I recently read something that made me sick to my stomach. After the initial shock, I literally stared at my computer screen as if unable to comprehend what I had just read. This took fanboyism to a new level.
Find out the disgusting details after the jump.
For the past week, Stephen Totilo, the editor of MTV’s Multiplayer blog, has been writing about the in-and-outs of game reviews. The articles were quite informative and I definitely recommend them to anyone interested in the subject. In a particularly interesting piece, which was entitled “The Art of Not Second-Guessing,” Totilo asks former GameSpot employees Jeff Gerstmann and Alex Navarro if they ever question any of their past judgments. I won’t summarize their responses, but one snippet from the article deserves some attention.
Gerstmann, who worked at GameSpot for more than a decade, is no stranger to controversy. Zelda fanboys lit up the message boards when he branded Twilight Princess with an 8.9 (out of 10). Late last year, he was supposedly removed from his position as editorial director due to a harsh review of Kane & Lynch. There is no official confirmation of that rumor, but the mass exodus of GameSpot employees following his departure suggests there is some truth behind it.
In Totilo’s story, Gerstmann touched on what he called “the raging fury of the Internet.” I prefer the term fanboys, but to each his own. For the most part, Gerstmann’s comments were pretty standard. Fanboys getting hostile over game reviews is old news. However, I was shocked when Gerstmann revealed that his life had been threatened because he assigned numerical scores to software.
I used to think that nothing could shock me. I was wrong.
I realize this kind of thing occurs all the time. Countless umpires and referees have talked about receiving death threats from crazed fans. Looney people often foam at the mouth. The result is a torrential downpour of venomous garbage. I get it. However, I was not aware that this occurs in the videogame industry. I didn’t think game reviews were all sunshine and lollipops, but I certainly didn’t expect this. Color me naïve.
I imagine at least some of these were idle threats. Any person who issues a death threat over a videogame is probably a huge coward that enjoys parading around in dresses.
The worst part was that Gerstmann acknowledged that he has gotten used to this type of treatment. “Now that stuff just rolls off,” he said. “It’s the ranting of insane people, which you could say about a lot of internet stuff.” This suggests that it has happened more than a few times. I guess questioning someone’s cognitive abilities has gone out of style. Apparently, if you really want to express your displeasure, you need to step it up a bit.
Before going forward, I need to address something. No, I have never issued a death threat to another individual. However, I once submitted a rather unpleasant response to X-Play’s review of the PS2 game State of Emergency.
I simply couldn’t fathom any possible justification for giving the game two stars out of five. I was absolutely pissed. I mean, it had hundreds (a rough guesstimate) of people on screen at the same time. That was worth at least three stars. I decided to write my own review. The truth had to be heard.
My review quickly degenerated into an indictment of the hosts’ (Sessler and Webb) collective intelligence. Needless to say, my thoughts were not posted on G4’s site. I eventually cooled down enough to write a proper review. My initial response was not threatening or even expletive-laden. It was simply an exercise in poor judgment. The funny thing is, upon further meditation, I agree with X-Play’s review.
So, we all have our little moments. The problem is that some people can’t recognize when they have gone too far. Death threats, no matter the situation, are utterly ridiculous and completely uncalled for. There is no excuse for them. I realize that I am stating the obvious, but, apparently, some individuals need to have it drawn out in crayon. If you are one of these pathetic losers, I have some advice for you. Next time you think about opening your yap, do us all a favor, don’t.
Source: multiplayerblog
Popularity: 1% [?]
I’MMA CUT CHOO!
I’m sorry, that was uncalled for.
In all seriousness, we have to remember that the games industry is ironically not all fun and games.
Some people do death threats naturally after a while, it becomes part of their anger management. I’m not too surprised that someone would flip out and threaten Gurstmannnnnnn for a game he reviewed lowly. Like you said, you yourself also wrote a “rather unpleasant response” (read:death thread) to reviewers. It happens, it is part of our nature to challenge that which we do not agree with.
I”LL KILL YOU!! (obligatory)
@ Necris
The big difference is that my response wasn’t a threat. The basic gist was that I made fun of Sessler and Webb’s intelligence. That is quite different from a death threat.
Its not really surprising. Anyone who gets enough attention (especially when stating some sort of opinion) will eventually get this kind of crap. Long before the internet people would send threatening letters to anyone with a decent amount of exposure in the media.
Some of it is that some people don’t know where to draw the line or how to keep their mouths shut. But I think a lot of it is just immaturity. Its the same kind of people who think its funny to make phony 911 calls. A little time in a jail cell wouldn’t be a bad idea, as it might just send the message that threatening to kill people is a serious thing.
