PC Gamer ass whooping

Games
21

Are you kidding me?!?! Do you have any idea how much really, [size=3]really[/size],[size=6]really[/size] stupid shit I’ve posted? :D

aw c’mon, its not that bad.

OK, so I sub to every gaming mag under the Sun, but thats besides the point. Heck, even during the days when PCG was declared a absolutely no Derek Smart zone, I still subbed - just so I could aggravate them as often as I could - knowing that I was paying them for the abuse (kinda like what some of my gamers do to me I suppose). Then most of the old crew left and ruined my fav past time. Same thing with Boot which then became MaxPC.

And I also liked PCXL even before that PCXL refugee Rob, went over to PCG and brought most of the whacky crew with him.

Some folks treat the media in general like it was a goddamn religion or something. I suppose the whole for entertainment purposes notion is clearly lost on them. Heck, I’m so de-sensitized by CNN (because I watch it round the clock), whenever Daryn, Paula or that Costello chic come on, I say Good morning/afternoon to the frigging screen. But through it all, I don’t go to bed at night thinking just how ridiculous CNN is - on a daily basis - and wondering why people still watch it. No, I go to bed thinking that in a few hours, the timer is going to go off and as I drag my sorry ass off to the bathroom, Costello is telling me, for the umpteenth time, that someone, somewhere was about to give George W a very bad day. And by the time I’m downstairs in my office, Jack’s running a story on something I’d watched ALL FRIGGING DAY before. By the time Tucker and his merry band of lunatics are hurling insults and innuendos at the end of the evening, I’ve written some code, participated in no less than two flame ridden threads, drank enough coffee to gag a mule and seen so much shit on TV, its no wonder there are no less than six of the damn things in this frigging house.

Take PCG for it is is, an entertainment medium. As long as they write about the industry I’m in (and I dont’ give a flying toss who is scooping what, when and how) they’re OK in my book. And that goes for all them. Which is why I’m one the suckers who blindly writes out a check to extend my sub to these mags, forgetting that, just a few months back, they’d ripped me off for another two years (not caring that I might have just walked off a cliff with 22 months to go on my sub). And I sit around wondering whether or not I really am paid up to the year 3000. :roll:

aha!! So it was him huh? brb :D :D

/me sauntering off to find my +10 battle axe

22

From cdc2.cdc.net!news.texas.net!news.kei.com!news.mathworks.com!howland.erols.net!news.starnet.net!news Mon Dec 9 18:02:30 1996
Path: cdc2.cdc.net!news.texas.net!news.kei.com!news.mathworks.com!howland.erols.net!news.starnet.net!news
From: “Mark Asher” <[email protected]>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic
Subject: BC3K: Top 10 Funniest Quotes from Derek Smart
Date: 9 Dec 1996 21:04:14 GMT
Organization: Impact Technologies
Lines: 106
Message-ID: <01bbe614$a09256a0$679edaa5@marka>
NNTP-Posting-Host: gatekeeper.impacttech.com
X-Newsreader: Microsoft Internet News 4.70.1155

Today’s list is the Top Ten Funniest Quotes from Derek Smart (yes, these
are real and not made up!):

  1. “Just because a disgruntled few can’t run it due to bugs and crashes
    does NOT make it a bad game.”

  2. “My handle is Supreme Commander.”

  3. “Take2 cannot and did not fire me.”

  4. “That crap about the coke machine didn’t happen.”

  5. “As a recognized public servant (me) going up against an unknown
    (faceless flamer), I will always be left ‘…holding the bomb’”

  6. “As far as I know, I did not attack a coke machine.”

  7. “Your $50 makes NO difference to me. It should cost you more than that
    to earn the priviledge of insulting me.”

  8. “The coke machine was not damaged much.”

  9. “Wanna flame me, come to www.bc3000ad.com. Once you’re done, I’ll kick
    you out and you won’t be coming back. Period.” Later Derek added the
    helpful, “For a ‘constructive’ review of BC3K, please go to
    www.bc3000ad.com.”

And the number one Funniest Quote from Derek Smart is…

  1. “First of all let’s be civil and objective. The patch works!”

I gotta confess. I made up number 3. But the rest are all his own words, I
swear it!

Here’s what I left on the cutting room floor as I compiled this list. It
was painful to leave these gems out:

“What do you think would happen if you personally attacked, say, Mark
Seremet (president) or Ryan Brant (CEO) of Take2 who gave the green light
to master and ship the game KNOWING that it was incomplete and had NOT been
fully tested. Why not call THEM thieves, liars, con-artists etc.”

“Now you know why I lock these undesirables out of my site and send them
elsewhere to complain. It’s downright disruptive.”

“Since I have to move on to other projects, I will still continue to make
patches available for BC3K but they will not be as frequent as they have
been since I expect only the most elusive bugs to remain in v1.1 (if any).”

“I am NOT abandoning the game, just moving on to other things so that I can
make some money from something.”

“There’s no such thing. BC3K does not end”

“I am calling for calm. This is virtually ridiculous and this whole
situation is just getting out of control.”

“I did not want to make you all testers. But think, how many of you
would’nt have killed to test this game if it were offered to you?? The only
difference is, you paid dollars to get it.”

“There is reason to be concerned, pissed even, but it’s been almost a month
and I think we need to end this, right here, right now.”

“There are tons of folks out there happily playing the game.”

“I haven’t been arguing with you. To argue with someone, you need to be on
the same plane. You and I are clearly worlds apart.”

“All pirates reading this, the next patch and ALL subsequent releases WILL
require the cd-rom in the drive. I’ve got it covered.”

“Look we can turn this site into a bloodbath if you’d like. ONE more post
like this, just ONE more and neither one of us will be coming back. I sick
of taking your SHIT!”

“ALL the members at the www.bc3000ad.com are COMMANDERS.”

“What’s your I.Q? If it less than or equal to your waistline, you have a
serious problem.
Artiste DOES NOT necessarily mean one who does ‘artwork’”

“What makes you think you’re talking someone who gives a %^#%$^!. I’ll fire
with fire… and you know what? I can’t lose. You just DON’T get it!!!”

“Derek Smart, on the other hand is a DIFFERENT story altogether. You idiots
don’t have a clue WHO you’re dealing with. You’re dealing with someone who
(a) doesn’t know when to quit (b) cares about one thing only, getting MY
game done RIGHT and © who’s not gonna sit back and take crap from some
pimple faced delinquent teenager. I’d probably slap the freckles off the
faces of anyone who comes to my face with this crap and deal with the
consequences later. Thank heavens for this comms media.”

–
Mark Asher

23

oh man, that just brings tears to my eyes.

btw, you’re not as anon as you think you are. :D

24

Sean, slagging PC Gamer (or the other books, FTM) is not wise in this forum, considering most of the folks here earn their livings, or a portion thereof, writing for the game press. You won’t make many friends here that way, I’d wager! :wink:

Personally, I miss the days of the 200+ page book, but I acknowledge it’ll likely never happen again with the ubiquitousness (is that even a word?) of the 'net.

That said, I think the gaming print media does some things very well – better than the web likely ever will on a global scale. For one thing, these guys are professionals. You won’t see “alot” in PCGamer, and I’m pretty sure Vederman knows the difference between “there,” “they’re” and “their.” Aside from the big sites, I see spelling and grammar mistakes pretty much daily. It’s indicative of the quality of the reportage, IMO.

The print guys also get great access to early code. Publishers recognize that the books still carry a great deal of influence, so we leverage that by giving exclusives whereever possible (see the big Doom III spread in the Dec. PC Gamer).

Lastly, you just don’t get insightful game biz column writing on the web. That’s not to say there’s no good writing on the 'net – I think Tycho is one of the best/most insightful writers I’ve ever read – but there’s a ton of it in every issue of PC Gamer or Computer Gaming World or Computer Games.

I guess my point is that while you can certainly fill your belly at the trough that is the world wide web, once a month it’s nice to treat yourself and sit down with one of the magazines.

25

The only reason I hate PC Gamer is because they killed the Cucaloo Bird. YOU FUCKS! I HATE YOU! I HOPE YOU DIE!1!!1!!1

:(

26

Funny thing about a lot of those 200-ish page issues is that you’re still getting pretty much the same number of editorial pages nowadays. Just fewer ads.

And I don’t think this business isn’t interesting enough to sustain 100-200 editorial pages every month. 60-70 is about perfect to me. (Of course that may be a failing of the writers, but I think it’s more like there are only X games worth writing about, and unless you want 10 page tips pieces on Evolve like we had Tom Chick wrote once… I think it was him, keeping the page counts reasonable, much like word counts, makes for a better magazine.)

27

Oh, and I could be wrong, but I suspect PC Gamer is doing the same thing they did last year, doing 13 issues in the year, so December arrives in mid-October, January in mid-November, then some special Buyer’s Guide thing in December ir something like that.

Of course everyone’s already read the December cover story on DOOM thanks to the websites of the world scanning and posting the pages. Warez hits the magazines, whee.

28

I thought when the number of ads increased the number of edit pages increased also?

29

Bah. Who needs a Ferrari when you can make your own spaceship?

30

Sure, but in those days it was like 35% edit, 65% ads. Nowadays it’s closer to 50/50, or even 60/40.

