Official IGN.com response

To Spec et. al,

Ole is right. IGN does reach a lot of people. As such, we need to make sure that reviews, such as the one by David Smith, don’t get posted.

Sure, it’s okay if he didn’t like the game. It’s not okay for him to make such glaringly wrong remarks about the genre, the Japanese, and the bishoujo game industry. If they do, they’ll mis-inform even more people.

As such, we have to let them know. It might not be instantaneous, but if the staff gets enough emails stating how inappropriate the review is, they might at least think about learning something, or asking the producing game company, about the game before putting up another review.

I’m also working on a letter to send to IGN. I again ask that you all do the same, if you haven’t done so already.

Mike

quote:
Originally posted by Mike Thomas:
[B]As such, we have to let them know. It might not be instantaneous, but if the staff gets enough emails stating how inappropriate the review is, they might at least think about learning something, or asking the producing game company, about the game before putting up another review.


Not to be negative about this option, but, when the Love Hina review (look above) appeared, one of the Megami Mailing List (aka. Ah! My Goddess! Mailing List) members did the same. Unfortunately, to no avail as IGN did nothing about it, considering that the A!MG ML has a bigger audience. IIRC, it went even on rec.arts.anime.misc and the same result; even worst, there were some people who defended the "review".

quote:
Originally posted by Mike Thomas:
(...)Ole is right.

Errrr..... It's "OLF"... Or "Olf"... Not "Ole"... I mean, it's only THREE letters... Howcome 99% people make a mistake when writing it? [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/confused.gif[/img]

quote:
Originally posted by olf_le_fol:
Errrr..... It's "OLF"... Or "Olf"... Not "Ole"... I mean, it's only THREE letters... Howcome 99% people make a mistake when writing it? [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/confused.gif[/img]


Beats me, humans are just weird? I'm still trying to figure out how people keep spelling my real name wrong even when I'm right there spelling it out for them!

quote:
Originally posted by Spectator Beholder:
Well, regardless of what we all think of IGN's lack of professionalism, we have to think of what we should do now... From what we've seen here, it seems like IGN doesn't care about adult Peach Princess, its customers or even their own customers, so the point is: Should we even bother about IGN any longer? Since they obsvously rejects us, why care about them, then?

Well, there's the $64,000 question. Originally, I said no, but if the situation is as dire as Kumiko says it is, even bad publicity could be better then no publicity at all. It's not like we've got anything to lose...

quote:
Originally posted by yyoshi:

To be honest, I don't like two-thirds of the adult bishoujo titles -- esp stuff that's nothing more than the adult AV material. But I guess the guy should've put things into perspective--if a game sucks, it sucks. I recall how I slammed "Cobra Mission" (anyone remember that one?) when it came out, for it's innane plot and stupid lines, but that doesn't mean one should shoot the entire industry.

What about Kana, Kanon, Air, Comic Party, Pia Carrot e Youkoso etc? I wonder how much this David chap knows about them to comment on the state of the PC bishoujo ind and their fans. Put it this way, Alicesoft's "Daiakuji" has some of the sickest CG I've seen, and it's a nasty title with a despicable guy for a hero. But you can slam the game on a moral basis, but still have to admit that it's one of the most replayable game out there, and it isn't b'cos of the sex and gore.

IGN has, time and time, featured game previews on Japanese bishoujo games like Tokimeki Memorial and Memories Off. But if their approach is always to be so lukewarm, and the coverage continues so that their writers can have something to swipe at--the "our game industries are more grown-up than theirs" mentality at work, I suppose--then we're better off not having any of them on IGN then. Better leave readers ignorant than having them misled.

I guess we should all be going back to our mindless FPS and countless C&C look-a-likes, and leave all the crappy storylines to Hollywood.

[This message has been edited by yyoshi (edited 03-10-2002).][/B]


Exactly. If this guy is going to get on his moral high horse on how all bishojo games and anime are depraved, why hasn't he jumped down the throats of the people who made "Grand Theft Auto 3".

I haven't read the review but thinking back to his Love Hina review, he not only condemned the anime but also its fans and the entire genre. Like anything you have to wade through the crap to get to the good stuff.

I do have a question. Was David Smith the guy that reviewed "Fear Effect 2"? The reviewer mentioned having an erotic Macross 7 doujinshi (to say that he wasn't a prude while slamming the game's content).

okay, got my two-cents up. not the same thing I e-mailed them though.

http://www.freetype.net/opinions/articles/op-12030213471.html

Wonderfully put yyoshi! If I had even an inkling of the skill you display with your intelligent prose, rest assured that IGN would be recieving an extremely well thought out email instead of the pathetic bosh I would undoubtedly give them.

