Before I begin, I want to make it clear that the following is me speaking for myself and does not reflect the views of Official PlayStation Magazine Australia or any other publication.
So. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a world exclusive review of Batman: Arkham City for Official PlayStation Magazine Australia. We worked hard for that review: because of reasons, I had two days to play the game and produce copy in time for deadline. And before you ask: no, I didn't play it the whole way through before writing the review. That’s just the reality of publishing – sometimes you don’t get to do reviews in ideal circumstances.
Did my opinion change after playing it to completion? It sure did – for the better. Here’s a text I sent to my editor after I finished it:
Just finished Arkham’s story. Holy SHIT. Fuck 10 – this thing should’ve got 11.
In any case, the review has leaked onto the internet – as reviews are wont to do sometimes – and from what I can tell the reaction has been largely negative. As soon as they see the source, the game, and the exclusivity, people do the math:
Official Magazine + Big Fucking Game x World Exclusive = obvious corruption.
And look, I can understand why you’d be cynical. Games journalism doesn’t have a sterling record of quality and integrity, and – to be perfectly honest – neither do I. I’ve written enthusiastic previews for games that turned out terrible, I’ve been taken on junkets and plied with free booze and t-shirts. But one thing I have never done, and never will do, is let PR dictate my opinions.
Warner Bros. didn’t give me money to give their game a positive review. The only time I even interacted with Warner Bros. was when their PR rep handed me the disc. There was no editorial or managerial pressure to write a favourable review. I wrote a favourable review – a very favourable review – because I fucking love the shit out of that game.
I’ll admit that the text is a bit hyperbolic in places, but it isn’t engineered hyperbole – it’s the natural sort of hyperbole that occurs when you experience something incredible and want to share it with somebody. I wrote that review to convince you motherfuckers to buy the damn game. I want you to buy the damn game because the damn game is rad as balls.
And really – do you think that Warner Bros. and Rocksteady don’t know that? Do you think they’re ignorant of the fact that their game is totally brilliant? Because I don’t think they are. I think they know very well how good the game is, and I think they know what sort of response it’s likely to receive. Given that, why on Earth would they bother wasting time and money trying to BUY good reviews when they know they’re going to get them for FREE?
It’s important in magazine publishing to write for your readers, and I’m certain that at least 90 percent of mine are going to love Arkham City. Which is great! As a critic, there are few things I love more than being told that my work has encouraged someone to try a great game. I know there are people out there (not a lot, but they’re there) who trust my opinions, who trust me to be honest, and I work fucking hard to make sure that I am. There are some games journalists who couldn’t say the same, but personally-? I don’t know any.
So fuck you guys. Fuck you for your constant sneering derision, for your endless unfunny “journalist in quotation marks” jokes, for your automatic assumptions of corruption, for all the times you sent someone an email full of vile personal insults because they gave some game you like a bad score, and for all the other toxic, squalid, and puerile bullshit that defines your contribution to videogame culture. Grow the fuck up for Christ’s sake. Or if you can’t do that, at least have the decency to keep your mouth shut once in a while.
Again: it’s right to be sceptical of games journalists. It’s right to be sceptical of big exclusive reviews that give massive scores to blockbuster titles. But if you’re going to accuse (or even insinuate) that a review is the product of corruption, that the journalist must have accepted cash for comment or anything like that, then here’s a tip: get some proof. Hell, not even that: get some evidence. Even the tiniest little shred will do. Get some evidence and use it to support your assertions. Otherwise, what are you even doing? I’ll tell you what you’re doing: you’re being a jerk.
Stop being a jerk.
Oh, and guys? The suggestion that I wrote the review the way I did so that I could get a quote on the box is… absolutely right. You got me! Ever since I was a child, I have longed – YEARNED – for a chance to get something I wrote printed on a videogame box. Truly it is my one great ambition, my one driving passion, and to this day it remains painfully unfulfilled. I don’t know if Arkham City will be my salvation, but I can assure you that I did everything in my power to make it so.
