Category Archives: Rant

Seriously, It’s Just A Phone

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Driving to work today, I only passed by one Cingular store, but I could see a small throng of people standing outside of it, waiting for it to open.  Listening to the radio, I heard that the frenzy had reached a higher pitch in the bay area, where some people have been waiting outside of Apple stores since Wednesday, and lines have extended to span almost a block of city streets.

What earth-shattering, ground-breaking, head-exploding new product are all these sad souls waking up early for?

The iPhone 3G, of course.  A slight upgrade to the iPhone.

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Twitter – The Internet’s Newest Cesspool

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As stupid and clichéd as it is, let me start this with a few simple definitions:

Mundane -adjective

2. common; ordinary; banal; unimaginative.

Uninteresting -adjective

1. arousing no interest or attention or curiosity or excitement.

Stupid -adjective

2. characterized by or proceeding from mental dullness; foolish; senseless.

Mundane, uninteresting, and stupid.  These three words perfectly describe one of the newest internet cesspools, Twitter.

If you took MySpace, and dropped it into a special machine designed to wring out everything but the superficiality, narcissism, and lust for attention, and then you took what was left, put it into some bullets, and then fired them at the internet with an automatic machine gun, you’d have Twitter.  And probably a few dead bystanders.

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Online Journalism and the Loss of Integrity

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I’m not a frequent visitor of IGN – I actually rarely visit the site at all, except to do occasional product research (for buying and discussion), or to see what score they gave the latest, hottest game. Years ago I used to be a more avid reader of IGN, but something always bugged me, even in those early days when the site was still finding its stride – the ad content.

And I’m not talking about those full screen ads that come up in between links. I’m talking about the presence of ads for rival products on review pages, the whole site conversion ads, and the effects of these ad campaigns on the objectiveness of the site’s content. These things trouble me greatly.

Before I venture further down the rabbit hole, let me say this: I know there is no such thing as a completely objective review. We all have our personal biases, weak and strong, towards people, companies, places, things, etc. and I both understand and acknowledge this. My commentary here, however, is about how advertising dollars can take people beyond objectivity, and how quickly integrity is lost when this happens.

Let’s also do a quick poll before the festivities start:

[poll id="9"]

In order to make my case, I’ve brought along a few examples of how corrupt online journalism actually is. These exhibits have left me shaking my head, nearly to the point of injury, so take care to rest your neck now and then if you need to.

Rotten Apple

It’s actually quite unfair for me to mention IGN singularly at the outset of this article, when the greatest offender I’ve seen thus far is CNET, and it’s stable of websites. In fact, one of the worst examples of dirty advertising and its ability to make me question the veracity of the hosting site isn’t even a games-oriented website; good old CNET.com was gracious enough to provide.

I present to you Exhibit A, the “Don’t Give Up On Vista” ad that Apple ran on this page, CNET’s Windows Vista landing zone.

Yeah, it’s kind of amusing. But on a site that purports to be an authority on fair, unbiased tech reviews, it’s alarming. How can I expect a fair look at Windows Vista when CNET frames their space in a competitor’s advertisement? ‘Childish’ and ‘irresponsible’ are all I can say about this.

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The Plight of the Pre-Order

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If you’ve been keeping up with my blog, you know that I’ve been pretty excited about Grand Theft Auto 4. Actually, looking back on my posts, I guess I haven’t written about it all that much, but you can attribute that to my intentional avoidance of all things that might reveal too much about the game to me. Yes, I want to go in with a completely fresh view of the game. To my credit, I have been talking up the game something fierce to my friends (in the hopes of having some fun people to play online with), and I went out and pre-ordered the game at my local GameStop last week.

Last night, the game went up for sale at midnight. I’d been debating on whether or not I wanted to go out and pick it up then, and finally I decided I’d just drive by the store and see how many people there were. If the line was huge, I’d simply turn around and leave; I normally have to get up for work around 6:15 AM, so waiting in line for an hour and then only playing for a few minutes is out of the question.

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CGI Trailers: A Complete Waste Of Time

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CGI Trailers Suck

The trend is annoying. It’s deceptive. It’s insulting to my intelligence. And sadly, it shows no signs of ever coming to an end. I am speaking, of course, about the video game industry’s constant use of CGI (computer generated imagery) trailers.

My disgust for this practice has been sloshing around inside my head for a while now, but the issue really peaked for me back in 2006, when Sony unveiled supposed in-game footage of Killzone 2, which later turned out to be a CGI trailer. There was a lot of backlash over this, and I agree with all of it – it pointed out both how tempting it can be for game companies to deceive the public with CGI, and how easy it can actually be when our game systems are almost capable of producing such visuals anyway.

Imagine you’re putting together an awesome movie. It finally comes time in production to get the word out and get people excited for the upcoming film. Your press agent asks for some promotional materials to show people… what would you give them? Would you create a video of animated characters and special effects, completely unlike the visual style of your film?

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