It's terrible journalism. If you skimmed past the first couple short paragraphs, the quotes from Jeff Grub (their "source") read like he's an insider at Aspyr or Embracer. In reality, the article is just linking to a 1.5 hour news podcast and quoting the host. The article doesn't even try to summarize Jeff's basis for his opinion, and the only quote they have from an actual insider is, essentially, "no comment."

[–] MudMan@kbin.social 12 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Look, gaming "scoops", such as they are, boil down to somebody having a friend somewhere that will break NDAs to you on the basis of being your buddy, being somewhat intoxicated, or both. The reason you get much, much looser attribution with people like Grubb or Schreier s that those connections would probably lose their jobs, and for the most part nobody wants that, often including the studios that employ those guys.

But on the flipside, it does mean that you have to take them at their word, and like any long game of telephone that also means you have to take things with a pinch of salt. Things may be lies, the source may just be mistaken, opinions may get passed as facts, things can change later. Rumors are rumors until they aren't rumors.

But that being said, is the vaporware huge triple-A remake that was explicitly struggling during development come out in the middle of the great 2023 game developer purge?

Meeeh... I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't.

[–] ourob@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The reason you get much, much looser attribution with people like Grubb or Schreier s that those connections would probably lose their jobs, and for the most part nobody wants that, often including the studios that employ those guys.

Oh, I'm not criticizing Grubb. I'm criticizing the GameSpot article quoting Grubb. I have no opinion on whether Grubb is right, and I certainly don't expect him to give up sources. I don't even know whether he has a specific source, or if he was just giving his (no doubt well-informed) opinion on the situation, because I haven't watched the podcast.

This felt like reading a New York Times article that links to a Washington Post article about some news event, and the NYT article is quoting the WaPo author in the same way that they would quote a witness. It's just bizarre to me.

[–] MudMan@kbin.social 3 points 11 months ago

Yeah, it's a bit weirder when Gamespot repackages Grubb's take as news, in that it becomes harder to tell whether it's them being coy about "we know a guy who knows a guy" info or if they're just trying to manufacture a click out of something that's unverified.

But then again, we're rating them against Youtube "influencers" and whatnot, so I'm actively shocked that any standards would remain at all these days.

[–] obinice@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

Yeah I was real confused, I've not listened to the podcast but how would Jeff even know?