Kotaku doesn’t care about you

Posted in Ethics, Video Game Sites by ubersoldat on October 14th, 2005.

Kotaku reports that after a year of promising, they’ve finally developed a method of invitational commentation. From what I gather, this invitational system is like Gmail in that they invite you, and in turn you invite your friends. So whom is Kotaku inviting? Tipsters, bloggers, and anyone working inside a major developing or publishing company. It seems as if Kotaku is only inviting those whom they deem worthy–the avant-guarde of multimedia.

So what does this mean for the average joe reader? Tough luck, unless you have a friend in the business. Having an elitist system like this where one must convince Kotaku of one’s own credentials smells not only of arrogance, but also of pure-bred disdain. Kotaku doesn’t care about its mainstream audience, or at least not enough to guarantee them a voice without the painstaking process of acquiring an invitation.

On one hand, I can see the benefits of such a system, namely, the people they invite are much less likely to spam them or post “excessively self-promotional, obnoxious, or even worse, boring” material. But this system seems difficult to become a part of, and it destroys the concept of honest feedback. By creating a system of rules prohibiting vague terms such as “boring” or “obnoxious” material, it’s almost an argumentum ad baculum to those fortunate enough to get an invite, with the ultimate mandate: entertain Kotaku, or else.

Here at ElliottBack.com, anyone can comment, 100% of the time, on anything. Spam is avoided by an ingenious plugin called Hash-Cash, obscenities are non-existent due to a “Politifier Plugin“, and freedom of speech is easily accessible simply by typing and posting your comment. At Elliottback.com, everyone is invited!

This entry was posted on Friday, October 14th, 2005 at 6:01 pm and is tagged with argumentum ad baculum, hash cash, mainstream audience, kotaku, gmail, vague terms, honest feedback, freedom of speech, tipsters, obscenities, tough luck, average joe, disdain, arrogance, avant guarde, publishing company, mandate, bloggers, credentials, invitation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.