Sign in to follow this  
Marek

Game journalism is a joke (no matter from where you view it)

Recommended Posts

I know it's a tired subject but I have to rant about the games press for a bit.

When you're a game journalist (and I was one, albeit on the fringe) you're constantly bombarded with press releases. When you decide to use one as the basis of a news post, it's your duty to kind of go through them and ignore all the spin and PR bullshit, and find the little nuggets of actual information and actual news contained within them. PR managers are extremely good at burying the actual news if it's in a company's interest, and will generally tempt journalists with easy-to-copy-paste prefab quotes and straplines, but you kind of have to look through that.

I think very few people understand this and it's always disappointed me. And now that I'm on the 'other side', actually working in the game industry, and having the full view from the inside, I'm even more disappointed.

Like when the NCsoft reorganizations happened. If you were a smart journalist, you'd find a couple of real actual bits of news:

* Around 70 people were made redundant

* The company is stopping development in Europe

* Most of the 'political power' within NCsoft US is moving from Austin (Garriot brothers) to Seattle (ArenaNet founders)

Very few outlets picked up on any of these angles. Instead, 90% had a headline along the lines of "NCsoft announces new division NC West!" with some PR copy about how they're aiming to be #1 in making AAA MMOs. Some even went beyond the PR quotes, such as headlining with "NCSoft West to Take on Blizzard in Next-Gen MMOs". What? No one said that.

A couple of publications did use 1% of their brains and wondered what might be happening to Tabula Rasa in the future. They re-dug up some older rumors of it getting cancelled, but then headlined with something like "Tabula Rasa not being cut says NCsoft". They get maybe one brownie point for trying to connect the NC West announcement to Tabula Rasa, but again that wasn't really the heart of the news story, and even if it was they may have missed the truth there.

The redundancies were hardly mentioned. And even fewer really picked up on the other points.

Watching the headlines come in on Google News was truly depressing. Some people are trying to do a good job (I thought GamesIndustry.biz had a good writeup for instance), but I wish a lot more of them would. :( Maybe I'm expecting too much or being to hard on games writers who generally don't get much pay or much time to do their work, but still, it kind of makes me really sad all over again.

Edited by Marek

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yup, that does stink. A press release should be nothing more than the beginning of some research into an article, but these days it IS the article.

A sad and annoying state of affairs :(

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I wish you guys would bring back your news...

Somehow I think if there was at least just one strong journalist who reported the nitty-gritty and left out all the press release bullshit and got straight to the point, then many others would follow suit.

But that would only happen if this one strong journalist had a large enough audience.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Unfortunately my impression is that this is a problem not restricted to games journalism only, but journalism in general (just looking at the press coverage of the election campaigns here in Austria makes me sad). And it's always the topics closely related to oneself that you really start to notice how bad things are.

Surely there's a small percentage of journalists with enough respect for themselves and their work, who don't invariably tend to always take the easiest route. I don't think the percentage has increased in any way though, which leads me to sadly conclude: there's just too few readers even noticing to make it worth the effort on a broader scale :/

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Agreed; I attempted to read a hardware "review" last week that was blatantly a padded-out press release, with basically no effort to disguise this fact.

What was most alarming was the dozen or so "great review!!!" comments after it... if they're not getting slammed for it by their audience, they'll just keep getting away with it.

And no, they certainly won't all follow suit; they'll continue to do whatever completes their words-per-article/posts-per-day metrics as quickly, easily and cheaply as possible. That's why things are so lazy and shit right now. :(:frusty::violin::getmecoat

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

It's really just an expression of Sturgeon's Law. The only thing you can do is point more of the public towards good journalism and tell them "this is good journalism", and teach kids in school "what do you think makes good journalism"? It won't make bad or average journalists go away, but perhaps they will get paid less and so be a little more miserable.

Here's some good journalism news. Congratulations Remo; having a guest essay on Penny Arcade means you have Won The Internet! You may now proceed to the Next Level.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Remo's article is good but the post from Stardock is a million time superior; in fact, its the first article about piracy that isn't streching some numbers/truth or making far fetched assumptions.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
To PC gamers: let's stop turning every inconvenience into the plight of Sisyphus.

So bend over and accept it?... no thanks. Also his reasoning that because the masses are dumb/oblivious doesn't mean I should also jump from the bridge.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That stardock article is a good one.

What struck me this time round, is if they got the coverage he was talking about (front page splash etc) would that naturally lead to a greater piracy problem for the game?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

probably...

1% of 1.000.000 is more than 1% of 100.000

but there's also a chance that of the 900.000 extra people more than 1% is pirating

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

There's no excuse for not having a hugely profitable self-published digital distribution platform nowadays, none whatsoever.

I have no sympathy or time for companies that moan about retail's greed or piracy taking sales, especially not from a behemoth like EA.

Put up or shut up; lower the price and make it brain-dead easy to get software and all these issues - both on the corporate side as well as the consumer one - will melt away.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this