Lester Bangs: Aw, man. You made friends with them. See, friendship is the booze they feed you. They want you to get drunk on feeling like you belong.
William Miller: Well, it was...fun.
Bangs: They make you feel cool. And hey, I met you. You are not cool.
Miller: I know. Even when I thought I was, I knew I wasn't.
Bangs: That's because we are uncool. And while women will always be a problem for guys like us, most of the great art in the world is about that very problem. I mean, good-looking people, they got no spine. Their art never lasts. They may get the girls, but we're smarter.
Miller: Yeah, I can really see that now.
Bangs: Yeah, 'cause that's what great art is about: conflict and pain and guilt and longing and love disguised as sex, and sex disguised as love...and hey, let's face it, you got a big head start.
Miller: I'm glad you were home.
Bangs: I'm always home. I'm uncool.
Miller: Me too.
Bangs: You're doing great. The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool. Listen, my advice to you--and I know you think those guys are your friends--if you want to be a true friend to them, be honest, and unmerciful.
--William Miller and Lester Bangs in "Almost Famous"
It is the international system of currency which determines the vitality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today. And you have meddled with the primal forces of nature. And You. Will. Atone. Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale?
--Arthur Jensen to Howard Beale in "Network"
The first time we realized the profound contempt with which videogame publishers regard the enthusiast press came in early in this millennium. We had noticed that over the course of several issues, a certain publication had repeatedly taken shots at several of a single company's titles--all of which had been very well received--in its short pieces and its reviews. Now no outlet is forced to like any particular game or games, but it had gotten to the point where we'd take a look at this publication and, like clockwork, a game from this publisher was being eviscerated. In the course of a conversation with a senior publicist with whom we were and remain friendly, we asked them whether they'd noticed this trend. No, but I'll look into it, we were told.
Not long thereafter, the publicist told us that they'd informed their marketing department of the offending copy; marketing then immediately pulled its advertising from the outlet in question, forcefully demonstrating that the publisher would not allow itself to be treated in this manner. From that point on, our close reading of the publication's contents showed that the reprisal had had the desired effect, because the relentless jabs at the company's games immediately ceased. And after several months, the publisher once again began running its ads therein, its point having been made loud and clear.
We'd be lying to you if we said that we immediately recognized this episode as a demonstration of the contempt publishers have for the enthusiast press. After all, we'd only been covering videogames seriously for a couple of years at the time. So while we certainly recognized that our employers at Newsweek wouldn't have the same vulnerability to videogame publishers as would enthusiast magazines, the matter-of-fact way in which the publicist shared the details of their company's scorched earth retaliation led us to presume that this was considered an acceptable way to deal with the specialist press, in a way it would not be with the mainstream media.
We've been thinking back to that incident a lot recently in the wake of the news of GameSpot editorial director Jeff Gerstmann's termination, allegedly over parent company C|Net's concern with publisher discontent over the substance, tone and scores in GameSpot's review of Eidos' Kane & Lynch.
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