In short, excellent article!

quote:
Originally posted by olf_le_fol:
Because they're giving misinformations to their customers, who may be interested otherwise by the bishoujo genre.

Hmm, true. But it remains to see they'll listen to our attemts to correct their misleadings... I don't except David Smith to be posting an aplogizy to the fans of Tokimeki Check-In, Oh My Goddees and Love Hina anytime soon, since people like that tends to be _very_ stubborn about what they've said, as I should know... Her ein Sweden,a bout two months ago, there was a famous author who wrote something in a newspaper that made many people feel insulted. She said in her article that "Everyone who reads Harry Potter, The Lord of the Ring, any other fantasy book or roleplays needs some serious therapy, since they don't seem to be able to live in the real world".... and if you consider how many people who are fans of The Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, you can be sure of that there was a storm of anger after her article got out. And two weeks after her first article, she still hadn't changed her mind. Instead she wrote a new article where she just spoke about the "stupidity of the nerds"... And if David Smith is of the same kind as her, we won't hear him aplogize for anything...

quote:
Originally posted by yyoshi:
okay, got my two-cents up. not the same thing I e-mailed them though. [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/smile.gif[/img]

http://www.freetype.net/opinions/articles/op-12030213471.html


Excellent article, Yyoshi!!!

quote:
Originally posted by yyoshi:
okay, got my two-cents up. not the same thing I e-mailed them though. [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/smile.gif[/img]

http://www.freetype.net/opinions/articles/op-12030213471.html


After reading this article, I have to ask to ask myself this: Why is the western media so snide about bishojo games? That lady you mentioned in your article, for example. I mean, a game where you kill the entire population of Hungary is more desirable that a game with lovemaking.

Also, thanks for pointing out Dave Smith's little doujin collection and his hipocritical attitude.

In regard to Kumiko’s assertion that sex can be a business: What’s considered “the world’s oldest profession”? That’s right, prostitution.

And besides, what kind of business doesn’t have someone somewhere getting screwed? (Sorry. Couldn’t resist.)

quote:
Originally posted by Kumiko Kamiyama:
However, Kumiko tries very hard to review things objectively, if she is asked to review something. She also tries very hard to stay informative, and even if she does not like something, she tends to simply state that she doesn't like it as opposed to stating "That piece of crap?! Man, that SUCKS!"

The most important thing that people fail to realize is that most people will at least listen to another's opinion if you tell them WHY you don't like something instead of just saying "That Sucks!"

My own personal favorite example is Bubblegum Crisis : Tokyo 2040.To be honest it was a decent show but on a personal level it was a love / hate relationship. The pluses were that it had a lot of good action scenes and the characters were fleshed out pretty well. The negatives were Sylia. She was basically IMO castrated in this series. In the original OVA's she was a scientist, She was the main designer of the hard suits and the Knight Saber's cool,confident leader. In Tokyo 2040 she was moody and unstable, Nigel designed the hard suits and there was only one scene were she was shown using here scientific knowledge. (The scene were she was using Genom's space needle to power her microwave gun.) My other big problem with it was her total exclusion from the end fight in space. I mean this whole thing is her fight to begin with and then you exclude from the final battle? What's up with that?

Kumiko, you forgot the review of "Plastic Little" in Animerica where the reviewer savaged it just because of the bath scene. My mind is still reeling about that review. I think the reviewer got quite a bit of hate mail over it.

From IGN’s Dave Smith’s review of Plastic Little:

"Essentially, there’s one chapter of the DVD you want to watch, the one with the bath scene. Satoshi Urushihara rarely fails to live up to his reputation, and this is no exception – nobody in the world draws women better from the waist up (as for everything else, well, buy that copy of Cell Works and you’ll see). We have the breasts, we have the bounce, and to top it all off, we have one of the greatest nosebleeds of the decade, arguably on par with the epic clouds of plasma spewed in the fourth Mahou Tsukai Tai! OVA. If you haven’t any hangups about staring at naked cartoon women, it’s good clean fun for the whole geek family.

"After that, though, the show becomes an extended sort of ‘now what?’ There’s not a lot that can follow Urushihara breasts, and generic shootouts/car chases/space fleet battles definitely don’t fit the bill. Maybe if the unbelievably hot ship’s surgeon got more screen time (tall, short blond hair, sweet voice, massively stacked), but sad to say, she remains among the continuously clothed supporting cast. A mortal sin, that, mercifully expiated by the pinups in the back of that artbook I keep talking about. Seriously, you should go buy a copy – primo stuff, and a far better value overall than this DVD."

