Back on track. I think Gerstmann was still the editor in chief or reviews editor or whatever at Gamespot when that review came down, so he probably had some responsibility for assigning Mueller to the review and then sticking by it when Jaffe cried like a spoiled brat about it. Greg Mueller was at Gamespot for quite a while after that, so I don’t think he was canned because of his bad review like Gerstmann was for his K&L review.
I listened to the podcast and didn’t get that at all. Of course none of the bombcast were going to debate the guest. Hey were all drinking buddies, and the guest were talking and digging their own grave. Jeff made sure David had the right person and where he ended up but he didn’t defend not attack the review or the game. Jeff could have taken him to task but then David would have probably blew up or worse left and we would have never got such an excellent insight into Jaffe and his world.
I agree - the bombcast isn’t a place to be airing dirty laundry, and I think it was wise of Jeff and co. to not feed into that. It could have only ended badly, really, and they knew it.
I’m not saying that Gerstmann should’ve gotten into a fist fight over it, but he could’ve at least something to the effect of, “We’ll have to agree to disagree on that one.” It just seemed like he backed down too quickly on it. I understand not wanting to get in a fight with your guest, but Jaffe is the one that brought it up, rehashed it and cried like a baby about it again, all as part of a question he had about the games media.
Definately it would have been the noble thing for him to do, but even “agree to disagree” could have sent someone with Jaffe’s personality into a tailspin, and I’m sure Jeff knows that and knows Jaffe enough to not make ANY kind of deal about it. I agree it would have been well done of Jeff to stick up for the original review rather than just rolling over, but I think he really did the podcast and the viewers a service by avoiding any sort of conflict. The LAST thing I cared to hear about is freaking APB and Jaffe’s thoughts on the reviewer.
Really, the BEST thing would have been for Jaffe to just not have ever brought it up maybe, but since he DID, it was good of Jeff to deflect and change topics.
Please. Calling All Cars. Let’s keep our shitty multiplayer focused failed games straight.
LOL, oops! I can’t keep all these crazy games no one cared about straight!
I hate to be the bringer of bad news, but it seems IGN has laid off a bunch of people, including the Gamespy Debriefings crew. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/35426/Layoffs_Hit_IGN_Editorial.php
No! They were about to release the Boozeapocalypse II! By the way, is it really the whole crew? The article didn’t say Altano, Ryan Scott, or Anthony Gallegos were laid off.
That sucks, Gamespy was my “work out” podcast - it was funny but mindless enough I didn’t need to give it my full attention. sigh Back to listening to music, I guess.
Yeah I’ve been waiting for that episode for ages. Hopefully they’ll keep something going, somehow.
Really sad to hear that Will Tuttle isn’t going to be there anymore. He was one of the few voices at IGN that I trusted.
IGN seems to have layoffs and rehires rather regularly it seems.
Good news! To quote Brian Altano:
“We’re not done with you motherfuckers yet.”
I’m just now getting through Episode 66 (June 17th) episode of Weekend Confirmed. They had the requisite discussion about the Duke Nukem Forever PR dustup and I was shocked by some of the stuff I heard. Andrea Rene (who I always find a bit annoying) was of the opinion that it’s okay to write a critical review of a game, but, to paraphrase, “Like, you don’t have to mean about it, okay?” Shockingly (to me anyway) the rest of the crew seemed to support this statement. Huh?
If the game is a piece of shit, shred it! I could not believe that Garnett and crew were really trying to say that reviewers should not strongly take a game to task for being awful. I wish I could remember some of the “venomous” examples they were citing, but they were so inoffensive that they completely slipped my mind. It wasn’t as if a reviewer personally attacked a particular person on the DNF team or called for Gearbox to be burned to the ground. The statements cited all related to how terrible the game is and why.
Did anyone else catch this discussion and think it was ludicrous?
Dude, The Shack and DNF are oddly connected. You can’t take anything The Shack staff has to say about DNF at face value.
The examples given seemed like perfectly reasonable criticism to me. They didn’t personally attack any particular person on the dev team, encourage violence against anyone or call into question the breeding of those behind the game. I re-listened to that segment just so I could pull the examples that Garnett and Andrea Rene thought were so beyond the pale:
“Nobody should think kindly of such a miserable, lifeless grotesque little game.” - Jim Sterling, Destructoid
“Most adults will roll their eyes or perhaps sneer in disgust at the game’s attempts at humor and it reeks of the developers trying too hard, something that every teenager will tell you is totally uncool bro.” - Ryan Winterhalter, 1up (admittedly the “totally uncool bro” part is awful, but obviously not venomous)
“Given its development history you might be inclined to grab a copy of this train wreck. Avoid the temptation.” - Kevin VanOrd, Gamespot
According to Andrea, these quotes are “just mean spirited.” Really? They might be scathing, but what is wrong with these comments being in a review of a terrible game?
Garnett sees the comments as signaling a lack of sophistication amongst game reviewers. What? Those read like dozens of movie reviews that I’ve read in my life.
Syzygy
4178
I caught the DNR discussion but their points made sense to me. Not their specific examples (which I also don’t remember), but I do think it’s a valid point that some rare reviews do cross a line.
I didn’t understand them as not saying a game shouldn’t be strongly taken to task for it’s failings, but rather that in some rare cases the review crosses the line and becomes overly caustic.
But then again I’ve been in that exact situation of having a game I’ve worked on get reviews I thought were unfair so maybe it’s not a surprise I was nodding my head.
LMN8R
4179
That’s a pretty baseless thing to say, considering that the people on Weekend Confirmed utterly ripped apart DNF on the most recent episode.
Gearbox did for Duke Nukem what Jurassic Park did for dinosaurs. Or they unearthed a long buried relic and put it on display for the world to see. I understand being given a bit of a break for that.
