The RAM Raider

GMA Corruption Special

noreply@blogger.com (RAM Raider) — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 19:00:00 +0000

No, this isn't a comeback. You can read all about this year's exciting GMA corruption here and here courtesy of Walker, and then feast your eyes on the full, unedited version of The Unreliable Eurogamer piece below that saw the writer, Robert Florence, drummed out of EG for being honest:

There is an image doing the rounds on the internet this week. It is an image of Geoff Keighley, a Canadian games journalist, sitting dead-eyed beside a garish Halo 4 poster and a table of Mountain Dew and Doritos. It is a tragic, vulgar image. But I think that it is the most important image in games journalism today. I think we should all find it and study it. It is important.

Geoff Keighley is often described as an industry leader. A games expert. He is one of the most prominent games journalists in the world. And there he sits, right there, beside a table of snacks. He will be sitting there forever, in our minds. That's what he is now. And in a sense, it is what he always was. As Executive Producer of the mindless, horrifying spectacle that is the Spike TV Video Game Awards he oversees the delivery of a televisual table full of junk, an entire festival of cultural Doritos.

How many games journalists are sitting beside that table?

Recently, the Games Media Awards rolled around again, and games journos turned up to a thing to party with their friends in games PR. Games PR people and games journos voted for their favourite friends, and friends gave awards to friends, and everyone had a good night out. Eurogamer won an award. Kieron Gillen was named an industry legend (and if anyone is a legend in games writing, he is) but he deserves a better platform for recognition than those GMAs. The GMAs shouldn't exist. By rights, that room should be full of people who feel uncomfortable in each other's company. PR people should be looking at games journos and thinking, "That person makes my job very challenging." Why are they all best buddies? What the hell is going on?

Whenever you criticise the GMAs, as I've done in the past, you face the accusation of being "bitter". I've removed myself from those accusations somewhat by consistently making it clear that I'm not a games journalist. I'm a writer who regularly writes about games, that's all. And I've been happy for people who have been nominated for GMAs in the past, because I've known how much they wanted to be accepted by that circle. There is nothing wrong with wanting to belong, or wanting to be recognised by your peers. But it's important to ask yourself who your peers are, and exactly what it is you feel a need to belong to.

Just today, as I sat down to write this piece, I saw that there were games journalists winning PS3s on Twitter. There was a competition at those GMAs - tweet about our game and win a PS3. One of those stupid, crass things. And some games journos took part. All piling in, opening a sharing bag of Doritos, tweeting the hashtag as instructed. And today the winners were announced. Then a whole big argument happened, and other people who claim to be journalists claimed to see nothing wrong with what those so-called journalists had done. I think the winners are now giving away their PS3s, but it's too late. It's too late.

***CENSORED BY EUROGAMER***

Let me show you an example.

One games journalist, Lauren Wainwright, tweeted: "Urm... Trion were giving away PS3s to journalists at the GMAs. Not sure why that's a bad thing?"

Now, a few tweets earlier, she also tweeted this: "Lara header, two TR pix in the gallery and a very subtle TR background. #obsessed @tombraider pic.twitter.com/VOWDSavZ"

And instantly I am suspicious. I am suspicious of this journalist's apparent love for Tomb Raider. I am asking myself whether she's in the pocket of the Tomb Raider PR team. I'm sure she isn't, but the doubt is there. After all, she sees nothing wrong with journalists promoting a game to win a PS3, right?

Another journalist, one of the winners of the PS3 competition, tweeted this at disgusted RPS writer John Walker: "It was a hashtag, not an advert. Get off the pedestal." Now, this was Dave Cook, a guy I've met before. A good guy, as far as I could tell. But I don't believe for one second that Dave doesn't understand that in this time of social media madness a hashtag is just as powerful as an advert. Either he's on the defensive or he doesn't get what being a journalist is actually about.

***END OF CENSORED EXTRACT***

I want to make a confession. I stalk games journalists. It's something I've always done. I keep an eye on people. I have a mental list of games journos who are the very worst of the bunch. The ones who are at every PR launch event, the ones who tweet about all the freebies they get. I am fascinated by them. I won't name them here, because it's a horrible thing to do, but I'm sure some of you will know who they are. I'm fascinated by these creatures because they are living one of the most strange existences - they are playing at being a thing that they don't understand. And if they don't understand it, how can they love it? And if they don't love it, why are they playing at being it?

This club, this weird club of pals and buddies that make up a fair proportion of games media, needs to be broken up somehow. They have a powerful bond, though - held together by the pressures of playing to the same audience. Games publishers and games press sources are all trying to keep you happy, and it's much easier to do that if they work together. Publishers are well aware that some of you go crazy if a new AAA title gets a crappy review score on a website, and they use that knowledge to keep the boat from rocking. Everyone has a nice easy ride if the review scores stay decent and the content of the games are never challenged. Websites get their exclusives. Ad revenue keeps rolling in. The information is controlled. Everyone stays friendly. It's a steady flow of Mountain Dew pouring from the hills of the money men, down through the fingers of the weary journos, down into your mouths. At some point you will have to stop drinking that stuff and demand something better.

Standards are important. They are hard to live up to, sure, but that's the point of them. The trouble with games journalism is that there are no standards. We expect to see Geoff Keighley sitting beside a table of s***. We expect to see the flurry of excitement when the GMAs get announced, instead of a chuckle and a roll of the eyes. We expect to see our games journos failing to get what journalistic integrity means. The brilliant writers, like John Walker for example, don't get the credit they deserve simply because they don't play the game. Indeed, John Walker gets told to get off his pedestal because he has high standards and is pointing out a worrying problem.

Geoff Keighley, meanwhile, is sitting beside a table of snacks. A table of delicious Doritos and refreshing Mountain Dew. He is, as you'll see on Wikipedia, "only one of two journalists, the other being 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace, profiled in the Harvard Business School press book 'Geeks and Geezers' by noted leadership expert Warren Bennis." Geoff Keighley is important. He is a leader in his field. He once said, "There's such a lack of investigative journalism. I wish I had more time to do more, sort of, investigation." And yet there he sits, glassy-eyed, beside a table heaving with sickly Doritos and Mountain Dew.

It's an important image. Study it.

Michael Pachter: Nostradamus, Or A Cunt?

noreply@blogger.com (RAM Raider) — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000

A Things Cunts Say Special

When Wetbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter makes a prediction, it’s reported as if it were scratched into a granite tablet by the fingertip of God. But how often do these sage-like reports from the future actually fly? To celebrate our five years of blighting the industry, let’s find out.

EA will buy Take Two

So said Pachter on Gamespot, and then went on about how it was virtually certain that EA would win its buyout bid to GameDaily.

Over two years later, EA still haven’t bought Take Two.

Score: WRONG x1

PS3 will outsell Xbox 360 by the end of 2008

So he said on VG247. As you can see from the figures for 2008 and 2009, it didn’t.

Pachter has a real hard on for predicting the PS3 will outsell the 360, so really we should multiply his “wrong” score by the number of times he’s got it wrong. We’ll be generous, though.

Score: WRONG x1

The iPhone isn’t “a viable gaming platform”

Here’s the full quote from next-gen, as it’s a winner:

“I don’t see it as a viable gaming platform, due to the cost of owning one. The iPhone costs $400 plus an AT&T wireless subscription for voice and data, I’m guessing this is $80 a month, so the addressable market doesn’t really fit the core gamer demographic. To the extent that hip, rich people are an interesting gaming audience, iPhone games will work. My guess is that this group is only interested in the most rudimentary games, and that the market will be small.”

Here’s a graphic demonstrating how iPhone gaming has eaten some of the DS’s share, and eclipsed the PSP:

Score: WRONG x1

GTA IV to sell 6 million copies in week one

And that’s how much it sold. Slightly less impressive is that every man and his dog made a similar prediction, such as the less publicity-hungry analyst Mike Hickey. But we’ll still give him a point for it.

