I do wonder if people just tend to remember anger more than joy, however.
I do wonder if people just tend to remember anger more than joy, however.
Peace through tyranny
To the contrary, it proves that you all give a damn.Originally Posted by Bonzrat
I expect that depends entirely on the reader. Thinking back at 2011 the big things that come to mind are the enthusiastic and thoughtful writings about Deus Ex, The Witcher 2, Portal 2, Skyrim, To the Moon, Bastion and so on. That's the sort of stuff I personally enjoy reading and the reason I'm a subscriber who keeps coming back for more.
What I mean by angrier is that when topics like CDP's pirate hunting, DRM or whatever other bollocks the games industry conjures from it's mystical bag of awfulness come up now the tone is more one of negativity and complaining rather than the merciless mocking these things have received in the past. That's just my very subjective impression though, not a statement of fact, and I'd certainly find it hard to have endless patience with an industry that seems hell-bent on annoying the life out of it's own customers myself.
I've been reading RPS since 2010, and I still love it. And I don't mind the increase in content, as the wit is still there in good quantity.
The news guy Smith is terrific, but I still miss the old one. You know the one lacking iron, Quinns or something. Can you bring him back? Please?
We miss him too, but he's lost to the cold but affluent arms of marketing now.
Peace through tyranny
Well, maybe, probably it's just me being grumpy combined with the more serious/negative tone.
To clarify, RPS is still the best (PC) gaming site with or without my slight disappointment.
Edit: I read the Antichamber (and the other IGF pieces) interview. I just don't comment that often.
Last edited by Nova; 17-01-2012 at 05:02 PM.
That's quite sad.
Actually, you can probably draw some parallels between that and this situation.
Blizzard clearly gather a hell of a lot of data about what goes on in game, which they can then analyse to see if any trends are occurring (ie class A being overpowered). They can then cross reference that data with what people are saying online, and ignore the trouble makers, though still pay attention to tease out the few nuggets of genuine concern from the piles of steaming shit.
Presumably (hopefully), that's what the RPS Tyrants are doing, and while some of us are being noisy, they can see that the numbers are up.
To be honest, I firmly believe that most of the issues mentioned in this thread would be sorted by a site redesign that made sure to work around what's going on with the content now compared to what was being produced way back when. With a real emphasis on giving a big showcase to the fan favourites (diaries, John's rants, Jim's robot posts, anything to do with Warhammer, etc) and then giving less attention to the press releases.
Offer an email subscription option on the site using the Feedburner feed (easy to do in Feedburner itself), so those of us at work can get read the articles and click through to the ones that interest us.
So yeah, use data, but please keep listening to us.
Last edited by Jacques; 17-01-2012 at 05:18 PM.
I know Jim's already addressed this, but hey, it's about me.
For someone so easily offended, you're very quick to be offensive. Announcing what I'm bad at, without giving meaningful examples (the TOR post, really?) isn't only rude, but it's incredibly lazy.
If I have made mistakes in articles, which I certainly will do, a sensible response is to email me about them so I can make corrections. People do that, and the articles improve.
Your suggestion that I'm lazy is tiresome. I work very hard. I spend a lot of time researching, and I'm proud of a lot of the work that comes of it. When you name the articles that contain mistakes, I'm going to venture that you're not going to cite the majority of them. Which, well, makes your sweeping statements a little unfair, don't you think?
As Alec said, I really don't understand why you don't go. The site clearly brings you more pain than pleasure, as your endless assault of pissy negativity displays, so just stop reading it.
John
If I thought RPS was going downhill I'd surely bitch about it as much as I bitch about RPGs. Having said that... this site is as good as ever. Probably better than ever. The content hasn't changed much so perhaps it's because RPS is angrier than ever. I like it.
It's funny how people are getting all nostalgic over a website that isn't even very old. "Remember the good old days of RPS? It's just not the same any more!"
Like many other things I have the opposite view from you Wizardry! I prefer my RPS silly and cheerful. Or not so much cheerful as positive - games are amazing and I like reading about people telling me how they enjoy playing games.
Just wanted to make clear that I still enjoy RPS a huge amount; it's the only website where I read almost every single article (only avoiding those with potential spoilers), it convinces me to play games I might have missed, I am very happy to subscribe and I'd quite like it the writers were my friends.
Last edited by Auspex; 17-01-2012 at 06:58 PM.
I can't speak for anyone else obviously but i love the indie content. However I'm less likely to comment on it as I tend not to have the time to play the game straight away and say anything partiularly useful about it. As a rule I try to self censor myself (not always successfully) from making boring comments like "that looks interesting" which is all I'd be able to offer at that stage. Unless there's an opportunity for a pun of course! Whereas with sequels there's always the chance to compare to previous games and an easy discussion to be had. I definitely appreciate the indie content - I just wish I'd remember which games looked interesting more bloody often!
