Moderator: JC Denton
by icycalm » 27 May 2009 19:30
by Bradford » 28 May 2009 14:39
by icycalm » 28 May 2009 16:24
by icycalm » 22 Jan 2010 22:23
by icycalm » 17 Apr 2010 19:56
Rev. Stuart Campbell wrote:Having spent the last three days hooked on the incredible Espgaluda 2 http://wosblog.podgamer.com/2010/04/12/ ... -argument/ , I've been looking into what other shmups we might be able to hope to see on the iPod in the near future, and it dawned on me that this vibrant genre has had almost no coverage of any kind on EG. There have been loads of fairly high-profile shooters released in recent years, yet not a sniff of a mention of any of them, far less anything so heady as a review.
Espgaluda 2 (iPod) - nothing
Espgaluda 2 Black Label (360) - nothing
Ketsui Death Label (DS) - nothing
Ketsui Extra (360) - nothing
Raiden IV (360) - one tiny news mention a year and a half ago
Raiden Fighters Aces (360) - a single video trailer
Dodonpachi DOJ Black Label Extra (360) - nothing
Mushihimesama Futari (360) - nothing
Death Smiles (360) - nothing
Now, few of these have had official European releases, but EG has reviewed plenty of games on import, and several of them (Espgaluda, Ketsui, Mushihimesama) are region-free and will run on PAL systems anyway.
And even when shooters DO get PAL releases they still don't get covered. Throughout the previous generations PAL-released shooters were ignored too, with the sole exception of Raiden 3. All these UK-released PS2 shooters, most of them excellent and released at mid-price, got zero coverage, not even tiny news paragraphs:
XII Stag
Psyvariar Complete
Castle Shikigami 2
Gigawing Generations
Homura
Ibara
Steel Dragon EX
Gunbird Special Edition
Mobile Light Force 2
Samurai Aces
Dragon Blaze
Strikers 1945 1+2
And it's not like there's nobody who can cover them - Simon Parkin's Raiden 3 review shows a perfectly good knowledge of the rest of the genre, and he still writes for EG.
Are there really fewer people interested in shooters than Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure or Panzer General: Allied Assault? Is it really too much to hope for the occasional break from hundreds of pages of God Of Gears Of Modern Warshock and tedious frame-rate comparisons between identical PS3 and 360 versions of the same game, and have maybe just one shmup review every few months?
by icycalm » 24 Apr 2010 00:40
Good writing dies at the end of search engine optimization.
by icycalm » 24 Apr 2010 00:45
by icycalm » 14 Jul 2010 13:47
Ben Paddon wrote:But it’s not unfair to say that game journalism needs people with a passion for delivering gaming news and reviewing games honestly, truthfully and, above all else, in an entertaining manner.
Ben Paddon wrote:That site doesn’t exist yet. Hopefully one day that will change.
by icycalm » 22 Jun 2011 15:05
by icycalm » 22 Jun 2011 16:23
Patrick Miller wrote:Because goddammit I love this but it needs to grow up. Because I need to grow up,
I wrote:Enough! Whether videogames are really growing deeper, more meaningful and more profound is irrelevant to these people -- they must and will be shown to be doing so in order to assuage the bad conscience of these men-children! These people have at last come to crave some degree of seriousness and profundity in their lives, some depth of feeling, some measure of spirituality; as human beings it is almost a biological necessity for them, and definitely a sociological one (this is the origin of their bad conscience -- the pressure to "grow up"), and since they have not bothered at any point to take an interest in, say, history, literature or philosophy -- fields of human endeavor which would have quenched the thirst for depth and spirituality of even the most spiritually thirsty human being, leaving him now with the opposite need, a need for frivolity, shallowness, playfulness, in short, a need for games -- the only place they can look for spirituality now is in the only place they know. And if they can't find it there, if it turns out that it simply doesn't exist there, that will in no way prevent them from miraculously discovering it -- by inventing it.
by icycalm » 23 Jun 2011 15:15
Harry wrote:icycalm is going to fucking slay you.
I wrote:I am actually considering whether it's worth doing that right now. On the other hand, this manifesto is so pathetic, and everyone (except Leigh, of course :) sounds so miserable and dejected after their whipping bout with Real Life, that if I did it I am sure I'd feel like I was pushing a bunch of crippled dudes down the stairs. Still, Nietzsche DID say that that which is falling "should also be pushed", so perhaps I should swallow down my sympathy for these guys after all (well, for Brandon, Tim and Eric-Jon, at any rate, for no one else means anything to me) and do it anyway. Perhaps I should even send it to Brandon for publication, to see if he REALLY means the hilarious spiel about his readers being his editors and suchlike.
