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Comic for: April 1st, 2008
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Woody & Ted: "april fools... yeah yeah"
Posted: Tuesday April 1st, 2008 by

From a gaming news perspective, I detest April Fools Day. No "legitimate" source of news should ever post fake news without a disclaimer. And magazines are the worst because their April issues typically come out at the beginning of March, which screws everyone up.

Now where I might consider doing an April Fools joke, I would never post fake GU news just so I could giggle and clap when/if anyone bit and started spreading it around. What seems to happen, year in and year out, is that some news sites do not re-post news the day it is released; Slashdot for example. So when they go grab the news a few days later "April Fools" does not immediately occur to them. They post the news as if it was true, then people link the spectacular news Slashdot just posted, and the ball starts rolling 3 days after the fact. This continues until someone catches the error and points out that the original article was fake.

I think it speaks to my point quite a bit that Joystiq actually posted a news item yesterday called "Beware: Tomorrow is April Fools' Day" wherein they point out the warning signs of fake news articles and remind people to take what they read with "a grain of salt".
Source: Joystiq [ more info ]

All that being said, I do think some sites do it well. Last year VG Cats did their comic, took a screenshot of the site, and then put it online upside down, so the entire site was flipped on its head. See? That didn't hurt/mislead anyone. Scott Kurtz telling people he'd finally been syndicated and then laughing at all of the emails/posts congratulating him... different.

Then of course there is Blizzard. They walk the middle somewhere. We know what they're posting is an April Fools joke, but we lust for it to actually be put into their games. A few years ago they said they were putting in two headed ogres as a playable race, and two different characters would play each head. That's funny, but people actually clamored for them to make it happen. This year... a Bard Hero Class that uses Guitar Hero to play their ingame instrument. They also "announced" Molten Core, a new console game. What amused me about that was the Atari 2600 style graphics. They have these fanastic pieces of concept art and then this barely recognizable series of pixels that represent the character in game.

So yeah, I know I might be somewhat alone, and obviously HEAVILY biased, in my opinion of April Fools day. But, there really is a method to my madness. And there are plenty of ways to do it "right". Now if you excuse me I have to go poop in someone's shoes and yell "April Fools".

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Today's Pimpage: Woody is wearing an "Epic Battle" shirt from Threadless.Com.

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