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Now 10% More Absorbent than IGN
Posted on Wednesday, March 12 2008 @ 02:51:01 Eastern

It's a sad, sad state of affairs when Kotaku's RSS feed has more than double the number of items per day than the CBC news feed. Every day, Google Reader churns out hundreds of items for me to read, and nearly all of the gaming feeds suck. Kotaku and Joystiq lead this parade of ****, coming up with dozens of nearly unreadable, teeveenewz-style articles about the minutiae of gaming culture. Some guy (undoubtedly with a vast collection of ass hats) makes a Master Chief figurine out of paperclips at his desk? Post. Wild unconfirmed speculation about a game that might be shown next month and maybe will be released this decade? Post. Someone from any major studio so much as takes a leak in a public washroom (and the urinal cake was recovered)? Post.

Today, helpfully, Kotaku decided to tell me that Interplay has put up a graphic on their webpage to inform us that a webpage will be there soon, and then proceeded to list the games represented in this graphic. Not only that, but all Gawker media sites now proudly state in their header how many posts have been made in the past 24 hours. Were there really 50 newsworthy posts in the last day from Gizmodo? Weblogs, Inc. is rarely any better, with the same vast resources of terribly-written humourless false-journalistic crap.

As someone who consumes more information in a short time period than your mother does in a significantly longer amount of time, I couldn't stand to put up with reading this nonsense just to keep well-versed in video games. If gamers want to be taken more seriously and be better poised to react when the real teeveenewz guys come after us, we've got to stop letting sites like Kotaku and Joystiq (and anyone associated with IGN and G4) speak for us.

So, err...viva la revolucion!

Comments

Murrow
Joined: Feb 2008

Posted: Mar 12th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
We do have a terrible habit of laziness. On the one hand, Kotaku really does a fantastic job with the important items - but along with that comes the aforementioned crap. I think, as you hinted, it's really just a matter of being able to sift through the nonsense if only because there is always going to be garbage with the gold.

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Geodole
Joined: Oct 2005

Posted: Mar 12th, 2008 at 11:46 pm
No, they don't. They do a terrible job with everything- the fake 'reporting-style' writing is just terrible to read.

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Brian_Rowe
Joined: Jan 2008

Posted: Mar 13th, 2008 at 1:57 am
I also have a two-handed argument to run with. On one hand, I really don't care about Japanese commercials for Contra 4, that Stephen Colbert almost became card for the WOW CCG, or that someone couldn't get around region-encoding on the PS3. These are all "news" items from today, and they read more like useless articles from the tabloids. On the other hand, sometimes the tabloids are fun to read. Reading about things like the "Haunted Ms. Pac Man" machine is generally useless, but it makes me feel like I'm a part of a gaming community that extends beyond the confines of my living room. You are definitely right about the reporting style. They need to realize that you can still have fun and be professional at the same time.

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mooseodeath
Joined: Jul 2006

Posted: Mar 13th, 2008 at 4:05 am
google news alerts filters some of the crap. sign up to those and just get feed the news in email....except some jack-off decided to include blog posts in news alerts. i don't care if someone can't decide on whether to buy a ps3 or x360. but my main complaint is with the content. the x360 feed includes gaming related stuff, the ps3 and playstation feed is a constant stream of what the ps3 might one day actually do. it's as though the ps3 is just a paperweight waitting for something awesome to come along and save it. i'm no fan of sony's bs marketting so i'm not buying a ps3, but even sony is constantly announcing stuff to keep people interested in them. one headline i'm sick of seeing is "sony leads console war in 2011" the war will be on to friggin round eight by then of course it'll win round seven if it's the only contender fighting for it.

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Murrow
Joined: Feb 2008

Posted: Mar 14th, 2008 at 12:44 am
I swear, I'm not really trying to defend Kotaku's journalistic integrity. I'm the guy who writes rants on the front page about how the media is ruining our brains. And hilariously I'm part of the problem. Heck, I hate just about everything.
I think I allow Kotaku more leeway with the crap because I've read things on there that are quite good. NOT MUCH mind you, but I am impressed sometimes.

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Odbarc
Joined: Apr 2007

Posted: Mar 14th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Who the hell is Kotaku?

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Geodole
Joined: Oct 2005

Posted: Mar 14th, 2008 at 11:10 pm
Brian- totally agree: when reading about video games - video games of all things - I expect the style to be fun and somewhat irreverent or just simple and to the point. Joystiq and Kotaku (and I single them out, but my god there are others) tend to miss either direction: they're not funny when they should be, and they're overcomplex.

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Murrow
Joined: Feb 2008

Posted: Mar 15th, 2008 at 12:27 am
Odbarc: Kotaku = self-important video game "journalists."

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