IGN's review editor has gone insane over The Angry Joe Show "I have more youtube than you!"

[Badnik Mechanic]

Disclaimer: Yes Joe has acted equally as badly as this guy did, but when you're the head reviewer for IGN, arguing over 0.1 on twitter doesn't exactly win you many favours.

 

So it's been a while since we've had a twitter breakdown regarding videogames, only one is going on right now, and it's... quite laughable.

 

 

Time for backstory!

 

IGN has in the past been criticised for their reviews over several games, often ignoring glaring problems and both confirmed and unconfirmed accusations of bribery in order to give games stupidly high scores and to ignore problems with games.

 

Recently, they came under fire for their constant previews and subsequent review of Titanfall. Here's some quotes from a 'hands on preview'

 

 

 

By this, you would think Titanfall is the bee all and end all of gaming, that there is nothing better or nothing that will surpass it... ... .hmmm.... doesn't this sound more like PR than an unbiased review? 

 

Well anyway, Titanfall comes out and many people review it... including the Angry Joe Show. Here's the review, bare in mind this has been up since march 18th.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhUHOqaC5_A

 

At around 8:25 Joe starts talking about the hype from other websites, and shows some actual screens of IGN, such as their preview hype and build up... the infamous and widely quoted "Believe the hype" and a screen show of the score that IGN gave the game.

 

That being 8.9 out of 10. 

 

He then calls out the various outlets for giving the game 10/10 and 9/10 when the game isn't that at all (and to be fair it does have issues which would mean it's not the god send game that the hype/PR machine built it up to be).

 

Anyway... for reasons we don't understand, IGN's review editor has now gone insane and is attacking Joe and his channel for 'misrepresenting IGN and the review.'

 

Basically "IGN didn't give Titanfall 9/10! It only gave the game 8.9 out of 10!"

 

Because you know... that 0.1 makes all the difference right? 

 

From then on, the IGN guy has a full blown meltdown on twitter, attacks Joe for bad journalism and more or less insults the people who view his channel. The full breakdown is in the spoiler (it's quite a long one).

 

The full breakdown 

 

 

One line which isn't included which shows just how insane this guy has gone... would be this little gem.

 

IGN's review editor says: Fun math fact: IGN has 4x the YouTube followers Joe does."

 

Ok so.... aside from posting a twitter breakdown, and arguably having a laugh at the pair of them since Joe doesn't handle this very well at all.

 

What's the point in this? well... I have a few questions which relate to reviews in general lately, not just IGN's style and the claims of bias and bribery.

 

1: The review editor says 8.9 our of 10 is not 9 out of 10, therefore it's different.

 

Do you agree with that? Lets turn that into a percentage so we're not looking at 'out of 10' all the time.

 

You see a review score at 89%, you see a review score at 90%. That 1% difference? is there a difference? Is that really going to change your thoughts on the game? Especially after all the hype and focus you gave the game?

 

Look at it this way, you present a game which scores 39%, would scoring it 40% change your mind? 

 

Personally, no, scoring something 8.9 and then saying 'oh it's not 9, therefore it's not the same' is ridiculous.

 

So SSMB, is 8.9 out of 10 is it going to change your opinion of a game had you seen the score being a 9 out of 10? 

 

2: Is IGN/big review sites that outdated already? We all knew this was going to happen, trust in big review sites has been eroding radically for the past few years, evidence of bribery is quite common, heck yesterday Ubisoft gave journalists free tablets, gifting and favours are also very common. Many see the humble youtube/fansite as the last safe base of unbiased reviews... and even then I would strongly disagree with that.

 

But the question here... if IGN is so big and powerful... why was the head of reviews so rattled that he felt the need to call out Angry Jo? Is IGN really in that much of a decline? Or is this an indication of review sites in general?

 

Yes the 'fun math fact' quote has been done because someone said they were jealous of Joe's show... but why even entertain the remark? So many people have replied and had a go at him for this outburst, why even bring up the numbers of even comment on it? If IGN is as big and powerful as people believe it is, why even acknowledge it at all?

 

You can see/watch this breakdown/argument here if you like, there's a lot more.

