Skyrim - The RPG for the Rest of Us @ IGN

Originally Posted by blackcanopus
The guy is not able to distinguish RPGs from fantasy novels. Great.

Worst still he's not able to distinguish words he is unfamiliar with from "olde worlde lingo." I just think the guy is bordering on being functionally illiterate if he lacks the ability to learn words from context and presumes anything unfamiliar is some archaic word that has no business in proper modern writing.

Just reading the quote given in the newsbit was enough for me. Good grief, what an utter twit.

Originally Posted by Shagnak
Martin uses "absurd olde worlde lingo"? Huh.

Well, I guess he meant terms like, "breaking the fast" for breakfast and "on the morrow" for tomorrow, etc. Not exactly absurd or Ye Olde Worlde, but gave me a moment of pause when I read them. However, my excuse is that I don't have English as my first language and wasn't familiar with these terms; this "journalist" more likely does have English as his first language and should be adept with it (as it is an essential part of his profession).

I hope there are not millions more like him. The article makes it sound like Skyrim is made for idiots.

The reason why I can't wait for Skyrim is that it is not an RPG

Oh Yeah !

Shouldn't this be in the "non RPG" section ?

Best response to modern gaming journalism = don't talk about it.

Originally Posted by jhwisner
Worst still he's not able to distinguish words he is unfamiliar with from "olde worlde lingo." I just think the guy is bordering on being functionally illiterate if he lacks the ability to learn words from context and presumes anything unfamiliar is some archaic word that has no business in proper modern writing.

Originally Posted by Lurking Grue
Just reading the quote given in the newsbit was enough for me. Good grief, what an utter twit.


Well, I guess he meant terms like, "breaking the fast" for breakfast and "on the morrow" for tomorrow, etc. Not exactly absurd or Ye Olde Worlde, but gave me a moment of pause when I read them. However, my excuse is that I don't have English as my first language and wasn't familiar with these terms; this "journalist" more likely does have English as his first language and should be adept with it (as it is an essential part of his profession).

It could be a sign of his age, that he just hasn't encountered many more rather "complicated" words in his whole life.

I guess he would have EXTREME problems reading Tolkien, then. Tolkien even once uses the word "gay" in the old-fashioned sense of "jolly" ! I found it somewhere rather in the first part of the LOTR novel.

I'm of course not going to read the article (since I'm not one of 'the rest of us') but isn't the whole point of it illustrating how a person, that has absolutely no familiarity and no love for fantasy, may react to that particular fantasy game? Because if that's the case, then isn't pointing out his ignorance superfluous?

I wonder if the guy that wrote the article works for Beth xD.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
Best response to modern gaming journalism = don't talk about it.

Amen to that, brother.

@bloodlover
No. He scored too high on the IQ test

Originally Posted by jhwisner
Well there's about 13-14 posts here basically pointing out that the author appears to be talking out of the wrong orifice - and not just about this game, bethesda games, or even games in general. I wouldn't let this article sway you one way or another really.

He's an idiot to be sure, but I am firmly convinced that this is one of the sorts of people that Bethesda and other large companies making games that more and more are stretching the limits of what you can call an RPG want to appeal to.

Honestly, I think an article like that is exactly what they want. It's mission accomplished for all the streamlining.

IGN, duh.

Probably an attempt to balance their "Top Five Reasons Dark Souls Will Eat Skyrim's Face" piece, heh.

Originally Posted by DeepO
IGN, duh.

Probably an attempt to balance their "Top Five Reasons Dark Souls Will Eat Skyrim's Face" piece, heh.

Ah wow yeah I just looked at the IGN comments section for this article - and if they were just going for a fluff piece that would serve as kindling to stoke their artificial dark souls vs. skyrim fanboi flame-war then mission accomplished and then some. Gets my vote for most effective and shameless fabrication of conflict in social media for the purpose of driving traffic.

Why is it that people like him feel the need to talk disparagingly about classic RPG mechanics as if those elements were still defining features of the genre's mainstream releases, and not already brusquely discarded in favor of watered-down gameplay designs which cater specifically to gamers with his exact preferences (not to mention prejudices)? He has already won the war (for now, that is), yet still pretends to be this edgy, excitingly contrarian rebel who bravely refuses to conform to the purported standards of the genre. One can only hope that this is exactly the kind of wild delusions which foreshadows a pretty nasty downfall…

Originally Posted by jhwisner
Ah wow yeah I just looked at the IGN comments section for this article - and if they were just going for a fluff piece that would serve as kindling to stoke their artificial dark souls vs. skyrim fanboi flame-war then mission accomplished and then some. Gets my vote for most effective and shameless fabrication of conflict in social media for the purpose of driving traffic.

You must have missed this article: http://ps3.ign.com/articles/119/1196439p1.html
(Top Five Reasons Dark Souls Will Eat Skyrim's Face)

That is the most effective flamebait I have ever seen on a game site. IGN was just trying to be fair and balance with this recent Skyrim article. It just was not over the top and inaccurate enough to even out with the other article.

Originally Posted by Kefka
You must have missed this article: http://ps3.ign.com/articles/119/1196439p1.html
(Top Five Reasons Dark Souls Will Eat Skyrim's Face)

Yeah I initially had - which is why I responded to the post quoting the mention of that article. That had prompted me to go back and read both and the comments sections. This doesn't seem like an attempt to even anything out as much as it is a less provocative attempt to keep the flame war going. Obviously it produces quite a lot of cross linking to the respective articles within their site and from others. Case in point - I this thread now has links to the previous article which (intentionally or not) benefits IGN in a two primary ways.

The obvious benefit is that every link to those articles is a chance for more traffic to be driven to their site - to this article and the previous original fire-starter. The less obvious potentially more interesting effect it has is that it significantly increases the Google rank of those articles for searches on "dark souls" and "skyrim" in general (the previous article is up 20 places since this morning and their Dark Souls review is up 5).

Every blog post, or news feed listing referring to this article or the previous contains the names of at least Skyrim in reference to the link - more importantly the comment sections (such as this one) often contain one or more links to the above mentioned flame-bait and numerous mentions of both games and the flame war as and often a link to the Dark Souls reviews in more actively flamed comment threads.

Unfortunately I don't have a way of considering the initial effect of the Sept 24 firestarter on relevant google rankings. Still, the fact that this article has perpetuated the ridiculous and contrived flame war has, regardless of intention or whether or not it was remarkably clever manipulation or lucky happenstance on their part, served to boost various Google rankings for IGN pages in search results as well as drive traffic to their site. If this was by design - kudos to them for successfully capitalizing on the fickle resource that is the horde of bitter snarling zombies infesting the tubes of the internet. If it wasn't then maybe it just serves to illustrate how bitter snarling noise perpetuates and propagates on the web.

Dark Souls (as well as its predecessor) actually does sound great - too bad its a PS3 exclusive.

Originally Posted by GhanBuriGhan
Dark Souls (as well as its predecessor) actually does sound great - too bad its a PS3 exclusive.

It's not, it's also for the Xbox 360.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
It's not, it's also for the Xbox 360.

That doesn't help me either, unfortunately.

Originally Posted by GhanBuriGhan
That doesn't help me either, unfortunately.

Too bad, you're missing out on a lot of delicious punishment