The sourcing of news stories is coming up a lot recently, and Official Xbox Magazine's Dan Amrich has an interesting post on an Xbox 360-playing robot, something originally reported in OXM and gradually radiating from there - it hopped online in a more major way via a BBC article.

He notes: "I’d wager that the BBC saw that post (or a copy of that post from one of the aggregators that pinged the site back when they picked it up) or possibly saw a copy of OXM US, and created their story the following week. But — there’s no way to put this without making it sound arrogant — we had the story first, and the internet, assuming print is dead, didn’t notice."

But that in itself is not Amrich's issue. He continues: "My objection is that the bulk of the interwebs sourced the BBC and did no further research. The BBC did not link to David’s site, so none of the stories that source the BBC list David’s site. Certainly, seeing the YouTube video or the creator’s detailed webpage would be considered a newsworthy link in this story? (The original blogger thought so.)"

His conclusion? "But they’re nowhere in the bulk of online coverage. That means nobody actually did any work; they just came up with a few pithy comments (one site offered moral objections and linked to a story on game sweatshops, but never actually found this other data) and shuffled the facts around, borrowed the same photo, and reposted the same info, only smaller."

Well, I've just quoted him and added some pithy comments, so I fear I'm part of the problem. One thing I will note is that, if OXM had a larger website (yes, I know about GamesRadar, not that) and posted some newsworthy things from the print mag to coincide with the issue every month, that should help. We're considering adding a little more actual Game Developer content to the official site, after an impending redesign, for just that reason. That doesn't stop the quote and quip mentality, though.