Yeah he’d be strung up in other corners of the internet instead, and probably have a massive campaign to get him and everyone associated with him fired.
IGN has posted thier “V2” review.
A damn good review after that fiasco, in that the reviewer nailed down why I think Deadcells is good.
Not word for word I hope.
I was plagiarized a couple of times very overtly - both guys were found to have done it to others as well. Both guys gave apologies that sounded almost identical to this IGN reviewer’s apology, for what it’s worth. It’s a weird aspect of the offence, at least based upon those 3 anecdotes, that they all admitted that would they did was wrong but all insisted it was unintentional (including making up fantasies that they read the original material and must have unconsciously memorized it, because they didn’t know how else it happened but admitted that it had).
It’s as if persons who are morally weak enough to plagiarize are too morally weak to accept that they did what they did, even while admitting the punishment is justified. I really think that people don’t commit this crime in order to save time or steal content that they enjoy and want to take credit for - they do it because they are broken in some way and have a strange compulsion. The fact that they plagiarize almost word for word, sentence by sentence, and usually don’t even change the order of sentences, etc. also seems to indicate that it’s not the act of someone acting rationally (aside from the moral implications). They’re just broken.
IGN’s going to remove most of Filip’s content from the site after further evidence of plagiarism emerges.
Speaking of reviews…
“We did it the first time because there was the whole thing about transparency and companies needing to be transparent,” Hines explains of the initial decision. “We were like, ‘Well, you want us to be transparent, this is what we’re doing’.
“Then it ended up being the focal point and, honestly, we were tired of reading reviews where the first paragraph spent more time talking about our review policy than the game. So we decided we’re not going to keep drawing attention to it – we’ll send out copies and maybe people will start talking about the game instead of talking about policies. So we did.”
Now reviewers can use that freed-up first paragraph space to discuss frivolous lawsuits against kids selling off unwanted copies of Bethesda games.
Also on the topic of Bethesda, we shouldn’t hold our breath for a new Dishonored game.
As for the studio’s most popular series, Dishonored, it seems like it might be a while before we see another, if we do at all. With Arkane’s assassination series, the story came to a natural conclusion with the last release, Death of the Outsider.
“I can’t say definitively what might happen down the road, anything could happen, but [Dishonored] is resting for now,” Bare tells me. “As far as pure immersive sims go, I don’t know if we’re going to continue to make like carbon copy – this qualifies as an immersive sim and it’s the only thing we’re ever going to make.
Busy day. Here’s Eurogamer looking at the current Team Fortress 2 (people still play that game?) drama:
The online discussion was initially provoked when one competitive TF2 player, Alex “Arekk” Uth from team Froyotech, used the transphobic term “tranny” to describe invitational TF2 player Jenny “Nursey” Tempalski live on a Twitch stream. The clip has been taken offline, but Eurogamer has seen the recording and can verify its existence. Since this occurred, Tempalski stated Arekk has apologised, but the incident sparked an online discussion about toxic behaviour within the competitive community.
Shortly afterwards, content creator Ness “uberchain” Delacroix came forward with her own experiences as a photojournalist for teamfortress.tv - an organisation which covers the TF2 esports leagues. Delacroix gave a detailed account of some of the emotional and sexual manipulation she’d experienced behind the scenes at LAN events. Professional players made suggestions she’d slept her way to getting a production position. Some made advances to Delacroix and claimed she could “play around with them” because she wasn’t married, despite her being in a relationship at the time. Behind her back, players planned to try to sleep with her at LANs, and then refused to participate in events when she rejected their advances. The very worst of the behaviour included sexual abuse.
As if to prove Delacroix’s point about toxicity in the community, two European Team Fortress 2 League (ETF2L) players, “degu” and “Pred,” responded to her tweet with a dismissive joke and a racist slur. degu shared a picture of a Windows screen showing “log off,” while Pred used the term “ugly gook cunt” to describe Delacroix (the term ‘gook’ is a slur for Korean people).
