Very interesting read: http://penny-arcade.com/report/arti...-why-cosplay-galleries-lead-to-better-reporti
Games Journalism! Wainwright/Florence/Tomb Raider/Eurogamer/Libel Threats/Doritos
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That was well put.
And just in case there was anyone who wasn't already aware of this : it's not only true for game journalism, but also for the whole press. It's drowning & needs cheap clicks.
It's an excuse. And a lame one. And it's clear the only reason it was posted here was as some kind of reasoning on why a good site needs to dabble in shitty content.
You can pander to the unholy masses for your cheap clicks, just don't pretend to be above it and only doing it out of necessity. This is not our problem, it's theirs. It's not on us to have to accept the way things are, it's on them to find a better way. I know it's tough, I've worked in ad sales, sales, marketing for games, all of it. I know. But I refuse to spend time on websites that use cheap clicks to justify their existence. This model isn't one out of necessity, it's one of laziness.
These sites should be judged by what types of content they are willing to post to drive traffic. The worst these types of click bait, the worse a site is, regardless of their other content.
APZonerunner
Member
There's a number of successful subscription-model based publications out there, and some British newspapers even lock their official websites behind a paywall (how would you feel if you had to be a Game Informer subscriber to see their exclusive reveal content on their website?) but you have to wonder how sustainable this model is, especially within games.
Giant Bomb tried to go down this path, right? They're still a site that is ultimately paid for by ads now, it seems, bolstered and helped by subscription money. The sub money combines with the wealth of clicks their Wiki probably provides to be enough to mean they don't have to start covering everything or having cosplay galleries, but they do still need the traditional ad deals. Plus that causes a whole new headache of where you draw the line between premium and free content and all that.
These pieces are like loss-leaders in the retail sector - you make a loss on one item to get people into the store in the first place, where they'll then buy additional product. In this case it's using these less original pieces to pay the staff who can then produce the better, more interesting stuff. Until a better model presents itself, I think it does kind of sit in that 'necessary evil' territory.
Besides, people are clicking it - and the first rule of Mass Media is of course to give the people what they want. If they want pictures of 'cosplay babes,' so be it - I'll be elsewhere reading interesting criticism and such. The existence of cosplay articles aren't the problem; they're earnest and honest in what they are, which is tabloid horse shit. They deserve to have a place to get it. Some people like and want tabloid horse shit. I don't think much of the content Hip Hop Gamer puts out, but he's providing a very specific service in a very specific style for an audience who clearly wants it; I respect that.
It's when you start to get shilling dressed up as interesting insight, or publisher influence beginning to exhibit in article copy and such - which does still happen all too often - that you start to hit a problem.
How much would you be willing to pay for a website with nothing but original, in-depth reporting? Your answer is probably "nothing," because any website that tries that model will find its content aggregated and rewritten by hundreds of other websites with no pay walls, and why pay for something when you can get it for free?
We as readers have become accustomed to free media, and the future of media is very scary because of that.
Cerebral Assassin
Member
If you offer more quality than the free option you will find people willing to pay(this has been happening in sports media for a while now) & given the state of most sites there is a clear gap in the market, the problem is the quality is simply not there.
That's right, it shouldn't be a reader's concern.
This, however, is wrong. I am not talking about games journalism here : each and every single piece of media is desperately trying to stay afloat.
In-depth analysis? Actual content? "Real" news instead of tabloid, badly written articles?
Every journalist wants to offer this type of quality. And a lot of them are able to.
But the truth, as demonstrated by the tone of this article, is that nobody has found the key of monetization, and it's not because they're not trying. Hell, I'm pretty sure never in history have so much brains together tried to redesign to future of journalism. But it still doesn't work (and it's not only because of internet).
So, what does the industry do? It relies on the only methods that sort of work. Sort of. subscription sometimes, more often click-bait articles and ads. Even if we know it doesn't go anywhere, they have to make at least a bit of money.
Who is paying for quality in sports media?
Cerebral Assassin
Member
People who have needs that aren't being met by the mass media, the problem is that that you can't charge if all you have is one decent article a week/month(like the majority of games sites).
No, I'm asking you for examples. I follow sports media, and I don't know what you're talking about when you're saying people pay for quality there.
