Jack Thompson disbarred!

[Ginsu Victim]

 

http://kotaku.com/5054772/jack-thompson-disbarred

   

[protokatie]

But now where are we supposed to get our laughable and rediculous news stories?


What cost man, at what cost!

[Ummon]

Who's this guy?

[protokatie]

Who's this guy?

He is the "All video games are bad, and teach sex and violence to our little children. Ban them all!" guy... Basically, he is a self-agrandizing A-hole.

[SithMaster]

My guess is he will go work over at ign.com writing reviews.

[Singapura]

Videogames are bad, mmmkay?

[SavannahLion]

My guess is he will go work over at ign.com writing reviews.

People still read that crap?

[patrickl]

What's wrong with IGN? Their reviews usually agree pretty much with what I think of those games.

[danny_galaga]

australian members can be excused for being concerned (and confused):

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0860233/

phew!

[SavannahLion]

What's wrong with IGN? Their reviews usually agree pretty much with what I think of those games.

IGN's central focus is about making money. While that is true for almost all review sites, there's usually a tipping point where the desire for increasing profits directly competes with honesty to your reader base. Unfortunately, most people take the greedy way out and take the money. This is exactly what happened to Tom's Hardware and why their so-called reviews are now completely worthless. IGN is fast heading in the same direction, if they haven't already arrived at that destination.

In the past, commentaries, articles and even scathing review/preview forum threads have been wiped out due to pressures from the higher ups. I haven't bothered reading an IGN review, or preview, in years. It's just not good for my heart to consume that much salt.

[shardian]

I usually just skip the number ratings and read the closing comments on an IGN review.  You do have to learn to read a little between the lines, but there's no other review site out there that's as up to date and thorough.  Usually anything rated 9 or above is a truly good game.  A lot of stinkers show up as high 7s, so long as they buy ads.

A good rule of thumb for IGN is this: If the front page is plastered with adverts for a game or movie, it is not worth seeing or playing.

As to movies, if Todd Gilchrist says it's good, avoid it like the plague. I still do not forgive that loser for claiming that Jeepers Creepers was a horror masterpiece.

[shmokes]

Jack Thompson lives in my neighborhood.  I don't know where, though.  But we both live in Coral Gables, FL, which is tiny.  You can drive from any end of the city to the opposite end in five minutes if it's not rush hour. 

[SavannahLion]

As to movies, if Todd Gilchrist says it's good, avoid it like the plague. I still do not forgive that loser for claiming that Jeepers Creepers was a horror masterpiece.

THANK YOU!!! I thought I was the only one that hated that garbage. That hideous piece of crap was a waste of film stock and popcorn money.

[Ginsu Victim]

Jeepers Creepers could've been great. Up until they reveal what the Creeper looks like, it's good. Once you see him, though, it goes downhill.

Originally, the black woman that explains everything wasn't in it. It would've been so much better NOT knowing the stupid backstory. (Why must they always explain things?!?)

I sold my DVD of it because we would only watch the first half.

[ChadTower]

What's wrong with IGN? Their reviews usually agree pretty much with what I think of those games.

Their reviews are bought and paid for by publishers, that's what is wrong with IGN.

[Ginsu Victim]

It's been a LONG time since IGN was worth trusting. Like 10 years. They sold out early.

[shmokes]

1up.com for games.  Rottentomatoes.com for movies. 

Reading full movie reviews is dumb.  You just end up spoiling the movie because the reviewer has to write an entire article about something that lasted less than 2 hours.  You can't do that without giving away important plot points and ruining the movie for the reader.  Games, being interactive, give the reviewer much more flexibility to talk about really important things that don't spoil the story.  Visuals, sound, gameplay, connectivity, replayability, etc.  Even still, game reviews sometimes contain spoilers, but they're much rarer and easier to skip.  It makes sense to read a full review before buying a videogame and spending 10-70+ hours of your life on it.  It doesn't make sense with movies.  Rotten Tomatoes is where it's out.  It ain't perfect, but it's by far the best thing out there. 

