Aliens: Colonial Marines Not Discussed – Pitchford

It’s a staple gripe with this industry; the almost unending amount of false-information, misinterpretation and, in some cases, blatant fabrication concocted by people who are either purposely out to misdirect or have trouble understanding English.

Yesterday we reported that Gearbox’s Aliens: Colonial Marines would not release this year. The source of this information? A forum member on NeoGAF who had, apparently, read a certain interview in US gaming magazine EGM with Gearbox’s Randy Pitchford. Like many other sites we reported this as news despite the fact we had not read the magazine ourselves or seen screens of the interview with Pitchford in question. Since the news of the delay hit, Pitchford has come out denouncing the claim that Aliens: Colonial Marines is now pushed to 2012 as hogwash. Speaking to Eurogamer, he said:

I haven’t seen the issue of Edge [sic] that the NeoGAF story is referencing or what was printed, but I am certain that I haven’t discussed anything specific regarding Aliens: Colonial Marines with anyone beyond emphasising how passionate I am about the title and how committed my studio and I are to making it great.

It looks to me like whomever made that post on NeoGAF made an interpretation that could be misleading or inaccurate.

I am excited that there is so much interest in the game that stories like this tend to pop up literally out of nowhere and from nothing, and I am looking forward to talking more about Aliens: Colonial Marines very soon so that speculation and arbitrariness can be replaced with tangible, reliable and accurate information.

In hindsight we probably should have waited to see the interview ourselves. Our bad. The fact is, however, we do assume someone reporting on an interview in a magazine can interpret it correctly*. We’ve sourced NeoGAF many times in the past, and in the vast majority of cases the information in question was accurate. Do we stop believing NeoGAF content because of this disingenuous story?

The fact is: whenever you see “Source: NeoGAF” at the bottom of any article here at TheSixthAxis, an inherent pinch of salt must be added to the story in question. After all, we are talking about a forum which, obviously, any yahoo can post on. We do try to siphon through the obvious nonsense but in this particular case we probably should have at least highlighted that the information in question was rumour and not fact until confirmation was issued by either Gearbox or Sega. We’re not perfect.

As for the revelation regarding Pitchford’s assurance that he did not discuss Aliens: Colonial Marines in any detail, it should be noted that does not mean the game will see a release this year. It just means he didn’t say it was delayed.

*The forum poster has since updated his post (removing the line about the delay) and has apologised for the misunderstanding. In his defence, it does appear that English might not be his first language considering his update (“If I was mislead, I apologize”) doesn’t particularly suggest a mastery of the tongue. Of course, this is the Internet, such mangling of the English language is almost expected! :)

[Update] Destructoid’s Jim Sterling, called out for not checking facts by Pitchford in the Eurogamer article, gave Randy a call to talk Aliens. Here’s what Pitchford said:

Aliens is a very important project for us — something I am incredibly passionate about and that my studio and I are very committed to. In the EGM interview, I basically dodged the question about launch dates because we’re not quite ready to talk about Aliens yet.

But, SEGA has been super proactive and I can tell they are very excited about the game and I can imagine it won’t be long before the communication will restart and I will be turned loose to talk about it. Until then, I would not be the correct source to talk about the release date.

I know where we are and what I imagine will unfold, but we have partners in SEGA and Fox who respectively are focused on games publishing and are responsible for the brand and they are the guys who should speak about such things. Until then, I will continue to dodge questions about the ship date just like I did with EGM.”

Source: Eurogamer