Score: CORRECT x1

Xbox 360 & PS3 price cuts in 2008

According to Kotaku. Xbox 360 dropped, as it was widely expected to, but the extortionate PS3 price stayed exactly where it was.

Score: CORRECT x1, WRONG x1

E3 “headed for extinction”

“In our view, E3 is headed for extinction, unless the publishers and console manufacturers wake up to the fact that nobody cares about the show anymore,” he said to VG247 in 2008.

E3 2010 is coming up in a couple of months.

Score: WRONG x1

New DS by the end of 2008

So he said to MCV. The DSi was announced shortly afterwards, which almost makes up for his iPhone faux pas. Almost.

Score: CORRECT x1

Pachter’s estimated 2008 sales wrong

As reported on VG247. Technically, he’s speaking accurately. But speaking accurately about the fact that you were wrong still makes you wrong, no matter how much backpedalling you do. Especially when it’s the serious stuff that people rely on to make themselves the big money. There are loads of faield predictions like this, but they don’t exactly make for entertaining reading, so this’ll be the only one he scores for.

Score: WRONG x1

Wii HD is coming

"A Wii HD would really position Nintendo well, which is why I'm absolutely convinced there is a Wii HD coming,” he said here.

18 months later, still no sign…

Score: WRONG x1

Assassin’s Creed 2 to be set in the 1700s

And during the French Revolution too, apparently, according to what he told GiantBomb. But in the real world, it was set in the 1400s during the Italian Renaissance.

Score: WRONG x1

PS3 price cut for April 2009

According to a report on VG247. Wrong – it happened in August.

Score: WRONG x1

Assassin’s Creed 2 & Splinter Cell Conviction out before March 2010

Despite setting up the calendar equivalent of a barn door on MTV, he still managed to miss it with Splinter Cell. AC2 was within his gargantuan 14 month area of prediction, so well fucking done for that.

Score: CORRECT x1, WRONG x1

Sony PSP Go is a rip off

Here's the full quote from GameTrailers:

“$249 is too much, period. The $169 PSP-3000 is a profitable device – the disc assembly, for a UMD, costs more than 16 gigs of flash does. So this new device doesn’t cost them as much to make as the PSP-3000 and they jack the price up $80. I’m sorry to say it. I don’t want to get bad fan mail from the Sony fanboys, but… They’re ripping off the consumer.”

Amen to that. Only Sony could take a handheld that’s sorely in need of a second analogue thumbstick and re-release it with less functionality for UMD owners, added internal storage that nobody wanted or asked for, and still no second thumbstick. Thankfully, there are people in the industry with influence who have the balls to call them on stuff like this.

Score: CORRECT x1000

But… hang on, what’s this?

“I sincerely regret the choice of words in my response to Geoff Keighley’s question in last week’s Bonus Round, where I said that Sony is ‘ripping off’ the consumer by pricing the PSP Go at $249.99. I made a poor choice of words, and I do NOT think that Sony is doing anything nefarious in choosing their pricing strategy.” (Via IndustryGamers)

That’s right – the one thing that man has ever said that’s been honest and relevant was retracted within a day. So…

Score: CORRECT -1000, WRONG x1

Borderlands is being “sent to die”

Over to Gamasutra reporting Randy Pitchford from Gearbox:

“It was tough for Pitchford to hear Wedbush Morgan's prominent industry analyst Michael Pachter declare, prior to Borderlands' release, that the game had been ‘sent to die’ amid big competition from Bungie's Halo 3: ODST, Infinity Ward's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and other major holiday titles. Pachter argued Borderlands had little chance of competing. We were sandwiched between the two biggest first-person shooter franchises ever. And the guys at BioWare, who walk on water, were releasing Dragon Age around the same time.

“But Borderlands sold around 3 million units, Gearbox continues to invest in the franchise through new downloadable content, and the title became the best-selling new property of 2009. "It was tough for me, because it's Mike’s job to analyze these things. You know what, Mike? I knew you were wrong."

Score: WRONG x1

Final Score: CORRECT x4, WRONG x12

Now, we’re no analysts, but… oh, you get the picture.

Ubisoft Offer To Drop Assassin’s Creed 2 Embargo For “Very Good” Score

noreply@blogger.com (RAM Raider) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Omar Boulon, the journo who heroically revealed the Dragon Age: Origins review corruption in Canard PC last week, has informed us that another mag has stepped up with details of another dishonest deal. This time, German mag Computer Bild Spiele has revealed that Ubisoft would only provide them with review code for Assassin’s Creed 2 if they would guarantee that they would give it a “very good” score. Computer Bild Spiele did exactly the right thing (and exactly what no British mag would do) by telling Ubisoft to fuck off whilst delaying the review and, in its place, blowing the deal wide open in an editorial.

Here’s the link if you still think we’re making this crap up for shits and giggles.

Congratulations, Boulon / CanardPC and Computer Bild Spiele. And bollocks to EA and Ubisoft (not to mention any mag that takes the deal).

EA Offer To Remove Dragon Age Embargo If 9/10 Awarded

noreply@blogger.com (RAM Raider) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000

For this story, you can pretty much remove “Eidos” and “Arkham Asylum” from our last few posts and replace them with “EA” and “Dragon Age: Origins”.

Reviews for Dragon Age: Origins are under embargo until 5th November. But, in what’s becoming an increasingly common deal, EA have offered to remove the embargo for anyone who’s willing to guarantee them a score of at least 90% (or 9/10, if you’re that way inclined).

We’ve learned from O Boulon, a staff writer from French PC games mag Canard PC, that his mag withheld their review on the grounds of “honesty” and “good conscience”. You can work out what that means for mags that don’t seem to have a problem taking EA up on this deal, mentioning no names…

And before we get swamped in the Dragon Age fanboys’ semen – we know it’s a decent game, and we’re not disputing whether or not it’s worth a 9. We’re disputing that these kinds of deals should happen in the first place.

EDIT: From Anonymous Knight: “As far as I know, the deal was print only. Online had a different embargo - earlier. I’ve got a mate on [removed European PC mag] who was offered it, but I don’t know about the consoles / officials. Sounds like an over eager EA rep trying to impress his bosses.”

Agreed, but it still shouldn’t happen. We asked PC Gamer editor Tim Edwards about the deal, and he refused to comment.

The Price Is Shite (Starring Gillen, Taurus, Porter & Mott)

noreply@blogger.com (RAM Raider) — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 23:00:00 +0000

Well over a year ago, we were asked to write a piece on how much reviewers should take game prices into account when reviewing and scoring in light of EA taking the piss out the entire country with its pricing for the original Rock Band set. The mag it was going to appear in folded shortly before it was due to publish (they usually have the decency to go tits up after we’ve administered our kiss of death). It seems a shame to see it go to waste before we disappear again, as it had some excellent contributions from Rick Porter (Editor of gamesTM), Dave McCarthy / Taurus (ex-Editor of Edge and current Triforce slacker), and Kieron Gillen (RR Award-winner).

We also asked current Edge Chief-Editor-In-Chief-Editor-In-Chief Tony Mott for comment, and received some of the finest prose to escape his fingertips:

“I've just had a look at your web site and you don't seem to have changed your stance on Edge (you still believe it to be a piece of shit, as far as I can tell).”

Although the focus of the piece was originally concerned with stuff that nobody cares about anymore such as the Rock Band pricing, the original iPhone, Gerstmann-gate and EA being cunts, it now seems relevant again thanks to Activision openly taking the piss out of you with their pricing for Modern Warfare 2, Tony Hawk RIDE and DJ Hero. So here, without the vast majority of our own wittering commentary, is the piece presented in more of an interview style so you can enjoy it even if you hate everything we stand for.