As for videogames, the quality of the reviews on 1up.com are of a far higher quality than IGN.com.  Actually, for videogames, zeropunctuation is where it's really at.  That guy is ---smurfing--- awesome.

[Malenko]

what about metacritic ?

[shmokes]

Metacritic isn't bad, but it's missing something big that Rotten Tomatoes provides: intrinsic entertainment value.  I think Metacritic provides the same service as Rotten Tomatoes, and it's scores may be even give a more accurate picture of how good a movie is, versus just whether it's good or bad (Rotten Tomatoes provides an average score, but it's hidden; the focus is really on the percentage of people who thought it was good vs. bad).  But Metacritic just isn't as fun as Rotten Tomatoes, IMO.

[Malenko]

i meant for games

[Ginsu Victim]

RottenTomatoes also collects game reviews. (Though I've never really used them much for games, only movies)

[patrickl]

I usually use Metacritic for checking the ratings. The scores there vary a lot and the IGN scores usually come closest to my opinion. They tends to have the most in depth reviews too. I think the only game they really steered me wrong was Battle Rev

In fact I took the scores of 40 Wii games. Out of these 7 games didn't have a review on 1UP (among which 3 of our favorite games!). IGN had reviews for all games. for 22 games IGN had the score closest to the Metacritic average. 1UP had only 7 scores where they were closest to the average. I compared it to the user scores too and then IGN was correct in 20 cases and 1UP in 9. The 1UP scores were often way off and they hand out way to many 10's.

So the IGN scores are a lot more accurate than 1UP. Besides, missing the reviews for games that I like best completely disqualifies them as a usable review site IMHO.

from the list of 40 games I had 13 favorites (games that we really play). Out of these only 10 had reviews on 1UP and in only 2 cases was the 1UP review the most accurate. IGN was correct in 8 case (or 11). That's a huge difference.

There were 11 games I really disliked Both had 5 reviews where they were most inaccurate (scored the game highest) So on games I don't like they both did equally well.

So I guess my impression of IGN simply fits with the data. For Wii games at least.

[Benevolance]

This thread is missing the point. Jack Thompson was disbarred. Though I doubt we'll be hearing any less from him, it does mean that he won't be randomly suing video game companies to prevent the release of their games any more. And that calls for celebration.

[Ginsu Victim]

This thread is missing the point. Jack Thompson was disbarred.

I certainly didn't miss the point (then again, I started this topic)

[Benevolance]

I will play some GTA4 to mark the happy occasion.

[SavannahLion]

Might want to check to see if shills are involved. They were a problem at GSI before they were bought by IGN. There might be some influence from them still.

Up until the mid 90's, EGM used to be the best review magazine, hands down. It was the only magazine to ever steer me to the really good sleepers. Then sometime around the late 90's, early 00's, I recall they changed their format and I believe ousted some of the staff to get "new blood." Ever since then, the feel of the magazine and the actual reviews didn't quite line up with how I felt the games were. It wasn't bad, just wasn't lined up properly and they were missing good sleepers too. I haven't bothered much with 1UP because of that.

I pay closer attention to forum posts than I do reviews nowadays. Still means I miss more sleepers, but I get a better feel for a games before buying them (The Mario Kart Wii discussion being a really good example).

As for Jack Thompson. My only fear is he now has more time to try and bend the rest of us over and stuff us with his so-called Christian anti-gaming dick slime. I'm afraid we're going to see dick weed do an interview on some idiot news media whoring himself as a martyr and moronic parents are going to listen.

