Tapezilla

I check Joystiq and Kotaku once or twice during the day, and I’m not sure why I continually subject myself to the latter. It seems like every time I visit the site, there’s at least one story that actively pisses me off. This time around it was the story coyly titled “SEGA’s President Casually Mentions Resident Evil 5’s Wii Release”. Holy crap! The President of SEGA himself drops a bomb like that in an EXCLUSIVE interview with Kotaku at E3?! The video proudly embedded on the main Kotaku page certainly has Mr. Jeffery confirming the headline, and the teaser paragraph whets one’s appetite, promising to confer with other industry luminaries. That big pink “RUMOR” tag looks pretty juicy… I’d better click through to see what happens.

Our diligent reporters follow up with Reggie Fils-Aime of Nintendo and Capcom’s Chris Kramer only to be met with non-answers and snark, respectively. Ultimately, they go back to the source and ask Simon Jeffery himself: A “simple slip of the tongue,” he says, further explaining that “[they'd] been discussing the Res Evil 5 showing at the Microsoft event earlier, and it was still on my brain – that’s all”.

OK, so a guy who basically has to be “on” for at least 4 days, talks to hundreds of journalists and bloggers (note the delineation), misspeaks once. Instead of asking him to clarify during the interview, they traipse around the show doing their very best Woodward and Bernstein impersonation, then post a misleading topic that you only get to find the truth about by clicking through, having the happy side effect of loading at least three ad units (it should be noted that the Gawker network pays its contributors by impressions).

Of course the story DOES end with “Resident Evil 5 for Wii has been officially denied, albeit in roundabout ways, so we won’t cancel our pre-orders for the superior Wii version just yet. But who knows what the future holds?” I’m pretty sure they meant anything BUT “Wii” when referring to superior versions. Do they read this stuff before posting it, or were they worried someone was going to scoop them for the rumor they made up? But that’s beside the point; you can almost hear the dramatic “DUN DUN DUNNNNNN” music, rationalizing the whole post with the cliffhanger ending. In reality, you just KNOW that the author was convinced he was onto something until the “well, shit” moment. But hell, why not post it anyway? Baby needs a new pair of shoes!

Perhaps it’s the influence of the Gawker network’s valuing of sass and tabloid sensationalism over legitimate journalistic integrity; the site does proudly proclaim “GOSSIP, NEWS AND LEAKS FOR OBSESSIVE GAMERS”, after all. (Note to Kotaku editors: you might consider a comma after “NEWS”. It’s called a “serial comma” and it’s a bitchin’ way to avoid ambiguity in lists.) At the time of this writing, there were almost 18,000 views to this one story alone.

And people wonder why the video game “media” isn’t taken seriously….