***

Every editor has their own idea about how much price should affect the scores given to games when reviewed. I've had my fair share of arguments with editors who think prices should play no part in the review, as I couldn't disagree more. Our jobs are to tell our readers whether they should part with their hard-earned money for the privilege of playing a game. Some editors get so totally lost somewhere in the yards of intestinal tract they spend most of their adult lives inspecting that they forget this simple fact. They become utterly blind to the notion that just because they get sent everything for free, along with assorted bribes and freebies, and of course the free parties where they play with all their little chums and have a jolly good time, all of their readership will have to pay out to enjoy the same experience.

Fortunately I'm describing a minority here, as most editors and review outlets do adopt a policy in their style guides that prices should be considered when awarding a score. Fifty quid for Audiosurf? Fuck off – 2/10. Five quid for Audiosurf? Yes please – 8/10.

But hey, I'm not always right, so I asked some of the mags and review outlets what they have to say about all this.

Rick Porter (Editor, GamesTM): “How to score titles when the price-tag strays away from the norm? It's something that myself and the team have struggled with plenty over the last 18 months. When a game is more or less free, it is very easy to justify treating the price as a distinctly separate issue. Besides, if pricing were allowed to be a contributing factor to scores then any flash game or title that's made available for free should almost certainly be awarded a perfect ten. Therefore, when reviewing games, the only way is to have a policy that disregards external factors such as pricing.”

David McCarthy (Former Editor, Edge): “I remember when I was working on Edge, the reviewing policy was to simply assume that Edge readers, being the early-adopting technophiles that we all imagined them to be, would assume that price was no object, and we reviewed games accordingly. And actually, that was fairly easy for me, because, impoverished though I was, price was no object for me when I bought Samba de Amigo, or when, for example, I bought an import GameCube with the money my mum had given me one Christmas to buy a bed. I'd rather play Super Monkey Ball than sleep comfortably.”

RAM Raider: “Now that's an interesting viewpoint – if your readership are so hardcore that they've learnt Japanese so they can play Final Fantasy "the way it's meant to be played", and think nothing of crashing the Tokyo Game Show whilst keeping a copy of their Scandinavian Game Development supplement with them for the plane journey, then it would be senseless to punish the quality of gameplay through a review just because of its associated RRP. In a way, it's moving away from critiquing the pure quality of the game. Nevertheless, £180 is still taking the piss.”

Porter: “When something is horrendously overpriced, the conscience begins to nag a little harder. When you're advising a largely young audience to part with hundreds rather than tens of pounds, you feel obliged to take things such as value for money into consideration. Fortunately, being one of the more mature videogame magazines on the market, I choose to assume that anyone reading gamesTM knows the worth of £180, is aware of the risks involved in spending it on a videogame and are, ultimately, sure that they can afford to spend the amount without too much consequence.”

RR: “So it seems that both Edge and gamesTM are familiar enough with their readership to know what the majority of them want – reviews of the games, rather than their price tags. But this brings us around to the question of whether particular audiences are that demarcated from Mr Average Gamer. If someone outside of the demographic picked up a copy of either mag hoping to see whether the game is worth mortgaging their house for, would it be reasonable for them to expect the reviewer to have considered the price?”

Kieron Gillen (RR Award-winning journo): “There's some very well meaning people, including several of my friends, who believe that the price shouldn't influence a review. I think they're about as wrong as you can get. A review in a consumer magazine is primarily a consumer guide, and the mark a shorthand for 'Should I get this or not?'. If a game is drastically overpriced – that is, giving an amount of entertainment beneath what a consumer would expect – I think it should affect the mark. It's part of the consumer protection part of the gig, and punishing developers who try to gouge consumers. You deal with everything in the body copy, allowing people to make up their own mind. But you can't give a 10/10 for a game that's ludicrously overpriced, because then people will think you mean 'It's worth it'. And you *don't* think it's worth it.”

RR: “Three reviewers, three different perspectives. On one extreme, we've got Gillen who thinks reviewers should take pricing into consideration. On the other, we've got McCarthy who thinks the dead opposite. Somewhere in between the two, albeit closer to McCarthy's camp, Porter thinks pricing should only minimally influence the reviewer when it's extraordinarily high. Are you following all this?”

Porter: “Could there be confusion? Almost definitely. When we gave Wii Play a fairly low score, there was a cry from many forums claiming that we were wrong to score a game that essentially cost five pounds in such a harsh way. It was agreed that it wasn't a great title, but all were willing to pay the asking price due to the Remote they received in the package. A shrewd piece of marketing by Nintendo who were obviously aware that all who purchased a Wii also owned Wii Sports – a title that near demanded a second Remote to be fully enjoyed. In the case of Rock Band, we awarded a high score. The game is excellent. Would we have come under fire from the same people who didn't agree with the Wii Play score had we marked it down to a four simply because of its high price? Definitely.”

RR: “So what about import reviews – can mags really be blamed for reviewing foreign code for the sake of an early review?”

Gillen: “Imports isn't really relevant to what I mainly do – a lot of mags re-review when it gets a UK release, like the lovely NGamer. What may be relevant is when I get sent a boxed copy of a game which is available much cheaper online, like many casual games. In that case, yeah, it affects the mark – as I'm reviewing the package I was sent and I'll actively point people in the direction of where they should get it from in the text.”

RR: “There's a lot of sense in that argument. To describe the job of the reviewer as being to review the game purely on its merits to the exclusion of all else would be misleading semantics. The real reason reviewers exist is to allow the reader to vicariously experience the game through them so they know if it's something they need to buy. In this sense, wouldn't ignoring the price be effectively ignoring the fact that in the real world, people have to pay for stuff?”

McCarthy: “I don't have a massive amount of sympathy for people complaining about the price of Rock Band. If you don't like the price, don't buy the game. Or move somewhere better than Britain. I mean, it's not just games, is it? As for the general point: if reviewers want to review a game based on its price, that's up to them, as long as they make it clear that's what they're doing. I'm basically in favour of reviewers reviewing a game however they want, as long as they make clear the basis upon which they form their judgements.”

Porter: “Wherever there is room for confusion and complaint, you can be sure that some will be confused and complain about it. I doubt there's any real solution to the problem. All that can be asked is that each magazine team is aware of the readership it has and points out issues where they see fit.”

RR: “The most important point underpinning McCarthy and Porter's argument is that there has to be clarity when it comes to the magazine, or the reviewer, getting the approach they're taking in the review across to the reader. But in an age where people will log on to MetaCritic to view a list of scores, or will happily just flick through to the last paragraph of a mag's review in WHSmith, what are the readers expecting?”

Gillen: “I suppose it's a natural conclusion of 'Some People Just Read The Mark'. If that's all they read, you need to actually carry the message, 'Not Worth It', in there. People who read the review will make up their own mind. And – frankly – publishers should be punished for trying it on.”

RR: “As compelling as the well considered and largely well-meaning viewpoints of fine journalists such as McCarthy and Porter are, particularly the attitude of reviewing the “game” rather than the “product”, it's hard not to ultimately agree with Gillen on this one. At the end of the day, we're not just here to tell the readers what's worth investing their time, and nothing more, in. Some other reviewers really do need reminding occasionally that their readers, those people they write for (remember them… anyone?), don't generally get sent stuff for free.

Gillen: “I suppose the central point is, 'I think that games journalists should remember when they spent thirty quid on a game and felt ripped off'. It's a good general rule.”

OPM Dodges Arkham Asylum Embargo With A 9

noreply@blogger.com (RAM Raider) — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 11:00:00 +0000

Still playing “spot the corruption”? There’s still time, as the general embargo hasn’t lifted yet. Ding!

Ding!