I think part of the problem is that outside of Fallout and Elder Scrolls, most games in Bethesda’s catalog tend to receive substantial discounts shortly after launch. That coupled with subpar marketing and a terrible reviews policy probably didn’t do their singleplayer output from Dishonored 2 to Wolfenstein 2 any favors.
THQ Nordic has acquired the TimeSplitters licence from Crytek!
Timesplitters was largely considered as one of the most influential console games of the early 2000’s. The three game series earned a large and passionate fan base thanks to its unique humour, art style and pop culture references while encouraging customization and modification to give each person their own individual experience. Timesplitters was originally created by the development studio Free Radical Design that later become Deep Silver Dambuster, part of the THQ Nordic group.
In addition to Timesplitters, the IP and the rights to science fiction action-adventure game Second Sight were acquired. Both acquisitions were made through THQ Nordic’s fully owned subsidiary Koch Media GmbH.
They have to - nobody who plagiarizes that overtly does so because they’re lazy - it’s an irrational, compulsive behavior that has almost certainly infected prior work and very likely all of it.
Can one of the respected writers here tell me why anyone would plagiarize something?
I know nothing about the art & craft of writing games reviews so forgive me, but is it really so difficult you have to copy someone else’s work?
I mean it seems more effort to go copy someone than write your own doesn’t it? Not just that but if you are a paid writer then didn’t you get into that line of work because you wanted to write and express yourself? Isn’t writing your own stuff the reward for having the job? Why give up on the good bit?
I just don’t get the motivation. What am I missing here?
No?
Every writing assignment isn’t going to be a labor of love, you still have to pay the bills and meet deadlines etc. None of that is justification for plagiarism, but it’s not surprise that people occasionally attempt it either.
Fair enough. I guess going to the effort of finding other peoples work, then cutting out bits , then mixing it up so it seems plausibly different,seems like more effort than writing your own opinion about a game.
In game design cloning someone else’s work is usually motivated by fear that the audience wont respond to something new.
Again if someone wants to make money then they wouldn’t be in games reviewing (or games making but that’s a different story).
You bring up a good point about deadlines though, I hadn’t considered that. I have had a writing block with a deadline before (power points usually), its an awful feeling so I respect that. But writing isn’t my chosen field, I have never had a creative block around game design and I presume that most pro game reviewers just love what they do as well so they don’t get blocked.
Again this all maybe naive on my part so I would love to be educated. I have such a high regard for the critics role in art so helping me understand it in my own art form better would be most appreciated.
There is no motive. It is sheer laziness. Copying to get by, there are just people who are plagiarists. Typically they do it all of the time. Someone upthread mentioned, if someone were to go through his old college papers, likely he wouldn’t have a degree anymore.
I have met people like this before, they slack off, and finally get some other paper and copy/paste and change it enough to seem like their own.
One interesting case is Jonah Lehrer
It is just how some people operate. With Jonah, once the first instance was caught, going back through everything he had done, it was clear he was a fraud. Nobody could trust anything he ever wrote in the past anymore.
Cheers Jon. So its just kind of a personality / laziness thing? That makes sense. Must be a pretty awful feeling though. Knowing you are a fraud in your chosen field.
Oh yeah. The book “So you’ve been publicly shamed” goes pretty deep into the Jonah Lehrer stuff, he was just making up quotes, messing with facts, re-purposing old articles he had written, copying from press releases. Basically everything you could imagine unethical, he did it while writing.
It is also interesting, because Jon Ronson (the author of that book) personally knew Jonah, and witnessed first hand the unraveling of a colleague.
I guess, it is like, you know how people have the “imposter” syndrome, where they feel like they don’t belong or deserve their accomplishments? That they are going to be “found out” any minute. Guys like Jonah and Filip are those people, but for real.
The only time I’ve ever done anything remotely like plagiarism was news aggregation as you’re just regurgitating the same crap in a summary. That’s not what these people do, however. When it comes to my editorial, I go in the extreme opposite direction. If I’m going to review or editorialize something, I avoid any sort of thoughts or reviews like the plague. Not solely because I’m afraid of plagiarism, but because it helps keep your thoughts your own without being accidentally influenced. The plagiarism thing is a nice side effect, though.