@wewantsthering said:

Maybe there should there be a separate opinion section on GiantBomb? This is not a news article. It's Alex's opinion on a news item.

Safe to say WM doesn't pay a writer's fee for blog entries.

Man I played the hell out of those Carmen Sandiego games in elementary school!

Also, just going to leave this here...

who cares

good article tho

The WARRant.

That's too bad. My earliest video game memory is playing (or rather, sitting with my grandfather and 'playing') one of the Carmen Sandiego games. I always joke about naming my future-daughter Carman Sandiago. Probably not any more.

This good be good.

http://www.collegehumor.com/video/753627/where-the-fck-is-carmen-sandiego

I like Alex's articles save for their long-windedness. Talk about beating things into the ground.

When did the Giant Bomb audience get such a stick up its butt about news/journalism? I love Alex's writing, always have, all the way back to the Gamespot days. He injects personality and humor in everything he writes without slipping into that vague fake snarkyness so many new games writers try for.

This is Giant freaking Bomb, by the way. As Jeff said once, it's about the byline here, not about bland flavorless news, reviews and previews. I'm a former journalist, used to report on businesses and corporations all day. That kind of stale AP Style writing is the last thing I want out of my video game news. I longed to be able to write with such flair when I was a reporter. This is a site about VIDEO GAMES people. They are fun, reading about them should be too. You can have news with loose breezy writing filled with hilarious jokes like this, it's okay. Those of you wishing for stricter journalism standards from this game site (or any other for that matter) need to loosen up.

On topic: J-Lo should star in the next Transformers movie. Maybe then they'll just implode and stop bothering our eyes.

Well... fuck.

My most treasured childhood memories are of playing Carmen Sandiego games with my dad. I would be ok with this movie as long as it stays children-focused and doesn't try to take the premise to some dark, "more mature" place (although how that could be done anyway is beyond me), and as long as Sandiego is played by anyone other than Jennifer Lopez. I personally think Penelope Cruz would be great, she has an energetic presence and a sense of fun. Like J.Lo used to before she became...J.Lo.

I always enjoy Alex's articles. They're funny and poignant. You know what your getting from his titles.

Alex title.

That's ok, we all know where the real Carmen Sandiego is. Back in the 80's and 90's.

They arnt doing anything else with the licenses, so why not.

OH NO! This thing that appealed to me as a very small child and no longer appeals to me as an adult will continue to not appeal to me!

They brought out ultra turbo hater to write this one. I think your memories of the game and game show are insanely tainted by nostalgia if you think this movie will "ruin" them. In both, all it was was kids answering questions about countries and cities. There's not much too ruin.

Honestly, I think Jennifer Lopez, is a gorgeous woman, but she's not a very good actress, which is why I'm surprised she's probably going to play Carmen Sandiago. Hopefully, the movie will get good reviews when it comes out.

@wewantsthering said:

@The_Patriarch: The only preference that I'm talking about is preferring well written, unbiased, interesting news articles. I'm not saying Alex is a bad writer. I'm saying he is terrible at writing news articles. I would love to see his articles under an opinion section. They simply have too much opinion/personality/goofiness to be under the News Headlines section of GiantBomb. I actually like Alex a lot. I like his reviews and (in the old days) his video reviews.

About Sidenote: Yes it does when it's a news item. It doesn't matter how silly the thing you are reporting on is. The point is to relay the news.

It's about expectations: if someone is coming to Giant Bomb expecting completely unbiased and unopinionated reporting, then they'll probably be aghast. But you don't go to a Chinese restaurant and complain because they don't have Italian food. You say "Oh, I'm in the wrong place for what I wanted." Once you know what to expect, you then have a choice: enjoy it for what it is or go elsewhere to get what you want.

Far as I can tell, the people who pay Alex's paycheck have zero issue with how he writes his news articles, otherwise they wouldn't be paying him to do it. Likewise, none of the other staff members seem to have an issue with it, or they would probably have told him to tone it down by now. Most of the community members seem to appreciate Alex's brand of wit, as well.

We know it's opinionated -- he's not trying to fool anyone. Whiskey Media in general have been pretty straight forward about their content being more personal. But as @The_Patriarch said, there are a lot of sites out there that provide gaming news straight-up without this kind of flavor and color. If we want it, we know where to get it -- there's no reason for Giant Bomb to do the same thing.

I mean hell, TIME Magazine added them to their top 50 websites of 2011 while making a point to say their content is "looser, funnier, and more opinionated ..." That, I think, shows pretty clearly that this kind of news coverage is a welcome and wanted alternative to what's available elsewhere.

Making a movie out of Carmen Sandiego sounds easy as fuck, but someone, somewhere is probably going to miss the point.

I would watch a Carmen Sandiego with Eva Mendes in the role. But only if they still have those Rockapella dudes teaching me things :)

Fuck Jennifer Lopez.

Fuck National Treasure too. I'm tired of that franchise getting off the hook. It's awful. Movie-adventures; stop aspiring to be a terrible Nicholas Cage movie.

This movie will be awful. Hopefully, if J-Lo does end up playing the role, it'll bomb horribly.

