Russ Pitts leaving Polygon (Insert GB hiring joke here)

So this is apparently happening.

For those that don't know, Russ Pitts was basically the features guy at Polygon and one of its founding members, back in the days when they were lavished with venture capital. He also does not have new work lined up, meaning he's basically pulled a John Drake. (Insert "Giant Bomb is hiring Pitts" joke here.)

I have never been a fan of Polygon, and what little of Pitts's work I've read has not left the best of tastes in my mouth. That being said, his departure in this manner and the tone of his farewell blog do leave me wondering. Particularly his postscript:

P.S. There will be those cynical few who consider my departure an admission of some kind of failure that they, watching from the sidelines, predicted long ago. They will say, “I told you so.” And that’s OK. They’re right. They did tell us so. But that was the easy part.

Throwing rocks from the gallery at those who are trying to do something ambitious is no great accomplishment. I’d rather be the one who rolls up his sleeves and tries to accomplish something inspiring, even if it may fail. Even if it won’t last.

But there is no failure here, just change. I’ll never be ashamed of the ambitious dreams we built at Polygon, and I’ll never be afraid to try again. Hopefully my modest successes will inspire others to do their own great, ambitious things and build their own dreams.

For those that don't recall, Polygon basically launched with a supergroup mentality that they would redefine game journalism. It was a lofty goal (some would say ridiculous), but it sounds like he's admitting, at least somewhat, that what plans they had for the site in the beginning didn't pan out exactly as they had hoped. I'm not going to sling rocks here; it sounds like his departure wasn't exactly his decision and I hope he lands on his feet, whatever happened. Still, this is going to make people wonder just what the heck is happening at Polygon.

Please don't let anyone from polygon close to giant bomb ...

Basically this. We don't need that here.

Really? Then I guess that job was really....the pits.

@video_game_king: yeah

The whole thing is weird. I'm not sure what would have changed or failed to cause this. Is Polygon in some sort of financial trouble or something?

I no longer go to Polygon after how they treated me recently but it's a shame Russ is losing his job.

He's a good writer and I hope he lands on his feet somewhere.

Seriously, though, fuck Polygon. I don't have a problem with that site going under so much. I like a lot of their staff (even if I disagree with some of the things they write), but the way they handle moderating legitimate constructive feedback is garbage and that's why I won't go there anymore.

@milkman: His work was based around long form articles that sounded like they were really time intensive and therefore costly to produce. I just don't think there is a huge audience for that kind of content anymore.

The McElroy Brothers are rad motherfuckers.

I don't know, I like Justin McElroy, and to a lesser extent Griffin the Younger.

the man builds websites, and he probably set up Polygon to run without him. He's off to build another site, I see nothing cynical about it. Just that everyone claimed Polygon is Arthur Gies, because that's how the internet blames things.

@milkman: I suspect they no longer wish to produce well written articles and are going to start writing more of the trash opinion articles like what they had during E3 as they always get more comments so I assume they get more views.

Seriously, the loss of Russ is a huge blow. He's legitimately a good writer and wrote some of the most amazing pieces I've ever read about video games. However, I don't think there is a market for that as people don't like to read- less so (statistically speaking) video game players.

That's what it seems like on the surface, at least. I was browsing a GAF discussion on the topic and Polygon apparently gets a lot more traffic for their shorter, more tabloid-esque articles than they do for their longform features by a significant margin. Whoever was handling the books might have just felt that his contributions were too much cost for not enough return.

This, unfortunately, reminds me far too much of Kotaku, and is the same reason I gave up on Kotaku many years ago.

How very bizarre. I follow Polygon somewhat closely and haven't really perceived anything out of the ordinary in the stuff they've been doing recently. In fact I thought their E3 coverage was pretty fantastic, if a little dry on occasion.

I wonder if the nebulous "Failure" he references is a shared sentiment among the staff or is something personal to his own thoughts. I don't dislike Polygon but I could certainly see how the relatively normal games site they are today contrasts with the ambitious start they had in a negative way.

Fair enough. I'm admittedly not familiar with his work. I would tend to agree that that sort of content is falling out of favor a bit, which is a shame because when done well, those deep dive-type articles can be some of my favorite video game related content.

@darkstalker: Would you turn away those McElroy brothers? Those guys are great.

yep

The Joystiq Podcast with Justin, Ludwig Kietzmann, and Chris Grant was great back in the day, but he wasn't kidding when he called himself an old man of games journalism. People already complain about how jaded and cynical the staff is, and I disagree with the notion, but Justin McElroy is the real deal in that department.

Maybe he got tired of watching his dream turn into a cesspool of click bait and sensationalist garbage, because I found his and the McElroy's work to be the only work I liked.

It's a shame that polygon is such a pretty, well laid out site with so many people I don't care for writing for them.

Have you watched Phil Kollar play dumb games on the Stream Friends twitch channel?

Polygon deserves a lot of the flack it gets but I thought their features section was actually really good, and most of the credit for it lies with Russ Pitts. It was really the only interesting thing about the site, and the fact that it's likely to wither on the vine with Pitts gone bums me out.

Wish I knew who that was. I don't follow Polygon. I wish him all the best though.

Man, in his post script he sounds pretty full of himself. Not endearing at all. I really only barely know his name, though, so maybe I shouldn't judge him based on that.

Wait a moment, isn't Russ Pitts from The Escapist? When did he leave that joint?

Edit: I Forgot this is the internet and that's easy information. 2011 he left there. I'm way out of it.

Giant Bomb's numbah one darling.

@blu3v3nom07: I like Arthur Gies but goddamn if the picture he chose for that didn't project all the things people seem to hate about him.

