Another Carnival of Gamers – a collection of gaming blog posts – will be held at Mile Zero on June 9th. Check it out soon.

If you do go to Mile Zero, you will notice this little rant about a mini-controversy over the last Carnival. Thomas links to all the relevant parts of what passes for debate on the Internet. (What is it about this place that makes us all act like we are on The McLaughlin Group?). Instead of really dealing with what could have been an interesting discussion of editorial ethics (the whole thing started with a standard blogger screed against big game media as personified by Gamespy) the thing broke down into Matt Gallant defending his opinion of the original post against others who were angry that he dismissed the entire Carnival as pointless. CGM editor Steve Bauman got involved, and I found the whole thing ridiculous.

Anyway, in the comments of that post you can get my opinion on Thomas’s summary, which ends up being a post about why Computer Games Magazine still sucks. (I am being a little glib, here, but he calling Mr. Bauman a liar and accusing CGM of misogyny gives me a little license here.)

I think Matt was wrong to dismiss the Carnival of Gamers based on a single blog post. I think that Peter exaggerates for effect in his original post on Gamespy and comes off sounding self-righteous and deserves a little slamming for it. Both make the cardinal error of dismissing swaths of good writing and editing based on one or two things they don’t like.

This is the last I will say on this issue, since I think the whole fight is both pointless and counterproductive. Despite the numerous examples of bad strategy game writing out there, or noticeable cases of people reviewing games they only half-played, I write very little about that. Why? Because the best counter to bad game writing is good game writing. And in a small way, I try to do that. You may disagree.

For the first time, I am disabling comments on a post. If you have a complaint, email me. But I do not want this fight on my porch. Any comments about this post in another post will be immediately deleted.

I will continue to contribute to Carnival of Gamers because it is fun and helpful. God (and Steve) willing, I will continue to offer my services to Computer Games Magazine and any other big media that want me.