[Nast]

.

[Sami]

I think they're both acting like fucking children and should take this shit back to the playground where no one will have to watch them make fools of themselves.

[WhoWhatMan]

All this does is convince me that IGN is more stupider then I originally thought.

Also is Joe really that well known in the gaming media? He is a youtuber who do reviews and some interviewing at points and I doubt he is a full time professional.

Then again, Joe shouldn't have response back so they can stop from looking like children over a stupid score.

[Lady Soniko]

Dan certainly isn't creating a solid case in favour of IGN, not that I like generalizing a company over one man's actions, IGN is actually full of cool cats and genuinely nice people, and this instance will just be more bad press that paint them as a whole in a bad light.

 

Joe is just a fucking immature moron though, trust him to be a part of this shit.

[Badnik Mechanic]

Also is Joe really that well known in the gaming media? He is a youtuber who do reviews and some interviewing at points and I doubt he is a full time professional.

 

Well he was, he started out as just being some guy who would try to go to media events and interview people. I think it is now his full time job.

 

However what a lot of people don't know and I think how he handled this quite clearly shows. He's not had any media training. There's some video of him from a few years ago trying to ask a question at a press conference to Geoff Knightly, and he doesn't have much experience and the question comes out a little odd. You can tell what he wanted to ask and it was a pretty good question, only the interesting thing comes from the other journalists in the room, every one of them laughs at him in almost like a pack mentality, it's quite uncomfortable viewing. 

 

So it still doesn't seem like he's had any media training sine then and is still doing what he does, which is probably why some people think he acts like an arse all the time and why he's handled this incident badly. 

 

But still, I do wonder if people really see any difference between an 8.9 and a 9.0?

[Willsy]

In my opinion, IGN can't make an honest review. Even their Lost World one was a bad review, mainly because it didn't point out the more important flaws, and I thought Lost World was pretty "meh". The CoD reviews and other AAA reviews are very biased too.

However it is really childish that two critics are fighting with each other.

[DocAzure]

Well, the constant insults getting thrown from each side...I mean, I hate IGN as much as the next man, but if you want to comeback at them, you do so with intelligence, not name calling, that lowers you to their level. 

 

*groan*

 

Video games sure are fun, right guys?

[Indigo Rush]

Wow.

 

 

 

Both of them are insipid, pompous, twit-mongering malarchists!

[Sami]

Wow.

 

 

 

Both of them are insipid, pompous, twitter-mongering malarchists!

The pun just presented itself I'm sorry

[Willsy]

The whole "believe the hype" thing for Titanfall just seems like exaggeration to me. I mean, the game looks interesting at least, but a couple of friends of mine who have the game have said that it's not all that good. And to be honest, it doesn't look like the kind of thing I'd enjoy.

This is IGN through and through, they overrate games and then continue to herald them as some sort of second coming until the next AAA title comes out, where the whole process is rinsed and repeated. This is why I prefer smaller and independent reviewers, the opinions just seem more honest and less likely to be bribed, and less pretentious.

I could get where Joe was coming from, but he should have been a lot calmer about it.

[Kuzu]

*sigh* The sad thing is, this is just gonna make people generalize IGN even more.

[Badnik Mechanic]

Trying to get this onto what I kinda hoped it would.

 

The IGN guy is trying to say that theres a difference between 8.9 and 9.0.

 

Does anyone actually buy that?

[Teoskaven]

And the moral of this whole story is: people should never use Twitter and just let it die.

 

As for the dispute itself: i really hope it ends up with both IGN and Joe being highly damaged. Both deserves that for different reasons.

[Kuzu]

Trying to get this onto what I kinda hoped it would.

 

The IGN guy is trying to say that theres a difference between 8.9 and 9.0.

 

Does anyone actually buy that?

 

Does a decimal point really count?

[Chronozoah]

The IGN guy is trying to say that theres a difference between 8.9 and 9.0.

 

Does anyone actually buy that?

