Polygon is the new Kotaku?

[LandLord]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLZy3CBBXuE&feature=player_embedded

Other than Polygons constant low rating of games not meeting their political agenda, they keep also have very low requirements for their staff.

Look at that posture.
That bored face.
Those awe inspiring questions that we ourselves could never have thought of.

She obviously isn't interested and she got called out on it only for the comments to be disabled.


(Btw before holy men in white cloaks atop steads attack me, I'm not aiming at her gender)

 

[Ryan Hughes]

Right.

Look, hate on Kotaku all you want, but there are many Escapist articles that source primarily from there. Steven Totillo and Jason Scherier are actually really good journalists. Totillo is now writing for the New York Times, and Scherier has done some very interesting work like this:
http://kotaku.com/shake-up-at-studio-from-hell-512135529

Yeah, Gawker media can be horrifying at times, but that does not mean that every site owned by them is bad.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

I always thought Polygon was the mouthpiece of publishers and Kotaku was everyone else.

That said, I'll take the unwashed masses opinion over some corporate shills any-day.

 

[Karoshi]

Polygon has some amazing investigative articles, like the one about voice actor of John Marston from Red Dead Redemption and countless others.

Their videos though are lacking, but it's not the reason why I go there. Escapist has that base covered.

 

[treeroy]

I generally think Polygon is alright, but that interview was horrific. Kotaku is interesting because the vast majority of it, like the other Gawker sites, is just rubbish, but because there's so much on there, they do have some original journalism. Polygon is far superior to Kotaku overall in my opinion, though.

 

[IronMit]

I previously read comments accusing Polygon of poorly reviewing PS3 AAA exclusives because they get advertising revenue or sponsorship from xbox. I have no idea how to check this but...

I don't think this is the case anyway. They just have awful taste and a skewed judgement from the Anita Sarkeesian school of thinking. That's why I don't visit that site.

 

[BrotherRool]

I can't see how they're in any worse than any of the other gaming news sites?

So far they've had less completely factually incorrect news articles than the Escapist (That I've spotted)). Polygons headline for the Fez incident was "Fez 2 canceled, Phil Fish confirms". The Escapists on the other hand was "Fez Dev Tells Media Member To Kill Himself". Which was exactly the kind of sensationalist BS that causes the problems in the first place. In fact it was so sensationalist that it was completely unrelated to it's own tagline which was the far more reasonable "Polytron has announced that development of Fez II has been cancelled following director Phil Fish's Twitter snafu."


I haven't noticed any wildly weird reviews to the extent I don't even know what's particular kicked off all this fuss and they actually update reviews over time which acknowledges that games change a lot after launch now.

It's top page features currently include an article on a Native American gaming company, interviews with several independent developers and the story of how their games were made. A story on Paradox's history and the awesome business models that have resulted in their unique niche of games. The mentioned article on blind gamers, a heartfelt interview with a near suicidal person who put all their passion into one game about how they see life. The lives of a couple of starcraft commentators. etc All great things and basically no editorials at all (And to be fair to my comparison, the Escapist also has a lot of really cool feature articles over a similar period of time www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/ )


They seem to me to be a very ordinary gaming news site with a lot of money and a couple of neat ideas. Their reviews scores are 7-10 and most of their news pieces are reporting on press releases, along with some interesting side content to support it

 

[Bruce]

I'd rather have reviewers err on the side of the negative myself. That way when they say something is actually good, I know they have some standards for saying that.

 

[Chemical Alia]

wasn't there a time "Polygon" was actually a site about 3rd party game models, maps and modelling/mapping or am i being senile again ?..

Maybe you're thinking of Polycount? http://www.polycount.com/

 

[ForumSafari]

So you're criticising their site, and by implication Kotaku, for low standards in selecting staff members and for inaccurately reviewing things?

And you're doing it on the Escapist?

Didn't you notice where half the news articles on here reference?

 

[Specter Von Baren]

I don't know... I've always found Kotaku fantastic. Not for their articles, but because of the comments. I often find I learn more about something by reading the comments to a news article than I do from reading the article itself.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

So you're criticising their site, and by implication Kotaku, for low standards in selecting staff members and for inaccurately reviewing things?

And you're doing it on the Escapist?

Didn't you notice where half the news articles on here reference?

There's a difference between referencing someone else's article and running an overall bad website. Polygon had good investigative journalism for gaming, which is why they are referenced so often. Other than that, they're bottom of the barrel for a gaming website. The Escapist may not have the best articles, but it does have, with a few exceptions, great videos, good interviews, a forum that's actually extensive, and its reviews aren't just a mouthpiece for publishers.

 

[Phrozenflame500]

In general I don't take any gaming journalism/news site seriously. I have a select set of reviewers/interviewers I consider non-terrible and most of them aren't affiliated with a particular site.

 

[RogueportJack]

Somebody's upset about Dragon's Crown.

 

[ForumSafari]

There's a difference between referencing someone else's article and running an overall bad website. Polygon had good investigative journalism for gaming, which is why they are referenced so often. Other than that, they're bottom of the barrel for a gaming website.

I've yet to find a genuinely good website for 'gaming', possibly because now that it's no longer a secret hobby most of the tech sites are covering it. I tend to prefer reviews on Ars Technica to anything I read here. I just find it funny that someone's criticising Kotaku on a website that stays in bed til midday and borrows Kotaku's lecture notes.

The Escapist may not have the best articles, but it does have, with a few exceptions, great videos, good interviews, a forum that's actually extensive, and its reviews aren't just a mouthpiece for publishers.

Full points for lack of bias and a grudging admission that the videos here aren't currently too bad (we all remember 'I hit it with my axe'), but aside from that I can't agree. The forum isn't extensive, in fact since at least 2010 it's really slowed down and there isn't the same depth of conversations. Maybe I'm spoiled from 4chan but I'd say this is actually a very narrow forum.

I've no read many good interviews here, in fact to be honest I've not seen many at all. Good general articles but no real interviews that I've seen.

The videos though tend towards the bad on average. The Escapist tends to have about three big ticket video series at any time and they haul a whole boatload of shit around with them.

 

[MushroomRetainer]

So far no white knights thank god.

"No white knights yet," and yet you still complained about them anyway. Way to Monoxeroth, Monoxeroth. Yep, you're a verb now. Congrats!

I'm always interested when threads like this pop up, because I like to get a general consensus on how people feel about other sites I've heard about but aren't necessarily familiar with. I heard Polygon got on the "black knight" radar because they aren't masturbating to Dragon's Crown, which put Polygon on my radar, but it still wasn't a place I checked regularly. Still, the reason I find Polygon interesting is the same reason I find the Escapist and, formerly, found Kotaku interesting. You can get gaming news any number of places, but Escapist and Polygon have a lot of interesting articles on things outside of which game was released recently and whether or not it sucks.

Not that all these articles are good, though. Polygon's recent article on game developer harassment [http://www.polygon.com/2013/8/15/4622252/plague-of-game-dev-harassment-erodes-industry-spurs-support-groups] kind of pissed me off for starting out really interesting and seemingly a reasonable take on a real issue in the industry, and then fucking it all up by the end. Yeah, George Lucas was definitely an innocent soul who didn't deserve any of the shit people threw at him.