I'm Not Waiting For Lester Bangs

I didn't get into the whole "OMG who is Lester Bangs?!?" freakout of the gamesphere from a few weeks ago, since I truly feel it's a very apple to oranges comparison of media and was so bored with it I'm already tired of talking about it.

Then last night I'm watching G4's Attack Of The Show, because I had mistakenly thought I had taped the episode where an old friend would appear. Guess what story they're running with...

That the Sony PlayStation 3 may have a feature to disable games from being replayed on other machines, hereby dismantling the PS3 rental and resale market. Their illustrious panel included Seanbaby, some chick from the L.A. Times and a guy - I honestly didn't bother to remember his name. They're basically all taking turns nodding with male host's insightful analysis of the situation.

To recap: this is a completely unfounded Internet rumor. It started with one of the many patent crawls people perform to dredge up "news". The patent was for copy protection on recordable mediums (which the PS3 does not have). Someone theorized Sony must be using this for the PS3 (because Sony, being one of the world's largest producers of consumer goods couldn't possibly use such a patent anywhere else). Few people bothered actually reading the patent, it hit the mumblevine and many forgot it was even attached to a patent and just reported it as fact.

It never made much sense. Sony has officially denied it. Nobody seems to care. None of the producers or staff of this show did any research on it. It took me about half an hour or so to read through the patent and find the points about recordable mediums. Apparently when you have a show which highlights people wearing televisions on their heads, it leaves little room for fact checking.

Lester Bangs? Yeah, right. I'm still waiting for mainstream game journalism to wake up to the same concept many of us want politicians and lawyers to recognize: many gamers out there aren't cola-addicted tweens who read Tiger Beat magazine. We're adults who read the news and occasionally even vote. I'm not a journalist. Let's get that clear before some smartass thinks that pointing out some error in this post will in any way highlight my "hypocrisy". I'm not a journalist. I make no promises on this blog about veracity. Or even good grammar.

All I can say is that I do generally think about what I put out there. Which is more than G4 can say.

So world - the next time I'm introducing myself as a gamer ... do not ask me if I watch Attack Of The Show.




tagged: g4, gaming