Kotaku.com talks smack about CAG

[quote name='darthbudge']Hahahaha. I love how CheapyD says that possibly pirated games would be ruining his cred, but then he comes out and supports contests like this.
[/QUOTE]

Hey, complain about this some more in other threads that have nothing to do it.

As for all these blogs, they never were legimitate to begin with, so I'm not sure why they feel like their cred is having significant shrinkage, like it was swimming in a cold pool.
 
Wow. I wasn't even aware of this contest (I just read the forums), but this is hilarious.

I read and enjoy Kotaku, and will probably continue to do so, but jeez, it's just a game blog with bad writing, typos and misspellings all over the place, content reposted from other blogs or scanned from Famitsu, and outrageous rumors. There's very little "journalism" going on and it's just ridiculously self-serious to pretend otherwise. The idea that one more fake rumor out of the hundreds they've posted could "hurt their credibility" and the credibility of a forum/blog that doesn't even claim to be a news site, at all... it's just crazy.

Kotaku may have a lot less comment trolls than other news blogs like Joystiq (I'll say that for Kotaku, they're pretty dang good at policing their comments and attracting semi-intelligent commenters), but it's just laughable how seriously they take themselves sometimes.
 
[quote name='Kinmar']+1 for that.[/QUOTE]

At this point, agreed. This has gone far beyond just Kotaku now. The PC World thing is great.
 
cryingbabykc9.jpg


When Kotaku picked up desz's "XBOX's New Name?" blog post, Kotaku must have thought that it was the truth or something. When Brian Crecente found out that it was part of Wombat's Bullshit Blog Contest, he freaked.
His response:
UPDATE: It appears that this rumor story could be CAG throwing their credibility out the window as part of a contest. Kotaku''s decision to run rumors is always based on the credibility of the site and the information contained within it. In the past CAG has proven to be a reliable site, having broken a number of stories through apt reporting. It appears that may no longer be the case.
Click to expand...
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This would have been nothing more than a rumour if it hadn't been part of the contest anyways. When you report on a rumour, you will usually find out it is false. I thought the "journalists" over at Kotaku would understand this, considering they probably deal with hundreds of rumours everyday.

Second of all, Crecente's response to the blog post is ridiculous. To blame CAG for his poor decision making when it comes to reporting on Kotaku is totally out of line. I would have thought somebody as important as Brian Crecente would show some professionalism, but this confirms that I would be wrong.

I will conclude by saying I will NOT be reading any more of Kotaku until the CAG community receives an apology from Brian Crecente himself. It would be great if the rest of the CAG community could participate as well. Hopefully Crecente will pull his head out of his ass sooner or later...

***This is was originally a blog post, but I figured many of you in the forums don't read the blogs anyways lol***
​
 
So much for bloggers pushing for professional journalism, they just shot themselves in the foot and in spite of that cut off their arm too.

It disappoints me greatly to see many outlets taking this rumor on as fact without even doing some simple fact checking. Its fine if you post it as a rumor, but it seems like a majority of the sites have failed to at least check to see if the source was somewhat credible (i.e. the poster, not CAG). Isn't one of the rules of journalism is to get the story right, and get it right the first time? I would imagine a vast majority of people reading "blogs" like Kotaku are likely to never see the update posted after the fact.
 
The funny thing is that someone at PC World had to waste their time and photoshop that 360 Slim.

Also BTW, did anyone look and read the image of the memo? IDK if anyone knows business style memos, but THAT is not it. I looked at it and was like wow, the formatting is all fucked up and the writing looks as thought it were written by a child and thought ok well this is obvious bullshit. Then I scrolled down to read the update, and look it WAS bullshit. Yay me.
 
[quote name='A Happy Panda']The funny thing is that someone at PC World had to waste their time and photoshop that 360 Slim.[/QUOTE]

I'm almost 100% sure I saw that exact photo a few months ago, sometimes around E3. There was a rumor that MS would announce a slim 360, or at least hint at one.

So that photoshoppin' has been done for a while.

Edit: Yep.

Blue: Even our actual news outlets don't get the story right anymore, and post all sorts of flagrant exaggerations and half truths. If I can't expect it there, what hope could there be for smelly nerds in basements?
 
[quote name='Strell']This might actually be less useful and newsworthy than an internet petition.[/QUOTE]

That's because internet petitions work.
 
I like it when people act like outraged customers... when there's a store nowhere to be seen.
 
[quote name='Strell']Blue: Even our actual news outlets don't get the story right anymore, and post all sorts of flagrant exaggerations and half truths. If I can't expect it there, what hope could there be for smelly nerds in basements?[/QUOTE]


And that's exactly my point, hince "outlets" and not "blogs". Of course, I imagine a lot of the media likely has other interests in hand which influence a story, but that's neither here nor there.
 
So...in the unlikely event that Crescentoast issued an apology, you wouldn't see it?

Look, we punked him, and he's all butthurt now. We don't need to pout because he's blustering to make himself look good. We already "won".
 
