A Bag of Hammers vs. Me - Editorials

Omni submits evidence for his hypothesis that he's maturing as a writer and exposes one of his private shames.

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A Bag of Hammers vs. Me

I’ll admit that sometimes I do stupid things. Thankfully, most of them are done well away from the eyes of the public. In the early days of the Armchair Empire, I sent an email to Stevie “Killcreek” Case in an attempt to setup an Q&A. In response to her “Sure, I’d love to” email, I asked if we could also get a Q&A with John Romero. Who knew that would be the wrong thing to email to someone!

“Hi were somewhat interested in picking your brain, but if your boyfriend is available we’d much rather pick his brain.”

As I gain more experience – it happens in real life, though I haven’t managed to level-up yet – I’m slowly starting to learn the correct way to do things.

My tongue-in-cheek treatise on "How to Be a Game Reviewer: Unabridged Edition” notes that,

Do not fact check anything

Most would assume that a game reviewer would check the facts. A small percentage – roughly 3% -- actually do, but they’re missing something: as part of the gaming press whatever you say is fact. (Be warned though, reviewing military conflict games will more often than not elicit much reader mail as the genre prides itself on its facts.) Fact checking should go no further than opening the game's manual.”

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I’ve started to break this particular rule on a regular basis. Though it can take a bit of time, it also has the potential to avert public embarrassment or being raked over the red-hot coals of gaming forums, fact checking is worth it.

Case in point. In a recent editorial – Take These Tears and Shove Them – I did

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some significant editing of the content due to a simple follow-up.

For the article, I was operating under the assumption that a picture accompanying an article in EGM was in fact of CliffyB of Epic Games – holding a PS2 controller. This struck me as sensational stuff only for the fact that CliffyB has been pimping Gears of War, coming to Xbox 360s in November, and he was holding a PS2 controller! I tried to be cute in the article with the suggestion that CliffyB was actually dead. My logic was pretty tight; however, something didn’t quite sit well so I emailed CliffyB to see if a) he was in fact still living and b) if he would comment on the fact he was holding a PS2 controller while being quoted about Gears of War.

Here was the email:

I'm just prepping an editorial for my website, The Armchair Empire, and I need a quick comment. The editorial was sparked by EGM's June feature about crying in games, and the closing paragraph of the editorial states:

"One other notably aspect of the article which I didn't really see right away is the fact Cliffy B is holding a PS2 controller. Is this like Paul on the cover of the Abbey Road album in his bare feet? Does the PS2 controller in Cliffy's hand mean he's dead? His latest project, Gears of War, has been primed to be the "killer app" for the Xbox 360 for Fall 2006, and he shows up holding a PS2 controller?"

Can you confirm that you're still alive?

I know your open letter to Michael Bay was posted about a week ago, but anyone could have posted that posing as you.

CliffyB’s response was short and to the point:

Hey man,

1. Someone needs to lay off the crack. That's not a picture of me; that's some random dude they photographed for the article. He looks like Preparation H Raymond from Conan O'Brian.

2. Yeah I'm still alive. Who said I was dead?

3. Michael Bay - anything on my own website is by me. Why would you assume otherwise?

-B

Why do I expose this private shame? Not entirely sure but it has been bugging me for a long time. Maybe the stupidity of the original email – it’s like an in-grown hair that I just needed to pull out, even with the possibility of puss squirting out. Maybe it’s the fact that I bothered to follow-up anything before posting it like it was some kind of admission that I’m… I’m maturing as a writer.

It’s a turning point of sorts, I suppose.

Will it make me a better writer? That remains to be seen. I just hope that if I ever run into CliffyB, he won’t remember my name or a certain idiotic email. Same goes for Stevie Case for that matter.

- Omni

(October 13, 2006)


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