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JonCole

"Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

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"Here's the manuscript for the next Harry Potter we've gotten our hands on, but don't forget it's all preliminary and may still change. We've asked the publisher for further detail but have somehow not heard back from him".

 

Okay, I concede that's a massive exaggeration. But by kotaku logic, still ethical. It's leaked, it's real, it's game, our readers want it, why not. :blink:

 

Welcome to news reporting on Star Wars. And yes, if someone got the manuscript for Harry Potter before it was published, I'd expect them to report on that too. Not posting the entire manuscript, since that would be questionable on copyright laws, but a plot summary.

 

Really, i don't understand why the tech field is so secretive. In Hollywood, you know movies are getting made long before they show up on shelves or have an official announcement.

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Do you think the better alternative is to wait until it is leaked anyways and then report on it? Stay entirely silent no matter what unless you've been given permission to report on it?

 

Wait a minute. The kotaku article wasn't a "report on a leak that had occurred". That article in itself was the leak! And, man, that casual pride because of the inside source.

 

As to leak ethics... sure, tough call. But it is a tough call because you always want the scoop, but you never want to be the snitch.

 

 

Welcome to news reporting on Star Wars.

 

Thanks, I visited that country before. Seeing some ethical stuff there! :)

 

Bottom line, how paranoid do we want our developers to be? Do they just have to accept that there are journalists around who are more than ready to publish their creative property without any kind of permission? Is an army of lawyers the only way to keep the journalists at bay? Are they supposed to establish actual anti espionage measures in AAA companies, segregate their dev teams, have the budget skyrocket every step of the way? Just because kotaku can't keep it in their pants?

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"Here's the manuscript for the next Harry Potter we've gotten our hands on, but don't forget it's all preliminary and may still change. We've asked the publisher for further detail but have somehow not heard back from him".

 

Okay, I concede that's a massive exaggeration. But by kotaku logic, still ethical. It's leaked, it's real, it's game, our readers want it, why not. :blink:

 

Yes, exactly. Why not?

 

You still haven't provided, like, an actual reason for Kotaku to not report on these things. Vague hand-wavey accusations of immorality aren't really relevant here.

 

Wielding sarcasm in an effort to demean arguments that you disagree with isn't typically a good way to convince someone.

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When something ridiculous is being done (video game publishers going "WAH YOU CAN'T REVIEW OUR STUFF BECAUSE YOU AREN'T BEING FREE POSITIVE PRESS ABOUT IT") I don't care who does what to get that information out there - it is stuff we need to know so that we as consumers can let the publishers in question know that it isn't okay.

 

I have a huge problem when content makers expect reviewers to operate as free press. This is the shit that STARTED Gamergate; accusations that Quinn had done made up shit to get favorable press. Now the same site in question is saying that their refusal to give arbitrary favorable press is getting them locked out from a content maker, and GG says this is okay all of a sudden?

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You still haven't provided, like, an actual reason for Kotaku to not report on these things.

 

Ethics and journalistic integrity. Oh, and a sense of self-preservation would be nice.

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If they need an inside source in order to gain information and write articles, it'd better be coverage about something illegal or otherwise really troubling going on. Something the public actually needs to know. Their sources violate their non-disclosure agreement, risking to never work in the industry again, and for what? For kotaku to be the first to report on the next Assassin's Creed, really?

 

Journalistic guidelines for such cases do not suggest that this kind of reporting is only allowed in matters of grave public importance, merely that you need to weigh the benefit to the public against the potential damages caused to your subject. So while Kotaku's posts may not have been huge achievements of investigative reporting, this is offset by the fact that the only damage caused is a slight hiccup in a huge company's marketing scheme.

 

When promotional material that is revealed early looks good, then it likely ends up working in the company's favor anyway. When it looks bad, well then people probably deserve to know. The only cases I could think of where publishing information could cause excessive damages was if it was misleading, i.e. the kind of internal documentation, vertical slices or prototypes that industry folk can put in perspective, but regular people are going to misinterpret.

 

Also, as far as I'm aware, this person contacted Kotaku (and potentially other sites who didn't run the story) out of their own initiative and volition, so how exactly is Kotaku to blame if a choice this person made ends up damaging their career?

 

This control should still have been Ubisoft's, really. There was no reason to wrench this control out of their hands.

 

Yes, there was, and it is to show that publishers do not get to control when and potentially what people write about their games. They have set up a system that uses game sites' desperation and fear to keep them in line, twisting their arms by limiting access to the early copies, events and exclusives they need to satisfy gamers obsessive curiosity and draw in the clicks that mainstream games journalism currently depends on, for better or worse (generally worse).

 

A site writing something a publisher did not want them to write is not a fucked up thing. That any site would consider not running a newsworthy story for fear of falling out of favor with the massive corporation they are supposed to call out on their bullshit, that is the fucked up thing.

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Bottom line, how paranoid do we want our developers to be? Do they just have to accept that there are journalists around who are more than ready to publish their creative property without any kind of permission? Is an army of lawyers the only way to keep the journalists at bay? Are they supposed to establish actual anti espionage measures in AAA companies, segregate their dev teams, have the budget skyrocket every step of the way? Just because kotaku can't keep it in their pants?

 

It isn't Kotaku breaking in to their studio and stealing this information. It is employees freely giving it away.

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Let's also not forget, GG freaked out because the game press didn't report on someone's sex life, which was entirely gossip.

 

Now that the game press did report on gossip, only it actually had to do with a fucking video game, it's unethical to talk about gossip.

 

I am table flipping you guys.

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You've literally crossed both into "What if it was an entirely different kind of information?" and "What if it was obtained in a completely different way?" now.

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I feel like some of these posts are coming from an alternate dimension. As a publication, Kotaku works with video game publishers, but it has no specific duty to them. It does have a duty to its readers, however, and they care deeply about the existence and nature of upcoming games like Fallout 4 and Assassins Creed Unity. To suggest that Kotaku should deny this information to them when it is freely given by employees making those games is flatly ludicrous. Kotaku has no responsibility to disclose privileged information only when the significance is huge or when harm is being done. They have no responsibility to conform to the marketing plan written on a whiteboard by corporate executives somewhere. They have no responsibility to keep an employee's NDA for them. They are a video game publication, publishing information about a video game. How is the rightness of this act even a question?

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Why does game marketing rely on secrecy so much, that's what I don't understand.

 

Part of it, I think, is a leftover from being an offshoot of the software industry, when a competitor could legitimately steal your product and beat you to market. Another part is that games take so long to make, it's easy for enthusiastic consumers to burn themselves out and forget about the game long before it's ready for release. Another part is just suits wanting control over shit.

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When promotional material that is revealed early looks good, then it likely ends up working in the company's favor anyway. When it looks bad, well then people probably deserve to know.

 

Promotional material is only promotional material after it has been declared free to be published, right? In this case, it's especially relevant how it looked, because naturally the company wouldn't declare bad looking screenshots promo material. These are still all calls for the developer to make. Sorry, I really can not agree here (I usually like to agree with you!). This is creative property being handed out freely by people to whom it does not belong. Not 'the source', not kotaku.

 

Sure, kotaku didn't 'steal' directly from Ubisoft. They just took information from the thief, knowing full well that it was stolen, then disseminated it for their personal gain. Fencing. That's... really not that much better...?!

 

(Will repeat at this point: Ubisoft's reaction still was immature)

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I feel like some of these posts are coming from an alternate dimension. As a publication, Kotaku works with video game publishers, but it has no specific duty to them. It does have a duty to its readers, however, and they care deeply about the existence and nature of upcoming games like Fallout 4 and Assassins Creed Unity. To suggest that Kotaku should deny this information to them when it is freely given by employees making those games is flatly ludicrous. Kotaku has no responsibility to disclose privileged information only when the significance is huge or when harm is being done. They have no responsibility to conform to the marketing plan written on a whiteboard by corporate executives somewhere. They have no responsibility to keep an employee's NDA for them. They are a video game publication, publishing information about a video game. How is the rightness of this act even a question?

I think an easier way to make the point is to apply these rules about what could or should be done to another kind of journalism. Like politics; suddenly, it's wrong for the press to write about what campaign aides decide to disclose to said press.

 

Edit - And mind you, it's actually important to hear what those aides are saying.

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Why does game marketing rely on secrecy so much, that's what I don't understand.

 

To a certain degree, I think this is understandable and probably has to do with the fact that, as far as I hear and as far as my own experiments go, games look like shit for most of their development, with placeholders everywhere, and huge components missing, or weird glitches. The game may already be fun to play! But you can't actually sit everybody down and let them figure that out for themselves, and the kind of glimpses of your work in progress you could give probably aren't going to go over well because the general public doesn't understand how a Video game comes to be and will just latch onto the fact that, right now, it still looks like shit.

 

Of course the only reason people don't know about how games come to be is because people have always been so secretive about it, so that's a bit of a weird ourobouros of secrecy I guess.

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Promotional material is only promotional material after it has been declared free to be published, right? In this case, it's especially relevant how it looked, because naturally the company wouldn't declare bad looking screenshots promo material. These are still all calls for the developer to make. Sorry, I really can not agree here. This is creative property being handed out freely by people to whom it does not belong. Not 'the source', not kotaku.

 

Sure, kotaku didn't 'steal' directly from Ubisoft. They just took information from the thief, knowing full well that it was stolen. That's... really not that much better...?!

 

(Will repeat at this point: Ubisoft's reaction still was immature)

"Thief" is a really huge label to apply.

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To a certain degree, I think this is understandable and probably has to do with the fact that, as far as I hear and as far as my own experiments go, games look like shit for most of their development, with placeholders everywhere, and huge components missing, or weird glitches. The game may already be fun to play! But you can't actually sit everybody down and let them figure that out for themselves, and the kind of glimpses of your work in progress you could give probably aren't going to go over well because the general public doesn't understand how a video game comes to be and will just latch onto the fact that, right now, it still looks like shit.

 

Of course the only reason people don't know about how games come to be is because people have always been so secretive about it, so that's a bit of a weird ourobouros of secrecy I guess.

The industry and businesses surrounding the industry don't do a good job explaining this to people. Most everyone I know understands what "work in progress" means. But as far as the broad consumer base goes, they don't know that. They should, so that it would bring understanding. But for some reason video game makers, the big ones at least, are terrified as the misconceptions that would happen. The problem is theirs to solve. I'm sure there's some amateur blog / "press" sites who lack that understanding and will take leaked content and go, "WHOA THIS LOOKS BAD," and it's their responsibility to fix that kind of rhetoric.

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Promotional material is only promotional material after it has been declared free to be published, right? In this case, it's especially relevant how it looked, because naturally the company wouldn't declare bad looking screenshots promo material. These are still all calls for the developer to make. Sorry, I really can not agree here. This is creative property being handed out freely by people to whom it does not belong. Not 'the source', not kotaku.

 

Sure, kotaku didn't 'steal' directly from Ubisoft. They just took information from the thief, knowing full well that it was stolen. That's... really not that much better...?!

 

(Will repeat at this point: Ubisoft's reaction still was immature)

 

That didn't stop everyone from reporting on the contents of the Sony hack, or iPhone rumors, or so many other things. I guess I don't really have a problem with the way that the entertainment news business works. Maybe a little more so on the Sony hacks that other items, but that's just because personal details were pulled through the mud, not just factual ones related to products.

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Promotional material is only promotional material after it has been declared free to be published, right? In this case, it's especially relevant how it looked, because naturally the company wouldn't declare bad looking screenshots promo material. These are still all calls for the developer to make. Sorry, I really can not agree here (I usually like to agree with you!). This is creative property being handed out freely by people to whom it does not belong. Not 'the source', not kotaku.

 

Sure, kotaku didn't 'steal' directly from Ubisoft. They just took information from the thief, knowing full well that it was stolen, then disseminated it for their personal gain. Fencing. That's... really not that much better...?!

 

So... would you be okay with it if Kotaku didn't publish the promotional images, just the existence and description of the game? Or is that information "intellectual property" too and I've been "stealing" from my friends every time anyone tells me a secret about their personal lives?

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If someone chooses to disclose info on something they were involved in, tangentially even, that's fair game to me.

 

I was going to say "I'm okay with however information is obtained," but then realized that's not true - a couple years ago, Rupert Murdoch and his organizations in the EU came under fire because they were going through dead people's belongings, including phones, for information. I would draw the line there for damn sure.

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Promotional material is only promotional material after it has been declared free to be published, right? In this case, it's especially relevant how it looked, because naturally the company wouldn't declare bad looking screenshots promo material. These are still all calls for the developer to make. Sorry, I really can not agree here. This is creative property being handed out freely by people to whom it does not belong. Not 'the source', not kotaku.

 

Sure, kotaku didn't 'steal' directly from Ubisoft. They just took information from the thief, knowing full well that it was stolen. Fencing. That's... really not that much better...?!

 

(Will repeat at this point: Ubisoft's reaction still was immature)

 

I would argue that it is promotional material because it was created with the express intent of being used to promote the game. Sure, sometimes there are reasons not to put it out, like maybe the stuff that's being depicted in that screenshot isn't actually in the game anymore. But it's assuming an absurd amount of incompetence on the part of the publisher to suggest that this material would ever look genuinely bad or make them look bad. Like, whoops, we meant to put in a high-res screenshot of a finished section of the game, but actually it's a photo somebody took of their screen, showing placeholder art overlayed with the word emotions in all caps.

 

Thief is a weird word to use, given that the person sending the information also played a part in the creation of the game. It's implying that they have absolutely no claim to their work, or the results of their work. I'm sure that's what their contract and NDA say, but I doubt it's a system I'd want to defend. I can see why people working on a game might decide for themselves not to talk about it, but when this becomes company mandate, and some person decides that fuck it, what's going on is 1) worth talking about or 2) not worth keeping a secret, there are few circumstances I can think of where I'd condemn their choice.

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Yes, "theft" was too much. As was fencing. The idea of creative property published without consent of rights holders stands.

 

...I'd really like a developer's view on this. Any around? :P

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Anybody watch Veep? (It probably happened a lot in The West Wing or The Thick of It too but I've seen Veep more recently, regrettably.) Whenever the press undermined the politics by breaking a story, the politicians didn't blame the journalists for doing their job, they just had to adjust for it.

 

The newsworthiness of the story in question will always be subjective. It's the principle that is ironclad: journalists answer to their readers, not the entities on which they report. If they held back on a toothless story for fear of retribution, then it is only more likely they would conceal a truly meaningful one.

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When promotional material that is revealed early looks good, then it likely ends up working in the company's favor anyway.

 

There are marketing people whose job is to figure this out, if it were optimal to release information as soon as possible, that's what companies would do. Leaking information may generate positive buzz, but it would have generated more buzz to release the information much closer to the launch date of the game. Leaking information isn't helping the company, it's robbing them of the difference between a controlled release and a leak.

 

 

Thief is a weird word to use, given that the person sending the information also played a part in the creation of the game. It's implying that they have absolutely no claim to their work, or the results of their work. I'm sure that's what their contract and NDA say, but I doubt it's a system I'd want to defend. I can see why people working on a game might decide for themselves not to talk about it, but when this becomes company mandate, and some person decides that fuck it, what's going on is 1) worth talking about or 2) not worth keeping a secret, there are few circumstances I can think of where I'd condemn their choice.

 

Imagine a situation where the company hires an artist to create some 3D models for them. The artist checks the internal company wiki and pulls down the game's script because it's available to them, they leak it to Kotaku for the lulz, and Kotaku publishes it for the pageviews. Can you defend a system that says the artist has no claim on the script, and would you condemn their choices?

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