Maybe they hire a woman so that it isn't all (predominately white 10/11) men running Polygon.

Yup. Hiring one or both of them would be pretty fucking incredible and probably do a lot to settle the fears/doubts about this site that seem to have been popping up lately.

Can't say I know who this guy that left is, though.

@wallofbricks: I agree! But, I guess that's the point.

For what its worth, its amazing how much The Verge doesn't get as much hate as they should, yet Polygon does! Neat-o.

@l4wd0g: Polygon has several female writers and it seems like they 90% of the time write trash pieces.

That was just my perception, though.

You don't turn away the brothers McElroy. The brothers McElroy turn YOU away. Or more likely give you hugs.

Yep, never heard of him and please dont hire.

@cornbredx: they do. And I'll agree most of their work is bad, but Tracy's articles are kind of the best. I guess my point is that all of the leadership is made up of entirely men. When they write E3 stories like, "There are more severed heads than female presenters at the press conferences" it's the pot calling the kettle black.

@l4wd0g: I agree 100%

Your comment actually made me think about that when I took the dog out a little bit ago.

That article was the worst too. Oh man.

Probably shouldn't go there, though. I don't want to derail the thread.

Anyway, agreed =)

I don't visit Polygon much so I don't really get the hate. Most of the exposure I have is through Patrick's Worth Reading where some amazing long form articles gave me stories about the game industry I can't get anywhere else. Too bad it seems that stuff is going away from what I'm reading in these comments.

Say what you will about Polygon, but I would accept Justin McElroy (and if we had take his brother as part of the deal, then yeah, him too) in a fucking heartbeat here at Giantbomb. We'd finally have our very own Sherlock Holmes editorial expert! We've been needing one of those ever since Justin told his first Sherlock Holmes game story.

And I like Arthur. I get why people don't, but I still like him.

I wish Giant Bomb allowed direct video embedding, but if you go to this page: http://www.polygon.com/e3-2014 the video titled "Justin and Griffin: your Guide to e3" is pretty hilarious. McElroys are the exception.

POLYBOMB

Don't get the Polygon hate. Maybe if they complained about everything all the time it would appeal more to this community.

What I find interesting is that everyone seems to have a different reason for not liking Polygon, I guess if you add all things up it becomes a place no one wants to visit. So far I heard everything from "they moderate the community unfairly" to "I don't like sensationalist clickbait".

A lot of the things have happened to The Verge too and now it's just a shadow of its former self. Polygon never had the chance to be as awesome as The Verge once was though. I'm not sure I can blame Vox for that or that is just what journalism has come to.

@development said:

Most of the hate stems from Arthur Gies being a prick. And he is a prick. He'd say so himself. That's where a lot of it comes from, I think.

Then you have guys like Brian Crecente who have to wear their association with Kotaku like the mark of Cain, and that didn't help. And even the McElroy brothers aren't immune. I love Justin, for instance, but follow him on Twitter for awhile and he turns from funny to some kind of old man yelling at children. Not in an endearing, funny way, either.

I guess my point is that all it takes is the most visible person on a site to influence public opinion. While I'm sure plenty of decent (and some hilarious) people work at Polygon, nobody can see it over how much of a douchebag some of them are.

@oldirtybearon Yeah I agree with all that. And yeah, I don't use twitter, but somehow I occasionally see tweets from Justin and wonder if I'm missing out on a joke or something, because some of them are a bit much. Though, to be totally honest... Alex has some of those tweets... though not as many lately. I have loved all of Justin's podcasts, though, so I'll happily keep indulging in his funny side. Sawbones is the best.

The amount of Polygon hate is really saddening. For every great, in-depth feature Patrick writes, Polygon has three. Granted, they have more people on staff able to write said features, but it really is a wealth of nuanced coverage. Russ wrote a fantastic piece about Vlambeer's troubles with Ridiculous Fishing getting cloned, and it's on par with Patrick's Threes! piece (in very different ways; Patrick focuses on the mechanical and philosophical aspects of cloning; Russ writes more about how it affected Vlambeer as a studio and Rami and JW's morale).

Also, all of the supposed clickbait-y, "trash opinion" articles written over the E3 week were insightful, levelheaded discussions about gender and minority representation in gaming. It's an issue that warrants further discourse and sadly few websites are covering it. Polygon and Giant Bomb are, in my experience, the sole exceptions.

It's fine to write about that but if you need to sign it with a headline that is deliberately trashy in order to drive SEO and comment engagement I can not respect you as a writer.

@theking: it was mainly me that complained harshly and I do so because of a recent incident I had with their moderation.

I'm not going into it because it's unnecessary, but the gist of my problem with them is that they don't accept respectful, constructive criticism when they post articles that are of questionable quality.

If that's what happening to Polygon, pretty much it's reason for existing is gone. We don't need two Kotakus or another PAR if Kuchera's presence is leading it that way.

Can't say I was a fun of Pitts's persona at all, but their longform stuff was the only truly interesting about the site.

I understand this is totally mean as a burn on GB, but I basically agree... Hmmm

@blu3v3nom07 said:

@bigjeffrey said:

Giant Bomb's numbah one darling.

But, he already works for Giant Bomb:

Everyone seems to be focusing on Justin as representative of the McElroy brothers (either you love him or hate him). Griffin is just as awesome and he seems to be a whole lot less jaded than his brother (dare I say, even enthusiastic at times). He's also an insightful dude, funny and an excellent writer - a lot of things that complement the GB crew.

Edit: But yeah, not a fan of Arthur Gies. The man exudes "fuck you - I know better" to almost everyone in close proximity.