aria
Former Moderator
- Joined
- Dec 4, 1977
- Posts
- 39,546
Wow, five pages? Nice.
Okay… after reading Stuart Campbell’s original article, I wouldn’t have expected a professional, adult response, and I see I was correct.
Since this obviously got under his skin (enough that he’s replied no less than 25 times in this thread), I’ll take a look at his initial response (way back on page one).
Here’s a running theme to notice in his response: he zeros in on a handful of items (not successfully refuting them, as will be soon evident), mostly because he can’t really answer for how terrible the article was.
A fine way to kick it off –a minor writer from England coming into a web forum to pick an argument. Let’s see how those arguments hold water:
Amidst the personal attacks (a professional response to criticism, no doubt), we find his central argument is that the error was a “joke”. Okay, then why did so many of the readers here miss the joke? Answer: poor writing. Poor writing that was prevalent throughout the article. I’m sure Mr. Campbell isn’t always a poor writer (how else would he keep getting assignments in retro gaming magazines), but from the quality of the article in question, this time he was overpaid.
Awesome, now he tossed in some curious insults about my ability to speak English. Must be the sort of Englishman who uses the term “Paki” in everyday conversation, but moving on to what he actually says:
Campbell claims he never meant to imply the game had been aimed at the Neo Geo CD. Yet, reading his section on Metal Slug, completely dominated by a discussion of the CD, you’re left with the implication. What’s the answer? Poor writing.
This was Mr. Campbell’s response to why he didn’t write a word on what Metal Slug was actually about before spending his entire section discussing the CD version. As you can see, he doesn’t actually answer anything; rather he says this isn’t about what “influenced” the game. My comment never said he should cover what “influenced” the game, it was pointing out he never described the actual game. You can add poor reading skill to the already evident writing skills.
Side note: I don’t think I could have ever made a more damaging argument than his own statement that he’s 41… and writing like this… and picking fights on “teh interwebs”… What a wondrous career we weave, when to one’s own writing ability we self deceive.
So, if Mr. Campbell is reading this (har-har, gee I wonder?), yes –you are older than me. You’re a 41 year old video game writer who can’t write very well, I’m a 29 year old attorney with a solid career. Shall we start wielding our e-dicks? You probably don’t want to with me.
Here he claims he never needed to write about the original Metal Slug in its own section because the intro section actually talks about what made the game interesting and successful. Nice defense if he actually had done so, but alas all the introduction contains is a half-baked “my first time seeing the game” story and a few generic sentences that amount to: “[. . .] was this really an old-school SNES-style 2D platform shooter?” (okay, that’s a vague description of the genre) and, a paragraph later: “Compared to anything else that was in arcades in 1996, Metal Slug was like Robotron – an exhilarating non-stop bloodbath with beautiful pixel art and a sense of humor. (More accurately, it was the arcade equivalent of Treasure’s 1993 Mega Drive masterpiece Gunstar Heroes.)” Good introduction to the series, not a very good description of the actual game. There’s a logical leap he makes, but doesn’t write out on paper, that people who read the article are familiar with the game and storyline, so he never takes anytime to do that –in fact, the closest he comes to describing the story is the poorly written “joke” about Metal Gear.
So what’s present in the introduction doesn’t do a good job of describing the original Metal Slug. Chalk that one up to poor organization, poor logic and our running theme, poor writing.
Mr. Campbell states that no one reading an article about Metal Slug would care who developed it. Yet in the same article he shows people do care by not just calling out Gunstar Heroes, but “Treasure’s” Gunstar Heroes. He backpedals into the reference to the title screen having the developer name (well… duh.), and moves on. If its not poor research, then its… poor writing.
This paragraph didn’t introduce anything new; it only attempts to cover for his lousy introduction to the original game. He doesn’t mention that my own introduction stated that these articles “covervarious games in a major game series”.
Humorously (though not intended on his part), Mr. Campbell claims my criticism was “personal abuse”. I can only assume he hasn’t received many professional criticisms in his life (there isn’t a whole lot of focus on the emerging field of game journalism, so that’s quite believable), or he has no idea what professional criticism is –my comments address how poorly put together his supposedly professional work is. As for a definition of a personal abuse, well, see how he conducts his own response... it tells you a lot about the sort of circles he’s used to running in.