[shmokes]

RottenTomatoes also collects game reviews. (Though I've never really used them much for games, only movies)

I think RottenTomatoes recently stopped doing games.  But they were always awful for games, anyway.  Unlike movies there is almost always a critical consensus of whether a game is merely good or bad.  There are differences of opinion about how good it is, but you rarely get one critic saying, "This game is an 8," and another saying, "This game is a 2."  Since Rotten Tomatoes works on the Fresh/Rotten score, games were always getting essentially 100% or 0% ratings, or damned close to that.  So a game like the new Brothers in Arms would get a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, even though it's MetaCritic score is 76% and both organizations are aggregating the exact same reviews. 

So, yeah, MetaCritic is far better than Rotten Tomatoes for games.  But like I said Rotten Tomatoes seems to agree since it exited the games reviews business.

[Ginsu Victim]

Yeah, I can see how the Tomometer wouldn't work for games.

[Ginsu Victim]

I'm getting EGM free right now.

[shmokes]

There are two things that I really like about 1up.  Big games get reviewed by three people.  EGM prints all three reviews.  It's nice to get the different (sometimes significantly different) takes.  Also, they just seem to be a lot more discerning to me.  They're harder on games, IMO.  I haven't done a scientific comparison or anything, but that's the impression I have.

[patrickl]

There are two things that I really like about 1up.  Big games get reviewed by three people.  EGM prints all three reviews.  It's nice to get the different (sometimes significantly different) takes.  Also, they just seem to be a lot more discerning to me.  They're harder on games, IMO.  I haven't done a scientific comparison or anything, but that's the impression I have.

In my comparison of Wii game reviews, 1UP rates good games higher (they do hand out a lot of 100%'s) and bad games lower. Overall their average score was resonably similar to metacritic. About 2 tenths lower and IGN's scores one tenth higher. 1UP can be really ridiculous when they have some gripe.

For instance they completely burn down Medal of Honor 2 Heroes just because the AI is dumb. Sure the AI is simplistic (characters run a pre programmed path), but the game is great and one of my favorites. Going by the reactions of people on the review (like "Yet another crap review!!!") they don't really agree. Compare that to the in-depth review (3 pages) that IGN has.

[shmokes]

Well . . . to be fair to 1up, their metacritic scores are difficult to compare.  They're not really giving out 100% scores.  They just sensibly decided that the scoring system the industry was using was absolutely absurd and they switched to one closer to what movie reviewers use.  Seriously do you think that you or any videogame reviewer could tell me is the difference between a 6.4 and a 6.9 game?  How about a 2.2 and a 3.5 -- more than a full point difference!  It's nonsense, and it suggests a level of precision in a review that is completely illusory.  When 1up gives a game an A+, they are not giving the game a 100%, they are merely saying that it is an absolutely phenomenal game that cannot be missed, much like when a movie reviewer gives a movie four-stars, he is not saying that the movie is flawless.  Metacritic converts the 1up grades to numbers so they will work with its mathematical formulas, but it's kind of a messy conversion.  They aren't meant to work that way.

[ChadTower]

rottentomatoes loses all credibility with me when crap like School of Rock gets a 90+ rating.

[patrickl]

Giving a game an A+ is just as daft as 100% or a 10. IGN usually rates in halves too.

The problem with 1UP is that their reviews are more like a quick preview rather than a real review. IGN also provides a video of the game and for me most importantly they write their review with the different readers in mind. For instance they will make extra remarks for casual vs hard core players or if a game is nice for kids. 1UP will just say the game is crap and give it a low score and the reader has to guess what the reviewers taste is.

1UP has better user reviews than IGN though. They tend to be better than the actual review. That's more a result ove the reviews themselves being so poorly done though.

[SavannahLion]

I'm getting EGM free right now.

Yeah, I *was* - had it backed up for years (4?) of free issues.  Even switched it to my new address without any problems and BAM stopped showing up.  :-P

How were you getting free issues of EGM? Was that something relatively recent?

If you read the stats they published yearly, it had a disturbingly low readership, and I have a feeling almost all of them were free subscriptions.

