Stadium Staffers Blast TSSZ Story; Stop Andac Blog Discussion

By
Tristan Oliver
– January 7, 2009

Slingerland: TSSZ an “Absolute Embarrassment”

There may be a good reason you’re not seeing what is, arguably, one of the biggest stories in the Sonic and Sega communities in some time, on the front page of the Sonic Stadium, the largest Sonic site in the world.

Stadium staffers have shut down all discussion of the story on their message board after it degenerated into harsh criticism, by SSMB forumers and Stadium staff alike, toward TSSZ News and this reporter, with regard to the direction the story examined.  This happened despite the news being picked up by major news outlets such as News 4 Gamers and Kotaku, and also happened even as Slingerland, a Sonic Stadium staffer, penned the original forum topic, and asked for discussion.

The entire thread no longer exists.

But Slingerland, Dreadknux, and other SSMB members quickly turned the tables.  Some SSMB members used the discussion to accuse this site and this reporter of slandering Ben Andac.  Andac is the ex-Sega and current Sony employee who disclosed details on NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams originally being an XBOX360/PS3 title and prophesied the existence of the Werehog in Sonic Unleashed on his now defunct blog.  Some felt we published our story with disregard to possible consequences that could come about toward Andac.

One of those individuals was FlashTHD, who, on the Green Hill Zone message boards, was the original person to unearth the information.  We can’t relay you his comments verbatim as we haven’t been able to completely recover the original SSMB forum thread.  Rest assured, they were harsh.

We are, however, able to give you some trinkets as discussion turned ugly from top brass at the Sonic Stadium.  After regretting ever posting the story in the first place simply because it was a TSSZ News story, here’s what Brad Flick, known to most as Slingerland, had to say to this reporter directly–evidently forgetting that the story was penned by our editor, Ryan Bloom:

I, personally, don’t care if you take verbal dumps on SEGA. It’s jeopardizing Mr. Andac’s career that is the problem. You should have ran this story by him, but instead, you took the tabloid route. You aren’t even a real journalist, jackass. You just saw what Flash dug up and ran with it.

Us crying foul isn’t about TSSZ becoming popular. I could give a fuck about your news site. It’s about respect to Mr. Andac.

[....]

You have no right to tell us how to behave when you don’t even run a news site properly. Your site is an absolute embarrassment to the Sonic community and I wish that you’d get the fuck out. We would all be a lot more happier if you didn’t kick up drama all the time. You don’t deserve to even cover this community, since you obviously don’t respect it enough.

Sonic Stadium webmaster Svend Joscelyne, known as Dreadknux, was a bit kinder, but not by much:

Surely the catalyst for Ben’s current troubles is the TSSZNews article and the replication of that article on various other game websites, not the fanbase itself.

I do feel bad for the poor guy, all things considered. I’m not sure why his job at Sony would be in jeopardy over this, although I can see it from his current employer’s eyes – if you’ve done the dirty and broken NDAs and whatnot when you were in your last job, there’s a worry that it might happen with Sony as well.

This all did spiral out of control, and a lot of us have grossly overreacted to what essentially was a glorified rant sprinkled with some new information on NiGHTS: JoD’s development and a Sonic Unleashed reveal. Aside from those two elements, nothing said was really of importance to us, yet somehow a lot of us latched onto the “passionless Sonic Team” part like it was news. I can see why FlashTHD (nice to see you again, by the way dude) dug further into this situation in order to uncover some potential development tidbits, but I guess the corporo-bitching makes for a better news story; which is why we’ve seen TSSZ, Kotaku et al run with that angle. An unwanted side-effect for some behind-the-scenes information, for sure.

Although I am inclined to agree with the position that Ben did set himself up for this inevitabiliy, nobody deserves to lose a job over an incident that they clearly regret and have moved on from. Particularly in this state of recession going on – I wish Ben all the best.

[....]

Tristan, I’m going to break it down quite simply – it’s not the story that’s the problem, it’s the attitude. Put simply; you’re not a fucking journalist.

Not all SSMB members share these sentiments.  Aurora Borealis put things in a different perspective:

…While you guys are constantly telling people that TSSZNews are assholes for publishing the news, I was honestly hoping that someone would have the decent sense to comment on the fact that, why did Andac even put the blog up there in the first place?  Sure, it might have been under an anonymous names, but where exactly is the point in that? You’re talking about how the company you work for is screwing up and you’re posting this on the internet. The motherfucking internet, where anyone can go on and publicly humiliate the living fuck out of you on sites like MySpace and YouTube, ruining your image and life. The guy was spreading information completely meant to stay on the inside of things and it doesn’t matter how anonymous the guy may be, it’s not supposed to happen. Saying that you ”regret it now” is a little too late for that. Besides you’re also posting a story about one of the most well-known VG characters in the world, knowing fans they’ll obviously eat it and twist it around the worst way possible. [....] Internet is going to fuck you up and bastardize things one way or another.

Dreadknux would backtrack some on his original comments before blowing the thread to bits:

Everyone’s going to hate any professional news outlet for simply reporting stuff. There are newspapers in Britain that are constantly getting sued because of something they said that the papers ran with. I have people who hate this site for some reason. Hate happens.

I understand your agitation about people talking down TSSZ about reporting this story, because it’s been picked up by loads of outlets and still you’re getting shitragged. I think the difference is the effect your article in particular is having on Andac – I can’t vouch for any other site, but Kotaku for example has angled their carrying of your story towards the NiGHTS development. Which I’m sure was the point of Flash’s discovery rather than the bitching that surrounded it. I think focusing on the ‘Anti-SEGA’-ness of it all is probably where people think you may be ‘spinning’ it, as whatever happened between Ben and SEGA most likely ended when he decided to delete all of his posts.

I’ll continue to respect the direction you’ve taken this and future stories, but I’m just trying to make you see why people may be at your heels with this.

It is unclear as to whether discussion of the story will ever resume.

This is a good opportunity to note that TSSZ News holds a policy not to retract or edit stories except in the case of a clear factual error.  Further, TSSZ News will continue to defend and vouch for the accuracy of all of our reporting, as well as our team members who post news on this site.  We will bring you more fan reaction from across the gaming world regarding our story in the coming days.

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