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Gaming Journalism |OT| May contain trace amounts of games. Or journalism.

Saruhashi

Banned
On the use of "Metroidvania" to describe games...

"Video games need to be easier to parse, not harder. We talk a lot about diversity and inclusion in games—how we games could become a better, more welcoming space if we just figured out a way to represent more perspectives both in the games we play and in the studios that make them. These are necessary, urgent steps. But I also wonder how many people have never bothered because we’ve spent all this time using the wrong words."

Would they ever just fuck off with this shite?

So if I call a game a metroidvania it's not just that I'm using a phrase that makes sense to me and a lot of people who also play games? Oh hell no! I'm being exclusionary and unwelcoming and chasing people away too! Fucksakes.

Jesus, how hard would it be to say "what do you mean by Metroidvania"?

It's not difficult. Why do these useless fuckers need to make every little thing into a big deal?

My wife is not big into gaming at all but for sure she knows what "roguelike", "metroidvania" and "soulsborne" is because she's heard me used the words and, check this crazy shit out, has asked me what that means.

Fuckin hell.

Don't be using big, strange, words to talk about games you guys. It's exclusionary.
 

angelic

Banned
Jeremy Parish spanking Kotaku

Screenshot-20190705-114121-Twitter.jpg
 
Jeremy Parish spanking Kotaku

Screenshot-20190705-114121-Twitter.jpg

Jeremy Parish is one of the bright sparks that exploded from the amazing inferno of gaming awesomeness that was 1UP. It makes me happy to know that he still loves games and isn't trying to indoctrinate and force his personal politics on an audience of few (non-gamers masquerading as gamers and infecting other so-called, "gaming" forums).

No politics. No bullshit. Just gaming (and passively sharing that love of the medium with your peers): That's how you win at video game coverage. Fact.

It's not rocket science. The concrete foundation for success in gaming coverage was already laid in the 80s and 90s.

It's great that there are still a few normal gaming "journalists" left. I'd buy Jeremy a beer for that Tweet if I could.
 
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Scopa

The Tribe Has Spoken
Jeremy Parish is one of the bright sparks that exploded from the amazing inferno of gaming awesomeness that was 1UP. It makes me happy to know that he still loves games and isn't trying to indoctrinate and force his personal politics on an audience of few (non-gamers masquerading as gamers and infecting other so-called, "gaming" forums).

No politics. No bullshit. Just gaming (and passively sharing that love of the medium with your peers): That's how you win at video game coverage. Fact.

It's not rocket science. The concrete foundation for success in gaming coverage was already laid in the 80s and 90s.

It's great that there are still a few normal gaming "journalists" left. I'd buy Jeremy a beer for that Tweet if I could.
What? Did you listen to the Retronauts podcast over the last 3-4 years? Politics up to your ears. In a retro gaming podcast, no less. I stopped listening to it because it was becoming ridiculous. Imagine finding a way to bring up Donald Trump when you’re discussing fucking Castlevania.

A listener even sent a very polite email expressing dismay that his favourite podcast was becoming hard to listen to because of all the Orange Man Bad screeching and you know what Jeremy Parish’s response to that was? He posted an excerpt from the email to Twitter along with a mocking comment so that his little gang of Twitter followers could also mock the shit out of the person.

Jeremy Parish might be less obnoxious than most modern day gaming journos, but he’s still insufferable with a terminal case of TDS.
 
What? Did you listen to the Retronauts podcast over the last 3-4 years? Politics up to your ears. In a retro gaming podcast, no less. I stopped listening to it because it was becoming ridiculous. Imagine finding a way to bring up Donald Trump when you’re discussing fucking Castlevania.

A listener even sent a very polite email expressing dismay that his favourite podcast was becoming hard to listen to because of all the Orange Man Bad screeching and you know what Jeremy Parish’s response to that was? He posted an excerpt from the email to Twitter along with a mocking comment so that his little gang of Twitter followers could also mock the shit out of the person.

Jeremy Parish might be less obnoxious than most modern day gaming journos, but he’s still insufferable with a terminal case of TDS.

...Oh no. Really?

giphy.gif


RIP games journalism.

I'm just going to keep my archive of old 1UP podcasts from the 2000s and re-listen to them in complete ignorance of the present whilst enjoying my game library and trawling GAF.
 
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I agree. I had to stop listening to Retronauts the likes of Jeremy Parish and Bob Mackey, due to a distinct lack of knowledge on huge swathes of the industry and due to overbearing political talk. Parish maybe not so much, but Bob is just a screaming child at the best of times and actually seems to have very little knowledge of anything that's not Nintendo. Jeremy has the same problem regarding his knowledge, but he's a little more reserved and a lot more articulate.