[quote name='Ryuukishi']Wow. I wasn't even aware of this contest (I just read the forums), but this is hilarious.[/QUOTE]

I don't think it ever was an official contest.
 
[quote name='Gothic Walrus']I don't think it ever was an official contest.[/quote]Well I hope it is now. :) Dude deserves some kind of prize for causing such a stir with a grainy picture of a Word document printout.
 
Those mofos disabled comments for my Kotaku account after I posted several in the Xbox Pure thread. I barely post there anyway, but I find it funny that they are now censoring comments about this as well.

Christ, Crecente should have just deleted the whole post instead of starting this shitstorm.
 
This is soooooo funny and Kotaku and the other blog sites deserve it. I have been pulling away from various blog sites once you realize that they don't really have any additional content to them. They typically don't create anything, they just find something else and link it. We pretty much have Digg for that. These people are really no body with no responsibilities. We can just post anything but for some reason they have built up credit because they have a funny name. Same thing with the other sites and they are all on their high horse and consider themselves "gaming press". In reality they are not and I wouldn't be surprised if we are starting to see the beginning of the bubble bursting on these type of sites.

Even if something is not posted as a rumor, it can still be wrong because they don't really look into it. Even asking for a comment or talking to someone at Microsoft. I am sure that if they do have this creditable well credibility, then they have contacts. They should, and ask them. I don't understand why there is a big deal with being first on something anyway. You can go to these three big sites: Kotaku, Joystiq and Destructiod and see the same stories repeated over and over again.

At least sites like IGN, 1UP and others have some sort of respectability when it comes to their news.
 
I left a few remarks via e-mail, (since I don't have a Kotaku Acct.) and these were quickly banned.

I think Cresente feels embarrassed, that why he's lashing out. He needs to walk away from the keyboard.

All in all, everyone got their page views. Cheapy and Cresente win.
 
Man, this is hilarious. Kotaku and all of the similar blogs got owned on this one. CAG is nothing more than a game deals site with a fancy forum attached, so there is no need for CAG to fact check anything. The only ones who need to do fact checking are sites like Kotaku, since they're the ones who'll look like the fools.

Besides, what's the big deal? They posted it as a rumor, so no one should be pissed when a rumor doesn't come true.
 
I read the comments on Kotaku for about a half hour and I think anyone who would blame CAG's motivation for the contest has to be a 1 dimensional thinker. Someone incapable of understanding the irony of the situation. Kotaku's God of Good Hair could have written up the story and saved it to a "drafts" folder in case it panned out. He didn't, and therefore, proved the point the contest was trying to make absolutely perfectly. It's hard to believe, but the perfect quote for what happened comes from Star Wars of all places.


"Who is more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows?" - Obi Wan from Star Wars
 
I love how they are all butt hurt about this when Kotaku posted a fake VC game story one time and it got picked up by Gametrailers, who they off course mocked. IIRC they said it was a joke directly in the story, but it's still kind of a pot calling the kettle black situation.
 
I think the best part is that BC is trying to say "oh no it doesn't ruin OUR credibility, it ruins THEIRS"

all in all..i think this sums it up

bccopygg0.jpg
 
[quote name='DarthPuma']I love how they are all butt hurt about this when Kotaku posted a fake VC game story one time and it got picked up by Gametrailers, who they off course mocked. IIRC they said it was a joke directly in the story, but it's still kind of a pot calling the kettle black situation.[/quote]
It was a week when there were no VC releases and Mike made a wishlist. Gametrailers didn't report it. You must be thinking G4.

Gosh you're worese than Kotaku.
http://kotaku.com/389422/what-would-be-your-perfect-vc-update
http://kotaku.com/5010699/g4-gamespy-gamestats-reporting-imaginary-vc-soul-blazer
 
Supergrass at 09:33 AM

* Of course, what happens when someone wants to play a little prank on CAG and sends in documentation of the next price drop for the 360 or PS3? Clearly, it's easy to pull a fast one over on a Web site.


Lol. Somebody doesn't know how cag works. Within the hour it'd be marked with YMMV if not outright dispelled as not happening.
 
We're a reliable source for shopping news because we actually go out of way to make sure the news actually happens.

They should have let this blow over and learned their lesson. Stop posting rumors just for page views. The story could have been worse. EGM confirmed FFVII for the PS3 a while back and even ran a 1up story telling people to buy that issue.
 
CheapyD,

A few weeks ago on a CAGCast (I want to say it was circa E3), you mentioned something about a person you met (or talked to, at least) that gave you a lot of valuable info and dirt about the gaming industry and its 'media'. You asked the person whose name I'm forgetting if an unnamed person in the gaming media was a "dick"*, and he apparently verified this. Was this "dick" Brian Crecente? Because no lie, that's who I thought of first and foremost, for whatever reason. Maybe it's just his shit-eating grin.

I will understand if you choose to 'ignore' this post.

*--You might have said "prick" instead of "dick", and you might have qualified it with "arrogant" or "stuck-up". I guess those adjectives might have narrowed it down for me a little.
 