I think that has a lot to do with how Ziff-Davis is/was managing their magazines. I used to subscribe to a lot of ZD printings. Nowadays, I don't even give them a second glance on the shelves. At first, I wasn't sure whether ZD changed across the board or my tastes, experience, and needs have changed. But after looking at why I stopped reading each of the magazines, it tended to be more to do with format changes or the loss/change/hiring of editorial staff.

To keep this thread somewhat on topic.

Can a lawyer type person explain to me why it's necessary for a peer to file the appeal to a disbarrment? I know that Thompson is a raging idiot and filed an appeal on his own anyways. I just don't quite grasp the logic on why an appeal must filed by a peer and not by the person who was disbarred.

[ChadTower]

Can a lawyer type person explain to me why it's necessary for a peer to file the appeal to a disbarrment? I know that Thompson is a raging idiot and filed an appeal on his own anyways. I just don't quite grasp the logic on why an appeal must filed by a peer and not by the person who was disbarred.

Uh, because you have to be a licensed attorney to file an appeal.  Disbarred people do not qualify.

[Ginsu Victim]

rottentomatoes loses all credibility with me when crap like School of Rock gets a 90+ rating.

90% thought it was above average. What's wrong with that?

Richard Linklater, Mike White, Jack Black, and a rockin' soundtrack....what's the problem?

I love that movie.

[ChadTower]

They took the guy from Tenacious D, told him he couldn't use any of his existing musical talent, and made a boilerplate "teacher gets through to his class" movie with no imagination and less entertainment value.

School of Rock was 90 minutes of nonoriginal fail.

[Ginsu Victim]

What did you think you were getting? "Lean on Me" starring a different sort of "Black" actor?

"Sims, ain't you got no sense, boy?!? Pull up your pants!"

[SavannahLion]

Can a lawyer type person explain to me why it's necessary for a peer to file the appeal to a disbarrment? I know that Thompson is a raging idiot and filed an appeal on his own anyways. I just don't quite grasp the logic on why an appeal must filed by a peer and not by the person who was disbarred.

Uh, because you have to be a licensed attorney to file an appeal.  Disbarred people do not qualify.

Oh Duh! Now it clicks together.

Since he blew it navigating legal waters as an attorney, I guess his chances of navigating the same not being an attorney is incalculable. Here's to his death disbarment. 

[ChadTower]

What did you think you were getting? "Lean on Me" starring a different sort of "Black" actor?

"Sims, ain't you got no sense, boy?!? Pull up your pants!"

Doesn't matter what I thought I was getting... what matters is what I got, and what I got wasn't all that good.  Certainly not good enough for even half of 90+. 

[Ginsu Victim]

How did we get here? All this from a topic I started about Jack Thompson.

[ChadTower]

How did we get here? All this from a topic I started about Jack Thompson.

They both suck pretty bad.   

[Ginsu Victim]

Touche`

[SithMaster]

How did we get here? All this from a topic I started about Jack Thompson.

I believe the blame falls to me since I mentioned him getting a job at ign.com.  I find it ironic that a topic about a man who hates video games, that was started on a website devoted to hardcore video games (arcade = hardcore, console = softcore), got derailed much like his career did.  The question is who shall pickup the cause now?  Who do we know studying to be a lawyer?  Hmmmm....

[shmokes]

I have been trying to decide what type of law to practice . . . and there appears to be an opening . . .


BTW, if School of Rock sucked it's more likely because of Jack Black than in spite of him.  The guy can be really funny, but the majority of his movies are horrible.  And I get the impression that a lot of the problem is that directors have a hard time reigning him in -- kind of like Jim Carrey in a lot of his early work.  Whatever you have to say about School of Rock in general, it stacks up VERY well against the majority of Jack Black movies.

[ChadTower]

I have been trying to decide what type of law to practice . . . and there appears to be an opening . . .