Its at this exact point you know for certain that Mr. Campbell doesn’t have strong arguments: I point out that they forgot to put the Saturn version under any section head (as they do parenthetically), he tried to move to the side and answer something else. I ask “what’s the 3+3”, he answers “pear”.
[Side note for older members: hearing echoes of Dion, anyone?]
You have to love this quote. In essence, he’s saying an inanimate level one boss is “hateful”, “deserving of or arousing hate”. He says this had nothing to do with being difficult. This assumes we’re operating in a vacuum, and not reading his entire opinion: Considering his earlier comments, in MS2, about how horrible the (wholly optional) mummy/fat traps were as well as references to the later zombie traps (revealing he was getting shot a lot), and his rants about the MS3 being a “joyless chore” and “tedious”, we get a strong view that Mr. Campbell has a hard time with Metal Slug, and 3 got a tad too difficult for him. So did he say hard? No. Did O.J. need to say “I did it?”
(Honestly, I didn’t even realize people still had Encarta, but that’s a side note of no relevance, just an echo to when I was much younger)
When I wrote columns, I was separate from the newsroom. The reason is obvious: the editorial section, of which the columnists were a part, are about opinion –not reporting facts. The reason a lot of professional organizations keep them separate (though not so much in the UK papers, which I should acknowledge, other than solid papers such as FT), is that –by combining fact-finding reporter/journalism with opinion writing—you can end up with poorly written articles like Mr. Campbell’s. Perhaps this blurry line at most UK papers versus their US counterparts plays some part here, but I think we can all agree that a journalist/columnist is one who reports accurately can write well.
[Good lord, this got too long and I hit the post size limit...Continued in the next post]
Okay… after reading Stuart Campbell’s original article, I wouldn’t have expected a professional, adult response, and I see I was correct.
Since this obviously got under his skin (enough that he’s replied no less than 25 times in this thread), I’ll take a look at his initial response (way back on page one).
Here’s a running theme to notice in his response: he zeros in on a handful of items (not successfully refuting them, as will be soon evident), mostly because he can’t really answer for how terrible the article was.
A fine way to kick it off –a minor writer from England coming into a web forum to pick an argument. Let’s see how those arguments hold water:
Amidst the personal attacks (a professional response to criticism, no doubt), we find his central argument is that the error was a “joke”. Okay, then why did so many of the readers here miss the joke? Answer: poor writing. Poor writing that was prevalent throughout the article. I’m sure Mr. Campbell isn’t always a poor writer (how else would he keep getting assignments in retro gaming magazines), but from the quality of the article in question, this time he was overpaid.
Awesome, now he tossed in some curious insults about my ability to speak English. Must be the sort of Englishman who uses the term “Paki” in everyday conversation, but moving on to what he actually says:
Campbell claims he never meant to imply the game had been aimed at the Neo Geo CD. Yet, reading his section on Metal Slug, completely dominated by a discussion of the CD, you’re left with the implication. What’s the answer? Poor writing.
This was Mr. Campbell’s response to why he didn’t write a word on what Metal Slug was actually about before spending his entire section discussing the CD version. As you can see, he doesn’t actually answer anything; rather he says this isn’t about what “influenced” the game. My comment never said he should cover what “influenced” the game, it was pointing out he never described the actual game. You can add poor reading skill to the already evident writing skills.
Side note: I don’t think I could have ever made a more damaging argument than his own statement that he’s 41… and writing like this… and picking fights on “teh interwebs”… What a wondrous career we weave, when to one’s own writing ability we self deceive.
So, if Mr. Campbell is reading this (har-har, gee I wonder?), yes –you are older than me. You’re a 41 year old video game writer who can’t write very well, I’m a 29 year old attorney with a solid career. Shall we start wielding our e-dicks? You probably don’t want to with me.
Here he claims he never needed to write about the original Metal Slug in its own section because the intro section actually talks about what made the game interesting and successful. Nice defense if he actually had done so, but alas all the introduction contains is a half-baked “my first time seeing the game” story and a few generic sentences that amount to: “[. . .] was this really an old-school SNES-style 2D platform shooter?” (okay, that’s a vague description of the genre) and, a paragraph later: “Compared to anything else that was in arcades in 1996, Metal Slug was like Robotron – an exhilarating non-stop bloodbath with beautiful pixel art and a sense of humor. (More accurately, it was the arcade equivalent of Treasure’s 1993 Mega Drive masterpiece Gunstar Heroes.)” Good introduction to the series, not a very good description of the actual game. There’s a logical leap he makes, but doesn’t write out on paper, that people who read the article are familiar with the game and storyline, so he never takes anytime to do that –in fact, the closest he comes to describing the story is the poorly written “joke” about Metal Gear.
