“We’ll be flying four finalists out to our studio in San Francisco to compete for a $1000 in prizes!”
“Here’s your the chance to show off your skill in team-based military combat.”
“Only two squads will make it to the Finals! These two forces will be pitted against each other in the Finals.”
“Tune in to find out which team earns the Purple Heart, and which is laid to waste.”
- all from GameSpot Tournament descriptions
I will understand if the reader doesn’t believe me when I say that I originally started this site to be serious. But you must trust your correspondent when he explains that sometimes an author feels he just hasn’t got any choice. And so I hope you will indulge me while I talk a little bit about The Escapist and its very odd pull-quotes.
The whole point of pull-quotes is to draw a hypothetical reader – imagine him impatiently flipping through the pages of a magazine while waiting for the dentist or for his plane to reach cruising altitude – into actually reading an article by highlighting a key point, an interesting fact or simply an intriguing turn of phrase. The point is not to stump the reader, nor is it to make him not interested in the article. Right?
Continue reading "Escaping to the Land of the Baffling Pull-Quote" »
Time to get back in the swing of things with an article regrettably cited by Kotaku and GameSetWatch entitled, “Does Portal’s Success Presage Game Industry Shift?” In this bizarre piece, a writer on the game industry admits he has no sales data, cites no budget information, then suddenly makes the claim that Portal's “profit margin is easily better than AAA hardcore titles that require tens of millions to develop...” Huh?
Continue reading "Making Claims With Absolutely Nothing to Back Them Up" »
“The videogame industry has literally never had a year like 2007.”
“In looking to the future, we inevitably look to the past as a guide.”
“Listen, writing is hard.”
“I’m convinced that video games are Japan’s stealth strategy to turn our kids’ brains into silly putty as payback for dropping the big one on Hiroshima... The trouble began last summer when my sons started spending virtually every unsupervised hour camped out in front of the computer screen engaged in multiplayer role games like World of Warcraft and Counterstrike.”
– The Wall Street Journal (editorial).
“It hooks kids when their young.”
– Kotaku.
“The first half of Assassin’s Creed is a truly clairvoyant experience. You’ve never played anything like it. The sagacious story, incalculable crowd interaction, and unprecedented freedom to traverse the environment how you choose are landmark moments.”
“As is evident from the name, Space Siege will take place in space.”
– GameSpot (yes, again).
“Dead Space is a horror-themed survival-horror game set in space.”
– GameSpot.
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