Heh. :) (Destiny)

by Leviathan , Hotel Zanzibar, Tuesday, October 20, 2015, 14:46 (3558 days ago) @ dogcow

So, I have a comment-blocker extension in Chrome so that I don't see random crap (unless I choose to) when I'm listening to a song on YouTube, etc. Comments become a grey box when it's active. What's funny is that when I go to Kotaku, the entire article is literally a grey box. While it's probably just because of the way their site is built, it's sort of funny and fitting. :)

I guess that's how I see these kinds of articles, too. A lot of it DOES line up with things we know, but a lot of it it still feels like gossip and opinion. I started to really doubt parts of it when an EXO in a random concept art piece became freak'n Rasputin... that just sounds like bad fan-fiction to me! It reminds me of when there was a 'leak' before either Halo 3 or Reach, when a former employee claimed Bungie was integrating RTS elements into the game. You'd get to a big battlefield and switch to Cortana who could summon and order units and vehicles around. That obviously, didn't happen. :)

Since the sources are all anonymous in this article and the journalist pulls on a number of older gossip threads we've heard before, one can't tell where the journalist's inference ends and where facts begin. How much is hearsay? How much are his own conclusions? What were the tones and settings the anonymous quotes were made in? And were those quotes coming from interns and temps? Or were they integral parts of leadership that may have actually known what was going on?

Without answers to those kinds of questions, without the ability to discern facts from opinions, I can't take it as anything more than just gossip and speculation* that references a lot of facts, thus making its opinions feel more like truths. Which is annoying, and perhaps more importantly, dangerous journalism to me. Well at least, it can be dangerous - but, you know, this is just a video game. :)

*When I used to work at Target, I remember a group of people that worked there that would huddle together around customer service and gossip about everyone else that worked there. "Did you hear what happened in the backroom yesterday???" and so forth in a big telephone game. That's what a lot of internet journalism feels like to me. I can't tell anymore where the Facebook comments end and the article begins.

Looking at the article and others like it from a different way, I also don't know if I really care about learning about every little thing in development - I don't need to know for sure what really went down. It seems like an obession sometimes to explain an issue a person might have with a game or movie by discovering how 'troubled' its development was. I just want to enjoy the game and look forward to its future. The author is dead and all that. ;)

When I go to a wedding, I don't want hear about all the stupid fights the couple had getting there, I just want to eat cake, get sick, and go home wondering "how did I know those people again?"