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Games Journalism! Wainwright/Florence/Tomb Raider/Eurogamer/Libel Threats/Doritos

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alr1ght said:
These clowns criticize their audience more than the people they're supposed to criticize. It's quite sad.
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I'm actually offended by this, and will make it a point not to support anything for Phillip Kollar is attached to, there are way too many differing opinions on GAF, we're often divided more than in agreement, to try to pretend there's a catch all to GAF shows how smallminded he is in my opinion.
 
alr1ght said:
These clowns criticize their audience more than the people they're supposed to criticize. It's quite sad.
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It's because they see themselves on the same "side" as the people they write about. If you follow some of these snarky twitter responses, it's journalists and games industry folks sharing their mutual disdain for the gaming public (usually by using some variant of the word "entitled"). It shows just how deeply entrenched much of the games media is in game production, publishing, and marketing. This is exactly the sort of "shared community" BS that many of us think is problematic.
 
conman said:
It's because they see themselves on the same "side" as the people they write about. If you follow some of these snarky twitter responses, it's journalists and games industry folks sharing their mutual disdain for the gaming public (usually by using some variant of the word "entitled"). It shows just how deeply entrenched much of the games media is in game production, publishing, and marketing. This is exactly the sort of "shared community" BS that many of us think is problematic.
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Bingo.

It's like some of these guys have an "Us vs. Them" mentality, and they think game devs/publishers are "Us" and the readers are "Them."

If you are a critic in any industry, and you think of the product makers as your friends and your audience as the enemy, ya dun goofed.
 
conman said:
It's because they see themselves on the same "side" as the people they write about. If you follow some of these snarky twitter responses, it's journalists and games industry folks sharing their mutual disdain for the gaming public (usually by using some variant of the word "entitled"). It shows just how deeply entrenched much of the games media is in game production, publishing, and marketing. This is exactly the sort of "shared community" BS that many of us think is problematic.
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Exactly.
 
conman said:
It's because they see themselves on the same "side" as the people they write about. If you follow some of these snarky twitter responses, it's journalists and games industry folks sharing their mutual disdain for the gaming public (usually by using some variant of the word "entitled"). It shows just how deeply entrenched much of the games media is in game production, publishing, and marketing. This is exactly the sort of "shared community" BS that many of us think is problematic.
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I keep posting this, but I feel like it's just such a perfect description of the dangers of media being too close to their subjects and the journalistic mission as critics to be "honest and unmerciful."

Almost Famous Uncool
 
conman said:
It's because they see themselves on the same "side" as the people they write about. If you follow some of these snarky twitter responses, it's journalists and games industry folks sharing their mutual disdain for the gaming public (usually by using some variant of the word "entitled"). It shows just how deeply entrenched much of the games media is in game production, publishing, and marketing. This is exactly the sort of "shared community" BS that many of us think is problematic.
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Yes they have become corrupted.

They are corrupt. The gaming journalists.

They are in bed with the publishers and spit on their audience.

The same people flow from journalism to PR and sometimes back again.

And sometimes they seem to be both "journalists" and PR at the same time.
 
Dennis said:
Yes they have become corrupted.

They are corrupt. The gaming journalists.

They are in bed with the publishers and spit on their audience.

The same people flow from journalism to PR and sometimes back again.

And sometimes they seem to be both "journalists" and PR at the same time.
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That's because they are one and the same.

I don't consider many of these guys as journalists or gamers. It's just a job to them and a way to get some freebies.
 
Massa said:
Sadly there's not much of an audience interested in games criticism. People are just looking to reviews for confirmation.
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Then the problem isn't with the audience. The problem is with how they're writing reviews.

I feel like games writers say this kind of crap all the time. "We'd love to do X, but there's just no audience for it." That's BS. If there were no audience for it, then why on earth would you want so desperately to write it?

