Stop Wasting My Time!

Over the last couple of weeks, while surfing through the internets, feeling the wind in my hair, the smell of 1’s and 0’s in the air, I stumbled across a couple of articles; this one, this one, and this one. I clicked on these articles because their topic of discussion (the first two about Naughty Dog and the last about Half Life 3) was of great interest to me. So when I clicked upon the links, I was frustrated to find that not only were these articles speculative bordering on inane, but complete wastes of time.

The reason that I come down hard upon these articles is because of the leaps made by the authors surrounding their subject material. The first two articles, written by Giuseppe Nevla for DualSHOCKERS, chose to embellish upon a Sony Computer Entertainment Italy Facebook post that contained an image of a PS4 controller made out of coal with the caption ‘Naughty’ in it. From here, he goes on a journey, of what I can only assume was epic proportions, to claim that there might be some hint at a Naughty Dog game reveal in the coming days. He bases this on nothing substantial, and makes leaps so huge that the Ancient Aliens guys would be embarrassed by him.

Giuseppe essentially wrote what this guy does for a living.

Giuseppe’s next article is essentially a retraction of his previous article of 48 hours earlier. He tried to clothe the ridiculousness of said piece by exclaiming that because of the festive season of the holidays, and Sony Italy being the only Sony site that chose to celebrate this, was the cause of his, and apparently many others, confusion. That annoyed me greatly. If he were honest (I made leaps and bounds for internet hits), then I would not have cared. However, to pretend that his readers are so stupid that they would believe that he wasn’t trying to fish for hits is insulting. Hell, the comment section below his second article seems to read like it’s all Sony’s fault that these articles were written. What the hell is wrong with those people? Sony didn’t force Giuseppe to write nonsense. He did that all on his own.

The final article that irked me was Dylan Zellmer’s article on Half Life 3, or rather, why Valve may never make one. Instead of pointing out the painfully obvious (between Steam and their new ventures in hardware, Valve have no monetary need to make games anymore), he chooses to focus on a quote about the importance of level design, and how multi-player experiences might be more valued than that which was found in Half Life games from a developer’s point of view. It’s an interesting quote, that actually might reflect how this new style of development may be influencing the next installment of Half Life if Valve ever choose to make one, but by no means can one say that this can be interpreted as why Half Life 3 may never come out. It’s not even the full quote. It’s taken in complete isolation, used to promote the dialogue of the article, and probably has nothing to do with any game Valve may be making. By manipulating the source quote, Dylan has shown quite an apt that would make political extremists proud.

G Man was not amused.

Thankfully, Dylan provided a source for the quote for his readers to read through and make their own minds up. But the fact that the entire article (a Washington Post blog post), in which Gabe Newell is interviewed by Andrea Peterson about why Valve is the way it is as a company, has been misconstrued by an author using his views instead of the facts of the article (which doesn’t even mention Half Life 3) to write speculative jargon should be embarrassing to both author and igameresponsibly.com. However, like my good buddy Giuseppe from a couple of paragraphs above, Dylan’s articles comes off as a fishing for hits expedition. Cheap and a waste of precious time.

There have always been people writing nonsense (I’m sure I’ve done my fair share of it), to get readers. There is nothing wrong with that. People should be allowed to write crap so that it is no longer inside of them. However, they should not be presented as news articles. Leave the speculations to blog posts, where all three of these articles belong. There is no need to claim this as news. If you write well, about real news topics, then you will get the hits you deserve, and the recognition that may lift you up to a better place. Until then, leave speculative tat to the blogosphere.

In this case mine.