I'm glad Jeremy pointed out how ridiculous dropping a decent category or description is though.
 
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cormack12

Gold Member
Source: Kotaku

The PC Gamer story reveals that Mordhau, which only launched with the ability to build white male characters, is looking to expand its roster to include women and people from different races. Which is cool, except the developers are so worried about upsetting their bigoted fans that they’re planning (though not guaranteeing the ultimate inclusion) on adding a toggle for players to filter out those choices, so that every character in the game is displayed as a white male, regardless of their rival’s actual selection.

Kotaku signal boosts lies




Kotaku calld out on their bullshit framing as though they instigated change




giphy.gif
 
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H

hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
Just to highlight some good gaming journalism, I can report that the latest issue of Retro Gamer magazine is excellent. There's some interesting stuff about Amiga Power which I never read back in the day as I had an Atari ST. Ended up grabbing a few issues of Amiga Power and while there are a few cases of the reviewers being plainly crap at the game they do at least admit it, and there's coverage with vastly more nuance than other magazines of the era were willing to provide plus a far better insight into the industry at that time. Modern journalists could learn from them.
 

cormack12

Gold Member
Just to highlight some good gaming journalism, I can report that the latest issue of Retro Gamer magazine is excellent. There's some interesting stuff about Amiga Power which I never read back in the day as I had an Atari ST. Ended up grabbing a few issues of Amiga Power and while there are a few cases of the reviewers being plainly crap at the game they do at least admit it, and there's coverage with vastly more nuance than other magazines of the era were willing to provide plus a far better insight into the industry at that time. Modern journalists could learn from them.

In the spirit of above, I also find Edge still fairly relevant.
 

Kazza

Member
I agree. I had to stop listening to Retronauts the likes of Jeremy Parish and Bob Mackey, due to a distinct lack of knowledge on huge swathes of the industry and due to overbearing political talk. Parish maybe not so much, but Bob is just a screaming child at the best of times and actually seems to have very little knowledge of anything that's not Nintendo. Jeremy has the same problem regarding his knowledge, but he's a little more reserved and a lot more articulate.

I'm glad Jeremy pointed out how ridiculous dropping a decent category or description is though.


I haven't listened to that podcast before, but thought I recognised the name. According to this video (admittedly by the alleged victim himself), Bob Mackey has been obsessively harassing Colin Moriarty, and tweeted about him 2,900 times in 2018 alone:




That doesn't sound like a well-adjusted person. Hopefully, things have let up this year.
 
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I long for the time when gamejournalist talked about the gameplay, the graphics, the story, the sound and the music and so on in games.
Things that really matter for gamers.
And than giving a score according to the criteria named above...

Not trying to push theyr agenda, not downplaying the game cous they really dont like the genre, no SJW b*s... Just raiting the games on the things that really really matter.

O wel time has changed...for the worst🙄
 
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Kazza

Member



The video covers general ethics in journalism, media literacy, and an interview with NeoGAF's favourite games journalist, Jason Schrier.

I personally think the section from 6:20 was the ost interesting part. Although George says that however people might criticise current games journalism, we have at least advanced past that time. I think the editor of the new EGM, who he interviews, is right, that the content in old magazines grew out of an enthusiast perspective, but htat's betetr than the political perspective many games news is written through nowadays.

I bit overly long at 50 minutes, but maybe worth putting on in the background, if you have the time.
 
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Shai-Tan

Banned
"EGM Guy" also pointed out that magazines were the primary means to get basic info about games and that's not true anymore. The blend with general entertainment on many nominally game sites also suggests game news isn't particularly lucrative. Anyway that video was a decent intro to the topic. Another basic video to watch about media literacy:

 

Danny Dudekisser

I paid good money for this Dynex!



The video covers general ethics in journalism, media literacy, and an interview with NeoGAF's favourite games journalist, Jason Schrier.

I personally think the section from 6:20 was the ost interesting part. Although George says that however people might criticise current games journalism, we have at least advanced past that time. I think the editor of the new EGM, who he interviews, is right, that the content in old magazines grew out of an enthusiast perspective, but htat's betetr than the political perspective many games news is written through nowadays.

I bit overly long at 50 minutes, but maybe worth putting on in the background, if you have the time.


I watched the whole thing and I'm still wondering.... at the end of the day, do we really want anything beyond product information? Like, I just wanna know what cool stuff I can buy. There are very few instances where I find the culture around games particularly interesting; though, maybe I'm biased as someone who works in it.
 

ROMhack

Member
I watched the whole thing and I'm still wondering.... at the end of the day, do we really want anything beyond product information? Like, I just wanna know what cool stuff I can buy. There are very few instances where I find the culture around games particularly interesting; though, maybe I'm biased as someone who works in it.

