How Publicity Works
by John Walker on Jul.27, 2006, under The Rest
From the website for Cornish adventure game, Barrow Hill:
“An impressive endeavor for a small group of first-time dev’s, with a shoestring budget…”
PC Gamer Magazine (UK) – Review by John Walker
From the review in PC Gamer Magazine (UK) by John Walker:
“An impressive endeavour for a small group of first-time devs with a shoestring budget, but as much as it feels like kicking puppies to say so, not a product worth your money. 51%”
I think I’m more offended by their decision to put an apostrophe in “devs”.
July 27th, 2006 on 16:20
As amusing as their collection of quotes is, I don’t think what they’ve done to yours is actually unfair (apart from the apostrophe business, which is cruel and unusual). A quote is unfair if it perverts the meaning of the words it quotes – it’s not obliged to represent the sentiment of the entire review or even the entire sentence. It’s only disingenuous is the words it quotes mean something different in the context from which it’s removed them. You actually were saying it was an impressive endeavour for a small dev team on a low budget.
July 27th, 2006 on 16:25
Does my original sentence carry a different meaning from that printed on their site?
Answer: yes
I know that it’s not the worst sort – the “…the best game of the year” minus its “Should have been…”. But it still misses out some rather vital info.
July 28th, 2006 on 02:02
I think it’s also somehow ironic that they used the PCG US logo rather than the UK one…
July 28th, 2006 on 09:49
To be honest, I’m with Tom (and all the other Devil’s advocates. Advocaats? Mmm, Devilled Egg Nog. Ahem). There’s nothing in their quote that you’d disagree with, save the abitrary imposition of crap grammar. It’s just that you’d like to add more and they elipsis it out.
Good post though.
July 28th, 2006 on 23:42
And really, isn’t it allowable as a contraction of developers? T’ain’t like it’s a real word.
July 29th, 2006 on 17:08
“Does my original sentence carry a different meaning from that printed on their site?”
Yeah, but what they printed is openly not a sentence – they even remembered the ellipses. If you’d said “Great, but not without its problems,” they’d be fine to quote you on the “Great”. The ‘but’ concedes that the preceding clause is true.
I suppose the shorter version of my argument would be: is Barrow Hill an impressive endeavour for a small group of first-time devs with a shoestring budget?