reporting and 2000+ word features.

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Actually, the contrast between what they implied the site would be, and the rewritten press releases and trivial features like this that have occurred, is a pretty big thing to nitpick. Also, slightly hilarious.

There have been multiple really cool articles on Polygon over the past weeks though?

http://www.polygon.com/features

Rob Zacny's piece on Homefront, the Sportsfriends kickstarter feature, the Doublefine one... I'm glad someone stepped into the hole that the Escapist left. I doubt it will ever amount to something profitable but it's nice to have longread reporting again.

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I won't negotiate with apologists. Playgrounds is one tacky-ass idea for a feature and deserves every bit of mockery it got.

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I won't negotiate with apologists. Playgrounds is one tacky-ass idea for a feature and deserves every bit of mockery it got.

Hear, hear.

Honestly, there are very few people around this forum who will bash something just because it's cool, or popular, or new. The Polygon site has been a joke from the start. I'm at the point where it's starting to affect my opinion of The Verge as well.

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Yeah, I'm sure they'd be successful if they only published original reporting and 2000+ word features.

To be fair, they were the ones who talked a big game about doing something entirely new. They even made a film about themselves that lacked even a modicum of self-awareness. They openly talked about how revolutionary they would be, and it turns out that they're another gaming site with a nicer design than usual.

That in and of itself didn't annoy me all that much, or at least not any more than that "year off the Internet" bullshit on The Verge, but this cribs feature is genuinely terrible.

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I do enjoy how Polygon was going to be A New Type of Video game Journalism and a couple of months later Unwinnable comes up with A New Type of Video game Journalism and Polygon basically isn't anything new.

Although I will say that I think I'm over How My Personal Problems Remind Me Of Video Games.

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The feature might be tacky, but the "backlash" just seems like thinly veiled jealousy to me. Not necessarily from you guys, but definitely from that RPS article. It was funny and admittedly made me laugh, but if you honestly think that Brian was trying to show off his massive castle with a billion dollar television then you need to get real.

I'm not going to defend the documentary because that discussion is long past, but I'll just say that in my brief Twitter discussion with EIC Chris Grant concerning the videos he said that it was really meant for people who didn't know much about the industry. That may be why it came off to many as this stargazing, mega-ambitious self-advertisement (at least the ad part was true), because they were really just explaining how the business works rather than how they hope to change it in these massive ways.

I think it's kinda shitty to constantly crap on them for putting out content that will allow them to survive as a website on the internet, while they still are doing awesome stuff like changing their review paradigm in a novel way (allowing scores to change over time) and putting up the features osmosisch is talking about. The way that you guys and others I've seen on Twitter have been talking about Polygon, I'd expect it to be worse than IGN. Every indication I get from Polygon is that it's still in its formative stage, so taking out their hopes and dreams in the garbage seems premature.

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I won't negotiate with apologists. Playgrounds is one tacky-ass idea for a feature and deserves every bit of mockery it got.

Good counterpoint to them having cool features: they also have stuff I don't like.

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Having written for a medium size gaming blog, everything in this is true.

Its interesting how even in the context of this article they call it "game journalism." I probably wrote nearly 200 "articles" the large majority of which were reposts from other sites or write ups of press releases. I tried to properly credit, but probably didnt always. Only 2 articles I ever wrote were actual journalism - which involved researching, contracting involved parties, etc, and had my research largely unsourced when other sites copied it (Kotaku is the worst offender).

Being Penny Arcade they are lucky to be big enough to have more leeway with publishers and also have some money to buy stuff if they dont have friendly relationships with them. If you are a small site there are a lot of interesting dynamics going on, from direct communications between you an a PR firm/publisher that tells you that you need to be favorable to a game, to indirect pressures that as a writer you know writing a poor review can damage any reputation you have established.

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No, just re-written by someone who didn't do the interview?

It sounds to me like you didn't read the Penny Arcade article. Kuchera wasn't demonizing re-writing - he was having a discussion about re-write reporting and more specifically criticizing insufficient attribution -

Sometimes you have to make a fuss, but the people who actually did the reporting were given a decent link. The GameSpot story still consists of a writer listening to an interview from another source and re-writing parts of it, but re-write journalism continues to make up the majority of the stories you read on most sites.

It’s nearly unfair to point out examples, because this is how we as news gathering organizations work in game reporting. We find a good story, re-write it, sometimes we add a thought or two or a snarky caption, and the work is done. Every so often there is correct attribution.

The article you cited at The Verge does just that - not only includes attribution to the original interview (another thing Kuchera knocked other sites/articles for not doing) at the end of the post with a "Source:" citation, but also on the second line of the page in bright pink hyperlinked text.

So, to answer "shameless or clueless?" with that context, how about neither?

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Thanks for picking that up so well JonCole, I couldn't figure out how to do so nicely.

The hateboner people have for Polygon is really astonishing to me.

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The Playgrounds feature reeks of self-importance. Crecente's video was painful to watch. But more importantly, it didn't really say anything. I read the article and watched the video and don't feel like I gained an insight into Video games, its culture or journalism.

Which is why the comparisons to The Verge's What's in your Bag? feature are misguided. With that feature you gain insight into how the journalists do their jobs. Now granted, it mostly involves MacBook Airs and iPhones, but every journalist has a couple of interesting gadget quirks and recommendations. Playgrounds is less "behind the scenes" and more E! Celebrity Homes.

As for the backlash: it's not really "thinly veiled jealousy", it's just good ol' self-deprecating British humour at its finest. The RPS guys do this kind of thing a lot, and The Internet routinely misses the point.

That said, I really do like Polygon. Yes, they promised to Change Everything and then proceeded to rewrite press releases. But the features have been seriously top notch. Just in the last week I've read their well written, well researched features on Double Fine and Starbloom. The Homefront feature is required reading. And there are a bunch of smaller, behind-the-scenes development features that have been great. If the price I have to pay for these features is sifting through crappy news posts, I'm totally down with that. (heck, I'm pretty sure you could just subscribe to the Features feed and call it a day)

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I actually did read the article, believe it or not. Even the last section. Admittedly, re-writing for page-views is something a lot of folks do. It just seems sleazy to me. It's why I've read RPS for so long, and why I'm liking PAR and Nightmare Mode.

I think I'm on the same page as SiN. Love the features and reviews, dislike the page-view hustling. I even like the format, which is something Arthur Gies seems to get a lot of grief for.

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Polygon actually replaced Kotaku in my RSS feed simply because it's more manageable as a "news ticker". Polygon probably has a 55/45 signal/noise ratio. Ends up beating the 10/90% junkfest that kotaku has become. Also looks pretty. It's nothing new, I don't think anyone serious about video games really thought it would be.

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