Where's Big Albie?

I don't think it was about TA not giving Albie a chance. After all, he was anointed a semi-official reviewer/impression giver, and had lots of articles posted to the front page.

The problem was people lobbing attacks in his direction just for doing what he did so well, write reviews. The biggest complaint I always heard about BA was that he never wrote anything negative about games. But what nobody took the time to consider is that there's fifty billion apps on the store. Fifty billion. That's a lot. Writing reviews takes a lot of time and thought. Why would somebody spend their valuable free time (that sliver that falls in between working full time, paying bills, and spending time with family and friends) and waste it writing a detailed review about a game that sucks? What would be the point?

Imagine the last really crappy iPhone game you played. Now imagine having to force yourself to slog through it enough to be able to review it. Sure, you don't necessarily have to beat a game to be qualified to review it, but you do have to play a fair amount so as to see what's on offer. This can be several hours or more. Do you want to sit there and play a bad game for several hours in your spare time when there's a near endless supply of really good games that you could be playing? Now imagine having to think up 4 or 5 meaty paragraphs that talk about said crappy game, then spending 2-3 hours (maybe more, maybe less) actually putting it down into words and making it interesting for people to read. This is a lot of work for somebody to do in their spare time as a hobby.

And those attacks aren't strictly true, either. I HAVE seen Albie talk negatively about a game before. He's TOFTT plenty of times and quickly and concisely warned others not to plunk their money down for something. The haters probably just missed those posts because they're not in the usual epic "Big Albie Presents: Lengthy Thoughtful Review (Now With Albie Meter!™)" format. Again, there's no point in wasting your time going into detail about a bad game.

And anybody that would suggest that BA was paid to write positively about a game is just an ignoramus of the highest caliber.

I feel pretty bad about the way things turned out. A person spends their limited free time, out of the kindness of their heart, to write about games for other people's enjoyment and benefit. How do you get rewarded for such noble acts? Wild accusations and insults. I don't blame Albie for being soured towards reviewing. When you're passion all of a sudden turns into a "job", that can suck a lot of the fun out of it right there. But when people start lamenting you for doing your job, it can be downright intolerable. I'm thankful to him for sharing his talent and humor with us by way of the many reviews that he wrote. And I'm glad to see him pop in from time to time and visit. The majority of people appreciated what Big Albie did, and it's too bad his presence here was spoiled by an ignorant few.

Now I think I'll go double check my app store figures, fifty billion sounds a little high...