I rarely comment on articles, but I do read almost everything (I occasionally skip The Flare Path, sorry Tim but it's just not my cup of beverage) and so I thought I'd stick in my two penn'orth re the state of RPS today: it's fine. A change of tone is understandable, what with the new blood introduced recently and the old hands getting more jaded from spending so long wading through the mire of press releases and facing down the snake-like corporate PRs day in, day out; but RPS is still the best site around for PC games bar none.
Rock Paper Shotgun is my favorite blog, period, and it's cultivated a nearly-completely great community. Three cheers for all the good work and clever ideas here.
@Jim
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011...from-dust-drm/
The original post at the time stated that valve were offering refunds on From Dust due to the DRM (now since edited btw). This was a based on a statement made at another gaming site (Lo Ping) to that effect. The truth was that was a fiction made up by that site (Valve hadn’t instigated any refund offer), and in reality all Lo ping did was link to steams general support page. However given that RPS links directly into Steam news feed, lots of people took this statement as fact and then proceeded to bombard Steam support with refund requests. Cue much wailing and gnashing of teeth over Valve refusing them causing more of an uproar. Sure down the road Ubisoft acquiesced over the refund demands and authorized Valve to honour them if made (even though by then the offending DRM had been patched out), but a whole lot of AIM frothing could have been avoided if some verification as to the validity of Lo pings claims had been carried out in the first place.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011...more-sinister/
This article took its lead from a thread begun at the escapist.: -
EA's Origin is creepy and watches you sleep!
Where in the OP claimed that: -
Now I’m not going to get into why this was complete alarmist bullshit of the first order, but what I don’t understand is why instead of attempting to clarify the matter John instead opted to go with the fear mongering headline and the ‘is it spyware?’ approach of hang wringing? (Cue much wailing and gnashing of AIM teeth across the comments as a result as everyone collectively loses their shit at EA, Origin, the Bavarian illumanti etc, etc).‘Well ok, not really, but EA's Origin does watch everything you do on your computer.
If you read the End User License Agreement for Origin it states that by installing Origin you're giving EA the right to monitor your PC and to make a profile of you, including what programs you have installed (and whether you have any illegally downloaded material), what websites you use, etc., and that EA reserves the right to share or sell this information to third parties.
Only a few days previously to that RPS when puzzling over the conundrum of regional locking in DX:HR decided to consult with the good folks at www.gamerlaw.co.uk to give them the skinny on what’s what, and Jas Purewal (someone who understands legalese) obliged. The perfect candidate to clarify the ins and out of what the EA EULA truly meant no? In fact he actually wrote a piece in direct response to John’s article outlining the fact that The EA Origins EULA is a non-story: -
http://www.gamerlaw.co.uk/2011/08/ea...non-story.html
and that people were really getting their knickers in a twist over nothing.
Why go with worried speculation, when clarification was available? What exactly serves the RPS site readership best Jim? Spreading disinformation that has no basis in reality and misleading people or dealing in the facts? Call me crazy but I’d say going with the facts would better for everyone.
As it stands almost without fail even now, you can guarantee that in any comments thread on an EA game, there’s someone posting about how they won’t buy the game because ‘Origin is spyware yadda tadda yadda’ and for me personally as a gamer, the notion that people are going to swear off an entire game experience over what are little more Internet phantasms is kind of tragic.
Sure you as a site weren't alone in spreading that line, but I kind of hold you to a higher order in that regard. RPS has a pretty good reputation amongst not only gamers, but also other gaming sites, so it was kind of disappointing to me that you didn't go with a real investigation into the facts and clear things up.
I do think at times there’s a tendency by the Hivemind to portray the big publishers as evil scheming meanies because it plays well with common gamer attitudes in lieu of seeing them as what they are namely, large businesses trying to navigate an ever evolving medium and market place. Yes they make mistakes all the time (and I sure as hell don’t like some practices), but I don’t think serves any great purpose to vilify them as incompetent pantomime Villains (‘Oh Ubisoft’) at any given opportunity.Also, I dislike your suggestion that writing issue based articles can boil down to RPS perpetuating "certain memes". For the most part they are actual issues for PC gamers, often on topics originated by us.
