Fuck this place

[sack]

Stu, for all his many, many faults is one of the incredibly rare exceptions to this rule and is (again in my opinion) doing something constructive for the games industry by challenging the problems that he perceives to exist.

Being outspoken is one thing but of late it seems he's had the unpopular opinion on pretty much everything. I don't really know of anyone who is unlucky enough to hold opinions like that and it just seems highly improbable to me that someone would hold that amount of unpopular opinions which brings up the question in my mind 'are these genuinely his opinions or is he just whoring for controversy?' Hell - if it only happened occasionaly, maybe half the time at worst, and he fought so hard for his point of view I'd be cheering him on.

Secondly, he spearheaded the monumental failure that was the FairPlay campaign, a campaign to lower the price of videogames. Given the current disgusting price of XBox360 games, I honestly can't believe that any video game enthusiast would call this attempt anything other than 'trying to make a difference'.

To be fair this is one of the rare things he did that causes me to have a degree of respect for him. 'only trying to make a difference' and acheiving nothing? True he didn't acheive much overall but in all fairness the only certain way to fail is to sit back and do nothing.



For the record I liked Kameo - ironically my thought the moment the game started seeing I was clinging to the wall with a battle going on around was 'Thank fuck I'm not doing mindless chores in a badly disguised and boring tutorial'.

[moobaa]

Just incase you don't know, there's not one single part of that that isn't a blatant lie.

"Impossibly weak humour" is right on the money. Four-year-olds wouldn't have found the "humour" in Kameo funny.

[Snakey]

The reason that failed is because he was targetting the wrong people.

Anyways.

When Stu actually does have a valid point, and to be perfectly fair he has done quite a lot more recently (and still got ripped on for it), I quite like him. But pretending that he 'always has a point' and 'can always back it up' is just wrong. It's hardly surprising he pisses people off. But as others have said, I think that's why he does it.

But I am genuinely sorry to hear about his current problems.

"Impossibly weak humour" is right on the money. Four-year-olds wouldn't have found the "humour" in Kameo funny.

There was humour?

[sillytuna]

Now bare with me because I can't remember the exact details, but I seem to remember his campaign for lower prices was done very antagonistically towards the industry and at a time that probably 30-40% of developers in the UK were falling over, with a lot of resulting job losses.

You can't campaign for lower prices without working with the industry and Stu knew it. You say he's on the player's side, but he deliberately winds up the industry so how on earth would he ever achieve anything? You know how many games make money? Very very few. You know how many developers make money?| | this many. Even many publishers are struggling, and there aren't many left.

The whole industry model is buggered. Fundamentally games cost far too much to write, and lowering prices simply does not boost sales anywhere near enough - retail have been discounting heavily on many games recently so the evidence is there.

However, to reduce game costs one thing that needs to happen is there is less content. If you do less content, the press hammer you. Yet actually most people never see the final 1/3 or more of a game. It's only the real hardcore people that complete them.

The other thing is you'd need to pay significantly more for your hardware. Sony, MS and NIntendo make a huge whacking great profit on each game, but they certainly do not on the hardware.

Also, regarding the review quoted above, this also says something about the way he treats the industry. Whilst I agree that some games deserve to be panned and that not enough reviews are honest, I often found his reviews to be overly insulting, patronising and often personal, as opposed to fair and balanced.

By all means call a crap game a crap game, but not the way he does it.

[Samus]

Edit: nevermind, not worth it

[RageMatrix]

The other thing is you'd need to pay significantly more for your hardware. Sony, MS and NIntendo make a huge whacking great profit on each game, but they certainly do not on the hardware.

I thought Nintendo was the only company that did make a profit on their hardware? Which (I thought) was the reason that they weren't too concerned about the perceived "failure" of the GameCube, as they were the only ones not selling their machines at a loss.

[oddbob0]

By all means call a crap game a crap game, but not the way he does it.

What would you rather the reviews read like, just out of curiosity?

Personally, I love Stu's reviewing style and once I put aside the fact he's never going to like most FPS controls, pretty much most of what he says and the style he delivers it in is aligned with my tastes.

I don't understand what sort of "fair and balanced" you want. I want someones opinion, someone who's opinion I trust - and I trust Stu's opinion (*insert obligatory "don't always agree" caveat here*). I don't want my reviews by someone "working with the industry", or pandering to be nice to them. Christ, I can go to Eurogamer for that

I'd rather 1 Stu review than a million and one bland, soulless reviews that are out there in magazines and on the net in recent years, even if I don't agree with what he's saying.