Im gonna kill u if u give halo 3 a 10. jokes.
Anyways I agree that some people go loony toon with threats like that. I can understand a great arguement over a review but with no facts to backup your claim in an arguement, why even bother commenting or getting mad over a review? Anyways I miss jeff gerstmann and some of the guys who left from gamespot. Gamespot was pretty good back then when they were around but now gamespot is full of fanboys.
I’ve acctually been given both public and private through PM, death threats on quite a few different internet forums for just pointing out all the great things about PS3, in threads that have these fanbois just blindly bashing PS3, when they really don’t know anything about it because they don’t really own one, nor do their friends. M$ spent/still spends alot of money to brainwash people with propaganda. Now they are such zombies (Nazis) that if anyone defends the PS3 from the lies and disinformation, all the zombies attack the person who hasn’t fallen for the propaganda. I never say 360 is bad, I just say PS3 is great as well, then all of a sudden in come the Storm Troopers. Litteral death threats.
I don’t know what M$ is doing to gamers, but gamers I’ve known for years, have become totally different gamers. People I’ve been gaming with since the NES launch in 1985, who have never bashed a system in their life, are now like rabid wolves any time someone says anything that even sounds like you’re trying to make PS3 sound better than 360 (which I think it is). Something’s going on. Someone check the unused frames for subliminal messages please! LOL….just kidding. (No seriously, someone look into it !!!!!)
LARRY L why go there in this comment thread? I say this as an avid PS3 fan, your statements about MS are completely ludicrious. It works both ways and you know it does. But, again, why try and take an excellent topic and turn it into a fanboy war? Why? JUST STFU for a minute or two and actually try and provide some quality input on this excellent discussion topic.
What worries me about all of this is how very few gamers understand what an opinion is and what is fact. These people look only for a number, and will never read a single word from the actual review. Hell they don’t spend the two seconds to read through the reviewers pro/con list. They take this number, combine it with their lack of education, plus no self esteem and attack any and all who don’t agree with them. Sad, it really is.
Sorry this is long…
I have been a gamer for a very long time now. I grew up playing in the arcades and at home when consoles were a new idea. I loved this medium and it helped shape into the profession I take on today.
The one thing that gamers USED to have in common was a passion for gaming, as well as appreciating the design and most of all the FUN. That ideal has gone way off course and worse of all it does so with an attitude. A bad one.
The gaming community is something I stay in touch with pretty tightly even today, while in the past we only had game magazines like Gamepro, Die Hard Gamefan and Electronic Gaming monthly.
Those were the days when reviews were heart felt and not some over bloated, ignorant and ego-laced report.
Stop celebritizing game journalists (everything is okay to an extent). They are journalists, that is all. Their opinion is not law or a final cast of judgment. Nothing is better than a first hand experience. Even if you find a game sucks, you still may not agree with everything the “official” review stated. Who cares what and how they score games. It’s just an opinion, but it can serve as an aid when researching a game, just be sure to do it in more than one place.
There are a lot of important aspects to games that are not pointed out by review journalists. While a large percentage of film critics have actually studied film or worked in the field, this is even a lesser-known ideal in the gaming realm (lack of any serious game or multimedia design first hand knowledge). Very, very seldom do I see anything educational come out of a review, preview or interview. Yes, I know that there are specific entities like Develop magazine where these topics are covered, but the thing is that this is a part of the gaming mainstream media that needs to grow up. There is a very large amount of older gamers out there that don’t want to read
gaming news that is aimed at 15 year olds with low attention spans (or be stuck in the same environment).
It seams that the majority of these “review specialists” have turned snob and into über game critics that criticize everything unless it is what they believe to be the “in” thing. They have gotten worse then these game-snob freaks that work in some of the retro-game stores. It’s this “I am more of a gamer that you, I have more say than you, or my ideals and thoughts are more important” type attitudes that are ruining the gaming media. It’s not just the journalists, it’s is a nasty brewing series of cesspools in blogs and forums.
I disagree with what happened to Gerstmann, he did his job and got canned. Lame. I applaud the fact that you can look at these games and see what the others choose to ignore.
Appreciate technology. Variety is good. If you eat the same fruit too much you will get sick of it.
Late
Larry L sounds exactly like the type of person who would send a death threat to someone who bash his beloved ps3, or simply said something nice about the 360 but his lack of education and low self-esteem makes his little pea-brain see it as an attack on his ps3.
You are the fanboyism the article mentioned personified.