The WHOLE article is about dicks
He posted an entire article about dicks on a videogame blog.
This has to be a troll.
David
i've got nothing
Dan
"The more dicks are fetizhized, the more prevalent they are. The taboo is still there, but the shock of cocks in American culture is now going limp."
hmmmm yes really makes you think
Whatever happened to the good old days, when the presence of a meaty fuckstick would make a lady blush?
Now when I wave my cock at women on the street they stifle a yawn.
From the comments: "And this seems like the appropriate place to ask: How do you get a really close shave on your balls?"
He's right - it DOES seem like the appropriate place to ask.
This really is a fascinating conversation they're having here
About ball shaving
David
i like how all the comments just carry on as if there was nothing out of the ordinary in having A POST ABOUT DICKS AND NOTHING BUT DICKS on a videogame blog
Dan
"Before long, you will be showing off your bulge with confidence at the pool, gym, or during lovemaking."
Thanks, LuvVGames!
There should be more frank and open discussion about dicks in the videogame press
As you will have probably already heard, FOX News panellist Carole Lieberman thinks the videogame Bulletstorm and others like it are depravity engines, turning regular people into violent rapists in much the same way Nietzsche turns dorky teens into insufferable budding übermenschen. Here’s exactly what she said:
“Videogames have increasingly, and more brazenly, connected sex and violence in images, actions and words. This has the psychological impact of doubling the excitement, stimulation and incitement to copycat acts. The increase in rapes can be attributed, in large part, to the playing out of such scenes in videogames.”
That’s a pretty big call, and since Lieberman is a practicing psychiatrist, then surely she has some compelling empirical evidence to substantiate it. Or – you know – perhaps not! Despite repeated requests by Wired and other outlets to clarify her remarks, she is still to cite a single study to support her extraordinary claim. A single fucking study.
Lookit: if you’re an accredited scientist it’s generally not a good idea to go on television and make sweeping causal claims for which you have not even the slightest shred of evidence. It’s a bad look. It’s a bad look for you, and it’s a bad look for your discipline. Obviously remarks like Lieberman’s negatively influence the public’s perception of videogames, but I’m more concerned with how they affect the public’s perception of science.
Psychiatry is a relatively new discipline and doesn’t enjoy the same level of prestige that the hard sciences like physics and chemistry enjoy. When a respected psychiatrist makes up some crazy nonsense – either because she felt the controversy would help her career, or because she was trying to please her employer – and presents that crazy nonsense as fact, it gives an already sceptical public another reason to think the entire field is a scam.
And that’s one of the better outcomes. Worse still is the possibility that people will believe said nonsense and let it inform the way they think, vote, and legislate. And the funny thing about bullshit is that once a person eats it up, it is remarkably difficult to flush out. Misinformation is resilient – like a disease it spreads and evolves, defying attempts to stamp it out. Remember when everybody thought Night Trap featured explicit sex scenes? I know people who STILL think that.
What I would like to see is professional bodies like the American Psychiatry Association condemn “experts” like Lieberman for professional misconduct. It’s one thing to go on television and make a legitimate claim, supported by evidence, that later turns out to be mistaken, but to actively and knowingly spread misinformation is grossly unethical and warrants censure.
If Lieberman wants to spread nonsense to her friends and relatives, then that’s totally fine – but being a scientist in the public sphere comes with a certain amount of prestige, and implies a certain amount of responsibility. Lieberman has failed to exercise that responsibility, invoking her authority as a psychiatrist to justify nonsense, and – until reprimanded – carries the implicit endorsement of the psychiatric establishment. No wonder there are so many Scientologists these days.
In other news, I got a kitten! His name is Mordin and he is awesome. Here is a picture:
Remember how almost a year ago, I started a storyline with Those Guys and never finished it? You do? Well forget that memory; that memory is now obsolete, because I have finished that storyline, so there!