There is a difference, but that difference is so minute as to be negligible, and kicking up such a fuss and creating a public spat over something so utterly irrelevant is ridiculous, infantile, ass-backwards, unprofessional and several other adjectives which amount to conveying the same message: this was incredibly stupid and that entire conversation should not have happened.

[EmmBee]

It's funny, but since Titanfall came out, I think I've only heard one friend talk about it. No one else, really.

Just saying, that hype died off pretty quickly.

And isn't Angry Joe the same guy who had a bitchfit over his Youtube partership not paying him enough or something? As though he makes 100% of his income from the thing? They're both pretty shitty, to be honest.

[Chooch]

Moron starts an argument with another moron. Moronic statements are exchanged back and forth. Both sides look like morons. News at 11.

 

I'm not sure which side of gaming journalism is worse. The "professional" side of game journalism that is clouded in advertisements, sponsorships and all manner of shady implications or all the dumb ass YouTube celebrities that pose as gaming journalists who try to make things hard for the professionals under the guise that they're fighting for the little guy.

 

Both of these guys are full of shit.

[SenEDDtor Missile]

If this were a test, 90% is better. Video Games...meh, not that big a difference.

[Willsy]

I never saw the point in decimal scores. If you're going to give a game an 8.9, you may as well give it a 9.

Another funny thing is how they gave Lost World a 5.8 and called it 'mediocre'. 5.8 is essentially a 6, which means above average. I don't get them at all.

[Teoskaven]

And isn't Angry Joe the same guy who had a bitchfit over his Youtube partership not paying him enough or something? As though he makes 100% of his income from the thing? They're both pretty shitty, to be honest.

 

Close enough: apparently, Joe had recently another dispute with a random hacker reguarding the fact that he clearly monetized his farwell to JewWario's video when he claimed (proudly) the exact opposite. Also, don't forget the always classic fight he had with Geoff Keighley early in his Youtuber carreer.

 

It seems that Joe has a natural talent for clashing with idiots. Go figure.

[Salamander]

Trying to get this onto what I kinda hoped it would.

 

The IGN guy is trying to say that theres a difference between 8.9 and 9.0.

 

Does anyone actually buy that?

 

It's a tough question.  Mathematically, the difference is negligible.  But culturally - why would you give something 8.9 unless you specifically wanted to avoid giving it a 9?  An 8.9, I think, is a good eight rather than a bad nine - that's how I think they would have looked at it.  Because no matter how many tenths you add in, people tend to look at the 8 and see a smaller number than the 9.  It's the same reason why everything the shops costs £X.99 - because if it costed £X+1.00, even though the difference is just a penny, people tend to perceive it as a different sum altogether, a bigger sum than it actually is.  Humans are weird, but we knew that already.

 

I do think it's totally reasonable to group an 8.9 review together with 9/10s, though.  Other than that, I know nothing about this incident, not the game involved nor the personalities, and don't care, either.

[Gabz Girl]

IGN are one of the worst game review websites around, only beaten by Gamespot. I know Joe is in the wrong too since he's badmouthing the guy instead of just ignoring him or whatever but it was the idiot from IGN who started it after all! IGN are full of idiots and this can be clearly seen in some of their video reviews. SLW anyone?

 

Speaking of Joe, I notice a lot of the Channel Awesome crew are actually not that friendly. JesuOtaku, Joe and a few others are generally quite nasty people and I don't know why they have such a huge following.

[Willsy]

It's all in the name; Angry Joe.

You can tell from the name of the channel that it's going to be one of those 'rage reviewers'. I don't mind James Rolfe, as it's supposed to be humorous with him, but Joe actually seems serious about yelling about the flaws of a game. I prefer it when people review the game properly rather than shouting about it. And call me old fashioned, but I think I prefer written reviews in most cases, but that's just what I prefer.

IGN are no better though, for reasons that I previously mentioned.

[Speederino]

I really can't blame Joe at all in this case, honestly. The IGN guy is the one randomly going apeshit and attacking him over a 0.1 decimal score, and most of his tweets aren't really anything more than just defending himself, aside from one or two kinda childish ones. Dan's?

 

 

This is something I expect to see from idiotic 14 year old fanboys, not editors for major gaming outlets.