About
Polygon is a video game site owned by Vox Media, which publishes news, reviews and video content.
History
On October 4th, 2012, Polygon[1] was launched as the third web property by Vox Media out of the company’s tech news blog The Verge.
Controversies
GamerGate
In the wake of the Zoe Post that spawned the GamerGate movement, many criticized Polygon editor Ben Kuchera for donating to the Patreon page of video game developer Zoe Quinn prior to reviewing her game. On August 26th, Polygon released a statement announcing that all writers must disclose any contributions they have made to developer’s Patreon accounts.
Rock Band 4 Review
On June 1st, 2015, Polygon[2] published an article about the game Rock Band 4. The following day, TotalBiscuit posted a dramatic reading of the article on SoundCloud, in which he mimics the accent of a wealthy aristocrat (shown below).
Doom Gameplay Footage
On May 12th, 2016, Polygon uploaded a 30-minute video containing footage from the recently released reboot of the Doom video game series (shown below). In the video, the player is shown moving erratically and repeatedly missing targets while shooting various weapons. After many viewers left comments on the video pointing out the player’s lack of first-person shooter experience, the comments and ratings were disabled for the video. That day, the video was mocked on the /r/gaming[3] and /r/KotakuInAction[4] subreddits.
On May 16th, Redditor Tac_Reso uploaded an animated GIF of two police officers in Family Guy wildly shooting while running titled “Polygon trying to play Doom” (shown below, left). In five days, the post gained over 860 votes (96% upvoted) and 120 comments on the /r/pcmasterrace[7] subreddit.
On May 18th, Markus Persson posted a tweet[6] mocking the Polygon video, which received more than 7,000 likes and 2,300 retweets in 72 hours. The following day, TotalBiscuit criticized Polygon’s video production team for creating poor content (shown below, right).
Traffic
As of May 2016, the site has an global rank of 2,361 and a United States rank of 835 on the traffic analytics site Alexa.[5]
Search Interest
External References
[2]Polygon – Rock Band 4 is doing a lot of the fun things you want it to do
[3]Reddit – Polygons first thiry minutes of Doom
[4]Reddit – Polygons first thiry minutes of Doom
[5]Alexa – polygon.com
[6]Reddit – Polygon trying to play Doom
[7]Reddit – Polygon tries to play Doom