My issue is not with the work on the whole, my issue is with fact checking at times (in fact I said this in my first post in this thread). I don’t doubt John is passionate, but being passionate is not a journalistic get out of jail free card when it comes to certain things. From my view I think at times there have been lapses. You might disagree and that is your prerogative.Whether or not you agree with the line RPS takes, or with whether we should be doing that stuff in the first place, is up to you, but do not discredit the work done. John puts an extraordinary amount of time and effort into this material because he *passionately* believes in it. If that were true for one or two more games journalists then our industry would be a very different place.
I apologize for the acerbic nature of my earlier post. It was a tad harsher than I anticipated and if I could take it back a notch or two I would (it was late when I wrote and I'm Kad).
Anyway for the record I don’t dislike the site at all. I wouldn’t have put as much into it as a forum regular, commenter and subscriber over the years if I didn’t like it here (that would be a mad waste of my spare time). When people have accused you having been bought off by publishers I've been first in line putting them straight in the comments. However at the same time I don't necessarily agree with everything you say. It would be a terribly boring world if that were the case.
Why yes you're right I'm deliciously evil
Tradition is the tyranny of dead men
Steam:Kadayi Origin: Kadayi GFWL: Kadayi
Probable Replicant
*blush* I'm flattered by the attention boys, but please let's not make the thread about liddle old me
Yeah, I was going to make a similar point. For me, commenting/not commenting isn't a very useful metric of my interest. (Unfortunately I'm not great at self-censoring worthlessless from my output, but I think I'm more likely to post some sort of lame joke or nitpick when I know it's going to get lost in a hundred other comments. Plus, a large proportion of my comments on articles are prompted by other comments, rather than by the article itself.)
etc etc.
Well, no it didn't. The original article had no mention at all, and then later after many contacted me with the Lo Ping information I edited it in at the top, but added the proviso that it seemed questionable to me. When it was proven untrue, I edited accordingly once more. Many other websites copied my story, but chose to leave out the bit where I said that Lo Ping's story looked dubious, and many more just lifted the Lo Ping story from their site as fact. I was not one of those.
Etc etc.
The wording of the EULA was sinister, because it was about something sinister. So much so that EA attempted to reword the paragraph to make it sound all lovely and friendly, when it was still the same "We must have a right to spy on your computer" it was in the first place.
Purewal, as lovely a guy as he may be, is an apologist for such things. The other day he was defending the bullying actions of extorting alleged pirates, and spreading misinformation about the so-called devastation piracy is causing developers without any evidence at all. I find this troubling. His position on Origin is equally problematic. Origin's EULA demands the right to scan your computer and send its findings, and has no option to switch this off. That is the very definition of "spyware", however much you may not care that it's happening. It's enforced spyware, that anyone wanting to play an Origin-only game must allow to run on their machine. This is in stark contrast to Steam, which allows you to opt out of this.
I find enforced spyware to be very concerning, and wrote a post arguing that EA should remove this from their EULA and have the option to opt out of allowing their software to scan your machine and send back any information it wishes. I believe in people's right to privacy, and as benevolent as EA's intentions might be, they are still demanding you sacrifice your privacy to this software, while agreeing to an EULA that gives them permission to abuse this information in any way they see fit. I am pleased they reworded in response, but I'm very troubled that they haven't seen sense to make it optional. And the enormous question remains: why not? This is the reason why people say they will not buy Origin-only games.
If those were your best examples to justify your extremely rude outburst about my failings as a journalist, I think you probably owe me an apology. One that you made up, and one where you presumably just disagree with my argument, rather than actually call any of the facts into question.
I'm sorry but it's not his position, its a legal interpretation. Simply labeling him as an apologist doesn't cut through that. Reading the EULA without putting it in context with the EAs privacy policy etc is a mistake (an honest mistake, but a mistake never the less). They are meant to be read in conjunction. If you doubt the validity of his position John, consult with another legal professional about it.
As regards the whole 'spyware thing' I'll refer to this thread: -
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/foru...ghlight=origin
Personal definitions don't really come into it I'm afraid.
I've acknowledged that I was out of order with the tone John, but I'm not going to apologize over the points because I'd say they are valid, sorry.
Last edited by Kadayi; 18-01-2012 at 12:02 AM.
Why yes you're right I'm deliciously evil
Tradition is the tyranny of dead men
Steam:Kadayi Origin: Kadayi GFWL: Kadayi
Probable Replicant
*blush* I'm flattered by the attention boys, but please let's not make the thread about liddle old me
Origin may not actually be collecting data from your PC, but the EULA (as worded in the article) appears to be granting EA the right to if they wish.
The Origin spyware story had little factual basis. It was based on fear kicked up by online communities over terms found in many EULAs. Also I was under the impression that you can opt-out of "monitoring" (which isn't close to what was claimed). At least I remember a checkbox to that effect during the install.
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