There’s nothing I like more than kinky sex in dangeous situations, like fellatio in a lion’s cage or bondage play with jars of scorpions and firecrackers.
Since that has nothing to do with this story though, let’s assume I said “there’s nothing I like more than two websites bitching at each other over trivial matters,” which is exactly what’s going on between cash-laden corporate games site IGN and publicly beloved web comic Penny Arcade.
This story gets a bit long and stupid, so please hit the jump unless you have something better to do like masturbating or breathing in.
The story so far:
Do you remember Assassin’s Creed? It was a game that came out a few weeks back (approximately four years ago Internet Standard Time) that was met with a firestorm of conflicting reviews. Some people loved it, some people hated it, most of you focused unnecessarily on its producer’s breasts, and the only thing people could eventually agree on is that it did, in fact, exist. Penny Arcade, a site known for applying metric ass loads of verbalization to the virtual page, went on at great length about how it was an amazing experience, how it folded their laundry and how they even got to second base with the game after a night drinking Coronas and watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
In a then-unrelated move, IGN reviewed the title and gave it a stunningly low “7.7” — the mainstream-site equivalent of some kind of fictional negative number that’s been divided by zero merely to show how much disdain the reviewer had for the title. By comparison our own Rev Anthony gave the game a “5.5” — the Destructoid equivalent of a flashing neon “12” covered in porno and glitter.
Since Rev escaped the view of PA’s Gabe by virtue of his ability to blend into his surroundings like some kind of frightened lizard, Gabe instead bitched about mainstream sites like IGN by twice slinging verbal hot-fire that could very easily be construed as meaning that IGN takes bribes and/or eats children. Here at Destructoid we take our jobs as purveyors of truth very seriously so while we cannot claim IGN has ever taken a bribe, I’ve personally seen certain IGN staffers kick the homeless and menstruate on crucifixes.
Here’s where things get interesting: in IGN’s recent podcast one of IGN’s resident residents waxes bitchcakes about Gabe’s words on Assassin’s Creed. Gabe, in turn, responds the only way he knows how: huge blocks of text. Have a look:
I guess some guy at IGN is mad at me and he lays into me on their podcast. You can follow the link and listen for yourself but I don’t recommend it, they don’t really deserve the traffic spike. Basically some IGN guy is super pissed because I said I didn’t agree with the bad reviews of Assassins Creed. I’m actually of the opinion that if we’re pissing off IGN we must be doing something right.Honestly my main concern was to make sure people didn’t avoid the game based on some of the poor reviews. I got something like four hundred mails after that post and 90% of them looked like this:“Thank you for sharing your thoughts on Assassin’s Creed. I was going to skip it based on the reviews. After reading your write up I rented it though. I’ve played about 10 hours and love it!”So there you go, that’s all I wanted.The IGN thing is just sort of silly. He says I should leave reviewers alone because I “just do things and write things as a freaking comic artist.” I’m not sure how to respond to that. I think he’s trying to insult me but everything he said there is true.The sad thing is I wasn’t even talking about their review. I was talking about the 7.0 from 1Up. No one actually pays any attention to IGN or their 7-10 review scale. To tell you the truth I still don’t even know what IGN’s review of AC was. Was it bad? It’s really kind of cute that he thinks I was talking about him. After hearing how worked up he got on the podcast I actually feel kind of bad ruining it. It must have been a real thrill for him to believe he was relevant.
