As we documented yesterday, “Cliffy B” became less about the man behind the name and more about the name itself. “Cliffy B” became a great big ‘thing’ of undocumented nothingness, becoming a buzzword (buzzname?) for generally douchebaggery. Everybody – especially Kotaku, apparently – went insane over Cliffy B, as if he were the second coming. It got a little ridiculous at times with everyone falling over each other to report everything he said, but it all came to a head in May, when Cliffy B decided he didn’t want to be Cliffy B anymore.

The chaos that followed was unimaginable…

So, in the middle of May, Cliffy B decided he was sick of being Cliffy B. Perhaps it was becoming too much of a mantra, too much of a a synonym for ‘douchebag’. “Cliffy B” was to be no more, he decided. Instead, he was just to be “Cliff”.

‘Hold on’, you’re thinking, ‘that’s not really a Top Gaming Moment of 2008, like the others.’ And you’d be right; it’s not.

The Top Moment that lurks in here is not the decision made by Cliff Bleszinski to change his name because, let’s be honest, it’s not newsworthy. The Top Moment here is the way in which the gaming media reacted to such an unworthy story: everyone went insane.

By everyone, I mean everyone. Videogaming247 declared that a “philosophical wormhole” had been created, and suggested that to change his name simply wouldn’t sit well with everybody else. MTV went down the sensible route and declared him to be “at the top of his game” which, while undeniably true, isn’t really worth reporting. Kotaku died a little inside and spent far too long formatting their post, and this, uh, other site, even begged Cliff to retain his old nickname.

Not that it seemed to have any sort of effect, as everybody kept calling him Cliffy B, including ourselves at Sarcastic Gamer; although to be fair, we spent more time questioning the importance of his opinion (or singing about it) than discussing his namesake.

The point still remains that everybody made too big a deal out of “Cliffy B”, and to this day they still do. A quick search of my Google Reader archives reveals a post as recent as the 15th of December mentioning the name – on, um, Kotaku (who also took to calling him “Dude Huge”…what?) – so all the furor that was created was eventually shown to mean nothing at all. Much like the name “Cliffy B” then.

Have some dignity, all you gaming sites (we don’t count, shhh): wise up and realize that Cliff Bleszinski is just not newsworthy – and neither is his name. Hopefully you’ll all learn quickly and we wont have anything else like this appearing in our Top Gaming Moments next year. Wont stop this moment hitting #62 this year though.

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