Lengthy Twitter Argument Shows Us of The Flaws of Gaming Journalism
The picture above basically sums up the Twitter battle between Popular Internet Game Critic Angry Joe and IGN Review Editor Dan Stapleton. If you have not seen the fight, a NeoGaf thread has the fight linked here. If you don't know, Angry Joe (Joe Vargas is his real name) tweeted out this to his followers:
IGN Review Editor Dan Stapleton then replied:
This led to the lengthy fight between the two. So here is some background:
Angry Joe reviewed Titanfall about a month ago, giving it a 7/10. His review has over 1,000,000 views currently on YouTube. I've linked the video here. At about the 8:25 mark, he starts talking about other reviews of Titanfall, he says:
"With all that said though, I'm surprised that this game is getting such whole high scores, you know. And major outlets [saying] 'Believe the Hype' '9/10' '10/10' with such glaring omissions! It seems wrong more aren't mentioning them! If you know you only find it in user comments or user scores. No matter how fun and solid the core game is, you have to focus on these certain things and inform people!"
The quote "Believe the Hype" is from IGN's Titanfall Preview, by IGN's Ryan McCaffrey. He also reviewed the game, giving it an 8.9/10. The 8.9 score has been given much criticism for it being a 0.1 point below a 9. Joe says "Believe the Hype" along with the "9/10, 10/10" quote, leading Dan Stapleton to believe it as a misquotation of IGN's review. This led to the lengthy Twitter argument between the two.
Now, I particularly prefer Angry Joe's reviews to IGN's. Angry Joe's are generally more informative and go in-depth with the content of the game while at the same time being entertaining. Still, IGN's reviews help me make a decision about a game Joe may have no interest or no available time to review. Angry Joe does have some fault with this. He probably shouldn't have taken a quote from the preview instead of the actual review. But I think the bigger fault here is that of Dan Stapleton.
First of all, Dan started the argument just off of a simple tweet Joe sent. And he also sent it a month after the review. Why now? And couldn't you have done it a bit more civil? Maybe an actual request to make a note about it or to apologize? He probably would have accepted it. No, you HAVE to wait a month after the review is out AND it has over one million views to RUDELY make a comment about it. Did you not see it getting a million views? He has two million subscribers and most of his reviews will get at least several hundred thousand views.
I think Dan did reach a new low when he tweeted out:
Another fun math fact Dan: IGN also has at least a hundred people working there whereas Joe only has maybe 3 or 4. And at least a decade head start. Whoops, might have forgotten to think about that.
Now, please know this is NOT intended to insult IGN in any way. I go to them a lot for reviews, and I think Ryan McCaffrey wrote an excellent review on the game I just cannot believe the childish behavior of Dan Stapleton in this instance. This probably has given others a negative outlook on IGN because of Dan's behavior.
This whole situation with Dan Stapleton makes me doubt the future of games journalism. This isn't the first time a games journalist has caused a Twitter fight. Most notably last summer, a Twitter fight between Marcus Beer and Phil Fish ended up with the cancellation of Fez II. This is a disturbing trend, one that I hope does not continue. Game Journalism is still relatively young compared to that of Movies or Music, but this stuff needs to stop happening if Games Journalism wants to get bigger.
Again, Angry Joe is completely innocent in this fight, but the child-like behavior of Dan Stapleton has seriously given me cause for concern over the integrity of Journalism in the gaming industry today.
What do you guys think of this Twitter Brawl? Was it justified or not? Let me know in the comments below. And, as always, thanks for visiting 8-Bit Ape.
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