Game journalists use and abuse this idea of "audience" all the time. Our readers are entitled. Our readers are impatient. Our readers want unboxing videos. Readers only "want" it because that's the crap you keep feeding them. Raise a kid on McDonald's burgers and he'll keep eating them as long as McD's keeps selling them. That doesn't mean he wouldn't actually enjoy something else more.
 
Dennis said:
Yes they have become corrupted.

They are corrupt. The gaming journalists.

They are in bed with the publishers and spit on their audience.

The same people flow from journalism to PR and sometimes back again.

And sometimes they seem to be both "journalists" and PR at the same time.
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Not sure if you're serious. But that's not even remotely what I'm saying. No one's "corrupt" in this equation. I'm not passing moral judgment on anyone, and no one's doing anything "wrong" in a moral sense here.

Graft and bribery are obviously bad things, but that's not the core of the issue for me. The majority of games journalists are honest people. But journalists often behave as though they are on the side of the "games industry," not on the side of their readers.
 
conman said:
Not sure if you're serious. But that's not even remotely what I'm saying. No one's "corrupt" in this equation. I'm not passing moral judgment on anyone, and no one's doing anything "wrong" in a moral sense here.

Graft and bribery are obviously bad things, but that's not the core of the issue for me. The majority of games journalists are honest people. But journalists often behave as though they are on the side of the "games industry," not on the side of their readers.
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This is the problem. Journalists should work for their readers, but it seems that they feel they need to work for the publisher to get early access, exclusives, etc..
 
Just for clarifications sake: If Keighley was sitting in that seat with the Doritos and Dew but each of those products had no affiliation with Halo whatsoever - would we be applauding him?

I 'd like to think that we would be. In fact, I would love to visit a gaming site that is advertising vacuum cleaners or Tide washing detergent. Anything BUT something gaming related would be a breath of fresh air.

Schreier mentioned that Kotaku was covered in ad's for Warfighter, and that their reviewer completely panned the game in his piece. "....slipshod, uninspired, unpolished, and unfun." was the line quoted.

I get that editorial and the decision makers behind the site are separate. My question is, who benefits (obviously outside of Gawker for the ad rev) from this approach?

Not the people who are visiting the site who are subjected to seeing ads cover a substantial percentage of their screens for a game they're being told not to buy.

Not Kotaku as a brand, as it makes them seems like complete cogs in the machine and look somewhat like hypocrites.

And certainly not EA who can't possibly feel like that was money well spent for putting eyes on their product.

So other than being an easy cash grab, why would all parties involved agree to that situation when everyone seemingly loses? It really makes no sense to me and is a major issue in my eyes.
 
GQman2121 said:
Just for clarifications sake: If Keighley was sitting in that seat with the Doritos and Dew but each of those products had no affiliation with Halo whatsoever - would we be applauding him?

I 'd like to think that we would be. In fact, I would love to visit a gaming site that is advertising vacuum cleaners or Tide washing detergent. Anything BUT something gaming related would be a breath of fresh air.

Schreier mentioned that Kotaku was covered in ad's for Warfighter, and that their reviewer completely panned the game in his piece. "....slipshod, uninspired, unpolished, and unfun." was the line quoted.

I get that editorial and the decision makers behind the site are separate. My question is, who benefits (obviously outside of Gawker for the ad rev) from this approach?

Not the people who are visiting the site who are subjected to seeing ads cover a substantial percentage of their screens for a game they're being told not to buy.

Not Kotaku as a brand, as it makes them seems like complete cogs in the machine and look somewhat like hypocrites.

And certainly not EA who can't possibly feel like that was money well spent for putting eyes on their product.

So other than being an easy cash grab, why would all parties involved agree to that situation when everyone seemingly loses? It really makes no sense to me and is a major issue in my eyes.
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I'm pretty sure adspace gets bought weeks, or maybe months before they are displayed.

Also, beggars can't be choosers. I'm sure many sites would like to get advertising that is not related to games but maybe there isnt that much available?
 
