Here’s the thing: the world is a terribly mundane place.

Nothing ever really happens. You get up, you go to work, you pay your bills, you watch TV, you go to bed… It’s so dull that we are always looking for ways to spice it up. Perhaps this is a side effect of the 24-hour news cycle. Surely, existence is not this uneventful? Surely, there’s a greater meaning to it all?

Upon careful reflection of my life, I often question my own intelligence; so, I invite readers to do the same. That said, however, I have come to the conclusion that life takes on the meaning which we lay upon it. It’s up to the individual to color his or her life with his or her own meaning. We must identify what stimulates us, and surround ourselves in that; we should recognize those qualities which we value, and work towards protecting them. Without these inspirations or goalposts, our daily being risks reverting back to that existential hellhole of which I wrote earlier.

Perhaps it is in the spirit of this drama-seeking that some people romantically and naively cling to the idea that scores are inflated or deflated because there’s perfidy afoot.

What a lode of fatuous nonsense. What kind of business model is that? How long do you think that’ll get you before you’re exposed, and it’s over? How much do you think you can charge for that kind of service, anyway, that would make it worth it? Because there isn’t enough money to make up for a dirt name or absence of self-respect. Surely, it has happened before, but the misbehavior of unscrupulous agents is hardly sufficient for a permanent indictment of an industry – be it us or even our competitors.

And indeed, I suppose that’s why we see a shift in a crumbling argument from the first video to the second. Somewhere between the two, you realized you made an awful mistake slandering OPNoobs of manipulating scores, of “intellectual dishonesty,” to use the phrase you like to bandy about quite ironically.

So, you turned instead to the plight of the working man, taking the sweat and toil of labor on your broad, heroic shoulders. This is a poorly advised sleight-of-argumentative-hand. Think of the writers! Won’t someone, please? How could Fred Brizzi, Presidente (he’s Italian), nuke the hard work of his writers?

Alas, you already know the answer to that, I suspect, because you conspicuously avoided mentioning it in any of your diatribes: quality of content.

When OPNoobs was accredited, Fred immediately sought to protect this distinction, out of a service to our readership and the Metacritic brand. Do you really think that during their review process, Metacritic considered every piece of writing to be of the same caliber? Or is it possible – just maybe? -- that perhaps some of the content was better, and it was this content that was being acknowledged and encouraged.

Is it possible that Fred made a decision to remove substandard content and improve the overall production quality of the site? Because no one ever does that, right? Oh, wait…

I remember distinctly when Fred asked me to come on board as editor-in-chief. We were having lunch at a café in Georgetown. His decision to remove, as you put it, “substandard” content was objective and measured, and it was largely based on the writers – not the publisher, not the developer – since it was easier to do it that way. Fred, or any one, for that matter, is under no obligation to spend time refining old pieces or combing through submissions to determine which are or are not good enough. He was acting efficiently. Humans are mortal beings, and time is of the essence. There’s never enough time – just ask anyone.

Slapping your fingers against a keyboard does not make you a writer any more than putting on running shoes makes you a track star.

And to hide behind the term “writer,” throwing everyone into the same bucket, is to be very unfair to the ones who go through a first draft, and then a second, and then look up some construction in a technical manual to make sure they’re using it just right. If you think people aren’t above just submitting random words sloppily cobbled together, and being done with it, then you’re wrong. And if you’re going to sit there and tell me that everyone’s writing is gold, then I’m going to sit here and tell you, it isn’t. As I wrote earlier, time is limited. When a “writer” doesn’t want to go through the trouble of checking his work, he forces the editor to spend undue time correcting it. This isn’t so much an inconvenience as it is a disrespect to his fellow writers.

I like how you try to intimidate through fear tactics, asking the current writers why they should trust that Fred won’t double-cross them. As our company matures, so does our selectivity. I’m proud to say that our current writers are top-notch, and when they have a bad day, I’m here to make sure they still cross the finish line looking their best. We don’t want to lose content on our site anymore than they do, but in our efforts to establish ourselves as a premium news source for the industry, we are not going to be beholden to the lamentations of those who didn’t bother polishing their own pieces, to begin with.

I don’t know you and I don’t watch your videos, and I certainly won’t after this exchange.

But don’t presume to speak towards the editorial practices of our company, especially when you haven’t even spoken to its editor. I go through great lengths to help our writers write better, and that’s why they spoke up – but you callously dismissed their complaints as some form of tribalism. The professional experience and exposure, I reckon, is a fair trade for a free game, a request to give us 1,000 words on it, and a platform on which to share one's opinion.

The games they review? Oh, they pick them, based on their interest. How often must they review? Oh, whenever they feel like it. Yes, what a treacherous slave driver, that Fred Brizzi. What a morally bankrupt, shady guy, that Fred. He’s so cold and distant, that he heard out what you had to say – a luxury, may I remind you, that you never afforded him – and he has reinstated the work of earlier writers. The definition of a monster.

I know Fred, and I know he sees the beauty of games both for what they are and for what they could be, and I know that he works like a madman to share this vision with the world. I’m sorry that you think someone owes you, or anyone else, an apology.

PS: Sid, you might not wish to speak with Fred in an open forum – and I suspect I know why – but you should at least have the self-respect and humility to acknowledge that you did, in fact, make a mistake in your title – and that’s fine: it’s just grammar, people make mistakes. I don’t know what the hell kind of Wikipedia mumbo-jumbo you’re trying to throw out there (passive tense? you mean passive voice, right?), but you’re wrong even by your own incorrect logic; “I was in fact using a present verbiage” – OK, well, in the present tense, the third person singular (“OPNOOBS site”) is conjugated as betrays, with an “s.” So, 0-for-2?

Also Check Out: OPNOOBS Guilty of Site Review Manipulation and Betray their Writers