APZonerunner and Jason Schreier, your posts made me think of this clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj5IV23g-fE (just adding some humour to the conversation)
And good clarifying post, APZonerunner.
And good clarifying post, APZonerunner.
Cerebral Assassin
Member
The Tomkin Times is a pay site, you have things such as The Blizzard magazine(which is probably the model that games writing should follow), the sports section of the Times is a big driver behind subscriptions, there are others but these are the ones I am most familiar with.
ESPN has ESPN Insider that has exclusive articles and other stuff. Mostly it is rumors, speculation, or Fantasy League type of information.
Puppet Shadow
Member
I've never heard of any of those. Google tells me those are UK publications, though. I don't know anything about how they work.
Yeah, and that's in addition to the oft-misleading ticker headlines and non-stop fluff they run.
Lactose_Intolerant
Member
I would give Kotaku $1 a month if all their pieces were up to jschreier's usual standards. Oh and they got rid of Brian Ashcraft. I'm sure he brings in hits to the site but all his stories bring the site down in my view.
He wasn't saying that Kotaku doesn't do that. Kotaku having all that fluff content to bring in the clicks is what allows Jason to write the long pieces that everyone compliments him on.
I apologize then if I misunderstood, but I think the fluff and lazy stuff steer people like me away from any of the good stuff that may be there.
Puppet Shadow
Member
I'll be honest, I don't really understand the hate towards sites that have fluff. Why? I never see these articles as I almost always only visit them when I'm directly linked to an article I'm interested in. So I never see it. And the argument that the quality or reputation of a site that runs these fluff stories ruins their credibility reminds me of a friend that borrowed my ipod and mocked me for having some Coldplay on it.
Great article that I'll keep in mind going forward.
Personally I don't think Ben Kuchera aka. King Games Journalism deserves any money or clicks.
Add to the fact that the people he's working for is the guys known for rape victim harassment.
Wickerbasket
Member
The guy he works for purposely goes out of his way to harass rape victims? That's terrible.
Is it some sort of hobby he has or something?
Yeah, they made a joke about rape. Joking is the worst thing you can do when your business is comedy, don't you know.
edit: Also, am I supposed to be taking the side against Kuchera in any of that "evidence"? He's taking the reasonable position in every one of those links, except for C which doesn't have enough context to know what's even going on.
1. http://debacle.tumblr.com/post/3041940865/the-pratfall-of-penny-arcade-a-timeline
2. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08838151.2012.705199
I won't derail the thread and if you don't think it's insensitive behaviour by PA, then we'll just have to agree to disagree.
I pay for Giant Bomb just to support them, I pay for ESPN insider, Pandora. Give me an option without ads or extra content from sites with personalities I like and I'm down.
So my answer is honestly somewhere between $5 - $10 / month, though I admit that's on the high side. HOWEVER it must mean that the site I pay for shows me no ads and runs no shitty articles. It could work, and it WILL work. It will just take a site that's willing to be above the shit and take that initial hit to do it.
Wickerbasket
Member
I don't really see a problem with the original comic, I wouldn't say it's pro rape. However, he did handle the reactions to the comic incredibly poorly, there's no defending that.
He was certainly acting immature and insensitive but I think it's a bit unfair to label him as a guy known for 'rape victim harassment'. From that label you'd be expecting him to be picketing health clinics with pro rape signs.
Puppet Shadow
Member
Kuchara is an idiot on Twitter, hell I could find better examples. He reminds me of watching Bruce Springsteen in an interview. There are some things that some people should just stay away from.
If all sites starting charging a small monthly fee, I'd think I'd just pay for Gaf, Giant Bomb and maybe Edge.
Edit: Damn, I just realized I'm a hypocrite because I do have a small list of sites I refuse to visit for moral reasons, and I've also been boycotting EA for the last two years. So, I see where you're coming from.
Edit 2:
Ya, I felt the same way about it.
Delusibeta
Banned
Meanwhile at RPS Towers...
Also down the comment chain is Polygon saying it doesn't apply to them, but then again they got a bunch of investment capital.
[Edit] And right down at the bottom, an ad rep for GameSpot UK (and Last.fm) chimed in:
The irony of the article in question being posted here by a Kotaku employee has been noted. Also: americans.jpg
And since Lime has decided to dig up the Dickwolves incident, while I think that the Penny Arcade duo handled the incident in about the worst possible manner, I also think that the original complaint was completely without merit.
