When Game Rumors, Plagiarism Gets Dugg
March 14, 2007 11:35 AM | Simon Carless
Since I've been known to get on the ol' hobby horse about the specter of 'terrible Internet reporting', I was very pleased to see that Official Xbox Magazine's Dan Amrich has done exactly the same thing in discussing 'alleged GamePro bribery' over an earlier review of Supreme Commander, as reported by the extremely dubious 'Game World Network' and then rocketed onto Digg.
You may recall a previous 'Anatomy Of A Rumor' report which also fingered GWN as being, to be blunt, absolutely terrible excuses for game journalists, and it looks like they're at it again. This time, they accused GamePro Australia of taking a bribe for giving Supreme Commander a 50% score, based on - wait for it - some crazy on the GameSpot forums spreading a hoax. Then they submitted it to Digg, where you will note that it's got to 1027 Diggs, despite being completely untrue.
Dan does a fine job of taking apart the chain of events that caused this lameness to occur (though perhaps the Craig Charles reference is pushing it a bit, even if I know what he means). But I wanted to point out the absolutely terrible plagiarism that GWN is using to get other front-page Diggs, such as this one about God Of War today.
Sure, that news is (more or less, vaguely) true - but look, GWN's coverage of the event by Richard Manley is in no way a complete cut and paste of 1UP's live event coverage, including identical quotes and the SAME ACTUAL PICTURES. Though they did draw a red arrow in one of them, so I guess that's OK.
Mind you, these were the folks who were 'liveblogging' the Japanese Wii press conference by watching an archived Japanese investor conference from a few months earlier by mistake. And their GDC Phil Harrison keynote 'liveblog' consisted of them reading Eurogamer's liveblog and repasting the quotes. So they were liveblogging Eurogamer's liveblog! Seriously.
But hey, it's the Internet, there's really little concept of reputation when it comes to putting stories onto aggregators like Digg - you can just keep submitting whatever you like, and the public will pick up on it if the headline is sensational enough. Wisdom of crowds at work! And my augmented rant is done. But really, GWN, please shuffle off this mortal coil, already?
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13 Comments
Not very shocked really... Still, that's a great post and a fair take on current web 2.0 culture...
gnome | March 14, 2007 11:55 AM
Excellent article that I hope GWN reads, but I doubt they would care because they get traffic, ad dollars and fame(? infamy?) that the love. If anyone wants to get them off the interwebs flag all of their stories on digg and eventually someone will ban them.
midicronica | March 14, 2007 12:21 PM
They are shameless, aren't they?
The beauty of the internet is that you can cut and paste so easily. Another beauty is that you can get caught easily, too, if anyone cares to look.
I'm glad you care.
Troy Goodfellow | March 14, 2007 1:14 PM
Let's use their own tools against them. Digg this story at the URL above.
Icupnimpn2 | March 14, 2007 2:32 PM
Er, not above, but click my name. I'm a n00b
Icupnimpn2 | March 14, 2007 2:34 PM
mildly related: A gaf post about GameJew singing to Miyamoto used the word 'serenade' then the proceeding blog posts from the usual suspects used the exact same topic line.
triology anyone?
Ryan in exile | March 14, 2007 3:45 PM
You come dangerously close to implying that Digg is supposed to have some kind of legitimate social purpose when it is, in fact, the editorially self-selective "new media" version of the National Enquirer.
Obiter | March 15, 2007 6:37 PM
Hello,
My name is Karn Bianco, I’m a new writer over at GWN, I also happen to be the one behind the ‘live-blogging’ GDC piece. Now I won’t get into your other criticisms as I haven’t been with the site very long and it wouldn’t be my place, but I will offer some words about my own.
At no point did I try to infer that the article was original content, or rather that I was at the event in person. I explained in my introduction that I would be using other websites as sources for ‘almost’ live-blogging (I’m sure you can imagine that it’s rather difficult to fit ‘Almost Live Updates Using Other Websites As Sources’ into the title section, so I made sure to clarify inside).
I used at least two sites for my information for collaboration, not only Eurogamer, though I admit it was in poor taste not to mention their names, I honestly thought I had done so (as I did with the Shigeru Miyamoto speech when I used direct quotes), but you can probably imagine it was fairly hectic, and must have slipped my mind, but I realise that’s no excuse.
Whilst I can certainly understand your point, given that we were unable to get any staff to the conference this year meant that this was the next best option for our readers. I would have loved to have been at the keynote myself but that wasn’t an option, and I did spend a good number of hours on both articles either way.
Regardless, I would like to apologize to you and anyone else that found my work offensive, I also realise it’s not the central topic of your post but I felt I should clarify nonetheless. I just wanted to make clear that at no point do I wish to rip other sites off, plagiarize anyone’s work or mislead any of our own readers by suggesting other people's work is my own, and it’s a shame that it’s come across like that.
Thanks,
Karn Bianco | March 16, 2007 5:51 AM
Thanks for chiming in, Karn. But the simple fact is that you should not be doing a 'liveblog' of an event that you did not attend.
You should either wait for a Sony press release about it (preferred), or round up other reports by citing and ideally linking to them. This whole step seems to be completely ignored at GWN.
simonc | March 16, 2007 6:11 AM
Indeed, I can see that now, though I must admit I have seen the same practice on a few other sites in my time and was honestly not aware it was something that was so frowned upon.
Admittedly not quoting my sources was a rather foolish mistake for which I am sorry (and not that it matters now, but I will edit those into the original article).
I made sure to re-write everything except the direct quotes and was essentially aiming for a roundup like you say, except in the style of a live-blog to get the news out there for people as quickly as possible
Well my eyes have certainly been opened, I will be more careful in future, thanks again.
Karn.
Karn Bianco | March 16, 2007 6:24 AM
I'm Matt, I write news, reviews and previews for gwn. I just wanted to say that I find the inaccurate, sensational reporting and incestual digging undertaken by A SELECT FEW gwn writers to be outragous. Personally, I have a history degree and work full time as an English teacher. I never worry about my writing being inaccurate or plagarizing others because I ONLY refer to official company releases and web sites.I understand that the opinions of random people, not involved with the game industry, on blogs etc have no place in journalism.
On that note, it's not really fair to smear the name of all gwn writers. Gwn employs a lot of people and I certainly don't want to be held responsible for the mistakes of a few, ill-trained writers. I hope management will think twice about retaining the services of those who engage in these dubious practices, though people like Mr. Karn, who appears to have made an honest mistake, don't fall under the same category to me. After all, gamepro has a 'corrections' section every month and no one nails them to a cross!
matt | March 16, 2007 10:37 PM
Hmm Matt from GWN huh? Matt Gallo that wrote the Gamepro rumor article or are you Matt Craig? If you are Matt Craig why would you associate yourself with GWN and all of the sensationalism that you seem to criticize?
gwowned | March 17, 2007 3:11 AM
I'm Matt C, I don't know Matt G. Also, you pose a fair question. I associate myself with (the admittedly imperfect) gwn because it's not easy to gain a toehold in game journalism. It's a lot more pleasant than reporting to an office everyday, so available jobs are few and far between. I need to build a portfolio before any larger organizations will think about hiring me and, thus, have little choice at the moment. It's actually not a bad gig at all.
Unfortunately, some weak, newby writers are interfering with my plans. If they keep dragging gwn's name through the gutter with inaccurate, sensationalistic articles, my portfolio is of little value. That's why it's so important to me to set the ship straight now, because these people are screwing up my personal career plans! If you know anyone else hiring writers, I'm always open to suggestions...
matt | March 18, 2007 8:19 PM