Ding ding ding!

Scans of the entire thing here.

By the way, if cunts keep posting numerous anonymous comments as if they’re from several different people, we’re going to start publishing IP addresses. Especially the ones associated with Eidos.

Why Publishers Love Exclusive “Reviews”

noreply@blogger.com (RAM Raider) — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 11:00:00 +0000

This ad is running on the back of issue 86 of GamesTM, out next week. It went to print before the issue of GamesMaster we featured last week was sent out to its readership, meaning that Eidos was privy to the score and text of GM’s “exclusive” before it was published. This, by the way, is very common, as it allows publishers to place borderline hysterical quotes like “Batman is a masterpiece” onto their advertising whilst simultaneously plugging the magazine the quote is plucked from.

For the record, the latest issue of GamesTM doesn’t feature Arkham Asylum on the cover, nor a review, as they didn’t arrange to be excused from the general embargo.

Arkham Asylum: We Have A Winner

noreply@blogger.com (RAM Raider) — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0000

Have you been playing “spot the corruption”?

Excitingly, the embargo hasn’t lifted yet. Ding!

Ding!

Ding ding ding!

“With regards an article posted on RamRaider alleging that Eidos has fixed review scores for Batman: Arkham Asylum, we want to state that no discussions have been held about review scores with any magazines. In short there is simply not one shred of truth in this article, except for the title of the game.”

Jon Brooke, Eidos UK marketing manager

Scans of the full review here, if you can somehow heroically endure it.

ONM’s Rushed Wii Sports Resort Review

noreply@blogger.com (RAM Raider) — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 14:30:00 +0000

This has probably been the worst attempt at closing down a blog in the history of everything, ever. Seeing as we’ve already broken silence (erm, twice), we’re going to offload a few posts that we were saving up for a one-off later in the year. And then we’ll fuck off again. Probably.

“Just thought I'd bring the Official Nintendo Magazine’s review of Wii Sports Resort to your attention (flagged up by the GRcade forums). The review is atrociously bad on practically every single level. I’d wager the word “well” & variations of “works really well” have never appeared together so often ever before. Bear in mind this is one review...

When describing the Frisbee... “The controls work really well”

Wakeboarding... “The controls work well”

Table Tennis... “Actually works really well”

Power Cruising... “Actually works really well”

Table Tennis again... “In fact it actually works really well”

Archery... “But I have to admit this one worked really, really well”

Cycling... “Works well”

Archery for a second time... “Works very well”

Couple in typos ("you have get to the front of the course over the whole competition") & their review must have been cobbled together in record time. Shameful.

Anonymous Knight”

Eurogamer Editor Tom Bramwell On Embargos

noreply@blogger.com (RAM Raider) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 05:00:00 +0000

By now we've all read RAM Raider's post about Batman reviews. I wrote Rammy an email on Friday night in which I raised a few points about it, and, as with all good Friday night emails, I regretted it immediately when I woke up on Saturday morning, because I was horribly inarticulate and bonkers throughout. So I wrote another email asking if I could write a clearer reply making a point that I think is often overlooked or goes without discussion, and then maybe he could publish that. If you're reading this, rather than a post entitled "Eurogamer editor sends mad email then panics", then Rammy is a gentleman. (Although, actually, that's still quite a good title.)

I believe we would all be much better off without review embargoes. One day, I hope to live in a world where developers finish making games, and their publishers immediately ship them off to as many critics as possible, encouraging us to write them up whenever we like, and allowing us to tell you whether we love them or hate them well before you find yourself staring at them in the shops. You would have plenty of time to make your mind up, developers and publishers would have lots of feedback to consider, and the quality of reviews would dictate the success or otherwise of the magazines and websites that published them, so there would be no sense in rushing to be "first!" (People would still do that for a while, but they'd get over it.)

That's the dream, so what's the reality?

With websites, the most common approach taken by game publishers is to provide review copies a week or two before release and specify a date and time that the review can go live. This is usually just before the US release date, which is a few days before the European one. Some publishers only specify embargoes on big releases, and allow other reviews to go up as soon as the publication likes after receiving the game. Elsewhere, there are a couple who I'd happily single out for praise. Sony frequently provides review code a month or more in advance of release on major games, and although it does set embargoes, these are usually well ahead of the release date, as with Killzone 2 and inFamous this year. One company, meanwhile, often provides games a month or more ahead of release and seldom sets any embargo at all. Stand up Nintendo, and take a bow.

However, it's not all like that. In the bad old days, websites struggled to get hold of review copies until the day of release, and sometimes had to wait until after that. Or - more frequently with magazines than websites, as far as I know - review copies were only provided if a publication agreed to a high score in advance, which is the sort of thing Rammy is highlighting. This behaviour is much less prominent than it used to be, but it does still happen. One of the biggest publishers in the world, for instance, makes it very difficult to review its games in the UK before the US release date, and sometimes even the UK one, even when said games are actually very good.

In this case, I'd like to separate the two aspects of Rammy's report and try and demonstrate why there is hope amongst the apparent bleakness. Whether or not the events described are true is immaterial - this sort of thing does happen, and the two key parts are: 1) A game provided for review in time for magazines to publish their thoughts ahead of release. 2) An offer to allow people to publish earlier if they really like the game. The part about the 9/10 proposal is something I've written about before, and as I said then, I think that in theory it is acceptable providing the publication behaves honestly. It's then up to its readers to decide whether it acted honourably or not.

In this instance, I think it's worth focusing on the first part: the idea of a publisher providing review copies in sufficient time for all manner of magazines and websites to publish their verdicts before the game is available to buy. This is becoming more common, and I believe that's progress. Similarly, I think Sony and Nintendo and the other examples I provided originally are signs of progress.

One has to remember that a game publisher's ideal scenario is completely the opposite of ours. Theirs is that only positive reviews appear before release, and preferably right around release, so that people's attention is drawn to the launch of something apparently loved by critics. While some do still attempt to stage that situation, plenty are now on the road to siding with us. There are loads of reasons for this, but one of the most prominent is that the internet remembers, and people don't like being fooled. It's actually better, a few Mr Publishers now believe, to live with the fact that a mediocre game is going to get low scores, because one day they will have a really good game to sell, and people will be more likely to believe the good things they're hearing about it.

Let's not paint too rosy a picture: we're still a long way from the dream scenario of tons of early reviews and every publisher taking the bad with the good, and it's important that commentators like Rammy continue to talk about review embargoes and let the people publishing games know that, in the long run, it will be best to do away with them completely. But the point I wanted to make, which I've hopefully stumbled into somewhere in the knots of text above, is that we *are* getting there, slowly but surely, and I believe that, in attacking the practices of PR and marketing people, we must make sure that we define our criticism specifically so as not to discourage that progress.

Tom Bramwell

Editor, Eurogamer

Eidos Seek 90% Score & Cover For Arkham Asylum In Exchange For Early Review

noreply@blogger.com (RAM Raider) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0000

UPDATE: We Have A Winner

Unlike our no-longer-regularly-updated blog, corruption in the games industry has so far failed to go into hibernation. In the week that Eidos has breathed its last, they’ve decided to go out with a bang by brazenly attempting to artificially hype up their forthcoming Arkham Asylum release.

Several mags have their review code already, but have to sit on their reviews until a hateful embargo expires at the end of the month. But Eidos, ever the helpful fellows that they are, have been offering a way around this embargo. If you dedicate the cover of your mag to Arkham Asylum and guarantee a score of at least 90%, Eidos will allow you to run the review early.

We know that one editor has already valiantly told Eidos to fuck off, but we can’t tell you which to protect our Anonymous Dark Knight. We also asked the usually chatty UK Officially Corrupt Xbox 360 Magazine editor Jon Hicks about it, who tellingly clammed up tighter than a nun’s cunt at the mere mention.

