Topic: The Chit Chat Thread

@RogerRoger

@mookysam basically, if you're not sure it's best to just say it somewhere else. But some people like to make it a more complex theory than that.

@mookysam Hey! We felt that the discussion was getting a little too far away from games. The article was published as it was a report relating to Jim Ryan's relationship with his staff - which is the news element. Hope that helps clear things up

@kyleforrester87 I found it even funnier

I wonder if this is enough to get rid of Ryan 🤔

@RogerRoger Hey friend, I wanted to post this here as it made more sense. I'm still hanging in there. A lot has changed since the last time I had my head above the sand. I moved halfway across the world and I'm now in Australia. The UK harboured a few too many bad memories and whenever I tried to "be normal" (Like do things with my website. Remember that?!) it was like I was hitting a brick wall, mentally. Nothing seemed to fix it. So I had to do something!

I'm still in the middle of trying to settle in, in fact I have just over a month to find a new place to live so I'm occupied with stressing over that. But I hope to start showing my face on here again.

I'm all alone over here and I'm starting anew, but perhaps it's what I need. I'm not sure yet. Life is a little surreal at the moment. One day at a time. I'm doing much better though, but I'll have a better idea of my state after this moving/settling in period.

@lolwhatno These sites are for-profit though. I’m sure the writers on this site would agree that there’s certain expectations to write the sort of articles that see heavy traffic. IIRC, the lists and guides on this site see a lot more traffic than the ‘controversial’ articles which are accused of being written to stir the pot. It also sounds a lot like you’re insinuating that Kotaku only write articles about progressive issues in order to get people ‘up in arms’ which is obviously nonsense. They write those articles because their writers pitch an idea to an editor who OKs it. I know irrationally hating Kotaku and ResetEra is the in thing amongst ex-Gamergaters and the like but it’s 2022, you’d think people would have a rather more balanced view of the pros and cons of these sites.

@nessisonett That's correct, we wouldn't have the website we have today without the traffic generated by our guide campaigns and PS5/PS4 game lists — to call them the backbone of the site would be an understatement.

General news articles, even if they cover a "controversial" topic or angle, are dwarfed by guides. Every single article ever written is designed to make you click on it @lolwhatno. If you don't, people don't have jobs doing this.

@lolwhatno I used to read Kotaku UK a lot but it was always slightly weird how it was such a messy mash up of their US writers and their separate UK team.

Keza Macdonald was really good from the UK (was at IGN before, now at the Guardian) and they did have some amazing and varied people in the US like Tim Rogers, Patrick Klepek, and obviously Jason Schreier so it had a cool mix of voices, and later did have a more varied rota of writers, rather than just White American Dude (even if Gita Jackson writing twenty articles a week on The Sims did my head in).

But the different takeovers and massive staff turnover have left it a bit of a shell of what it once was.

Not a massive reader of any site's content these days (except for this one I suppose), so was never a consistent reader of Kotaku, but the one they did when they tracked down the one remaining player of Babylon’s Fall was kinda neat.

@lolwhatno Kotaku have got a bad rep recently with some obnoxiously titled articles, but i think they had a new editor since, and I've not seen so many being commented on.

It kinda works in the reverse with me, if I see an article title which I don't like, I usually won't click on it, depending on how interested I am in the subject.

@lolwhatno I don’t know if you’re familiar with the term ‘shock jock’ in the world of radio, but Kotaku seem like the shock jock of gaming journalism. I very rarely go there (or go really anywhere but here, to be honest) but when I do, I’m entertained at the melodrama for a few articles and then eventually move on, unsure if it’s all just a schtick. There’s apparently a market for it. Look no further than the fact the writers all went on strike a couple months ago for a peek into their mindset. Everyone over there just comes across so… passionately distraught? But again, it could all be an deft attempt to get more eyes on the articles. Either way, I get a kick out of some of their stuff. Out of curiosity, I went to the site to see what was on their newsfeed, and I actually had to chuckle at the full article critiquing Elon Musk’s Elden Ring build 😂. It’s those kinds of their articles I find amusing, but I guess he’s an easy target, being the world’s richest person and all.

I'll start this post by saying that this is nothing to do with console wars or any of that stuff. I'd have ideally posted this on the xbox thread but I know that people get touchy about that being used to bring up anything that's anti-MS so thought I'd just post it here.

I found this quite interesting reading and obviously it's on NeoGAF so I'm totally taking it with a pinch of salt as well, but it just feels like this could be the reason some people are so fanatical about game pass that they have to remind you every 5 minutes that it's the best value in gaming.

https://www.neogaf.com/threads/phil-spencer-responds-to-starf...

@velio84 There's so much of that other stuff going on it's very hard to actually see what's real any more. It's not great but you can filter a lot of it out if you know that it's all fake. There's also plenty of fans out there who are happy to shout about their brand allegiances anyway without any extra incentive however this Ambassador thing does seem to take that to the next level. It's taking a bunch of normal people and effectively paying them peanuts to become a brain washed marketing army.

Push Square is the best website on the internet.

@kyleforrester87 Nice to meet a member of the Push Square Ambassador program 😉

@render from my experience they get paid by the word 😉

@lolwhatno It's pretty dodgy behaviour for anyone, be it a company or a government, and does show the internet can be used in plenty of bad ways.

@colonelkilgore You ain't wrong 😂

I know Epic Games aren’t exactly everyone’s favourite company but it’s really great of them to give Frogwares a grant with everything going on in Ukraine.