People love game rumors. There is just something about the possibility of a rumor being true, especially when we want it to be true, that we leach onto it and believe it with all our hearts, even sometimes believing still when companies deny the fact, insisting that they just want to cover up their secret. So, how exactly sure are rumors?

From the article:

Ah, rumors. The media love reporting them, the readers love reading them, and the forum trolls love prattling on about them endlessly to anyone who will listen. Unfortunately, by the time most of these rumors finally get confirmed as true or false, most journalists are busy chasing the next rumor, most readers have forgotten about the original report altogether and most forum trolls are still trying to sell the one about Apple buying Nintendo (it aint gonna happen! Move on!).

At its best, rumor reporting gives readers a valuable scoop on some important facts months before they're officially announced. At its worst, rumor reporting misleads readers with false visions, only to eventually dash their hopes upon the rocks like so many bottles of Heineken at a beach party.

Obviously, any sufficiently large sample of rumors will include plenty of examples of both types of reporting. But which type is more common? I decided to find out by looking at the granddaddy of all game rumor reporting columns—Electronic Gaming Monthly's Quartermann.

Started in 1988's short-lived Electronic Game Player magazine, the Quartermann column moved on to the pages of EGM starting with issue 1, where it still runs to this very day. Despite the seemingly eponymous column title, the Quartermann moniker has passed from writer to writer through the magazine's history, a semi-open secret finally confirmed in a 2004 blog post by former EGMer Chris Johnston. The venerable column has gone through some slight name changes through the years, including "Q-Mann" and the current "Rumor Mill by Quartermann," but the string of monthly rumor reporting remains unbroken.

Read the full article over at biz.gamedaily.com