[quote name='jollydwarf']CheapyD,

A few weeks ago on a CAGCast (I want to say it was circa E3), you mentioned something about a person you met (or talked to, at least) that gave you a lot of valuable info and dirt about the gaming industry and its 'media'. You asked the person whose name I'm forgetting if an unnamed person in the gaming media was a "dick"*, and he apparently verified this. Was this "dick" Brian Crecente? Because no lie, that's who I thought of first and foremost, for whatever reason. Maybe it's just his shit-eating grin.
[/quote]

No, it was not.


I've met Brian many times and even took both Kotaku Brians to Sumo during last year's TGS. Crecente always been very nice to me and has always stopped to shoot the shit with me when I've run into him at various gaming events. I never got the impression that he felt he was "too important" to talk to me or anything like that.

[quote name='DQT'] Supergrass at 09:33 AM

* Of course, what happens when someone wants to play a little prank on CAG and sends in documentation of the next price drop for the 360 or PS3? Clearly, it's easy to pull a fast one over on a Web site.[/quote] In the 5+ years of running CAG, I've never posted a rumor to the front page that didn't turn out to be true. I'm very careful about that.
 
I wonder if the people getting giggles at the expense of Kotaku now are the same ones that got their panties in a roar when Sony went after 'em for posting info they were specifically asked not to.
 
I just joined the forum to say I'm astounded at the sour grapes of the bloggers claiming CAG should be ashamed of themselves over "credibility". If they were so worried about credibility, they wouldn't have all posted the news of "Google buying Valve?" from The Inquirer, a site well known for for being unreliable many, many times in the past, and without doing the thing which is the bare minimum of journalistic integrity - taking two minutes to call Valve and ask for a statement before running it.

For sites like Kotaku and Destructoid, that thrive on creating fake drama, posting notiouriously unreliable rumors without doing proper follow-up and taking quotes out of context, to claim a simple gag was highly unprofessional is laughable to a hundred degrees.
 
Well, back to the speculation drawing board. But thanks for the ultra-turbo-fast response!

Now that I think about it, I remember the sumo anecdote, what with the cramped confines and the women sitting behind your group (or was it the other way around?), and all that stuff.

They might be lashing out now, but I think that this one will have more than a momentary effect on how indiscriminate gaming blogs feel they can be. That's the upside. The downside is that this is going to spark a shitload of kids with too much time and no creativity trying to "punk" anyone and everyone.
 
Well, if anything, this will make for an interesting CAGcast come Monday. :p

Edit: ha, I totally forgot Cheapy took the Brians out to Sumo! I'm sure this will all blow over by Monday, but sheesh, how quickly these guys'll throw industry courtesy out the door just to cover their ass.
 
Well I'd hope it wouldn't turn into a gaming site turf war. as funny as kotaku's sour grapes were, if it went on any longer than, say, a few hours ago, it would be kinda sad.
 
I read Kotaku, but Brian Crecente and Brian Ashcraft are two of the biggest idiots on the planet who really need to get off their high horse. They act like the pinnacle of the games industry when they're a fucking blog that constantly makes reporting mistakes, and they tend to blame the source over themselves for being wrong.
 
[quote name='CheapyD']

In the 5+ years of running CAG, I've never posted a rumor to the front page that didn't turn out to be true. I'm very careful about that.[/quote]

See here's the problem with the whole CAG credibility issue. If an insider had some a juicy bit info, would a website called cheapassgamer even be on the places to leak the info to? What credibility do we have to lose?

edit: I posted this point on Kotaku after seeing shipwreck's response (the post wasn't related to his) but it didn't show up on the comments for some reason.

Still I can see Crecente being a little upset. If one of my friends indirectly led me to be caught with my pants down I'd feel a little betrayed too. His problem is he let the internet know about it and made it much worse.
 
[quote name='jollydwarf']CheapyD,

A few weeks ago on a CAGCast (I want to say it was circa E3), you mentioned something about a person you met (or talked to, at least) that gave you a lot of valuable info and dirt about the gaming industry and its 'media'. You asked the person whose name I'm forgetting if an unnamed person in the gaming media was a "dick"*, and he apparently verified this. Was this "dick" Brian Crecente? Because no lie, that's who I thought of first and foremost, for whatever reason. Maybe it's just his shit-eating grin.

I will understand if you choose to 'ignore' this post.

*--You might have said "prick" instead of "dick", and you might have qualified it with "arrogant" or "stuck-up". I guess those adjectives might have narrowed it down for me a little.[/quote]


If I were to place a bet on who the dick was Cheapy asked his source about I'd say it was Jeff Gertsmann... ;)
 
How much ad revenue or hits has this crazy event generated for you Cheapy? Are you okay with this, or are you ready to cyber-strangle Wombat?
 
[quote name='MSUHitman']How much ad revenue or hits has this crazy event generated for you Cheapy? Are you okay with this, or are you ready to cyber-strangle Wombat?[/quote]


There is no such thing as bad press, or at least, I believe that's how the old adage goes.

Just look through this thread and you'll find several new people that have signed up to the sight just to talk about this.
 
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