[Rod_S]

You can't campaign for lower prices without working with the industry and Stu knew it.

Kinda related, but he did have a pop at the fruit machine industry too:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2979142.stm

http://www.time.com/time/europe/magazin ... 47,00.html

I don't know the outcome of this campaign but I'm sure a bit of Googling will reveal all.

Your argument about game prices vs content is a bit flawed when you look at some of the current releases for Ps2/Xbox compared to their identical 360 equivalents, and the differences in prices. Same games, higher prices on the 360 with zero extra content, and I don't accept pointless fluff like 'achievements" as being any kind of worthwhile value-add.

[sillytuna]

oddbob - I'd refer you to Yak;s post for an example. If you find his reviews balanced then I'd have to disagree. Honest yes, balanced no. And they can be quite personal/aggressive.

He carries that same attitude onto various forums and has the same problems he has had here. It's hard to be sympathetic in those situations as he likes to stir things up. He can hardly be surprised when people like Yak take offence at articles or forum comments. For Yak, substitute any number of people in the industry. People can do honesty - despite what Stu may think - but he takes things much too far.

There's two things that sum the problems up - over-inflated ego and distinct lack of respect.

Since he does often have very good points to make, I just wish he'd stop taking away from that with his attitude. I can only think it's deliberate, but then why complain, announce you're leaving, then come back to read all the posts?

It's attention seeking behaviour, pure and simple. We shouldn't be surprised.

As I said, bring back the journalism and lose some of the attitude. He could be (is?) a damn good journalist, but things get in the way.

[Tmuk]

Is anyone else noticing a trend here? Very broadly speaking, developers hate Stu, gamers love him...?

[Rod_S]

[his reviews] can be quite personal/aggressive.

All the most memorable reviews usually are. The one that has always stuck in my mind was an NME Review of Rock n Roll is Dead by Lenny Kravitz. The review simply said "Because talentless cunts like you have killed it". Brilliant.

[Kronos]

Edit: nevermind, not worth it

Don't know why you removed that link....it has a classic Rev retort about some n00b insisting that PGR3 is worth getting a 360 for (which we all know is bollox and NFS:MW is the one he should have said )

There's no need. I have PGR2. Now I want PGR3. There's nowt wrong with that.

It's like trying sex once, and saying "Right, that's it.. I've done that. MOVE ON!"

Well, no. It's like getting married to a nice girl, then going out and shagging a prostitute for £325 because she's a bit better-looking.




(Okay, you personally might not do either of those things, but THE ANALOGY REMAINS SOUND.)

[oddbob0]

There's two things that sum the problems up - over-inflated ego and distinct lack of respect.

Y'see, thats where we're always going to differ as they're my two favourite traits in critics. Wasn't the same thing said by Rolling Stone of Lester Bangs?

[sillytuna]

re: game prices - which I can't believe I'm defending because I really don't want to - 360 titles weren't around at the time of Stu's campaign and yep, they are too expensive. They'll drop. As will various publishers I suspect! They are that price pretty much because of the early stage in the console history and corresponding *huge* development costs.

The again, as I said, the industry model is flawed and it's only sustainable with investors throwing money away.

My point is that to drop prices you need to balance that off with reduced costs. The supply/demand curve doesn't appear strong enough to increase profit by reducing prices.

As for Nintendo - their model has changed but I doubt they'll make much on hardware even so. Nintendo have traditionally charged very high fees for manufacturing/licensing and Nintendo prices/publisher profits have always reflected that. That's one reason why many games didn't appear on GameCube, and also why many GBA games are - let's face it - so basic and license-based. The money wasn't there to do much more than throw a license out.

[sillytuna]

Hold on, we're arguing about different things here! Yeah his reviews *are* entertaining, I'm not disputing that!

I'm saying that his attitude is what has got him this thread and a lot of "enemies" as it were.

My view is that, considering he often has very good points, he has dug this hole himself.

As I said, people who do games don't get annoyed over honesty - well not most of us anyway - they get annoyed at the attitude that comes with Stu. Yak's probably in a better position than me as my minor run in with Stu - and it was really really minor - was ten years ago. He was fine to me, and nice to my face, so I really have no axe to grind or personal love/hate for the man. I always found him entertaining, I just wondered why he persisted with winding people up. I presume he loves doing it, so I'm really surprised he's left YakYak citing a somewhat twisted story.

Example of that attitude - Stu posting up a bought version of a game on his site purely because they authors hadn't mentioned a previous Sensible game in the credits. Sorry guys, but that is so wrong I find it hard to believe he did it.