But what of the others? Well, there’s an exciting way to find out in the form of a game that you can play at home over the next month called “Spot The Corrupt Arkham Asylum Review”. You see, Arkham Asylum is a decentish release that’s not quite up to par when it comes to variety and depth. This means even the most charitable outlets should settle at no more than the 80s in their verdicts, but don’t be surprised if you see a few 7s from the pseuds.

This means that if you see a mag turn up within the next few weeks (ding!) that features Arkham Asylum on its cover (ding!) and gives it at least 90% (ding ding ding!), you have a winner.

Exciting…

UPDATE: We Have A Winner

Ridiculous Statements Masquerading As Games Journalism: Fallout 3

noreply@blogger.com (RAM Raider) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Strap your arms to your sides before you read this, or you may gouge your eyes from your skull before the paragraph’s out:

“It’s hard to pin down the problem, but there is a reason why, however intelligent we may be, we mostly read Henning Mankell ahead of Tolstoy and watch Woody Allen instead of Bergman. There comes a point in the evolution of any art form – and releases like this make any quibbling over games’ claims to such status laughable – when the supposed masters of it leave the mass audience behind. It’s probably inevitable, by no means a bad thing and mostly explainable in terms of mostly finite consumer qualities. In other words, the amount of effort, time or brains that you can bring to the table will play a large part in determining how deeply you can appreciate an artwork’s quality. If you’re not convinced by the thesis, have a look at Ulysses.”

The Daily Mail’s James O’Brien’s Fallout 3 review… sorry, thesis.

The Inexplicable Madness

noreply@blogger.com (RAM Raider) — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Seven games journos from the Unreliable EuroGamer talk sense about Little Big Planet:

Dan Whitehead: I’m honestly quite surprised to find LBP at the top of the heap. Few games made me grind my teeth more in 2008. It looks lovely and is bursting with charm and clever ideas, and has Stephen Fry’s rich mahogany narration, but...it’s just not very good at being a platform game. Is that just me? The floaty ambience, unpredictable environments and crude checkpoint system all made it a bit of a chore to get through, as far as I’m concerned. Platforming requires precision, and that’s something that LittleBigPlanet just doesn’t have. It’s as woolly as its star.

Simon Parkin: That the responsibility for the game’s greatness rests on us and not on the developer is unusual, and for that reason the endless plaudits make me uneasy.

Tom Bramwell: I almost feel guilty that it wasn’t on my list at all, but it leaves me completely cold: the platforming is overburdened with self-conscious presentation its imprecise controls and frustrating checkpoints fail to justify, and the editor was too slow and complicated for my pathetic brain to bother with.

Kristan Reed: Pretty much everyone I’ve spoken to seems to agree that LBP makes for a fairly boring single-player experience, but becomes absolutely mesmerising in co-op with the right player. The online lag is ruinous most of the time, and the added inertia on the jump mechanic makes it needlessly fiddly when the going gets tough.

Kieron Gillen: I can’t help but wonder - if a game’s based around user-generated content, and the fact you’re on a console means that you can’t actually let gamers generate their content without half of it being deleted because it infringes some copyright or another... isn’t that just a fundamentally flawed concept?

John Walker: All I’ve read about this is that the platforming is rubbish, and you have to make your own if you want to play a decent level.

Rob Fahey: I’m surprised that this is number one… It’s not my personal favourite game of 2008.

Perfection. Except, they’re all talking about why Little Big Planet is the Unreliable EuroGamer’s number 1 game of the year.

Excuse us while our heads explode.

RR Most Ridiculous Statement Masquerading As Games Journalism 2008: IGN Australia

noreply@blogger.com (RAM Raider) — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Our personal favourite award threw up some gems, but fuck knows, there’s plenty out there to choose from. The winner has dropped straight from the encrusted slit of a game that’s proven to be an efficient shit magnet in its effectiveness at drawing together the assorted things cunts say – none other than the RR Most Overrated Pile Of Shite 2008 winner, Little Shit Planet. Here’s IGN Australia’s take on it:

‘On the surface, LittleBigPlanet is all about jumping and stickers and rainbows and ponies and having a good time with friends. But if you delve deeper and look past the infectiously approachable presentation, there’s something far more curious at play. LittleBigPlanet is actually all about the fundamentals of cause and effect relationships, man in his environment and how we relate to the world around us.’

“No, it isn’t. It’s a game about sackboys.”

Dan de la peche, via Facebook

The notable nominations list sees another nod to IGN, this time featuring shit-speak about GTA4:

“IGN’s GTAIV review includes such eyebrow-raising lines as:”

‘Helicopters are also very tough to control in this fashion – it’s as if Rockstar thought they were making a game about dragons.’

“What?”

‘Go to location, kill people to get to target, chase target, kill target -- it never feels repetitive.’

“Not at all! Even if it is simply the same formula repeated from its predecessors.”

Melaisis, via website

And finally, it’s only right and proper that our favourite award should include a mention of our favourite magazine:

‘Gaming magazine and website, Edge, announced at this year’s Edinburgh Interactive Festival that it has awarded its fourth Award for Innovation to Bungie’s popular Halo 3.

‘Halo 3, just as Halo 2 did before it, presents a roadmap for the way online will be integrated into videogames in the coming year,’ said Alex Wiltshire, Deputy Editor of Edge.’

“What a pile of fucking horseshit.”

Anonymous Knight, via email

Yahtzee Makes A Cock Of Himself

noreply@blogger.com (RAM Raider) — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

If you hate Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw, yet always lose arguments about him being a cunt because Zero Punctuation is still just about good enough, this is the vid you’ve been waiting for. Game Damage, a pilot (we’ll take his word for that), basically consists of Croshaw and a couple of Australians sat on a sofa droning on about games with the verve and panache of a tramp bringing himself off in a shop doorway by poking his twice-smoked cigarette dog end against a discarded one-armed Barbie where its contour-free gash would be. For half an hour.

Here’s what one of our Anonymous Knights had to say:

“What it’s like when the punctuation is added back in. Isn’t it funny how self-awareness zips away as soon as someone gets some fans? I hate that guy.”

If you want to watch a couple of silly arseholes laughing at Yahtzee not being funny and a red on white blood splat that’s exactly the same as the designs from the press and marketing materials for Dexter, click through to the website and hit play. And then hit stop again after a couple of minutes as you realise that, yes, there really is half an hour of this shit.

Why Mainstream Press Shouldn’t Cover Games: A Ridiculous Statements Special

noreply@blogger.com (RAM Raider) — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

If you follow the blog, you might have seen some Anonymous Knights commenting on a BBC “news” story allegedly about games. The piece was apparently written by Daniel Emery (us!) and Andrew Webb, although why they felt the need to share out the literal four sentences that introduce two paragraphs of straight-up quotes is a mystery.

The quotes are from Future’s John Houlihan (we know him – he’s better than this shit) and Shiny Media’s Zara Ravinowicz (note to self: never read anything from Shiny Media, or by Zara Ravinowicz).

If you can’t be arsed to click through, an Anonymous Knight pulled out the best quote:

“You need to get a game that lasts more than an hour. With the credit crunch, people are going out less, so you need to get a decent bang for your buck. Platform or fighting games are good; just make sure it’s properly interactive.”

It’s not even worth beginning to dissect all the cuntiness crammed into that paragraph because it should all be obvious to anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together what’s wrong with it. I’m choking on my own fucking rage here just reading it back again.

Here’s the vid that goes with it, so you too can choke on your own fucking rage from the comfort of your home/office:

In other news, let’s all laugh at the man’s funny name:

“Dec. 16 (Bloomberg) -- PartyGaming Plc’s founder and former director, Anurag Dikshit, pleaded guilty to illegal Internet gambling.”

