You’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t. At least, that’s how it is when it comes to game reviews and previews. Provide soft, fluffy reviews that start at 8 — and only go up — and you’re doing a disservice to your readers by catering to the game companies who advertise in your magazine. Provide hard-edged, honest reviews that tell it like it is and the company pulls its ads to punish you. In the wake of Gerstmanngate, writing up a negative review of a game would seem to be the fastest way to end up in the unemployment line, but what happens when the entire magazine suffers at the hands of a miffed game company? If you’re Dan Hsu, you call them out.

Except for the cases where an advertisement showed me a product I was actually interested in and maybe even gave me some piece of useful information, I’ve generally been insulted and annoyed by the majority of the ones I couldn’t outright, completely ignore. I’ve seen just about everything from blatant product placements in major motion pictures to being told I wasn’t cool unless I had the latest gizmo by the very people who made that gizmo. In a lament voiced by The Rolling Stones over 40 years ago, I’m just the latest version of the dude who can’t get no satisfaction.