Keep it up. The thread's a riot. Or it soon will be, just keep the 'intellectuals' busy with replies.
Konami Shuns Kotaku Japan Over Corruption Comments
- Thread starter Logan Westbrook
- Start date
Well I'm going to ask an actual law student for clarification on the exact nature of libel laws before I indulge in any more speculation.Abriael said:
You know Konami. Saying "Fuck you you can't come to my party" to the guy who accused you of spiking the punch isn't going to revert his thoughts you know....really off-hand analogy.
I still refuse to believe that Famitsu of all reviewers (they're well known for being brutal) gave it a perfect. No. That just doesn't sit right.
I still refuse to believe that Famitsu of all reviewers (they're well known for being brutal) gave it a perfect. No. That just doesn't sit right.
Exactly. It would take a lot of money or influence to equal even the threat of losing subscriptions from pissed off fanatics.Space Jawa said:
Since I don't really buy all that many games anymore, I don't have any subscriptions to gaming magazines. But I used to have a longtime subscription to Game Informer, and this kind of thing slowly became more and more apparent over the years.
Back around the turn of the millennium, reviews tended to get much harsher if the reviewer didn't like it. Profanity was actually not uncommon, and the review staff pretty well gave off the vibe that they were just some dudes sitting around talking shop about games. There was also a tendency to get pretty harsh if a game honestly didn't perform well, and especially if it didn't live up to hype. I recall a game receiving a 0 on their 1-10 scale once, and that was pretty damn funny, even more so since the reviewer declared it had only fared that well since their editor confirmed that they couldn't, in fact, give a game a negative score.
It actually surprised me a great deal when I dug out one of the oldest magazines I had and realized that that style was completely gone. Everything in the most recent issues I had gotten seemed so clean and safe. Hardly anything except the most expensive blockbusters received any page space, and even games that received fairly harsh criticisms in the body of the review would still end up with superb scores. The fishiest one was actually pretty topical: MGS4 got a 10/10, which in itself wouldn't have surprised me if the text of the review had had any content to it whatsoever. No premise, no mechanics, no discussion of style or content, and, tellingly, not even a mention of potential criticisms. It seemed suspiciously like the reviewer was just trying their hardest to resist committing to any potentially assailable critical position.
All the time since I had first started reading, perhaps ever other issue some years, there would inevitably be an entry in the letters section telling them that their 'outrageous' low score, usually of a game that wasn't even all that big, was the latest in a long line of blah blah blah and they were canceling their subscription. These kinds of assholes (to put it bluntly) are unavoidable, but I can certainly understand how, as gaming culture grows larger and larger, fanbases become more devoted and insular, and the financial stakes grow larger with the the size of the subscription base and the ability of the publication to appease both fans and developers alike, the incentive to fudge a review here and there becomes less of a trick to get an edge on the competition and more of a necessity just to hold on to what you have, especially if they even suspect their competitors aren't above doing the same.
The end responsibility is, as always, with the readership, of course; until even the suspicion of foul play is enough to threaten a publication's subscriber base as much as or more than the occasional fan tantrum, there isn't any reason for them to stop other than their own conscience, and there are a lot of people that would rather have job security than a spotless conscience, and can you really blame them?
But so far, the opposite has proven true. When something happens to give gamers serious doubts about whether or not a given publication is playing by the rules or not, there will be a short period of grumbling followed by zero change in the status quo, or a quick return to it. When a publication has the gall to speak ill of a popularly inviolable title or developer, heads roll, ads and previews get pulled, and readers flee.
Rather than lengthen an already overlong post with citing unpleasant events that everyone is already far too familiar with, things are like this: rather than be falsely accused of employing unpleasable trolls and lose money from readers and money and access from developers, they can conduct slimy practices to appease the truly unpleasable trolls upon which they are financially dependent at no risk to themselves.
It's up to you to change this statues quo. If you think a publication or website is trying to game the system, don't give them your money, and don't pay them your attention. Nothing else you can do is going to give anyone the crazy idea that gamers want journalistic integrity, too, because unless or until this is done, I guess we really don't.