31

Back to the original post. PC Gamer now lifts message board quotes out of context and calls that content? In what context did they use the quote? And officially - the content is copyright qt3 (tom and mark) but the bit is small enough for fair use, just not fair to Derek use.

I don’t read pcgamer, do they do this regularly? I remember when register got bitched at for taking a George B quote from planetcrap and treating it like a story. Pretty shitty to make a developer not only worry about how his quote is taken in context to the thread but how it can be taken in general. I think considering all the crap that was going on it was not so over the top.

Gaming journalism?

Chet

32

Of course I know that. Why else would I post here ? :wink:

Maybe PC Lamer has improved in recent years ? Last time I picked up a copy was over three years ago.

33

Are magazines called “books” now? What kind of gay shit is this?

34

PC Lamer? Nicely put.

I’m on my way out the door to go have beers with a few of the CGW boys right now. I’ll be sure to let them know you’ve got their backs.

-Vede
Senior Editor
PC Gamer Magazine

35

A magazine is not a book. If it was, it’d be called a, um, book.

— Alan

36

Are you kidding me?!?! Do you have any idea how much really, [size=3]really[/size],[size=6]really[/size] stupid shit I’ve posted? :D

aw c’mon, its not that bad.

OK, so I sub to every gaming mag under the Sun, but thats besides the point. Heck, even during the days when PCG was declared a absolutely no Derek Smart zone, I still subbed - just so I could aggravate them as often as I could - knowing that I was paying them for the abuse (kinda like what some of my gamers do to me I suppose). Then most of the old crew left and ruined my fav past time. Same thing with Boot which then became MaxPC.

And I also liked PCXL even before that PCXL refugee Rob, went over to PCG and brought most of the whacky crew with him.

Some folks treat the media in general like it was a goddamn religion or something. I suppose the whole for entertainment purposes notion is clearly lost on them. Heck, I’m so de-sensitized by CNN (because I watch it round the clock), whenever Daryn, Paula or that Costello chic come on, I say Good morning/afternoon to the frigging screen. But through it all, I don’t go to bed at night thinking just how ridiculous CNN is - on a daily basis - and wondering why people still watch it. No, I go to bed thinking that in a few hours, the timer is going to go off and as I drag my sorry ass off to the bathroom, Costello is telling me, for the umpteenth time, that someone, somewhere was about to give George W a very bad day. And by the time I’m downstairs in my office, Jack’s running a story on something I’d watched ALL FRIGGING DAY before. By the time Tucker and his merry band of lunatics are hurling insults and innuendos at the end of the evening, I’ve written some code, participated in no less than two flame ridden threads, drank enough coffee to gag a mule and seen so much shit on TV, its no wonder there are no less than six of the damn things in this frigging house.

Take PCG for it is is, an entertainment medium. As long as they write about the industry I’m in (and I dont’ give a flying toss who is scooping what, when and how) they’re OK in my book. And that goes for all them. Which is why I’m one the suckers who blindly writes out a check to extend my sub to these mags, forgetting that, just a few months back, they’d ripped me off for another two years (not caring that I might have just walked off a cliff with 22 months to go on my sub). And I sit around wondering whether or not I really am paid up to the year 3000. :roll:

aha!! So it was him huh? brb :D :D

/me sauntering off to find my +10 battle axe[/quote]

Hey Derek,

That’s actually a helluva good post. Many props to your evocative style.

Maybe I’ll get me one of them damn +10 Battle Axe’s as well! 8)

Best,

Greg

37

Well said Chet.

I’m not particularly worried that they lifted the quote, but you raise a good point about taking it out of context. However, I think Harms did that as a tie-in to the topic of that mag section, i.e. whats said across the Net.

Nevertheless, you do raise a point about context, hence my notion about being caught in the cameras on a bad hair day. Anyway, no harm no foul. Its the industy we’re in and there don’t seem to be any boundaries, no matter how you look at it.

hehe, its not my best post though. :D

38

The magazine industry (not just gaming) frequently refers to magazines as “books”. That might offend the purists here, but if you simply mentally substitute the word “magazine” when you hear “book,” referring to a game mag, you’ll be happier and probably less annoying.

Say, if you substitute “poopy” when you hear “books” you’ll probably think it’s funny.

39

That is funny. Saying or typing the word “poop(y)” always brings a smile to my face.

[size=2]Note to self: First chuckle of my day is credited to Andrew S. Bub.[/size]

40

No, it’s journalism, period. Any public figure can have quotes taken out of context, and it happens all the time, particularly by the far left and right.

And any public figure, unfortunately, has to always be conscious of this and choose his or her words with great care, all of the time.