So what’s present in the introduction doesn’t do a good job of describing the original Metal Slug. Chalk that one up to poor organization, poor logic and our running theme, poor writing.
Mr. Campbell states that no one reading an article about Metal Slug would care who developed it. Yet in the same article he shows people do care by not just calling out Gunstar Heroes, but “Treasure’s” Gunstar Heroes. He backpedals into the reference to the title screen having the developer name (well… duh.), and moves on. If its not poor research, then its… poor writing.
This paragraph didn’t introduce anything new; it only attempts to cover for his lousy introduction to the original game. He doesn’t mention that my own introduction stated that these articles “covervarious games in a major game series”.
Humorously (though not intended on his part), Mr. Campbell claims my criticism was “personal abuse”. I can only assume he hasn’t received many professional criticisms in his life (there isn’t a whole lot of focus on the emerging field of game journalism, so that’s quite believable), or he has no idea what professional criticism is –my comments address how poorly put together his supposedly professional work is. As for a definition of a personal abuse, well, see how he conducts his own response... it tells you a lot about the sort of circles he’s used to running in.
Its at this exact point you know for certain that Mr. Campbell doesn’t have strong arguments: I point out that they forgot to put the Saturn version under any section head (as they do parenthetically), he tried to move to the side and answer something else. I ask “what’s the 3+3”, he answers “pear”.
[Side note for older members: hearing echoes of Dion, anyone?]
Let’s be clear that I raised the suspicion that Mr. Campbell didn’t use any home/MVS carts in his “research”, and this dismissal of the massive slowdown in 2 only reinforces that. I think any lay gamer would notice it pretty quick –especially if you look back to when it first arrived, costing $200+ on a $600+ video game system. Slowdown was huge, and relevant to the time, and something that was missed in poor research and… poor writing.
A great example of selective quoting: it took me a few seconds to figure out what he was quoting, but we’re now talking about X. I had observed, in the much larger paragraph he quoted from, that the shoddy work on Metal Slug 2 had rolled into a undercooked section with an incomplete description of X and then a very thick description of the PS1 version. He replies with “The Definitive is concerned with how the PS1 version differs from the original. If it doesn't differ, it doesn't get an entry.” As anyone who’d read the section would’ve concluded, it might as well have been solely about the PS1 version –going back to the suspicion that it was the only version he actually played. If that’s an incorrect assumption, it’s poor writing.
Given how inadequately short his game descriptions tended to be, Mr. Campbell’s argument that he can’t possibly include lines like “the game was developed by Nazca”; “Nazca was bought by SNK”; “MSX was noticeably half-finished, with inaccessibly levels programmed in”; etc. is disingenuous and rather embarrassing. Instead we have whole extra paragraphs that only expand on MSX’s PS1 extras. This is “poor [a lot of things]”.
You have to love this quote. In essence, he’s saying an inanimate level one boss is “hateful”, “deserving of or arousing hate”. He says this had nothing to do with being difficult. This assumes we’re operating in a vacuum, and not reading his entire opinion: Considering his earlier comments, in MS2, about how horrible the (wholly optional) mummy/fat traps were as well as references to the later zombie traps (revealing he was getting shot a lot), and his rants about the MS3 being a “joyless chore” and “tedious”, we get a strong view that Mr. Campbell has a hard time with Metal Slug, and 3 got a tad too difficult for him. So did he say hard? No. Did O.J. need to say “I did it?”
(Honestly, I didn’t even realize people still had Encarta, but that’s a side note of no relevance, just an echo to when I was much younger)
When I wrote columns, I was separate from the newsroom. The reason is obvious: the editorial section, of which the columnists were a part, are about opinion –not reporting facts. The reason a lot of professional organizations keep them separate (though not so much in the UK papers, which I should acknowledge, other than solid papers such as FT), is that –by combining fact-finding reporter/journalism with opinion writing—you can end up with poorly written articles like Mr. Campbell’s. Perhaps this blurry line at most UK papers versus their US counterparts plays some part here, but I think we can all agree that a journalist/columnist is one who reports accurately can write well.
[Good lord, this got too long and I hit the post size limit...Continued in the next post]