If I DO NOT end up doing it, though, I'll leave you with this thought, which by itself rips this pathetic manifesto to shreds and dooms this site for ever (well, the feature-part of it anyway): The older manifesto was only about a million times better than this one.
by El Chaos » 25 Jun 2011 15:37
I wrote:I wanted to nitpick a number of stupidities in this thing, like "the game made me OCD as hell" (it made you "obsessive-compulsive disordered as hell?" Fuck, learn to write, goddammit!), but seriously... you don't care about games, and it shows. You just use them to get more hits, just like recycling this site instead of starting a bunch of blogs. Whoever really cares about games, among other things, wants them to be compared to as many other similar games as possible, get as detailed information about their ruleset and technical excellency as possible, and maybe just one paragraph about what you fucking "feel" about it.
Good writing about games takes an impressive amount of hard work, dedication, deliberation, experience and actual love for games, and, like science, it's meant to improve over time. It DOES NOT take writing about "lost love and feelings of deep nostalgia, or abandoned innocence" or any other unimportant, unrelated crap, you clown.
And I don't say this as a writer 'cause I've never really wrote about anything, I say this as a gamer and as a fucking SANE PERSON.
by icycalm » 29 Jun 2011 14:59
by icycalm » 09 Aug 2011 14:44
This sorry episode is indicative of a larger problem with our business: those that write about games are supposed to be part of a marketing program, and any attempt at breaking a story that isn't handed to an outlet is met with outright hostility. If you get a scoop about a game before an exclusive reveal at another publication, you're going to be called out for "shoddy journalism." Having a story before you're allowed to have it makes you a target.
We experienced this firsthand when we broke the news of Rock Band 3's keytar peripheral. After we ran the story we were contacted by the PR company handling the Harmonix account, and threatened with all sorts of nastiness if the story wasn't removed.
We held firm, because we knew the story was accurate, but what I was unprepared for was the anger from other writers who had signed nondisclosure agreements that prevented them from writing about the peripheral until the NDA expired. From their point of view I hadn't played fair, and in many cases outlets which had signed the NDA didn't pick up our story for fear of angering Harmonix. We had stepped out of the marketing plan for the game by running a scoop we had dug up ourselves, and boy, did we ever hear about it.
Game Informer will still have the first details of the game, and that will remain exclusive until the rest of the gaming press is granted access to the title, which will be playable at PAX Prime. Neither Game Informer nor Gearbox was hurt by the early news of the game's existence, but the power of a Game Informer cover and story can't be underestimated within the industry, and publishers are going to do everything they can to protect the marketing deals they've made with the magazine. If you threaten that relationship with honest-to-goodness reporting, apparently you're nothing but a shoddy journalist.
by icycalm » 13 Nov 2011 15:21
by icycalm » 06 Jan 2012 06:47
by icycalm » 07 Jan 2012 19:38
Recap wrote:And seriously -- you should reconsider linking to websites like Andriasang. Stealing 4 Gamer's material without mention is only one of its lame practices.
by Recap » 07 Jan 2012 22:30
or whether you changed your stance at all
I link Ruliweb only because it re-uploads the scans to its own hosting service and I can always be sure they won't be down anytime soon (aside of being easier to find), but believe me -- I hate it. They (its posters) rarely mention the original source, much like Jeux-France, Go Nintendo or many others. But hey, at least Western visitors of Ruliweb can't make any money for these bastards.
Moreover, why link 4 Gamer, or any other "legitimate, original" source in the first place? Because they are good at controlling and monopolizing the source of free promotional information, and stamping their ghastly watermarks all over it? Fuck them -- fuck them in the ass is what I say. Indeed, we should be supporting any site that rips "their" shit off without linking them ON PRINCIPLE.
by icycalm » 07 Jan 2012 23:00
Recap wrote:Is that a "monopoly which destroys video-game criticism"? Most likely, but that's beside the point
Recap wrote:And much like with Neo Arcadia and whatnot -- beware Adriasang's misinformation bits. Maybe you'll "care" when you start finding them out.
by icycalm » 08 Apr 2012 19:24
by Agentx » 09 Apr 2012 01:53
by icycalm » 09 Apr 2012 19:45
by icycalm » 10 Dec 2012 16:13