Ridiculous Statements: A Sequel

noreply@blogger.com (RAM Raider) — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Why should only games (and films, and books, etc etc) have sequels when there’s just as much fun to be had with Ridiculous Statements Masquerading As Games Journalism? As an early Christmas present just for you, dear readers, Tim Edwards has busted out his stash of uncomfortably short sentences for a second time. So that he. Can carry on. Talking about. Far. Cry 2:

“I was crouched in waving grass, scouting a guard-post. It was dark and I felt safe. I watched a truck winding along a dirt track. I waited. A zebra wandered past. I started to sneak toward the camp. As the guards turned, I hid behind a tree. But then I got bored.”

PC Gamer’s Tim Edwards on why he likes Far Cry 2. Still.

>Run Shit-Filter v.2.0

noreply@blogger.com (RAM Raider) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

**BEEP**BEEP**BUZZ**

THANK YOU FOR ACTIVATING THE GAMES REVIEW SHIT-FILTER TRANSLATOR PROGRAMME

PLEASE INPUT SHIT:

“Attempting to persuade catatonic big rigs around an anfractuous Gordian knot of narrow dirt roads remains a torturous exercise in futility.”

**BEEP**BEEP**WHIRR**BUZZ**

TRANSLATION:

“Driving the big vehicles is hard.”

THANK YOU FOR USING THE GAMES REVIEW SHIT-FILTER TRANSLATOR PROGRAMME SPONSORED BY EDGE

END OF LINE

***
Suggested by an Anonymous Knight regarding a dribble of semen running down the leg of Edge’s anfractuous review of Motorstorm: Pacific Rift.

Pretentious Games Journalism (And Something About MCV)

noreply@blogger.com (RAM Raider) — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

There’s an excellent piece that’s gone up on Robson’s site nicely explaining why mirthless cunts like N’Gai Croal can fuck off. If you’re still unclear about the difference between Old and New Games Journalism, then you’re probably one of those wilfully ignorant self-deluding cockwits who’ll tell anyone that listens that NGJ is nothing to do with the ramblings of the pseuds, because you are one and you’re too embarrassed to admit it. If you’re not a pseud but genuinely don’t know what makes good games writing, then read Robson’s summary.

Also for today, here’s an email we received from an Anonymous Knight who’s got a thing or two to say about the way MCV chooses who gets positive coverage. Enjoy:

Dear RAM Raider,

Over the last few weeks I have become increasingly angry as I turn the pages of MCV and I have finally broken and can keep quiet no longer.

The dirty dish rag of a magazine has run several pieces recently like “30 under 30” and “Industry Dream Teams”. Each one is populated by a denizen of grinning golums who believe that firstly they have some influence over the world around them and secondly that anyone cares. Do none of these children realise that it is their brands and products that are successful and not them? As brand or account manager on “Call of Singstar 09” please don't confuse (convince) yourself that you have anything to do with its creation and or popularity. Anyway that's not my gripe so I will continue after the jump.

Why do these media sluts get to go into the magazines pages? Well, it is certainly not by virtue of their professionalism. As an example one of those so called “Fantasy Team” members (who was an average telesales executive at the time) once offered out carnal favours to anyone prepared to give her career a boot up. She now lives with her current boss.

No, the reason they are all there is simple: Stuart. Either he likes you or your company is prepared to pay him “advertising” money. In return for a large sum of money on an annual basis Mr D will not only refrain from giving you bad press but he will ensure your employees are held up as paragons of the business world. All dressed up as the legitimate business of advertising. This is a joke as an ad in MCV must have about as much impact on your target market as a fart in hurricane. I will call it by its real name for once; protection money.

I know for a fact that one very large publisher was having a sticky time with SD as they had stopped “advertising” a couple of years back. As a result MCV never published positive stories about them and also would go out of its way to slag them off in print and in person. Recently a marketing man was dispatched from the publisher to enquire of Stuart “how much will it cost to stop slagging us off?”. The answer, “£XXX,000 PA”. They negotiated him down to around £XXX,000 and the deal was done. This is why the company’s ads can now be seen all over MCV on a weekly basis and its employees faces regularly grin out at us whilst we go for our Friday morning dumps.

My word that feels better.

Regards,

Anon.

Eidos: Paying For Review Scores

noreply@blogger.com (RAM Raider) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000

You wouldn’t believe the shit publishers pull in their quest to salvage good review scores out of games that are clearly underperforming. Publishers such as Eidos, with workmanlike shit that’s not worth your money like Tomb Raider: Underworld.

The fun started when Eidos began laying down arbitrary conditions on reviewers before they could be assigned review code.

“They insisted that whoever was reviewing Tomb Raider for each of the Future Bath mags attend a one hour demo in Wimbledon before they were allowed to take away review code. I make that over £600 in train fares and nearly 30 hours of work time wasted to be told how to play a fucking game that’s been around since the dawn of time, or to show off some new sodding mo-cap gymnastics. Ramsay’s stench is all over this.”

Reviewing is politically hard enough when you’ve got the twin spectres of PR and publishers dropping turds on your head, but it becomes even more so when Future Publishing itself joins in. So-called site takeovers are the latest in the marketing man’s armoury in his quest to make editorial sites appear more like a shop front for whatever piece of low grade shit they’re trying to hawk on that particular week.

So the world shouldn’t have really been surprised when Future’s Games Radar changed its name for the day to Tomb Radar, as the risk of shattering the impartial veneer they try to con their readers into thinking exists is easily worth weathering in return for the substantial cash amount deposited into their coffers.

Here’s what James Binns, senior money launderer at Future, had to say in the press release issued by Future as part of the bargain:

“Tomb Raider: Underworld is a great game, well worth the 9/10 scores it is picking up across gaming websites and magazines. Getting the message out there on launch day is essential in the games market and this takeover gives Eidos unprecedented cut through.”

It’s always nice to have Future’s publishing goals confirmed as putting advertising over the truth. But eagle-eyed Pat Garratt of the excellent news site Videogaming247 spotted a slight miscalculation on the part of Binns – the “9/10 scores it is picking up across websites and magazines” don’t exist.

MetaCritic, which has the game down as a painfully average 76% at the time of writing, reveals that the only editorial outlet to have given the game 9/10 is Console Monster (anyone?). Interestingly enough, the 9/10 stuck onto the end of Games Radar’s (sorry - Tomb Radar’s) review is actually in place of the less PR-friendly 86% score it was given in the mag that was the source of the review, PC Gamer.

You might think a disinformation campaign would be more than enough to save an ailing franchise that dreams of being half as good as (ironically) Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, but you’d be wrong. As again noticed by VG247, it was revealed by Gamespot journo Guy Cocker on his Twitter page that Eidos were asking review outlets to hold back any reviews that scored the recycled crappy-camera-angled shit-fest at less than 80% until Monday. That way, all of those saps who pay their wages have several days to go out and buy it before being warned by reviewers that it’s not worth the money.

“Call from Eidos – if you’re planning on reviewing Tomb Raider Underworld at less than an 8.0, we need you to hold your review till Monday.”

Then, a miracle occurred. The PR firm representing Eidos broke with an ancient tradition held since time immemorial – they told the truth.

“We’re trying to get the Metacritic rating to be high, and the brand manager in the US that’s handling all of Tomb Raider has asked that we just manage the scores before the game is out, really, just to ensure that we don’t put people off buying the game, basically.”

After realising the earth-shattering blow they’d dealt to the turgid name of PR by telling the truth, BHPR quickly retracted the statement and tried to pretend that all of the above was nothing more than a vivid hallucination.

So what’s the moral of all this? Don’t be silly – publishers, marketers, PR husks and editorial shills don’t have any.

