@walterg74: So your original comment meant you're going to pass because "oculus for the analysis of the product for what it does instead of some ridiculously stupid appreciation of who the ceo is or does."
Alright, that sounds a bit weird, but whatever floats your boat.
@walterg74: If by "the win" , you mean run by a morally questionable dwarf and whose corporate culture seems to be pathological and anti-consumer, then sure.
@JRLennis: OKay. Let me first say I'm not an English professor. I haven't really been in a University for more than a visit to the library in four years. Even then, I studied politics, not English.
That said, yes, it is substantially better than the clickbait articles you normally see on gamespot. The quality of this website has dropped dramatically in the past few years. It wouldn't be unfair to say a substantial portion of the content is either sponsored content or clickbait sponsored content. I am thankful it isn't that.
Except, I'm pretty sure this is sponsored content. It came out one day after Lucy also did a piece on Wargaming. What are the chances that this isn't a coordinated strategy? I mean, I get that Zorine is the one who is really into competitive gaming and I have no doubt that is genuine. But she also writes for a living. She should write well.
The reason I clicked on the article was partially the comically bad title, but half way through the article I realised this piece is very unfocused without a clear purpose. It rambles about jumping from topic to topic, discussing things that aren't really connected to the thesis at all. The point of which is clear in retrospect; this is an advertisement. It's not about Zorine figuring out why the game is so popular, so much as Zorine using that as an excuse to write a description of the game. Why is she talking about the gold shop? What does that have to do with anything? Well, it lets the reader know that it isn't pay-to-win. Does that have anything to do with the popularity or its success as a esports title? Not a damn thing.
Maybe it is a giant coincidence and this isn't an attempt to sell anything. It's still disrespectful to you and me that they didn't proofread this before posting it. It's professionalism. Writing well shouldn't be exclusive to university English departments, as the gamespot community seems to think. This is a website that exists to sell adspace-- or maybe communicate information; it's one or the other. These are people who write articles and scripts for videos for money. They should be good at it. That they normally produce work (click bait articles) so utterly abysmal that it should be held up as an example of what is wrong with the internet as a medium is not an excuse for poor craftsmanship when they decide not to be Buzzfeed.
Let's start with the title, shall we? I can see Zorine shaking her head no. We're starting with the title: "Why World of Tanks Is Wildly Popular and No One Seems to Know Why". First of all, you seem to know why, you're someone. Ergo writing "No One Seems to Know Why" is bad writing. That's pretty much it for the title, except, that doesn't seem to be what the article is about.
A fair bit of the article is about why world of tanks is popular, but is why no one seems to know why addressed? Actually, the article has several people who have hypotheses why World of tanks is wildly popular,which further questions the title. The article isn't about that at all. It's about how you didn't understand some thing about World of Tanks and other things surprised you but now you have a grasp on them. Not a catchy title, but neither is the one you went with.
I'm not going to to a point by by breakdown of this article, that's your editor's job (which s/he clearly dropped the ball here), but the problems go beyond the title. Ignoring that in making a list in the first paragraph, you don't get to the second item until paragraph five, because-- well, that's weird, but style is style. Ignoring the list oddity, the thesis of the article "The World of Tanks had always been a foreign one to me. It was a game that mystified me on two levels" is poorly written because the two levels are "(World of Tanks) success as a free-to-play tanks game" and the second is "the size of (World of Tanks) competitive events." These two levels are arguably talking about the success of World of Tanks, making the second point somewhat redundant. As a side note, I would note that World of Tanks isn't "standard artillery warfare gameplay", or rather, it absolutely is, but that is because it created a genre. It would be like calling DOTA a pretty standard DOTA. It set the standard.
I'm not getting paid to jammer on, but this is highly disappointing work. Poor writing is, more times than not, indicative of poor thinking. You have a responsibility to your audience to respect their time by doing quality work.
@nurnberg: The US doesn't know what liberal means. This behaviour is radically illiberal and much more in line with socialism as a political ideology. Political correctness is an idea to come out of Communist Russia. Liberalism-- as you might have guessed from the name-- is about freedom. Spoiler: conservatives (in the 20th and 21st centuries) are liberals. As are liberals. As is the Green Party. Freedom of speech, constitutions and parliaments are all liberal institutions. Liberal is opposed to Fascists, Communists and Aristocrats/Feudalists. Currently, there isn't really any other family of ideology.
I don't like Trump. He's a disgusting human being for irresponsibly encouraging populism. My personal ideology could not be more different than the hatemongering isolationism spewed by that troll. Furthermore, Oculus is terrible and abused the trust it was granted by gamers by its dishonest practices.
HOWEVER, I find it equally morally disgusting to attack a person based on their political views. We live in democratic societies. One of the core democratic principles is the idea of plurality. This means we live in a space where many different ideas compete for the metaphorical limelight. This means, in order to have civic peace, we have to tolerate these ideas, even if we think that they are wrong, misguided or destructive. Every man, woman and child have the right to what they choose to believe and undertaking a form of economic warfare because of the private political beliefs of man is undemocratic, illiberal and despotic.
No matter how sure of your right-ness and your righteousness, this does not eliminate the right to freedom of other people because you judge them as wrong. To not respect this freedom of other people is tyranny in motion and such actions must be stamped out before they become legitimised. It doesn't how matter how right you think you are; other people have the freedom to be wrong, should they chose.
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