"I assumed you were white based on my dissection of your post, and my cynicism got the best of me and my apologies for that. "

I read this on Kotaku. Big argument that came up about Cain.

No Kotaku is generally a great place. Oddly enough, especially for comments (at least in comparison to most other sites with comment sections, namely because there is a 'screening' period where all of your comments are approved before posted).

This just came from a heated argument. It was ironic. The very person who posted the comment in question was calling other people racist.

EDIT: Just letting you know, Kotaku is a gaming blog. not a political blog. The article that the comment thread was from was about Herman Cain using a quote from a pokemon movie in one of his speeches.

*Shrugs*

Kotaku has always seemed alright to me. The editors and writers for it are different than those on Gawker and Io9. I only check out Io9 out of those 2 though so I can't say how good/terrible Gawker is. In kotaku, Owen Good is a little obnoxious at times, and Brian Ashcraft is very clearly a American obsessed with japan (he also lives there, his kid knows Japanese better than English). Rest of them always seemed pretty smart and friendly. In Io9, Stuff is generally well written but sometimes there are hints of pretension. (namely in Annalee Newitz articles)

As for the actual people who RUN the Gawker Blogs 'network', They seem douchey based on what I've read about them. But their authors/ journalists are all ok in my book.

Idiots in comments will always pop up though.


EDIT: also, make sure to keep the classic 'blog' view. (http://blog.io9.com/ and http://blog.kotaku.com/) because their new 'top stories' format is awful.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/ is the only decent PC-gaming site I even know of. They legitimately discuss things and don't assign numbered rankings/scores.

Kotaku (and all the related sites) is absolutely terrible, their writers are awful, biased, proven paid off and often factually incorrect. They are a site that tries to get pageviews, not give quality content. Stop going there.

Whoa. Biased? No way. -_-

Every site is biased, every site tries to get page views. Plus, I don't go there for reviews. (which have been simplified to Y/N or the equivalent of having games get a 0 out of 1 or 1 out of 1, which is pretty dumb)

Anyway I don't mean to be rude, but I have to ask, what proof of them being paid off can you produce? And paid off for what? Again if you are talking reviews, that isn't something I care about on their site. I check it for general game related news. And doesn't every site try to get page views?

The "often factually incorrect" thing is admittedly half right. They are wrong more often than other sites unfortunately. I think though that is generally due to their nature of posted stuff they hear about immediately. So rumors occasionally are not recognized as such.

Why are their writers awful though? This is something I'm really baffled by. They, on the whole, seem fine to me. Like, they aren't brilliant, but their writing hasn't killed my father and raped my mother.

Despite all of that, I'll give Rock, Paper, Shotgun a shot. Since you said it as a good PC news site. Which makes me a little more interested because kotaku is admittedly very console oriented and I've fallen out of console gaming mostly.

You seem to feel very strongly about Kotaku though. Is that hyperbole I smell are are these honestly how you feel? if so, if you don't mind could you explain why?

Also, I am baffled by the hatred of rankings/scores for games and the idea that intelligent/interesting discussion is impossible in their presence.

Numbers are useful... assuming the numbers are consistent. And review scores generally are. Especially in the context of an aggregated score. I find the review scores accurately reflect what is worth playing for me most of the time. Though that isn't to say their aren't outliers. Like low reviewed games that I liked, (Shell Shock 2) and highly acclaimed games I thought sucked (Time Splitters 2). but for the most part, my enjoyment of a game is pretty level with the critics. Though of course I wouldn't let reviews be the only element of research I utilize to determine what I buy. My friends and family are good sources, as are game demos and videos of gameplay. Of course thats only numbered scores.

I actually think ranking is more useful, as it gives more context to compare a game to. but usually only in the smaller scale individual thoughts (gamesradar's "is this game better than that game" section of each review is a great example). Oddly enough this is an area when a compilation of numbered scores tend to cease to be accurate (look at gamerankings "all time best"). But I don't care to squabble over what are the best games ever any way so this doesn't bother me (I don't believe the best game ever exists or can exist).

Ok, I decided to do some research of my own actually.

I searched Google for some comments from others on Kotaku and its shady practices and I remember the articles they are referring to and being annoyed at them then too, and felt a lot of them had made some pretty good cases as to why Kotaku is probably not such a great place to visit...

So now, I feel a bit foolish... I have yet to encounter anything particularly wrong with Io9 yet though. Except Annalee Newitz... And I can shrug her articles off.

EDIT: though their shady-ness only stems seemingly from their tabloid-esque nature. Not their reviews, so I'm still a little confused about that.

EDIT2: another side note: after reading rock paper shotgun, I've come to like it very much already. Is Destructoid any good? I keep hearing about it from other people and occasionally run into it when I'm looking at reviews. Though I've heard it has a lot of eccentric and trollish writers.

EDIT3: Looking for negative things said about gaming journalism sites, I came across http://gamejournos.com Which seems to do a pretty good job of calling on site's stupid shit. Rock Paper Shotgun has only 3 entries that I could find. Only one of them legitimately angering. While... Kotaku has countless... Shit dicks, my apathy to find a new gaming journalism site (and resistance to change in general) lead me to stick with a site that doesn't seem to deserve my views... Which makes me sad... even now I can hardly fathom deleting Kotaku from my bookmarks... I don't honestly know that I will.

It also gives me a minor boost in confidence that I could be a decent gaming writer/journalist/reviewer. Probably not though.