BTW, if School of Rock sucked it's more likely because of Jack Black than in spite of him.  The guy can be really funny, but the majority of his movies are horrible.  And I get the impression that a lot of the problem is that directors have a hard time reigning him in -- kind of like Jim Carrey in a lot of his early work.  Whatever you have to say about School of Rock in general, it stacks up VERY well against the majority of Jack Black movies.

I think that has to do more with the "work for a check" syndrome vs working for quality.  Can't blame him for doing it - gotta make it while it's there to be made. 

[Ginsu Victim]

School of Rock was written by Mike White for Jack Black. He wrote the role with him in mind the whole time. Richard Linklater came in as director BECAUSE he wanted to direct a White script starring Black.

[AtomSmasher]

rottentomatoes loses all credibility with me when crap like School of Rock gets a 90+ rating.

90% thought it was above average. What's wrong with that?

Richard Linklater, Mike White, Jack Black, and a rockin' soundtrack....what's the problem?

I love that movie.

There are actually two scores on RottenTomatoes that you should look at when seeing how good a movie is.  The first obviously is the tomatometer, but the second is the "Average Rating."  The average rating works exactly the same as Metacritic and averages the scores of the reviewers.  The tomatometer is nice as it quickly tells you how many people found the movie to be worth seeing, but the average rating tells you exactly what they thought of the movie. 

The average rating of School of Rock is 7.7/10, which I think is a little high, but not by much.  It was an enjoyable movie, but completely unoriginal.

[Malenko]

-- kind of like Jim Carrey in a lot of his early work.

Ace Ventura was awesome and is still one of my all time fave flicks, the sequel was just as good; however the Mask was SCHMOKIN HORRIBLE

[Ginsu Victim]

Ace Ventura is great, but the sequel stunk.

You want good James Carrey films from early in his career, try The Dead Pool, Once Bitten, and Earth Girls Are Easy.

[ChadTower]

School of Rock was written by Mike White for Jack Black. He wrote the role with him in mind the whole time. Richard Linklater came in as director BECAUSE he wanted to direct a White script starring Black.

Which is exactly why it sucks so bad.  They wrote a script for a guy who specializes in individual rock performance, brought in people who specifically wanted to do it with him, and then had him deliver all of the personality of a muddy sock.  There used zero of his unique talent for the role.  What was the point?  They could have gotten the same performance from Richard Dreyfuss...

...oh wait, they did, when it was Mister Holland's Opus.

[Ginsu Victim]

Though I like Black better in Saving Silverman and High Fidelity, his personality is all over this movie. Same goes for when White wrote the role for him in Nacho Libre. Nacho, while completely different from his other work, is still VERY Jack Black oriented.

And I can't picture Dreyfuss in the Angus Young schoolboy outfit...

[Ginsu Victim]

I use IGN for smaller game releases that no one else covers.

[SavannahLion]

Ok, so basically everyone hates IGN but there's nothing better...?

In a consolidated way? No.

A HUGE majority of the decent review sites can't do anywhere near the number of reviews IGN can do because they haven't sold out like IGN has.

It's the same with radio stations. Ever notice that some radio stations will play the same song over, and over, and over, and over? Notice it's usually the same station that has the worst advertising? It's not because they're doing requests, it's the money. Even though the courts found it unethical (or whatever) for a station to get kickbacks based on the air time a particular song gets, those studios still find a way to shove that crap down our throats.

Others have a much more even handed way of doing reviews, but they can't match the volume IGN is doing because they're not getting the money (or free games, or support, or exclusives, or whatever). Others do some reviews, but it's not a primary motive for the site (PA is a good example).

Mayhaps someone should do a Wikipedia-like type of review site?

[patrickl]

Ok, so basically everyone hates IGN but there's nothing better...?

Everyone besides me. But sure, if you guys can show me something better than I'm game. 1UP fails as far as I'm concerned. I'm looking for a review and not some useless rating based on a preview.

Or the other way around, could someone point me to a review on IGN that is unfair (overly positive or something)?