John Walker said:
Also down the comment chain is Polygon saying it doesn't apply to them, but then again they got a bunch of investment capital.
[Edit] And right down at the bottom, an ad rep for GameSpot UK (and Last.fm) chimed in:
The irony of the article in question being posted here by a Kotaku employee has been noted. Also: americans.jpg
And since Lime has decided to dig up the Dickwolves incident, while I think that the Penny Arcade duo handled the incident in about the worst possible manner, I also think that the original complaint was completely without merit.
Tummi Gummi
Member
Ah, the Dickwolves flare up. That was hilarious.
Agreed, that is terrible as well.
American news media seem in general worse than other Western media, imo. You should see the level of difference between CNN USA and CNN Worldwide.
It's funny because that CNN issue is directly related to the issue we have here, rushing to post without confirmation or reliable sources. It's like day 1 Journalism class and yet because of our developing social media that allows us to communicate to the entire world in real-time we have to go through it all over again.
Technology changes, people being people always wanting to be first stays the same.
Just wait until telepathic news hits. Wolf Blitzer Jr. all up in your mind.
Technology changes, people being people always wanting to be first stays the same.
Just wait until telepathic news hits. Wolf Blitzer Jr. all up in your mind.
Actually, thanks to the Internet I no longer pay money for news bulletins, but instead spend my hard-earned money on publications that mostly has quality in-depth articles about topics on a weekly basis. So in that regard, the proliferation of news we are seeing can be interpreted as a good thing in that regard (i.e. higher demand and focus towards higher quality articles).
I pay for ESPN Insider - mostly for the magazine - and I wouldn't exactly call it high quality content.
Just_myles
Member
jschreier said:
But isn't the whole point to have paid subs regardless of the quality of the content? Or am I missing the argument?
Kadayi
Banned
Laughable denial by the Boris Johnson of games Journalism.
Agreed. Zero sense of perspective.
The more I think about continuing as a games journalist, the more I realize how freaking difficult it is to write a story that isn't 90% PR jargon. Much respect to the guys that are able to build stories around it, but I just want to be able to inform the public without PR trying to usurp my job.
Because that's how the publishers want it.
They've deliberately set the industry up so that everything is behind walls and walls of carefully orchestrated PR.
Look at any other entertainment industry - all the sub-industries contained within (the script writers, music producers, VFX, cameramen etc) have their own culture featuring websites, magazines, award ceremonies all dedicated to that particular profession. Everything is very easily accessible to journalists who want to write a particular story and not just play to the PR beat.
These industries freely give interviews about current projects, behind-the-scenes footage is everywhere, scripts are floating around on the internet, stuff leaks all the time. Does this diminish from the end-product? Of coarse not.
That's why so much of the interesting games journalism is about projects that were finished years ago, or internal drama about a studio that has long since shut down. Anything current is deliberately hidden away with as much secrecy as possible - and for what? They're fucking videogames not matters of national security.
It's really off putting, especially when I'm working on stories outside of the industry that are much more interesting and easier to work on. It's nothing against working hard, it's more about how difficult it is to get a simple answer out of someone. I'm all for working a source, but there comes a point where the work does not add up for what should be written. Especially when playing the confirm from a second source game and no one wants to give a definitive answer on the subject -- hypothetically speaking since I'm only a few months into gaming journalism and years into regular ass reporting.
Squidofman
Member
It's actually not that hard.
The trick is in story selection. If the "news" is just bullshit PR, instead of trying to put spin on it, just don't write it.
That's how the entire industry is set up. Who ever has it first gets the views and the advertising dollar. The same things happening on major news networks happens in pretty much all journalism across the board. We seriously talked to a guy a few weeks ago in one of our classes about being a multimedia first responder for a local news outlet. The guy drives around as a one-man reporting crew to pick up on stuff as it happens. One guy shoots film, tweets, photographs, and writes news for web and the paper in the span of 10-15 minutes so the outlet is first to have it on their site. It's good to have up to day news, but it's getting crazy that outlets are getting to this level.
