that's exactly what i think as well

Well, the article seemed to have good intentions at the beginning....

But in the end, it just turns out that this article was designed to make it appear that the folks at IGN know what they are talking about and are experts at how the industry works and how it should works, when in reality it is the opposite.

The media in general tends to put a spin on the news in order to appeal the audience. Right now, the gaming media is appealing to the "hardcore" crowd and they are pissed that Nintendo and its attempt to get "outsiders" into this world is now the center of attention. This article, in general, is the gaming media's attempt at reassuring the "core" crowd that they know what they are talking about and that they know how the industry works, when in reality it is the complete opposite.

Sure, they got some of the obvious trends that are wrong, right. But, with some of the examples a bit iffy (the strongest ones seeming to be adding characters like The Boss as a bad female lead role), it shows that the author(s) doesn't know what the hell they are talking about. It shows that they have the basic theory of what is wrong, yet lacks a true understanding of what is really wrong. For example, yes having overly sexual females as lead characters is wrong and is creating an immature video game industry. Yet, The Boss is one of the few female characters that is anything but that. She is a character that exerts a motherly character with the strength to do the right thing, a character that is rarely shown in video games overall.

Then, when they went on to bash everything that has been tacked on to be related to the Wii and Nintendo in general, it became obvious that the article was created to help ease the minds of the rabid views of the site's viewers. Instead of realizing that w/o the DS and the Wii the holidays would have shown a poor holiday sales result and thus show a crippling industry, they instead showed how their distaste for some of the games on the Wii has blinded them from seeing the potential it has.

In short: This article is pathetic.

I don't need to read it to know IGN is the epitome of 'Gaming nerds who get a paycheck'.

Did they go off the cuff about how all games, including DS games, should have voices? Or how about the one where 2D games are automatically inferior to 3D games. Hell, why don't these sites just put up a message that says 'We rate all of our games based on the highest grossing game of the generation'. Maybe that's why every DS game has an avg of 8.0 or lower.

Sorry but, gears 2 script was fine. Some of the voice acting was questionable, but come on, its not meant to be shakespeare!

I think it would be awesome if a gaming website used Wii Fit as a yard stick to measure all other games against. It would be spectacularly silly.

Pros: This game brought something fresh to NPCs by giving them fully animated mouths.

Cons: Not enough balancing and a total lack of penguin suits.

awww.  But I liked that article. lol.  I thought some of them were pretty good points.  At least it isn't your traditional top 10 games or worst 10 games.

Actually what he says about games needing a much larger department for story writers is spot on.

The guys at IGN have a following.  And as such, they are no longer just a small website who do reviews and have fun going to conventions getting all the news for the fans.  They are a corperate driven rating site.  And as such, they influence gamers perchases and opinions.  So yes, they do feel Superior to these 'casual' gamers because they can't influence them.  Because before, a 'casual' gamer was the person who came onto IGN and just read their reviews and bought what they told them to buy.  Now that's changed, and now they're trying to widen their influence into the 'Hardcore' market by seeming to hate anything connected to WiiFit, WiiMusic (and Wii/DS games on the whole) and giving inflated scores to games like GTAIV, Halo 3 (and other major popular games for the PS3 or 360 each year).  And they use those games as a measuring stick to guage what a 'good game' should be on all systems, including DS and Wii.

In general, this might not be a shared view, but this is definitely the trend I've seen IGN take.  And I use to read IGN regularly back when they were reporting in the GC/PS2/XBOX days.

I don't see the problem here.

I don't think casual gaming is ruining gaming, but it sure is annoying having to sift through all the shovelware to get to the good games. Motion controls are lame.

There are considerably more points on this list than those two, and those two are not the ones that anyone is taking umbrage with.

Again, this isn't about the console war.