You may consider this THE END of EEGRA Hilarity Comics as we know them. That doesn't mean there won't be any comics on EEGRA in the future -- hopefully there will be! But this is me finishing whatever project it was I started when I drew Mario in a top hat back in 2007. This particular collection of dumb jokes about games and gamers is now complete.
You can read more, not-especially-videogame-related Hilarity Comics here, although if you knew that already and you've been waiting since June for me to post a new one, ignore that link and spare yourself the disappointment. Alternatively, RELIVE THE MAGIC!!
Like Patrick's Sound Club Sweet, but instead of being an album it's just one track, and also it's a remix. Sort of. Actually, instead of saying it's a "remix" of Gary Numan's Metal, it's more accurate to say it's was "inspired" by it. Basically, I stole the main riff, and the basic structure, and then added some stuff and got rid of all the singing. ANYWAY. Here it is:
Try to imagine it as the background music for the mandatory "industrial" stage in NES platformers. (At least, that's what I was thinking of while making it.)
Note to the four people who've already heard it: This is a new version!
It's a chatlog! I know a lot of you have been asking us to do more Octopodcasts, and we're totally working on that, but in the meantime this is like an Octopodcast. It's a conversation, between two guys, about videogames. The only difference is that you don't have to hear our annoying voices. Bonus!
Metal Gear Solid RIsing
David
apparently Metal Gear Solid Rising is a third-person Fruit Ninja
to judge by the on-stage demo at Microsoft's TGS conference
Dan
There's a ninja cutting fruit?
Or a ninja dressed as fruit?
Or a homosexual ninja?
All of the above?
David
ninja cutting fruit
he may or may not be homosexual
Dan
Maybe his cutting fruit is symbolic of his struggle with his latent homosexuality.
Draco and Gordon Ramsey
David
Project Draco from the team behind Panzer Dragoon and Phantom Dust
also for Kinect
Dan
Oh no.
You don't fly a dragon by spreading your fucking arms and tilting, do you?
Because that would be super fucking shitty.
David
yeah, sounds like Panzer Dragoon for Kinect
Dan
Someone should make a game where you play a bird and have to flap your arms constantly to stay in flight. That would be SO MUCH FUN.
Also, someone should make a Gordon Ramsey game where you do chef related mini-games while he yells obscenities at you.
David
or maybe you have to yell the obscenities?
Dan
That could work!
Gordon Ramsey's "Cut Those Fucking Carrots, You Cunt!" Exclusive to Xbox 360 Kinnect.
Kinect and Move Pricing
David
huh, apparently Steel Batallion is "Kinect enabled"
not "Kinect required"
Dan
You can probably play with the original controller.
David
so you can choose which $200 controller to play it with?
Dan
OH SNAP
Honestly, who is going to buy [Kinnect] at 200 bucks? David
no idea
Dan
How much is Move?
David
$200 for the two controllers, camera and one game
Dan
Whaaaat.
It's not like the PS3 is cheap to begin with.
David
so yeah, mum and dad this xmas will walk into toys r us and see a 360 Kinect bundle for $400, a PS3 plus Move for $600, or a Wii (with Wii Sports Resort) for $250
i wonder which one they'll get
Devil May Cry 5 and Parasite Eve 3
Dan
Ha ha ha ha haaaa.
This DMC trailer just gets funnier and funnier.
"My name ... is Dante."
*falls off building and explodes a motorcycle or something*
David
he looks like a rent-boy
Dan
Yeah, I could see him standing against the Darlinghurst wall.
"My name ... is Dante. Five bucks ... for a handjob."
David
dual-wielding penises
Dan
Ebony and Ivory
David
i think SE just announced a new parasite eve
or did they reveal that at e3?
Dan
No, I think they announced that at E3.
It's not like a "real" Parasite Eve though, right? It's a shooter or something.
David
The 3rd birthday, it's called
Dan
Step into the horrifying world of party hats and ice-cream cake!
David
musical chairs! pass the parcel! Dan Are you ready to pin the tail ... on TERROR?