At the same time, all media outlets have the fluff pieces because they make people happy. Human Interest stories that aren't really news but give you the warm fuzzies. For local and national news, it's animals, babies, and the occasional triumph over some issues. For games, it's all nostalgia, music and cosplay. I don't think we will ever get away from these types of stories because people will continue to be interested in them. Right now, there's a negative connotation because these stories drive views, but I'm sure there are tons of people who are always happy to see a non-serious story in the news or in their feed.
Finding a solution to the problem that has plagued print journalism for years (to a lesser extent) will not make the fluff go away in your online media. I'm sure people will start asking for it if it ever happened to go away.
Squidofman
Member
Exactly. People's resistance to such stories has always amazed me. If I walk over and turn on BBC World right now, there's a show about a lady cooking Thai food. My local news will close with a kid's fashion show.
Just because something isn't perceived by an industry follower as important doesn't mean other people don't find it entertaining content.
CoffeeGames
Member
I have "blogged" for the last few years. It's not my job, and I didn't start it to make a living doing it. I "write" (if you call what I do, writing?) because I enjoy it.
When I spend 4-8 hours (or longer) on a story that gets a few hundred hits, you won't see me complaining that I'm not making $50K a year doing it (I don't even currently make $100 a YEAR blogging, but get decent traffic).
I do try to focus on producing stories/reports that aren't found anywhere else on the internet though, and sure, some would/will find them completely boring/useless, but I find the game-play data interesting. I also enjoy sharing it with the developers, and have had interesting conversations with some over the last few years because of my pieces...
So far this year, minus my monthly wrap up posts, I have produced about 20 original pieces for my blog. Sure, they may follow a similar layout, but every single word in them is typed by hand, not simply copied/pasted from other posts. The images I do in most of them are edited by myself, as I try to keep images interesting (and I try learning something "new", often, with the video/photo programs I use).
As for the PAR piece, it's garbage IMO, because why should readers care about the issue, when the guy that wrote it didn't even have time to reply to emails (after asking me about an issue I mentioned), but he had time to tweet about random stuff, and blocked me on Twitter?
"Games journalists" would do well to go take a customer service class, or work at a fast food restaurant, wait some tables, and just get out and deal with the public in general. I think most live in protective "virtual" bubbles behind their computers. It's easy to not respond to customers, apparently, that you probably won't ever meet...but don't go pouting about not making enough money when you are actively blocking, ignoring, lying about, name-calling, and wasting your readers' (see: customers) time.
So many are too busy to answer emails, but not too busy to be tweeting about randomness? Right...
When I spend 4-8 hours (or longer) on a story that gets a few hundred hits, you won't see me complaining that I'm not making $50K a year doing it (I don't even currently make $100 a YEAR blogging, but get decent traffic).
I do try to focus on producing stories/reports that aren't found anywhere else on the internet though, and sure, some would/will find them completely boring/useless, but I find the game-play data interesting. I also enjoy sharing it with the developers, and have had interesting conversations with some over the last few years because of my pieces...
So far this year, minus my monthly wrap up posts, I have produced about 20 original pieces for my blog. Sure, they may follow a similar layout, but every single word in them is typed by hand, not simply copied/pasted from other posts. The images I do in most of them are edited by myself, as I try to keep images interesting (and I try learning something "new", often, with the video/photo programs I use).
As for the PAR piece, it's garbage IMO, because why should readers care about the issue, when the guy that wrote it didn't even have time to reply to emails (after asking me about an issue I mentioned), but he had time to tweet about random stuff, and blocked me on Twitter?
"Games journalists" would do well to go take a customer service class, or work at a fast food restaurant, wait some tables, and just get out and deal with the public in general. I think most live in protective "virtual" bubbles behind their computers. It's easy to not respond to customers, apparently, that you probably won't ever meet...but don't go pouting about not making enough money when you are actively blocking, ignoring, lying about, name-calling, and wasting your readers' (see: customers) time.
So many are too busy to answer emails, but not too busy to be tweeting about randomness? Right...
CoffeeGames
Member
Depending how far you are toward a degree, I would suggest looking at two fields (if you want to make a decent income and not float from job to job).
Medical industry (lots of jobs in it, not just nurses and doctors).
Oil industry (might have to relocate, but the money is great).
I don't what you're insinuating, but I'm two years into my journalism degree.
He's insinuating, that good luck finding a journalist position.
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