Htown said:
Bingo.

It's like some of these guys have an "Us vs. Them" mentality, and they think game devs/publishers are "Us" and the readers are "Them."

If you are a critic in any industry, and you think of the product makers as your friends and your audience as the enemy, ya dun goofed.
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Well, you only have to look at the reaction to 8.8 and other scoring controversies to start understanding why the journalist may side with the PR because the PR isn't the one coming up with bigoted slurs and shots against their character and treats them like human beings. Yes, it's a loud minority. But it's too depressingly common in gaming that such a loud minority is not only allowed to get traction, but it's allowed to be the leading voice. And it's no wonder some journalists retreat back to the more friendly PR's since they are the ones who aren't holding them up to abuse. So we have a massive Us Vs Them problem because as a community, we aren't exactly inspiring them to fight our corner when if they say, for example, "I don't like Kingdom Hearts", they have 1,000 anonymous commenter's screaming for their corpse to be dragged through the city streets.

It's a two way street after all and maybe we should consider, as a community, how to bring them back to our side instead of just being another extension of the PR machine.

Hell, I'm surprised people like Stuart Campbell actually still fight on our side considering the sheer amount of hate mail he got for helping with the Fairplay campaign in 2003 where it was highlighting how the industry was ripping off the consumer. But that is what you have to deal with and I can imagine it takes it's psychological toll. I'm not saying that we should stop pointing out examples of bad journalism. But I think it may be time to consider bringing it down a notch lest the gaming culture becomes the internet's version of the Tea Party.
 
I will try a little summary.

A videogames journalist, sitting beside a Halo 4 poster and a table of Mountain Dew and Doritos. Not just anyone. Geoff Keighley, one of the most prominent games journalists in the world. He presented himself as a sellout. Would Keighley be a actual journalist, he would have to quit. He would have to explain himself. He would have to defend himself. Defend against questions. Questions coming from competitors. Questions coming from journalists. That is a job of a journalist. To ask questions, to investigate, to go where it is uncomfortable. They didn´t do this. Instead of that cirle jerking. Circle jerking and attacks against the critizism. That is videogames journalism.
 
RobotRocker said:
Well, you only have to look at the reaction to 8.8 and other scoring controversies to start understanding why the journalist may side with the PR because the PR isn't the one coming up with bigoted slurs and shots against their character and treats them like human beings. Yes, it's a loud minority. But it's too depressingly common in gaming that such a loud minority is not only allowed to get traction, but it's allowed to be the leading voice. And it's no wonder some journalists retreat back to the more friendly PR's since they are the ones who aren't holding them up to abuse. So we have a massive Us Vs Them problem because as a community, we aren't exactly inspiring them to fight our corner when if they say, for example, "I don't like Kingdom Hearts", they have 1,000 anonymous commenter's screaming for their corpse to be dragged through the city streets.

It's a two way street after all and maybe we should consider, as a community, how to bring them back to our side instead of just being another extension of the PR machine.

Hell, I'm surprised people like Stuart Campbell actually still fight on our side considering the sheer amount of hate mail he got for helping with the Fairplay campaign in 2003 where it was highlighting how the industry was ripping off the consumer. But that is what you have to deal with and I can imagine it takes it's psychological toll. I'm not saying that we should stop pointing out examples of bad journalism. But I think it may be time to consider bringing it down a notch lest the gaming culture becomes the internet's version of the Tea Party.
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I think the main problem is, and I don´t mean this in a bad way, videogame "journalists" are kids. Kids who never studied journalism. They don´t understand journalistic basics because they never learned them. Not only this. They want to defend their hobby. They don´t do it with critical thinking. Most of them never learned that. They prefer shoot the messenger. They are still kids.
 