This is the same guy who bashed TCI. Granted I agree with his review here and see the humor in it, I don’t know why this kind of gratuitous jiggle is acceptable and why he seems so disappointed that one character never is shown naked yet he thinks the folks who like the nudity in TCI are freaks. Of course, his last comment indicates that he’d rather simply have the dirty pictures than any story with them. Maybe if TCI was a slideshow of the naughty parts, he’d like it better.

quote:
Originally posted by Kumiko Kamiyama:
Gee, they did a bad review of Gatekeepers? This is why Kumiko has ignored Animerica for years, now - they're simply ignorant of the bishoujo and shoujo genre. They didn't used to be... it seems to be a developed affliction.

The worst so-called "review" was Ai Tenshi Densetsu Wedding Peach - to tear apart the greatest magical girl TV anime ever done without actually watching the show and learning the story... (sigh)


Oh yes, the (in)famous Best of the East section. Having four people review something in a language they don't understand (and I assume non-subtitled) isn't the best way to review something.

Well, I was doing a search for Tokimeki Checkin on Google like I usually do, and bumped into the IGN review. After reading David’s take on the game, I can’t help but notice three things:

1) David didn’t want to give TCI a chance. He went into that game hating it and was determined to find everything he could find that would allow him to hate it.

2) A lot of his review was off-topic, which makes me wonder if he even really tried the game at all or just went to gamefaqs and tried to piece it together.

3) David let his feelings get in the way. Having rape in a videogame is no reason to dock several points off of a videogame. Rape occurs in several videogames aimed for an older audience. Some of them even received critical acclaim.

Being an editor of a game review e-zine myself ( http://www.hulla-balloo.com/vplanet ), I find it surprising that an IGN game reviewer would make as many rookie-like mistakes as David did. Right now I review freeware QBasic games only, but if you look there have been two adult QBasic games that I approached with an open mind. It’s sad to see that even that is disappearing from the commercial market when it comes to game reviewers.

I’ll tell you this-- I’ve never played TCI, but I do have the wallpaper. It looks like a nice game, but David’s review didn’t tell me anything about it. Don’t listen to that IGN crap, Kumiko. It’s crap like that that would make want to make a bishoujo game review site of my own.

quote:
Originally posted by Vance:
3) David let his feelings get in the way. Having rape in a videogame is no reason to dock several points off of a videogame. Rape occurs in several videogames aimed for an older audience. Some of them even received critical acclaim.

Hmm, haven't hear dof such a video gmae myself but... hmm. I may remember wrong, but didn't Sierras "Phantasmagoria", or whatever the name was (I'm not too good at remembering names, I fear).. But even if it didn't have a rape, that game had some scenes thar seriously messed my stomach up. I'm still feeling somewhat sick when I think of the scene where you see a "vision of the past", wher Carno force-feeds one of the wifes he killed with some... some... *eew* [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/frown.gif[/img]...

Well, TCI is in any case clearly labeled as an "adult" game and if those who play it fails to notice it and dislikes the game because of the themes in the gmae, then they shouldn't play it.

Oh, BTW, David also managed to upset a great many Love Hina/OMG fans who heard of his review.

quote:
Originally posted by Spectator Beholder:
Hmm, haven't hear dof such a video gmae myself but... hmm. I may remember wrong, but didn't Sierras "Phantasmagoria", or whatever the name was (I'm not too good at remembering names, I fear).. But even if it didn't have a rape, that game had some scenes thar seriously messed my stomach up. I'm still feeling somewhat sick when I think of the scene where you see a "vision of the past", wher Carno force-feeds one of the wifes he killed with some... some... *eew* [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/frown.gif[/img]...

Well, TCI is in any case clearly labeled as an "adult" game and if those who play it fails to notice it and dislikes the game because of the themes in the gmae, then they shouldn't play it.

Oh, BTW, David also managed to upset a great many Love Hina/OMG fans who heard of his review.


Yes he very upsetting indeed. I now have no respect for IGN now. After "checking out" the rest of the sites contents, it like reading some of my High School Students' reports. (when I was teaching in HS about four years ago.) Only once in a while I noticed a objective review. But what do you expect. The demographics is the mid teens. It's hard to get a "good" review these dsay.