@Branthog said:

This falls into the category of things that are twenty or thirty years old or greater and that I therefore could not fucking care less about seeing ruined because . . . you know, it was decades ago and I'm an adult now. Like Transformers. Go ahead. Butcher it. Ruin it. It doesn't impact anyone except the one guy in his basement with a massive collection of Carmen Sandiego crap.

You're missing the point. Nobody rational applies any sort of sanctity to Carmen Sandiego, it's just that people realise how dumb this is that Jenny from the Blog is trying to remain relevant in video game driven world.

HOLLLLLY FUUUUCK!!! I used to kill at that game show. PBS's Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego was my favorite show growing up; hands down. Lynn Thigpen has passed-on and I haven't heard anything from Greg Lee or Rockapella so no reason to cash-in on this old IP.

Jennifer Lopez...? Really? Might as well get Reese Witherspoon for a Ghostwriter remake.

Holy shit: I love Carmen Sandiego!

@EchoEcho said:
We know it's opinionated -- he's not trying to fool anyone. Whiskey Media in general have been pretty straight forward about their content being more personal. But as @The_Patriarch said, there are a lot of sites out there that provide gaming news straight-up without this kind of flavor and color. If we want it, we know where to get it -- there's no reason for Giant Bomb to do the same thing.

I don't think the issue is that Alex or Patrick mix opinion with the news. The problem is that they do it in a long, sloppy fashion that takes forever to get to the point (and I think they're both guilty of this at times). There have been too many news articles that barely warranted a short paragraph go on for over 5 paragraphs, mostly filled with conversational, snarky, un-concise banter about the news at hand.

I think they should take a page from the AV Club news blurbs, which rarely weigh in at more than one or two paragraphs, but still have room for some smart quips about what's being reported. Here's a random example of their style:

http://www.avclub.com/articles/remember-janet-jacksons-wardrobe-malfunction-from,64507/

I think that longer, more conversational tone works great on podcasts, but less so in print. At the very least, they need to get the news out of the way in the first paragraph, and save the editorial for further down.

Oregon Trail references? Did I black out and fall into a time machine?
 
Also, these people insulting Carmen Sandiego are all assholes who hate learning and probably had backwards, joyless childhoods.

@yeah_write: Right on!

Cynical headline... Yep, that's Alex's doing.

She really does suck so bad and does ruin everything. If only Jen's untalented fats ass would somehow collide with the even more untalented and only famous for a fuck film Kim Kardashian's fat ass... and they were both knocked out of show biz or into space somehow... the world would be a better place.

People who talk shit on Alex and Patrick are probably Matt Kessler nut huggers. Go figure.

@jessej07 said:

OH NO! This thing that appealed to me as a very small child and no longer appeals to me as an adult will continue to not appeal to me!

That kind of makes me scratch my head. Who is the market for this? Are there that many 20-somethings who can fondly remember the games enough to go and see a movie based on it?

Oh man better get my '94 world almanac ready.

LOL'd so hard that that caption.

Also, Carmen Sandiegio rule 34ers are losing their shit right now.

endurance run please

That pic and caption. Epic.

I played the fuck out of some Carmen Sandiego.

If this results in a torrent of slutty Carmen Sandiegos during next halloween, I'm all for it.

Goddammit, Alex.You're article titles are fantastic.

All the mullets!!!!!

The Warrant!

I was somewhat into this as a kid in the 90s and I expect this to turn into some form of dinosaur shit.

I <3 Alex!

Anyways, Jennifer Lopez is pretty much the worst person in hollywood, so despite having fond memories of Carmen Sandiego...I hope this fails on all levels and causes her to go bankrupt or something equally dramatic.

I think I could find Carmen Sandiego faster than I could find Jenny Lopez's career.

Where in Time is far superior to Where in the World in the Carmen Sandiego franchise.

Hennifer Lopez?....taco taco burrito!

Seriously though, Sofia Vergara would be perfect for this role.

Muy bueno!

@Turambar: Word

Never played any of the games, but as a kid I remember watching the original game show and even enjoying the cartoon as well. That being said, I feel apathetic about a Camen Sandiego movie. Dane Cook could play the role in drag and I wouldn't care.

@Lively: Maybe I've been reading the wrong websites and newspapers, but I've never felt that Alex or Patrick take any longer to get to the point than most other news articles, whether they're being snarky or not. If you prefer conciseness, I think that's a perfectly valid complaint, though granted not the one I was responding to. If you really want the point up front, though, the headline and lead tell you what's important in less than a paragraph (at least on this story). And really, I don't have a problem with people wanting no-nonsense news articles, either, I just don't know why they're so insistent that Giant Bomb specifically is the website they need to get it from. There are plenty of options, and there's no reason why people can't get their news from multiple sources. I was pretty sure that's what most people did anyway.

@Anwar: Hey, that's cool by me. I wasn't saying that people can't want their news without personality. I just don't think people should hold it against Alex (or Giant Bomb in general) for providing it that way. There are plenty of sources for news on the internet -- if someone doesn't appreciate how one source provides it, just go to another, really.