RobotRocker said:
Well, you only have to look at the reaction to 8.8 and other scoring controversies to start understanding why the journalist may side with the PR because the PR isn't the one coming up with bigoted slurs and shots against their character and treats them like human beings.
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Anyone who's been on the receiving end of those insults quickly learns to distinguish between the vocal minority and the silent majority. Judging by some of the press responses over the past couple of weeks, some members of the gaming press have lost track of that distinction.
 
That Kotaku Au article is pretty awful tbh. The whole argument boils down to I had these silly experiences as a music journalist so it must mean Video game journalism is fine


which is ridiculous and dumb.



Im not going to lambast Kollar hes a cool dude and does good work. Theres other tweets of his after that one where he talks more about his opinion on gaf. Its a shame hes friends with that idiot but we all have friends who are idiots.
 
conman said:
Which tells me that journalists like him aren't doing their jobs. If people are afraid of comedians/comic writers, then those people must be doing something seriously wrong. Hey, Mr. Journalist Man, isn't it your job to make the industry afraid of you?
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I fucking love this part of your post. Needs to be echoed throughout the whole thread.

But, maybe they just have it all ass-backwards and the "journalists" are making their audience afraid of them, rather than the people they're supposed to be reporting on.

I was going to have a wink at the end of that last line, but I just thought about it... I honestly think that's what they're doing. Winning over publishers by shitting on their audience.
 
It's so odd to me that games journalists are so openly mean toward their audience. Readers, even some Neogaf posters, can be clueless, annoying or spiteful but it's seems cruel and idiotic to publicly show your contempt toward the very people you are meant to serve, and who provide traffic to your site which gets you paid. Journalists talk shit about annoying readers, bad PR people, asshole interviewees, etc. but they generally have enough common sense to not say it in a place where the entire world can hear it.

Blowing off steam with your peers is important but it shouldn't be done in a setting where your readers can see. It's very off-putting to me, publicly showing anger toward a portion of your readers just strikes me as very unprofessional and it just makes the people involved, and sadly others in the same profession who vent their feelings in private, look a bit like stuck-up snobs.
 
Vice said:
It's so odd to me that games journalists are so openly mean toward their audience. Readers, even some Neogaf posters, can be clueless, annoying or spiteful but it's seems cruel and idiotic to publicly show your contempt toward the very people you are meant to serve, and who provide traffic to your site which gets you paid. Journalists talk shit about annoying readers, bad PR people, asshole interviewees, etc. but they generally have enough common sense to not say it in a place where the entire world can hear it.

Blowing off steam with your peers is important but it shouldn't be done in a setting where your readers can see. It's very off-putting to me, publicly showing anger toward a portion of your readers just strikes me as very unprofessional and it just makes the people involved, and sadly others in the same profession who vent their feelings in private, look a bit like stuck-up snobs.
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This trend can be found emanating directly from Polygon. A bastion of snobbish elites that feel so protected by their big money angel investors, who sit on such gilded lilies that when they enter the conversation, that they can swing their imaginary huge dicks around as if they were any sort of pillar of journalism.

Just remember their names. Keep their disdain for you close in mind. Keep writing articles about them and their disrespect. In the next year or so when some of them are let go, we'll know which inevitable kickstarters to avoid. And future employers will be unable to search their online profiles without getting a flood of negative backlash. Each one of them are tearing down their own future careers, tweet by tweet.
 
RobotRocker said:
Well, you only have to look at the reaction to 8.8 and other scoring controversies to start understanding why the journalist may side with the PR because the PR isn't the one coming up with bigoted slurs and shots against their character and treats them like human beings. Yes, it's a loud minority. But it's too depressingly common in gaming that such a loud minority is not only allowed to get traction, but it's allowed to be the leading voice. And it's no wonder some journalists retreat back to the more friendly PR's since they are the ones who aren't holding them up to abuse. So we have a massive Us Vs Them problem because as a community, we aren't exactly inspiring them to fight our corner when if they say, for example, "I don't like Kingdom Hearts", they have 1,000 anonymous commenter's screaming for their corpse to be dragged through the city streets.
Click to expand...

