Matthew Gallant over at Computer Games Magazine wrote up a review of the recent Carnival of Gamers that Senor Buttonmasher organized. I'd like to take a moment to help Matthew with his reading skills. Let me start you with what my grade school teacher taught me: Read everything completely and thoroughly.
Seems simple? Well, Matt dismissed the Carnival completely because he didn't like the first blog that was linked, which happened to be Tea Leaves' dissection of an honest review ...
I didn't bother with any of the other articles; if that's what they're going to lead with, then I can just go to the local middle school playground and ask for the hippest in gaming editorial there. I guess that since I've written for the sites that he slams, my words are immediately suspect, but I don't really care; I'm going to argue anyway.
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Matthew Gallant, CGOnlineWow. I feel bad, because I meant to e-mail Tony and remind him that "if it bleeds it leads" was the rule for
real journalism since clearly the idea of the Carnival was to order the blogs in the most interesting manner. Then I remembered that was idiotic since the whole goal was just to let people submit what they wanted and not rank or judge them individually. Silly me.
Of course, if I used Matt's harsh method of reading, I wouldn't get past his first sentence:
Slashdot and other sites have thrown a link the way of this thing called "The Carnival of Gamers", a blog that collects articles posted on other gaming blogs.
Actually Matt ... there isn't any blog called "The Carnival of Gamers". There is a blog which does what you what you describe (gameblogs) ... but buttonmashing.com is the blog, the Carnival was just a post and next time it will be posted somewhere else. So, tell me, Mr. Gallant - if you can't even make your first sentence factually correct ... why should
I bother reading anything after that? What's funny, of course, if that if Matthew had just bothered reading the whole post, that would be evident to him. I guess reading one page is too time-consuming for his busy day of, you know, not reading things.
And what's Matthew's big beef with Tea Leaves? Well, since Tea Leaves buys their own games and they consider that a point of integrity ... they clearly just don't get the industry:
Our paladin of game reviewing trots out the standby that he's got more integrity than any reviewer at any major site or mag because he buys his games. What the guy doesn't know is that half the time your editor will tell you to go buy the game, and you get the price of the game added on to your fee for the review. What the guy doesn't know (and should because it's so completely obvious) is that publishers send review copies to sites and magazines because it costs them virtually nothing to do so, and if they don't it's because they just forget.
Is it me or does he seems to try to dismiss the point that purchasing games for review is honest
by bragging about how he gets his for free? Yeah, that makes sense.
Having read
all of Tea Leaves' post, there are things I kinda disagree with (for instance, that Roger Ebert is truly credible), but towards the end he brings home a fine point:
All that's needed to write (and edit) great reviews is a commitment to clear writing, a desire to be something other than an industry shill, and the strength of character to keep your published words consistent with that desire.
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The Best Review A Money Can BuyAnd is probably something Matthew should read again, considering I'm now far more likely to read the Tea Leaves blog than any of his columns.
Speaking of - why is a professional game reviewer getting paid to review a blog? Particularly one they don't like? That's like devoting a magazine review to a mod that just sucks. You're more likely to get people to play it than not.
I thought the games.slashdot responses were odd - but at least those were just bored geeks, not someone taking a check.
Oh right, magazines need
filler from time to time. I forget.