What you are really doing when talking about the 360 fanboys and how they conduct themselves is talking about your own actions.
Get a clue and leave the adults here to get back to the discussion at hand
I’m going to go psychological for a bit so bear with me.
I think the reason some fanboys get so angry as to issue death threats is that they trust the reviewers. They are usually quite experienced in their field and most people check the same 3 websites or so. That trust is built up and when a fanboy loves a game and a website gives it a bad review their sense of trust is broken. At this point, said fanboy is quite sad and angry at the reviewer for their broken trust. The fanboy has no way to express their mixed feeling of anger and sadness so they turn to what can best describe them and issue a death threat. The fanboy is somewhat relieved at this point but is not willing to build the trust up again. It is somewhat like building a relationship with a real person to them. They don’t want to gain that bond only to have it eventually broken again. Really it is all in the subconscious but it does make sense.
Or maybe the guy is just crazy and is looking for a reason to whine.
Anyway I don’t think that this is right in anyway but as long as they don’t honestly plan on carrying out their threat it seems fine. Human emotions are something that no one can or will fully understand and they can be hard to express. Language only has so many words and even with all of them they cannot always express our innermost feelings. The way fanboys love certain things is inexplainable to a certain point, the way they hate other things, why we love in the first place, all of these are quite hard to comprehend but in the end we still do. While we are all surprised and disgusted at how some people react to a simple game review, they obviously see it as something different. It is a completely different level of importance to them and it makes all the difference.
Again I do not, in any way, condone this kind of behavior but if people want to express themselves, it is their god-given right.
@bendaid: I don’t think Larry meant it in that way. He actually seems like someone who would give a fair view on a game for any console. He is simply saying that a lot of people are so absorbed into a certain company that they are ignorant as to how good another console can be. Larry likes his PS3 and is willing to give reasons why. When he does he is hated for his beliefs and people simply don’t want to hear it out of ignorance. Larry is just saying that he believes the PS3 is a good system and that when he defends it, he is bashed at because people think he is too much of a fanboy to realize that other systems are great for their own reasons just like the PS3.
To anyone who just happens to stumble upon this: Please remember everyone has their own OPINIONS on everything and they are neither right nor wrong. If you believe one thing and another person believes something else, do not be angry with that person. Simply try to help them see it your way and they can help you see it their way. If we all share our opinions and mix them together we can get a broader understanding of everything. By mixing our personalities with everyone else’s we get rid of a reason to hate and the human race as a whole can come together and be at peace.
@mastershredder: Not all 15 year olds are that way, consider I am 15. >.>
That’s all I have to say. You may return to your regularly scheduled gaming.
Sorry, I stopped reading at “Looney people often foam at the mouth. The result is a torrential downpour of venomous garbage. I get it. However, I was not aware that this occurs in the videogame industry.”
Are you kidding? Video game whackos are no different than sports whackos. They are out of their minds. If you honestly didn’t know this, you haven’t been reading many gaming blogs.
Arctic Yesterday you are completely / 100% correct. People with this mindset will do this type of stuff in any given situation once they feel that they have been crossed. Especially when they have a personal stake in it. (Kid playing a sport or a console [their baby] that they have put their life savings and reputation on the line for.)
The sad thing is that in some cases these are not idle threats, them people can get really pissed and will take a shot (swing) at you if it escalates too much without being defused. I think the best medicine for these people is to ignore them. In the video game forums and chat rooms, the problems comes from others like them encouraging them by adding to the negativity. Another thing is it appears that the negative people out number the positive. I have seen people try and discourage this type of behavior only to be ridiculed by others for doing so. What gives?
It is amazing that some people are dumb enough to become emotionally attatched to a piece of plastic. The current generation of consoles are all excellent machines and any true gamer should aspire to own all three so as to be able to play all the brilliant platform exclusive titles.
I have been called a huge amount of names by these fanboys but it just amuses me as all they are doing is parading their lack of emotional maturity. So far no death threats so I am missing out a bit. However the fanboy phenomenon is now so big that any article I write on or around the subject gets a massive response.
Hey here is a joke on fanboys!
What do you call a fanboy that has a Wii a Ps3 and a Xbox 360 and the hottest titles to all three systems?
A fanboy that is a fan of the hottest games thats what! hahahahhahahaha!
oh and by the way it wasnt a real joke I was making a point.
……..ILL KILL YOU IF YOU THINK IM WRONG!!!!!!! -Opera and Dr. Phil
Also I saw a guy who crapped on a 360!!!!!!!!! that didnt really happen though.