The bile from gaming fanboys is comparable to that hurled at political reporters and the national media; political reporters get just as if not more vicious rhetoric hurled at them daily. That doesn't stop most of them from being journalists or keeping their relationship with the people they're reporting on in check.
 
David Rayfield asked for it.

7wNEz.png



bish gets all the credit ;)
 
Massa said:
Sadly there's not much of an audience interested in games criticism. People are just looking to reviews for confirmation.
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Why wouldn't the audience expect what they've received ad nauseum for years on end?

That's not to say we're guiltless in this, but let's put it this way... if you have been irishing up your spouse or roommate's coffee at breakfast every morning to make them more pleasant to deal with and after a year stop doing it, the natural reaction from that person is going to be "WTF IS THIS?!" Why? Because you've created a morning alcoholic who didn't get their fix.

RobotRocker said:
Well, you only have to look at the reaction to 8.8 and other scoring controversies to start understanding why the journalist may side with the PR because the PR isn't the one coming up with bigoted slurs and shots against their character and treats them like human beings. Yes, it's a loud minority. But it's too depressingly common in gaming that such a loud minority is not only allowed to get traction, but it's allowed to be the leading voice. And it's no wonder some journalists retreat back to the more friendly PR's since they are the ones who aren't holding them up to abuse.
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Protip: journalism isn't about making friends with either your readers or your subject matter. It's about being trusted and respected by the former, being seen as consistent and even-handed with the latter.

I feel no sympathy for "journalists" who buckle under the pressure of a few harsh words when part of their job is laying harsh words about others onto the public.
 
Vice said:
It's so odd to me that games journalists are so openly mean toward their audience. Readers, even some Neogaf posters, can be clueless, annoying or spiteful but it's seems cruel and idiotic to publicly show your contempt toward the very people you are meant to serve, and who provide traffic to your site which gets you paid. Journalists talk shit about annoying readers, bad PR people, asshole interviewees, etc. but they generally have enough common sense to not say it in a place where the entire world can hear it.

Blowing off steam with your peers is important but it shouldn't be done in a setting where your readers can see. It's very off-putting to me, publicly showing anger toward a portion of your readers just strikes me as very unprofessional and it just makes the people involved, and sadly others in the same profession who vent their feelings in private, look a bit like stuck-up snobs.
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It's sad, because these people are supposed to be professional. They're acting like they made a post on Wordpress and NeoGAF started making fun of it. "Why me? You guys don't know what you're talking about!" It wouldn't be so bad if some game developers/publishers didn't do this as well. Hell, some of the people in the game development industry act like gamers are wrong and anybody who offers any sort of criticism are idiots. It drive me fucking crazy, to be treated like someone whose opinions don't matter.
 
What kind of non-game stuff do you do?

CY: There is a whole industry in serious games, and we have a lot of contracts going on from gas and oil companies, General Electric, all the way to SOCOM. We have a lot of military companies working with our technology, in fact.

So you provide simulation and training software?

CY: Technologies, simulations, contract work, whatever they need and whatever they want. We have a studio for serious game development. That studio is a subsidiary of Crytek, but it's not called Crytek. It's studio number seven -- so secret I didn't even mention it! [laughs]
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source


Something for journalists. Published September 24, 2010. Has anyone done anything on this topic?
 
A few regulars on the old 1UP gaming forum resented GAF. They wondered why former 1UP staff who never frequented their own forum spent so much time here, whether posting or patrolling threads for posts about themselves. We/they were here and not there because compliments made on your own site, though valuable, are much like mom's support, where GAF is the pretty people in the bar. Don't dismiss this. How many of us can turn to a corner of the web where people we've never met know our names and talk about the things we say, write, and create? Don't underestimate that heady and highly addictive drug. It's when those pretty people in the bar talk shit instead of swoon that we return to mom (or twitter followers) in search of comfort and sympathy. We say GAF is irrelevant, caustic, a vocal but meaningless and unrepresentative minority. And then, undeterred, we come back for the very reasons that lead us to find those offending posts in the first place.
 