Titties
David
Dead or Alive is coming to 3DS
Dan
Yes!
3D titties on public transportation! The future is NOW!
David
DOA: Dimensions
Dan
Seriously?
Is that what it's actually called?
David
yep
Dan
Genius.
3DD would've been good too.
And that's it! Thanks to David for having nothing better to do, and thanks to me for spending the last two hours formatting a bloody chatlog.
So I haven't drawn a comic in months -- not for Eegra, not for anywhere. But what I have done is the artwork for an album of cute, sort-of-but-not-exactly chiptune music, called Sound Club Sweet. Look, look!
This is what you see when you grab handfuls of sugar and just grind it into your eyeballs. (I know because that's how I came up with the concept.) Even now you can feel the tiny sweet crystals clawing and scratching through to your brain. There is nothing to fear. In fact, make this image your desktop wallpaper.
('Desktop wallpaper' is a stupid arse of a phrase, isn't it. Think about it.)
In addition to the artwork for Sound Club Sweet, I also did ALL OF THE MUSIC, HA HAAA, YESSS, THAT'S RIGHT. You wanna hear it? Well it's right...
What happened was, I contributed to the TIGSource 'assemblee' competition last year, with a few little tunes I put together during the month. And I enjoyed making them so much, I thought, "I'm going to make a few more, then put it all together and call it an album." And do you know, that is just what I did. THE END. You too can achieve your dreams, if you have a positive attitude and a huge, huge penis.
One of the great things about the internet – and let's be honest, there are manygreatthings aboutthe internet – is that it is gradually shifting the burden of objectivity from media producers to media consumers.
Take game reviews as an illustrative example. Before the internet came about, the games press – then consisting almost entirely of monthly magazines – was obsessed with objectivity. Reviews in rags like CVG, NMS, and Super Play (as well as all the American ones I didn't read) would usually be accompanied by a jumble of numbers and graphs, each providing a precise qualitative assessment of some specific aspect of the game. For example:
The (correct) assumption being that data, no matter how arbitrary and meaningless, makes reviews look like SCIENCE. And if the reviews in your magazine look like SCIENCE, then the readers of your magazine will be pleased, because it means they didn't pay 5-10 bucks to read opinions. Kids (as most readers were back then) don't want opinions. They want FACTS. They want to KNOW that Super Metroid is awesome, so that when they spend their pocket money renting it this weekend, they KNOW they aren't going to end up with a piece of shit.
Thankfully, the videogame media's enthusiasm for this sort of thing has decreased significantly in the last decade or so. There are holdouts of course, but by and large the numbers and graphs and so on have all but disappeared. Why? There are a couple of reasons.
The first is demographic: the people who read game mags as kids have grown up. We've grown up. We've found jobs and have disposable incomes. As such, it's not a huge deal when we buy (or rent) a shitty game because some dumb reviewer told us to. Annoying, yes, but nowhere near the world-ending tragedy that it was when we were kids. Basically, readers now are less invested in the objectivity of reviews, and the format has changed to reflect that.
The second reason is technological. 20 years ago (fuck I'm old), magazines were the only source of videogame news and reviews we had, and even then, only when we could afford them. Now, as you all know, it's a whole different deal. Experts estimate that there are roughly 30 trillion videogame websites on the internet that are both free to read and regularly updated. We're spoiled for choice, basically, and as a result we're not compelled to assign undue weight to any single source of information. Reviews have stopped being monthly decrees and have instead become more like voices in an ongoing conversation.
So where does this leave objectivity? Exactly where I said: in the hands of the consumer. In our hands. It's not "objectivity" in the empirical or logical sense of the term. It's more like the objectivity you get in ethics and aesthetics. It's consensus objectivity – if enough people whose opinions you typically share say something is good, then there's a better-than-average chance you'll agree. And that's it.
Not good enough for you? Tough cookies, mang. We're talking about videogames, not atoms and quarks and magnets and shit. So far as matters of taste are concerned, this is about as good as it gets.
Intro: 81
