This is the shit I was talking about

I'm a bit livid about this Eurogamer shit. Did you hear about this? No? Well let me tell you about it.

Uncharted 3: Drake's Predictable Sequel came out yesterday. A couple of places have posted reviews of the retail copy, as they are wont to do. Over dinner with friend-in-laws I was trying to explain the notion of explicit bias in gaming media, citing Game Informer being owned and printed by Gamestop as a specific incident where it benefits the Company to market and produce Hype early. Game Informer, of course, gets exclusive reviews and previews and announcements and the sort which I'm sure has nothing at all to do with the fact that Gamestop is the one selling the game.

Eurogamer is a gaming-media-blog-type thing. It gets interviews, it posts reviews, it does the whole gamut of existing in the world of fastest scoops and insider detail. Of course they got a copy of Uncharted to review. It got a solid 8/10, too, which is a good score going into the holidays and nothing to be upset about.

That is, of course, unless you're Naughty Dog's lead developer Richard Lemarchand. Here's what happened: Eurogamer posted their review of Uncharted 3 last week, which was a scant few days before the game's proper launch. The game got a POSITIVE REVIEW OF 8/10. This is important. Four days after the review went live, Eurogamer's News Editor just so happened to have a sit-down with the aforementioned lead dev. From the article:


"The strict, linear design and tight camera management may contribute to a sense of being a semi-spectator on a fairground ride, but the benefit of this design approach is that it allows the team to focus every ohm of PlayStation processing power onto what is on screen at any one time," reviewer Simon Parkin wrote of Uncharted 3, out next week.
And in his concluding paragraph: "The execution exhibits a kind of workmanship and polish way beyond the ambition of most other developers, let alone their abilities or budgets. As an expression of all that a video game could be, however, Uncharted 3 is narrow, focused and ultimately shallow."

Lemarchand, who has read the review, told Eurogamer at the GameCity festival in Nottingham that he "agreed with some of [Simon's] points and not with others", but insisted Naughty Dog had done even more to keep players in control of central character Nathan Drake with Uncharted 3 than with previous games in the PlayStation 3 exclusive series.

""The way we design the Uncharted games is a very deliberate creative choice on our part," he said. "We've said many times in public we don't think it's the only way for video games to go."

"I guess that's what I was a little disappointed about in Simon's review. We have done even more than we did before to keep the player in control from moment to moment, and to return control to the player really promptly whenever we possibly could. It's almost an obsession of ours. Players are going to notice it."

In so many words, the lead developer pulls a specific part of a review and not only refutes it but goes so far as to imply the reviewer was somehow doing it wrong. He mentions that Naughty Dog has done a better job in Uncharted 3 than ever before in allowing players to have control, and that "players are going to notice it." Is this not a cheap shot at the reviewer in question? The lead developer of a game with obviously no bias just called out the credentials of the guys who gave them a POSITIVE REVIEW by pointing out that real players will catch the awesome nuances of their elaborate and polished control scheme.

So of course the News Editor for Eurogamer steps up to bat for his boy, right? He points out that reviews are subjective and that maybe the things Naughty Dog wanted to come across didn't quite make it?

No, of course not. The news editor has zero to say about the article, literally, as it is just a series of paragraphs of quotes. There is some fluff about how far gaming journalism has come and how everyone is doing such a great job of "stepping up to the bat."

What's the fucking point, lead developer Richard Lemarchand? This guy, Simon Parkin, is a freelance contributor to several gaming media devices. He's written for newspapers and has done general journalism since 2005. Simon Parkin DID go up to bat, you cock-sucking self-aggrandizing chocolate thief. He went to bat and gave a solid, POSITIVE REVIEW of a game that is the third in a series and has been riding the hype train since last year. He went to bat and called out a company on their bullshit and pointed out mistakes and things people should know, which is the point of a review. THAT WAS POSITIVE. What did he get for his "good job?"

The sniveling whining dick-guzzling lead developer Richard Lemarchand going to the place that posted his review and calling into question the credibility of his journalism, something he's been doing for years. And what happened when the self-entitled and delusional lead developer Richard Lemarchand complains publicly? It gets posted on the front page of the same website that hosts the review. Just out there in the open for anyone to see, "Here is what a developer says about an independent review," and not a single word of defense for their own publication. No one goes to bat for Simon Parkin, he doesn't get a rebuttal or a comeback. He gets insulted and a dev gets to question his abilities as a writer and nothing happens.

So what is it, Eurogamer? What are we supposed to do with this information? You didn't pull the review, you didn't put an asterisk next to the 8/10 with a note at the bottom saying

*but it should be at least a 9.5 since this guy isn't really a player, see lead developer Richard Lemarchand's commentary

and you definitely didn't defend your writer who you paid to write in the first place. You're making yourselves look bad by letting someone come into your home, and I can't stress enough that the counter-argument against the review wasn't hosted on Naughty Dog's website but on Eurogamer itself, and decry someone who works for you. Are we supposed to stop trusting the journalist? Or should we stop going to the website that obviously has no faith in the reviews it publishes? By allowing a biased party to show up on your turf and openly state the review is wrong, their game is perfect, you are setting a very uncomfortable precedent for anyone releasing a mega-hyped game and doesn't perfect scores across the board.