GAF's at times critical and caustic nature is why the praise that is given is meaningful in the first place (along with the fact that outright trolls are banned, making it harder dismiss any given poster's thoughts as trolling).
 
FartOfWar said:
A few regulars on the old 1UP gaming forum resented GAF. They wondered why former 1UP staff who never frequented their own forum spent so much time here, whether posting or patrolling threads for posts about themselves. We/they were here and not there because compliments made on your own site, though valuable, are much like mom's support, where GAF is the pretty people in the bar. Don't dismiss this. How many of us can turn to a corner of the web where people we've never met know our names and talk about the things we say, write, and create? Don't underestimate that heady and highly addictive drug. It's when those pretty people in the bar talk shit instead of swoon that we return to mom (or twitter followers) in search of comfort and sympathy. We say GAF is irrelevant, caustic, a vocal but meaningless and unrepresentative minority. And then, undeterred, we come back for the very reasons that lead us to find those offending posts in the first place.
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Oooo i feel so special.

In all seriousness though, thanks for the bit of perspective. Its rather wild that people get so up and arms about this forum (and 4chan to a not as public respect)
 
Some games media people turn to the twitter 'echo chamber' for the same reason part of their audience turns to reviews - validation of pre-existing opinion rather than critical discussion.

This behavior serves only to retard the progress of the medium.
 
Jake Tower said:
Some games media people turn to the twitter 'echo chamber' for the same reason part of their audience turns to reviews - validation of pre-existing opinion rather than critical discussion.

This behavior serves only to retard the progress of the medium.
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One might say that about certain persons on this forum. It's what people do.
 
FartOfWar said:
A few regulars on the old 1UP gaming forum resented GAF. They wondered why former 1UP staff who never frequented their own forum spent so much time here, whether posting or patrolling threads for posts about themselves. We/they were here and not there because compliments made on your own site, though valuable, are much like mom's support, where GAF is the pretty people in the bar. Don't dismiss this. How many of us can turn to a corner of the web where people we've never met know our names and talk about the things we say, write, and create? Don't underestimate that heady and highly addictive drug. It's when those pretty people in the bar talk shit instead of swoon that we return to mom (or twitter followers) in search of comfort and sympathy. We say GAF is irrelevant, caustic, a vocal but meaningless and unrepresentative minority. And then, undeterred, we come back for the very reasons that lead us to find those offending posts in the first place.
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send me a BioShock shame-tarp and I'll give this post a 10
 
Dennis said:
From the BLOPS 2 review thread.



"hmmm, who should we get to review this new COD game....oh, I know! Lets use that guy who used to do PR for Activision! Bet he knows his COD!"
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Someone in the review comments apparently quoted his LinkedIn profile a few hours ago:
PR Manager - Activision
August 2004 – Present (8 years 4 months)
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Certainly looks different now.
 
Réalisations : - Les deux plus importantes et imposantes campagnes RP d’Activision-Blizzard France avec Call of Duty : Modern Warfare 2 et Call of Duty : Black Ops, les deux plus gros lancement de l’histoire dans le domaine du divertissement en France et dans le monde.
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Another non-story acording to game journalists.
 
Catshade said:
Welp, so much for their new ethical guidelines.
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Totally different websites. Eurogamer just sells a license and have nothing to do with the other languages websites. Just like how there are multiple Kotaku or IGN sites.

Oersted said:
So outside UK, Eurogamer doesn´t even try to look like they care for the most basic ethical standards?
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They're probably pissed about it, but they can't really monitor every editor, freelancer and reviewer on about twenty foreign websites.
 
If everyone starts talking shit about GFW will they be compelled to do a another reunion episode to win us over?

Remember GFW, what a crappy podcast that wa... ugh I can't even type it out its such a lie :(
 
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