Ridiculous Statements Masquerading As Games Journalism: The Daily Mail

noreply@blogger.com (RAM Raider) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

In case you’re still pondering what to nominate for the RR Award for the Most Ridiculous Statement Masquerading As Games Journalism (as if), here’s another couple of entries to add to the list:

“If you were to imagine playing a Sims character within a fantasy adventure full of side missions and surprises you would be heading in the right direction.”

The Daily Mail’s James O’Brien reinvents the action-RPG genre in his review of Fable 2. A game which, frankly, is second only to Braid in terms of attracting reviews consisting of two thousand words of waffling bollocks that abjectly fails to tell the reader about the game in anything approaching an entertaining or informative way. COUGH*EUROGAMER*COUGH*EDGE*COUGH

“Bikes, when you think about it, should lend themselves to video games more readily than cars – they are smaller and accelerate faster.”

The Daily Mail’s James O’Brien barely manages to stop short of adding “and they go brrrroooom” to his review of MotoGP 08.

***

We’ll be announcing the first RR Award winners soon. The voting will stay open for all categories until they’re individually announced, but we’re going to leave the Most Overrated Pile Of Shite Award until last so you have chance to vote for November’s releases. Like, say, Mirror’s Edge.

Ridiculous Statements Masquerading As Games Journalism: Far Cry 2

noreply@blogger.com (RAM Raider) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

“You have two options. You can leave her to die in pain. Or you can euthanize her. You put a gun to her mouth. She’s in so much pain she practically swallows it whole. She wants you to kill her. So you do.”

PC Gamer’s Tim Edwards describes the fate of the sub-ed who was the first to read his review of Far Cry 2. In very short. Sentences.

More On The PC Zone Walkout

noreply@blogger.com (RAM Raider) — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 15:04:00 +0000

Original story

Considering how long we’ve sat on this story, we’ve been surprised at how few people actually knew about it. So, here are some more details for you.

First of all, if your life’s ambition is to edit an ailing mag that’s being ground down to sawdust, you’re in luck as Future hasn’t found a replacement for Porter. Considering he’s leaving on October 17th, this could potentially be quite awkward for them. Well, we say awkward, but we really mean lucrative, as considering key staffers aren’t being replaced (including Ed Zitron due to centralisation), it’s not a huge stretch to envisage the mag being swallowed whole by the Future corporate whore machine.

The one and only new guy brought in to replace the four writers that have left is a chap called David Brown who’ll be getting whipped for peanuts alongside the only remaining writer, Steve Hogarty. Curiously, Hogarty doesn’t seem particularly upset about the walkout.

In summary, Zitron, Sefton and the Art Editor have gone, and Porter and Blyth depart October 17th. They’re having a party. Wouldn’t you?

By the way, while you’re reading this story on certain other sites, you’ll have to add the “Source: RAM Raider” part yourself, as not all of them can be arsed to include it.

Walkout At PC Zone

noreply@blogger.com (RAM Raider) — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 00:10:00 +0000

Five of PC Zone’s staff, including its editor and art guy, have finally tired of Future’s bullshit. Disc Editor Ed Zitron and Chief-Editor-In-Chief-Editor-In-Chief Jamie Sefton have already walked (Zitron responded to a job offer in New York, and Sefton's contract was up), and Editor Will Porter and Best Games Journalist This Country Has Jon Blyth are following. The reason? Take your pick:

The page count and budget have both been slashed. Again. This means the staff writers are going to have to take on more work for the same money, and won’t be able to assign as much out to freelancers. Is this saving being passed onto the readers? Is it fuck – the lower page count means they’re getting less for their money.

The publication frequency is going up to 14 issues a year. Again, this equates to more work for the team, but they’ll still be getting the same money. It also means the regular readers will have to pay for one extra issue a year to get the same amount of content.

The hardware section is written by the same guy who does PC Format’s and PC Gamer’s bit. Once upon a time, PC Zone used to have a reputation as the daring wild child with strong opinions that had no truck with Gamer’s wishy-washy sixth form philosophising. This has naturally been diluted beyond belief since the mag was bought out by Future, but now that chunks of the mag are going to be written by someone from Gamer, any personality it once had is now warmly dribbling down its inside thigh.

Disc Editor Ed Zitron isn’t being replaced because the cover disc is going to be handled in the same way as hardware – so one guy will be dealing with the coasters for several mags. Again, an opportunity could have been taken here to ditch the disc (which died the day everyone got broadband) and lower the price of the mag. It’s no secret that they cost barely pennies, and are only there to justify the fucking silly prices Future charge.

We’ve been predicting PC Zone’s demise for some time now, but now know that it’s due to keep on running for a while yet. But despite having a special soft spot for the former cool kid, we really wish it had already gone under instead of being centralised, cut-back, sanitised and cheapened by the Future Publishing corporate bland-o-thiser. At least it would have cashed its chips whilst on a relative high, instead of rolling on with none of its talent left, fleecing its three readers month after month until it inevitably slips into the not so great shithouse in the sky.

We wish our best to the dearly departed, and salute them for fucking off away from Future's dick of doom before it rogers them into obscurity.

Dennis Publishing’s legacy is well and truly dead. Does that make you sad?

(Big thanks to our Anonymous Knights)

EDIT: Update posted

Things Cunts Say

noreply@blogger.com (RAM Raider) — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000

It’s fair to say that the true star of the Official Top 50 Games Journalists (And Industry People) 2008 this summer was its partner feature, Things Cunts Say. We’re toddling off for a couple of weeks before we open up the voting for the RAM Raider Awards, so we thought we’d leave you with the complete run down of the diabolically cunty things rattled out by journos who believe their own hype, even when they don’t have any. Memorise this list, because we’re going to be waving it over the heads of all like a turd on a shovel.

Don’t forget to add your own entries in the comments thread at the bottom. But before you do, here’s a brand new entry:

“Here’s something cunts say – anything said by RAM Raider.”

The Anonymous Knight who originally suggested this was quick off the mark. Well done, Anonymous Knight. However, the seven thousand people who suggested it afterwards are bereft of imagination, wit, originality, and – yes – are all cunts.

Now, for the rest of the list:

“… will make you grin.”

Fuck off. We never, EVER, “grin” when playing games. Ever. If you “grin” when you play games, then you need professional help. If you think a game will make your readers “grin”, then you can fuck right off, because you’re a cunt.

“… is a near-religious experience.”

The times we’ve read this in a review reaches into double figures, but it never fails to make us vomit wildly. Religion is where people believe in one or more gods, and involves praying from time to time. Games are things you play and enjoy. THERE IS NO COMMON GROUND BETWEEN THE TWO. If you think there is, then well done, you’re a fucking cunt.

“If you don’t like [insert game title or facet here], then you have no soul.”

This is, without doubt, the cheapest cop out in journalistic history. If the reader doesn’t like the game that you’re so blinkered about you can’t comprehend that other people might not like it, then it means you’ve fucked up the review. It also means that you’re a cunt.

“Teh interweb.”

In a parallel universe, referring to the internet, the net, the web, or the world wide web as the “interweb” is considered to be the height of wit and a demonstration of the writer’s mental aptitude. Likewise, the deliberate misspelling of “the” as “teh” leaves the reader gasping at the braveness of the writer in having the guts to transpose a joke which was never that funny on internet forums into a journalistic piece of writing. However, in the universe we live in, it means you’re an absolute fucking arseholing cunt.

“Here in the office, [worthless anecdote about one of the writer’s colleagues].”

Writer sits at keyboard. Writer can’t think of anything prescient to say about the game he’s supposed to be telling you about. Writer crowbars in an anecdote about another writer on the magazine. Writer sits back and smiles smugly, satisfied that his comments will be appreciated. And they will be appreciated – by the person in the anecdote, the seven other people in the office with him, and the three readers that are so hardcore they cut out the staff photos and stick them to their bedroom walls so they don’t have to bother rolling over when they’re knocking out a sweaty half-hearted wank. To the thousands of other readers who don’t know or care who writes for the mag, the writer will be correctly considered to be an indulgent cunt.

“If you don’t like [game that reviewer has been paid to like, but there’s a remotely slender chance that other people might fucking not], then you just don’t get it.”

Guess what – we don’t like you. Not because we don’t get “it”, but because you’re a cunt.

“I”

Have a look through that pile of paperwork on the floor. Underneath your contract and your commissions, there’s a style guide. What does it say? Does it instruct you to write something witty and informative about the game you’re dealing with? Yes. Does it instruct you to tell the reader about your boring, crappy, shitty life? Does it fuck. So don’t. Because, guess what? That’s right – nobody gives a fuck, because they’re buying a magazine to read about games, not your fucking autobiography. Save it for your blog that nobody reads, or your angsty diary you keep by your bed whilst harbouring delusions that one day it’ll be published. It won’t be published, because nobody cares about your life. Because you’re a cunt.

“Meh.”

One of the privileges of serving the mighty cause of games journalism is being able to write colloquially and getting away with it. Exasperated? Then render that tutting sound you would usually make as a “tsk”. Need to express your incredulity as you would in conversation? Then you may use “pah”. But how about if you’re not really that bothered about the subject of the piece you’re writing? Then perhaps you should justify to the reader why they have to sit through an account of something you’re not interested in. Explain to them why it is that you feel the subject needs to be mentioned, but should be treated with apathy. If it makes you tired just thinking about it, pick from “yawn” or “zzz”. But who within the wide expanses of this fucking miserable arsehole of a planet has ever opened their mouth and said “meh”? Who? That’s right – nobody. Nobody ever says “meh”. So why write it? Oh, that’s right – because you’re a fucking thick cunt.

“Games are art.”

Here we FUCKING go. Games are things that you play and enjoy. Sometimes they can invoke other feelings, such as excitement if you’re blowing the fuck out of everything with your cock hanging out of your trousers, or screaming rage if you’re playing Alone In The Dark, or, if you’re a particular breed of “enthusiast”, arousal whenever the protagonist in the latest Final Fantasy or some hardcore “JRPG” appears on the screen looking like a half-dressed teenage androgynous boy. When you’re in the Barbican or the Science Museum at one of those games exhibitions, the only emotions evoked in relatively sane and normal people are frustration because the fucking pads don’t work, apathy because the game’s shit even if the pads do work, or bewilderment at the guy standing next to you with both hands bunched up in his pockets as he’s drawing out a hefty sweat in front of Rival Schools. So this is a long-winded way of saying that games are games that are there to be played and enjoyed or wanked over. If you think they’re art, then step up to the line and take a proud bow, because very well done – you’re a cunt.

“The first rule of [something fucking tenuously linked to Fight Club] is, you do not talk about [something fucking tenuously linked to Fight Club]”

Can’t think of anything funny or original to say? Then how about bastardising one of the wittiest lines from one of the best films of the 20th century? Because that’s not been done before in the near-fucking decade it’s been out, has it? And seeing as you’ve already shown your readership what an utter cunt you are, how about mentioning the cake is a fucking lie?

“…will remind you why you like gaming.”

Have you ever spent five years alone in your flat staring blankly at the wall because you’ve forgotten why you like watching TV? Have you ever spent a month feeling peculiarly frustrated and suffering random erections, the likes of which you’ve not seen since you were a teenager, because you’ve forgotten why you like wanking? Have you ever collapsed in a heap on the floor, clutching your throat and turning blue because you’ve forgotten why you like breathing? No? Then you’re hardly fucking likely to forget why you like gaming, then. Cunt.

And now, our guest contributions.

Anonymous Knight:

“No pun intended.”

Yes, you mean the pun to be intended. Fuck off.

Naïve Student Journo:

"Hello this is [PR dickhead] at [soulless publishers]. I'm currently out of the office until [a date that was three weeks ago], please feel free to leave a message after the tone."

Just calling around to try and scrape up some shitty review code, and I've had the above message from the last four numbers. It seems publishing city has turned into a ghost town of never ending summer breaks. With practically no games to promote, where the fuck is everybody?

We’d like to add that it’s not only during the summer that the PR cocks are failing to do their mind-implodingly simple jobs. Try putting together a new-year preview for a mag in early November (and, seeing as it’s a mag, they’ll give you slightly less than a day to produce six pages of copy), and you’ll find out that even at the busiest time of the year for games releases, the useless fucknuts still piss off out of the office so they’re unreachable for weeks.

Us: “Hello, I work for [games mag that used to be popular], and we really need some assets so we can advertise your game for free.”

PR Cunt’s Secretary: “Well, [useless PR cunt whose sole purpose in their miserable fucking life is to promote that game] is away for two weeks.”

Us: “But my deadline’s tomorrow, and he said he’d get the assets to me a week ago. Is there anyone else who can help me?”

PR Cunt’s Secretary: “No. Fuck off.”

And yes, Codemasters, and yes, THQ, and yes, Ubisoft, we’re looking at you, you hateful incompetent fucking wankers.

Keza:

"Insert pun/joke about X here."

No. No I shall not. You are a fucking WRITER. It is YOUR job to think up passably amusing puns, not the reader's. Presenting the reader with the constituent parts of a POTENTIAL joke is not the same as actually being funny, you lazy tosser. I understand that a staffie job can wear one down to the point where even thinking of jokes becomes a joyless, tiring experience, but have some pride.

Anonymous Knight:

"We [insert activity here] so you don't have to."

The single most asinine, faux-chummy cop-out available to lazy writers/subs.

DX:

"As I type this…"

Going on, of course, to insinuate that they are engaged in some ‘cool’ activity, rather than simply staring cunt-eyed into a monitor, marvelling at the inane shit pouring from their fingers, the sole purpose of which being to convince themselves that they're not better off dead.

DX:

"As in some other magazines I could mention."

Yes, but you never fucking do, do you? Instead, you're quite happy to rest on the laurels that at least half the retarded chavs reading your mag will clench anally in rapturous self-satisfaction, as they briefly believe that what they're reading is the best of the bunch, despite the fact that they've never read anything other than whatever arse-towel they're holding while delighting in the scent of their own morning gravy.

DX:

"Gaming has never been more popular."

Particularly cunty when opening an editorial, and usually from the pen of a journalist who's made editor after ten years of giving up his social life, his marriage, his kids, his integrity, his ability to tell the truth, his ability to tell the difference between good, bad, or cunty, his ability to get a hard-on, his means to keep his eyelids anything higher than half mast and most importantly, the means to take another career path now that he's painted himself into this filthy shit-smelling corner. But that's okay. Because games have never been more popular.

Anonymous Knight:

"War-hunnh! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!"

Every shitty preview of a war FPS has contained this innocuous, arse-standard lyric over the past 20 years. Surely the true sign of a proper cunt?

But Anonymous Knight 2 disagrees:

That's more the sign of the first time someone's ever written about a war game. The true sign of a cunt is:

"War - what is it good for? Well, the developers of this game, actually!"

At least people who do the vanilla lyrics don't think they're fucking clever.

Anonymous Knight:

“Eye popping”

The amount of sub-eds who let this through in national newspapers, magazines and even TV scripts is mind-boggling. What an absolute fuckbag of a phrase. Whose eyes actually pop?

But Sinister Agent says:

It's not as bad as “mind-blowing”. The instant I see that in any piece, I stop reading before I'm overwhelmed by the urge to hunt down the writer and show them a far more effective way of blowing out their feeble mind.

Finally, another Anonymous Knight weighs in with this:

“Whose eyes actually pop?”

Probably the same people whose minds boggle, you dozy cunt.