Tell the rest of the guys at Famitsu I said 'hi'Abriael said:Actually, I'm out. Time for work and the real world awaits. I said what I had to. Sorry to disappointLoonerinoes said:
OT I think this is quite fishy also. But then again, I remember raising a post some months back about how funny it was Famitsu were always giving Squeenix RPGs high scores even when other magazines were giving them mediocre ones, so it really isn't all that surprising.
Au contraire, I bet you'll say far more than what you have to if your current track record is anything to go by. But be sure to go hard at your 'work' as you put it. Might tire your hand out enough so that you won't be able to type back furious responses and actually think about how your logic fails to grasp the most basic context around the law as pertaining to cases of 'slanderous libel' as you put it so well. Though I'm pretty sure that your definitions of the term and how to apply it to the word of the law would be more appreciated within mainland China.Abriael said:Actually, I'm out. Time for work and the real world awaits. I said what I had to. Sorry to disappointLoonerinoes said:
Meh...why do I bother. He's probably buzzed off to his fairlyland place before returning to his home and first thing he'll do when he comes back is hit the keyboard with a vengeance. I'll try to think of a clever objection line to link in response if that does indeed happen.
Absolutely agreed. One of my fondest memories is of when I picked up my first copy of 'Hyper' (which I believe Yahtzee wrote for at one point, correct me if I'm wrong), and about four pages into the reviews there was a game called 'Tactical Ops: Assault On Terror', with an accompanying headline "Dan Toose stopped retching just in time to write this review." The guy gave the game a mere twenty five percent and called it out for being a blatant attempt to cash in on the events of 9/11. I laughed 'til I couldn't feel my sides anymore. We need to bring these good old days back.TheRocketeer said:
Yeah, guys I just called about 4 of my uncles. All of which are lawyers in business law. Aribel is right about the libel. Konami/Famitsu could take Kotaku to court over that article. It's spreading defamatory remarks about a business. Two businesses in fact. Kotaku has no proof of any score inflation. Kotaku never said shit when MGS4 got 40/40, or when MGS3 got 39/40. And seeing as how Destructoid is famous for hyping up game by repeatedly reporting on one or two AAA games almost exclusively at a time then giving one of them a scathing reveiw Brian Aschcroft is going to need proof. Or a lawyer if Konami/Famitsu sees fit. I remember how much Destructoid hyped up Assassin's Creed II. They ran an article every other day. They had constant ads on the site. They had contests. And then when the game came out, it got a 4.5. Just because there's a promo for a game being done by a certain magazine doesn't mean score inflation is afoot.
The "you" here was a "you all," apologies if that was unclear. EVERYONE needs to tone it down - argue nice, or don't argue at all.Abriael said:
And I'm sorry, but the world doesn't work the way you think it does. If you can support your argument with facts (and yes, Bashcraft was using facts), it's fine.
If libel was as widespread as you believe it to be, no newspapers would even HAVE an op-ed page out of fear of lawsuits. But they do. It would kill academic analysis (How dare you say my paper is a racist text for X Y and Z? LAWSUIT!) which might not be a bad thing.
While you do have a correct literal definition, its nothing like that which is used in reality.Abriael said:
NYT v. Sullivan
The Court held that the First Amendment protects the publication of all statements, even false ones, about the conduct of public officials except when statements are made with actual malice (with knowledge that they are false or in reckless disregard of their truth or falsity).
Now there is a lower standard for private entities but its not much lower(especially with people in the public eye, the court has basically said "deal with it"). Other court cases have indicated that actual harm must come from the libel.
So while your right in the definition, I believe your offbase in your application of it in the kotaku article.
He's not off base here. It's Kotaku Japan who's blackballed here. And Famitsu as well as Konami are Japanese companies. The laws there are different. You can't spread defamatory accusations in Japan like you can in the States.sneakypenguin said:
In other words using the U.S. first amendment right as a comparison has no effect here.
It sounds like we have last generation journalists reviewing this / next generation games.Abriael said: