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JonCole

"Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

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This is an interesting point. I don't really know what that has to do with objectivity in a direct sense.

The point is that a genuinely unbiased reviewer would be someone who doesn't already like video games. Nor dislike them. Someone who has no opinions about video games.

In other words, asking for completely unbiased game reviews is like demanding reviews be written by pink unicorns.

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The point is that a genuinely unbiased reviewer would be someone who doesn't already like video games. Nor dislike them. Someone who has no opinions about video games.

In other words, asking for completely unbiased game reviews is like demanding reviews be written by pink unicorns.

 

That's not quite what I'm driving at. What I'm saying is that an unbiased reviewer would necessarily assume that games, like any other work, have to prove themselves worth writing about. To pluck an example out of thin air, let's take Alien: Isolation. No-one knows if it'll be any good. It's an adaptation of a property that has a very spotty history, it's not doing anything mechanically unique, and it's not timely because it's not out yet. If it is bad, its impact on the world will be, probably, non-existent. A game that no-one will remember in a year is not news. An unbiased journalist would conclude that it's not yet worth a story, not until either something actually newsworthy happens, in the same way that an official set visit of Guardians of the Galaxy to get a feel for whether the movie will be any good when it comes out is not actually newsworthy.

 

However, the audience is there and they don't want news or journalism. They want deets about the product they are emotionally invested in, to stoke their anticipation. The moneymen would very much to stoke that fire because it means ad spend during the crucial opening weeks will be more effective and have to do less work. Both sides have a reason to want non-news: gamers want validation of their investment by showing all the cool things that are coming in the future, the next hip product, and publishers want to build awareness through over-promising. I mean, say what you will about Apple fans, but a lot of that obsession is built on a thing they actually have.

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I mean you say there's no corruption but then say there's misdirection where that corruption might lie, right? But obviously, we can agree there's some level of corruption. The way journalists basically pass on press releases as articles, the way the games industry is covered almost like an extension of AAA marketing departments?

 

That isn't corruption; it's just shoddy journalism. The issue there being that the enthusiast press (which most, if not all, games-specific sites pretty much inevitably are) is usually run at razor-thin margins, usually with expenses needing to be near zero and ad revenues being very limited. Sites like Polygon (Vox Media), Kotaku (Gawker Media) and at a lower tier The Escapist (Defy Media) have the ability to cross-market and cut better per-view/click revenue deals, but if you look at the sites that the Gaters were holding up as shining examples of the kind of journalism they want to see - places like Cinemablend's gaming section - you're probably looking at people who are paid little or nothing for their labor. They may get freebies from PR, and that may be the bargain: they produce content that pulls in some ad views - mainly copying and pasting press releases, either with minor alteration or straight out - and in return can try to get free merch.

 

One weird thing is that people without journalistic training are being lovebombed - despite one of the 'gate's multifarious demands being the frankly hilarious stipulation that you need a journalism degree before being able to be a journalist - and, in part due to that lack of journalistic training, they are responding to a level of attention and praise they have never previously received by moving further into the tank.

 

(I guess, Goodgames.us could become a media giant and give them all paying gigs. But it feels like it will be another site with limited editorial oversight, a largely amateur staff and a stock in trade of reproducing press releases and pestering publishers for review copies.)

Which way The Escapist jumps probably remains the most interesting element of this farrago from a business perspective. 

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I don't really see how posting press releases as news is corruption, it's not uncommon in mainstream press and is more prevalent in other kinds of enthusiast press outside of gaming. Also, that kind of coverage is exactly what the seemingly non-conspiratorial branch of #GamerGhazi is asking for - completely unbiased content that isn't garnered from personal relationships within the industry. I saw a "list of demands" going around where people were literally asking that reviews only cover topics that were less likely to be "infected" by "bias", like performance and graphics.

 

The most prescient comments I've seen yet is that the real corruption is the stuff that would never get any kind of play in some Twitter hate campaign - namely, the stuff that goes on where payola is actually a thing because there is actual money involved instead of meager sums of Patreon monthly funding and so on.

 

Also, in my opinion your posts continue to be shotgunning completely unconnected ideas together to somehow attempt to get at conclusion that "corruption is a thing". I still don't see anything convincing in what you're saying that corruption exists in indie/journalist relationships. And really, there's no convincing evidence that there's any corruption in press for bigger games, because someone would have to do some real, actual, journalistic digging to get it.

This is an interesting point. I don't really know what that has to do with objectivity in a direct sense, but I do think it is a problem that AAA games are massively over represented in games coverage. That said, like clickbait or other distasteful practices I'm sure that writing about AAA games is getting them traffic and coverage of indie games is getting them proportionally less otherwise they wouldn't do it. I mean, it's not like indies aren't trying to get their games covered.

 

Either way, I think this is something that bigger websites are becoming more aware of and they're adjusting their approach as time goes on. Jeff Gerstmann at GB has never been shy to say that the marketing departments of the AAA companies are starting to get largely autonomous and are doing a much better job than ever covering their own stuff. With video streaming of stuff like Nintendo Direct, events like Blizzcon and Call of Duty XP and company blogs like the PlayStation Blog and Major Nelson, there are lots of direct methods of communicating to gamers and thus gaming websites have a shrinking role in that process.

Do you have amnesia? Because earlier in this thread when we were discussing Patreon, you posted a link to a scientific study which lent credence to the whole "paying money to a project creates emotional investment in it, which creates bias". The Ikea effect? You posted that, remember?

And as other people have said there are other issues, some of which you've brought up, clickbait, bias towards AAA, marketing departments, etc. So yeah those are specific issues. 

This isn't a shotgun argument, I was making a very specific argument about the idea that "there is 0 corruption in the industry, and everyone who disagrees has secrete evil tingly motives". It may seem abstract to talk about how humans compartmentalize and simplify reality through generalizations but I'm making a very specific point about how people ought to make criticisms in a concrete and individual way, and the inherent fallacies in generalized sweeping statements. 

Additionally I was making a very specific criticism about saying "There is no corruption, except for the corruption there is which is a misdirection" thing Tegan said, which is just blatant double think. You can't say "there is no corruption" and then turn around and say "there is payola". There are/were issues, some of which you've even explicitly agreed to, and many of which I think the majority of this forum can agree on. Instead of being intellectually dishonest and oversimplifying things in our favor I wish people would just stick to concrete points. 

Honestly I don't know why this fight is rolling on, because it seems that some of the larger issues were already taken care, and although I think there still needs to be some refinements on those changes, and also though I think that there needs to be a shift in the games press paradigm in a larger sense, I think the most relevant issues have already been taken into account by the major outlets. I hop around the internet and it just seems to be a bunch of people sitting around in circles patting each other on the back, congratulating themselves, and talking about how everyone else sucks. And no real substantial discussion going on. 

And yes, you're right, the twitter hate campaign is just a huge hate fest right now, and I think we all know that they clearly don't give a damn. 

 

 

I suspect there isn't a lot of corruption in the games press because when there are actual, straight up examples of corruption, basically everyone moves. That does not happen if everyone else is doing it too and someone got caught.

 

The problem, as someone put it, is that the games press cannot be objective because their editorial position is that AAA games are worth writing about.

I think that's a pretty good point. It's a new industry and people are very involved in it on a personal level, which can be part of the problem, but also means that things do self correct decently fast. 

 

 

I see your point, but people also seem to want "unbiased" things that actually do state an opinion, as represented in the "demands" of #GamerGhazi people in many instances. Unbiased reviews in this case just seems to be a super lazy, awful shorthand for "reviews biased in favor of the typical gamer demographic".

I totally agree. The gamergate people are not looking for a lack of bias, they're looking for the bias that suits their purposes.

 

 

The point is that a genuinely unbiased reviewer would be someone who doesn't already like video games. Nor dislike them. Someone who has no opinions about video games.

In other words, asking for completely unbiased game reviews is like demanding reviews be written by pink unicorns.

Exactly which is why there needs to be a fundamental change in the way we talk about "objective" or "unbiased" journalism. 

 

That's not quite what I'm driving at. What I'm saying is that an unbiased reviewer would necessarily assume that games, like any other work, have to prove themselves worth writing about. To pluck an example out of thin air, let's take Alien: Isolation. No-one knows if it'll be any good. It's an adaptation of a property that has a very spotty history, it's not doing anything mechanically unique, and it's not timely because it's not out yet. If it is bad, its impact on the world will be, probably, non-existent. A game that no-one will remember in a year is not news. An unbiased journalist would conclude that it's not yet worth a story, not until either something actually newsworthy happens, in the same way that an official set visit of Guardians of the Galaxy to get a feel for whether the movie will be any good when it comes out is not actually newsworthy.

 

However, the audience is there and they don't want news or journalism. They want deets about the product they are emotionally invested in, to stoke their anticipation. The moneymen would very much to stoke that fire because it means ad spend during the crucial opening weeks will be more effective and have to do less work. Both sides have a reason to want non-news: gamers want validation of their investment by showing all the cool things that are coming in the future, the next hip product, and publishers want to build awareness through over-promising. I mean, say what you will about Apple fans, but a lot of that obsession is built on a thing they actually have.

Bingo. 

 

That isn't corruption; it's just shoddy journalism. The issue there being that the enthusiast press (which most, if not all, games-specific sites pretty much inevitably are) is usually run at razor-thin margins, usually with expenses needing to be near zero and ad revenues being very limited). Sites like Polygon (Vox Media*), Kotaku (Gawker Media) and at a lower tier The Escapist (Defy Media) have the ability to cross-market and cut better per-view/click revenue deals, but if you look at the sites that the Gaters were holding up as shining examples of the kind of journalism they want to see - places like Cinemablend's gaming section - you're probably looking at people who are paid little or nothing for their labor: they may get freebies from PR, and that may be the bargain: they produce content that pulls in some ad views - mainly copying and pasting press releases, either with minor alteration or straight out - and in return can try to get free merch.

 

One weird thing is that people without journalistic training are being lovebombed - despite one of the 'gate's multifarious demands being the frankly hilarious stipulation that you need a journalism degree before being able to be a journalist - and, in part due to that lack of journalistic training, they are responding to a level of attention and praise they have never previously received by moving further into the tank.

 

(I guess, Goodgames.us could become a media giant and give them all paying gigs. But it feels like it will be another site with limited editorial oversights, a largely amateur staff and a stock in trade of reproducing press releases and pestering publishers for review copies.)

Which way The Escapist jumps probably remains the most interesting element of this farrago from a business perspective. 

You say marinara sauce, I saw tomato sauce. How is shoddy journalism not a form of corruption exactly?

These issues of clickbait, underpaid amateur writers, etc is exactly why I keep on bringing up Old/New media issues. These issues are profit driven, and there's problems created by that. 

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Additionally I was making a very specific criticism about saying "There is no corruption, except for the corruption there is which is a misdirection" thing Tegan said, which is just blatant double think.

Except that's not at all what she said? She said they never uncovered any corruption because they never actually tried to uncover any, not because there was never any there.

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Everything that happened in the past two weeks was about hurting people, 4chan was given a reason to attack someone that they already hated. Any real criticism about games journalism has been drowned out by people getting together to completely drag people through the mud for no reason. I do think that there is room for a conversation about games journalism but it has to happen in a safe and respectful environment, you guys are doing a pretty good of that so far. 

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You say marinara sauce, I saw tomato sauce. How is shoddy journalism not a form of corruption exactly?

 

If I make you a chair with three functioning legs, that chair is not corrupt unless I was paid by your sworn enemy to endanger your coccyx. It is however indubitably a shoddy piece of work.

 

Shoddy journalism may also be corrupt journalism. However, it need not be. Plenty of people are able to turn out substandard work without being illicitly encouraged to do so.

So, you know, words mean things? That's basically what's happening here. Words are meaning things.

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If I make you a chair with three functioning legs, that chair is not corrupt unless I was paid by your sworn enemy to endanger your coccyx. It is however indubitably a shoddy piece of work.

 

Shoddy journalism may also be corrupt journalism. However, it need not be. Plenty of people are able to turn out substandard work without being illicitly encouraged to do so.

So, you know, words mean things? That's basically what's happening here. Words are meaning things.

 

I think one of the biggest things fueling #GameGhazi among more "reasonable" people was the belief that shoddy journalism was due to some outside force and not just people doing a bad job of what they do. In those situations, it's hard to point out that all A is B but not all B is A.

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Except that's not at all what she said? She said they never uncovered any corruption because they never actually tried to uncover any, not because there was never any there.

The Patreon thing was brought up and while it's hard to say "who uncovered it", but I think there's a pretty big Venn Diagram involved. I do agree that a lot of these people have bad motives though, but saying EVERYONE has bad motives is just wrong.  

 

Everything that happened in the past two weeks was about hurting people, 4chan was given a reason to attack someone that they already hated. Any real criticism about games journalism has been drowned out by people getting together to completely drag people through the mud for no reason. I do think that there is room for a conversation about games journalism but it has to happen in a safe and respectful environment, you guys are doing a pretty good of that so far. 

Agreed. And I hope I'm not causing too much conflict or sounding like an asshole. This is the only place I'm willing to discuss this online, because I respect you guys, and I hope you guys know that. 

 

If I make you a chair with three functioning legs, that chair is not corrupt unless I was paid by your sworn enemy to endanger your coccyx. It is however indubitably a shoddy piece of work.

 

Shoddy journalism may also be corrupt journalism. However, it need not be. Plenty of people are able to turn out substandard work without being illicitly encouraged to do so.

So, you know, words mean things? That's basically what's happening here. Words are meaning things.

That's a good point, but I think it's not quite right. 

So yes, words mean things, when they're instantiated in a specific cultural context. We're both using valid definitions of corruption, though slightly different. 

You're talking about malicious corruption, people consciously attacking someone they disagree with for bad reasons. I'm talking about systemic corruption, which I think is a more problematic and insidious issue. 

I would say most relevant corruption is systemic. People aren't silent film villains cackling in delight as they twirl their mustaches and blow the dynamite under The One True Hero. Most often they're normal people, trying to do what they think is right, but going about it in a harmful way, encouraged by things like perverse incentives, lack of accountability, etc. 

This kind of corruption is so insidious because it's mostly invisible. This is the problem a lot of modern liberal white people have when you try and talk about racism to them. They say "Hey I'm not racist. I'm colorblind! I don't treat other people bad because of their skin color". Well they don't consciously go out and call people slurs or hurt them with their fists, but they are part of a system that, despite their lack of awareness, perpetuates racial and class disparity. Stuff like Redlining isn't sexy, it isn't obvious, there is no clear villain and hero. It doesn't sell movie rights or make headlines but it's a massive issue that has harmed racial equality more than almost any single official policy in American history. Most people aren't trying to do anything bad. They're just part of the system, and the system is messed up. 

So yeah the chair probably doesn't have three legs because someone is "out to get you" but it may have shoddy design because it was built in a sweat shop where profit seeking behavior determines who gets hired and fired. That's the kind of corruption I think is troublesome. 

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I think one of the biggest things fueling #GameGhazi among more "reasonable" people was the belief that shoddy journalism was due to some outside force and not just people doing a bad job of what they do. In those situations, it's hard to point out that all A is B but not all B is A.

I can't speak for anyone but myself, and I do not associate myself in anyway with GameGhazi or Gamergate, don't even talk with those crowds, but I don't think it is some kind of "outside force". These are systemic issues, they're internal, they're unintentional, but they still lead to bad stuff. 

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The Patreon thing was brought up and while it's hard to say "who uncovered it", but I think there's a pretty big Venn Diagram involved.

Patreon is barely plausible as even a conflict of interest -- calling it 'corruption' verges on ludicrous. Yeah, journalists might be more inclined to view a project they've financially supported favorably -- they also probably have favorite genres, favorite developers/studios (even if they've never met/had sex with them), favorite consoles and control schemes and rendering styles. It's a huge fucking stretch to call any of that systemic bias, when having opinions like that is their job.

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The casual use of "corruption" to describe any kind of bias for any reason is really bothering me.

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Yeah, there are problems in the games industry and press for sure, but whether identify with gaters or not MadJackalope, some of the things you're pointing to are decidedly within the same crazy ballpark as everything they're hooting about.

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Patreon is barely plausible as even a conflict of interest -- calling it 'corruption' verges on ludicrous. Yeah, journalists might be more inclined to view a project they've financially supported favorably -- they also probably have favorite genres, favorite developers/studios (even if they've never met/had sex with them), favorite consoles and control schemes and rendering styles. It's a huge fucking stretch to call any of that systemic bias, when having opinions like that is their job.

Okay maybe we just disagree. As I said, when I originally brought that up, the issue of the Ikea effect came up, and I think it's a relevant thing. 

And as I've said, to me the solution here is NOT to make sure journalists don't contribute money to Patreon. The solution, in my opinion is to shift away from the authoritarian model of press, towards one which embraces and is transparent about the subjectivity of humans. This doesn't mean paragraph long disclaimers before each article, it means holistically integrating people's subjective experience in to the way they evaluate art. 

 

The casual use of "corruption" to describe any kind of bias for any reason is really bothering me.

Look, I'm just using the term the way it is used in certain contexts. Maybe people find the connotations of the word too harsh but I don't semantic games are really going to push the issue forward. I'll call it something else if you'd prefer. 

 

Yeah, there are problems in the games industry and press for sure, but whether identify with gaters or not MadJackalope, some of the things you're pointing to are decidedly within the same crazy ballpark as everything they're hooting about.

I get that, but if I change my opinion merely because some crazy people held it then I would have a hard time picking any opinion at all. I believe in evolution, but that doesn't mean that I agree with Social Darwinist and eugenics, does it? I am a feminist but I disagree with Dworkin. I'm a person who thinks that video games can be a medium of artistic expression, but I don't necessarily  like everything that is called a "video game". Changing one's opinions in reaction to perceptions of the opposition is the textbook definition of reactionary. 

And if I'm wrong, or crazy, then I'm good to discuss that, and taking that down a peg. I know on a personal level that that I am fallible and often wrong. 

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This doesn't mean paragraph long disclaimers before each article, it means holistically integrating people's subjective experience in to the way they evaluate art.

But, I mean... isn't that implied by the very idea of evaluating art?

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there's a twitch stream going on now under the name lordkat and they are throwing out tons of accusations about sites directly taking money for stories.

Funny how they need solid evidence that someone like Saarkesian filed a police report before they beleive her and yet some guy talking on twitch is PROOF THAT GAMING JOURNALISM IS CORRUPT!!!!!

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Look, I'm just using the term the way it is used in certain contexts. Maybe people find the connotations of the word too harsh but I don't semantic games are really going to push the issue forward. I'll call it something else if you'd prefer. 

 

Systemic corruption is defined as the following:

 

As opposed to exploiting occasional opportunities, endemic or systemic corruption occurs when corruption is an integrated and essential aspect of the economic, social and political system. Systemic corruption is not a special category of corrupt practice, but rather a situation in which the major institutions and processes of the state are routinely dominated and used by corrupt individuals and groups, and in which most people have no alternatives to dealing with corrupt officials.

 

So let me get this straight. You're saying that corruption is the rule rather than the exception, that corruption is the primary if not only method by which things are reported at all in the games industry? That companies regularly bribe journalists/reporters to present gaming news exactly how they wish it to be presented?

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It's imprecise to use 'systemic corruption' to describe a highly commercialised industry in which the major corporations use every avenue available to attempt to influence thought leaders. A corrupt industry is one that suspends its ethical standards for money, not one in which there are holes in their ethical standards that haven't yet been patched.

 

Honestly I also think that the worst-case scenario here isn't particularly worth worrying about: at worst, game journalism is a third-party advertisement of commercial products, and consumers will have to rely on product reviews to determine whether that product is any good -- just like most other kinds of products. The artistic standards of the industry would definitely decrease, but people don't seem to be referring to cultural critics like Brandon Keogh or Anita Sarkeesian when they talk about corruption, they mean sites like Gamespot or IGN. So the cultural critics, who make the most difference in discussing non-commercial games and the artistic side of the medium, probably won't go away.

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This is quite the article-...except the fact that it was mostly based on strawmen, and even ignoring that fact, it's ad-hominem, and beside the point of #GamerGate. It doesn't prove any point other than "herpderp, gaemerz r nerdz wich r angree an ef-entitilelld olo0loolthus dey hav no rite to orr baise to maek argumints ol0lo0l fuck gaemrs". In short, this is slandering that's beside the point and has absolutely no backing other than trust in the writer.

 

Is a legitimately terrific comment.

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