The Rybicki Maneuver

Killzig said:
Kharn, why do you post your post about your editorials in the third person?

Does anyone check the submitted news e-mail? I sent you guys scans of the GFW write up on the FO3 demo.
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Because people read them in third person, Killzig.

Yeah, we got 'em. Good read, written by the very Joe Rybicki...The same!

I don't think we were planning to put them up. It's not exactly our habit to put up scans of articles, GI was an exception because it was the premiere, and Desslock's piece was an exception because we put up scans of theirs before, plus it was one of the more interesting previews. Nothing much new in this one, tho', that I could see...Or did I miss something? Per, do a write-up on it, Brother None commands it!
 
No, just making sure you got it.

<s>I</s> Killzig <s>don't</s> doesn't have the attention span to read your editorials but <s>I</s> he still wubs j00.

oh the humanity, no <s>strike tags</s> bb code on a bb <s>.</s> !
 
<strike>We do have strike tags, but only in HTML, not in BBcode</strike>

Well, if you refuse to read it, then I'll just...why don't you...I should just...GNYEH!
 
All those articles were excellent reads. Didn't nearly take 4 hours that someone was groaning about further up the thread, but it certainly was dense!

Personally, I lost faith in honest previews and reviews with Oblivion. Though I recall Halo 2 being a completely different dog in the drive than on paper.

Lately I haven't read too many previews, maybe an odd estimation on release dates and what the game is. Reviews are completely taboo to me now. Unless it comes from a user on a forum somewhere, I won't trust it.

A good substitute for previews, reviews, and interviews are videos. The kind of videos where the developer is showing what the game can do. Not what he or the journalist or the giant PR god in the sky says it should or will be able to do.

It's also nice that you can mute over zealous pushers.
 
It is so idiotic how GFW seems to think Fargo had something to do with Fallout.

We already covered that article, tho'

PS: and another magazine that claims BIS made Fallout. Ugh
 
Brother None said:
It is so idiotic how GFW seems to think Fargo had something to do with Fallout.

We already covered that article, tho'

PS: and another magazine that claims BIS made Fallout. Ugh
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Mistakes easily made if one only gives a superficial glance to Fallout, in order to pretend that they actually know anything about it.
At least the ones who admit they know nothing of Fallout have a little more credibility.
 
Good article. I agree with your observations.

I do not trust previews/reviews to do more than point out features of Fallout 3. Reviewers can be bought. Even if honest, opinions of "goodness" and "badness" are in the eyes of the beholder -- so I will not place much credence in those. I will reserve my own opinion as to how good or bad Fallout 3 is until after I've played it myself.

When playing, sometimes I need to stop, sit back, and think about how to play a game to get the most out of it. That takes time most reviewers do not have, I imagine. Moreover, adapting to a game is a direction most will not take, I imagine. Rather, it is either "good" or "bad" based on first impressions. I think reviewers tend to err on the side of "good" if a game has been hyped enough.

With Oblivion, I had to restart after my first 15 hours because at first I was playing it "wrong" -- I had to adapt to its idiosyncrasies and play it on its own terms. I played the first 100 hours with the as-released game. Then, I put in all the major mods at the same time (and added my own little mod) and played 300 more hours (now I am played out). I put Oblivion in my all time top 5 or 6 crpg -- but, that took some effort on my part to understand how to get the most out of it -- time reviewers and other players may not have had to spend.

I imagine Fallout 3 will be the same. I will need to play it a while and adapt my play style a bit to get the most out of it -- maybe restart after a few hours. But, I will not base my "buy" or "not buy" decision on how reviewers/others liked it -- rather, I will take my chances if it seems to have a good mix of features (which it does).
 
One thing is for sure, the gaming media is better at praising than they are at criticizing, since it takes them a one-hour demo to praise a game to high heavens, but a year to find flaws in a game once released.
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Obviously, the closing statement wins the game of Life™.
 
Well, Fallout was developed by then-unnamed Interplay's RPG division which changed its name to Black Isle Studios during the development of Fallout 2, so the statement that Black Isle developed Fallout is not *entirely* untrue, even if most of the key members of the FO1 team left Interplay by that time.
 
The division wasn't unnamed, it was called the Interplay TSR division.

The statement that it is the same as Black Isle is pretty untrue because the staffs of the TSR division and Black Isle were different. BIS was 100% Feargus' baby, TSR division was not.
 
Great Article,

only what to improve it would have been to put the Before and After Dates, separating the quotes into 2 categories.
 
An issue that GameDaily brings up though is this:

The biggest problem facing this industry (even worse than the sketchy writing) is the lack of original thought. We're far too obsessed with catering to our PR contacts instead of supplying our readers (who should be our primary focus) with refreshing editorial. The biggest sites aim to cover just about every single videogame in existence, which is fine if these publications intend to create this massive database, but it's just not smart journalism. PR should be submitting games for our consideration, but instead of politely writing back and informing Suzy Q PR that the game she's sent to us isn't top story material, we happily accept our free trinket and give the title a top story slot.
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And that's something I've really come to struggle with. You might want to roast a game, but if you do... don't expect them to be treating you with the star content at a later time.

Case in point: Do you think Bethesda will do an interview with NMA? No... because in the end, they're all about making money and selling games and if an interview with us won't help them sell more games (though it could if they had something phenomenal to reassure us with... which they don't), they're not going to do it.

I feel like after a game has been out a while, it's more politically safe to criticize it as your criticism will be overlooked by the publisher.

Another, less political look at this is the idea that when you first play something, it looks really cool. I remember when I first bought Black & White, I was like man, this is the coolest game in the world. About 3 days later, I saw that there wasn't too much meat to the game and that it really wasn't all that great. Then again, you'd expect reviewers to be a little more qualified at spotting the stinkers.


EDIT: Didn't realize there was a content comments and news comments section... moved this over here.
 
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