I haven't watched the video but that's the only thing I actually care about. I appreciate that aspects of videogame journalism will naturally cover technical information but it adds very little to my personal enjoyment of a product. As soon as somebody here gets into a debate against 30 vs. 60 FPS I find my brain going on vacation.

https://www.usgamer.net/articles/nier-automata-postmortem-yoko-taro-platinumgames

Articles like this, which offer insight into the industry, are the only thing that interests me. It's the type of article that wouldn't feel out of place in a physical magazine

Conjecture is fine but podcasts do it so much better than text.
 
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Whitesnake

Banned
I watched the whole thing and I'm still wondering.... at the end of the day, do we really want anything beyond product information? Like, I just wanna know what cool stuff I can buy. There are very few instances where I find the culture around games particularly interesting; though, maybe I'm biased as someone who works in it.

You are far from alone in this opinion.

There is only one gaming news site that is perfect:

 

lifa-cobex

Member
I watched the whole thing and I'm still wondering.... at the end of the day, do we really want anything beyond product information? Like, I just wanna know what cool stuff I can buy. There are very few instances where I find the culture around games particularly interesting; though, maybe I'm biased as someone who works in it.
That's pretty much my stance as far as what I want from a game journalist.
Touch upon the games features, how well it runs, music and audio quality and a base description of what the game is.
Just the basic elements of what i'm purchasing.
Anything beyond that, I can go to a lets play.
 
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Helios

Member



The video covers general ethics in journalism, media literacy, and an interview with NeoGAF's favourite games journalist, Jason Schrier.

I personally think the section from 6:20 was the ost interesting part. Although George says that however people might criticise current games journalism, we have at least advanced past that time. I think the editor of the new EGM, who he interviews, is right, that the content in old magazines grew out of an enthusiast perspective, but htat's betetr than the political perspective many games news is written through nowadays.

I bit overly long at 50 minutes, but maybe worth putting on in the background, if you have the time.

Great video as always from George. It's an interesting watch that teaches you a lot about journalism and it's history. The part at the end about consuming media is also a great checklist to keep in mind.
Also the meme about Schrier shilling his book everywhere comes true once again. :messenger_grinning_smiling:
 

#Phonepunk#

Banned
I watched the whole thing and I'm still wondering.... at the end of the day, do we really want anything beyond product information?
i don't. i'm sick of it. i'm sick of hearing about crunch culture. i'm sick of people fantasizing who they would fuck if their video game characters were real. i'm sick of hearing about gaming journalism itself. i'm sick of hearing about shit that has nothing to do with games.

really, if you want to write about the industry, start an industry rag. they can gossip all day long. talk about market shares. talk about business strategy. talk about crunch culture and corporate harassment. do stories on other reporters. pass off your dumb fan fiction as "articles". go nuts. none of that has to do with games themselves.

it's like, if i pick up a car magazine, are they doing deep dives into the management process at Ford plants? no. some pink haired lunatic fantasizing about fucking a jeep? no. they are looking at cars, talking about cars, reviewing cars, comparing cars, etc. the product is the focus.

with gaming journalism, it seems like means to an end. someone is a writer and they want to use games as a medium to express themselves and talk about other non-game shit they want to. they need their own high school club they can go to and leave the rest of us alone.
 
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with gaming journalism, it seems like means to an end. someone is a writer and they want to use games as a medium to express themselves and talk about other non-game shit they want to. they need their own high school club they can go to and leave the rest of us alone.

The reality is all these games journos can't hack it as real journalists so they've turned their hobby blog into a place where they can play dress up and pretend.
 

ROMhack

Member
i don't. i'm sick of it. i'm sick of hearing about crunch culture. i'm sick of people fantasizing who they would fuck if their video game characters were real. i'm sick of hearing about gaming journalism itself. i'm sick of hearing about shit that has nothing to do with games.

really, if you want to write about the industry, start an industry rag. they can gossip all day long. talk about market shares. talk about business strategy. talk about crunch culture and corporate harassment. do stories on other reporters. pass off your dumb fan fiction as "articles". go nuts. none of that has to do with games themselves.

it's like, if i pick up a car magazine, are they doing deep dives into the management process at Ford plants? no. some pink haired lunatic fantasizing about fucking a jeep? no. they are looking at cars, talking about cars, reviewing cars, comparing cars, etc. the product is the focus.

with gaming journalism, it seems like means to an end. someone is a writer and they want to use games as a medium to express themselves and talk about other non-game shit they want to. they need their own high school club they can go to and leave the rest of us alone.

Fuck, I just wrote a really long reply to this but accidentally closed my browser.

My point was that I think specialist websites are less prone to this kinda crap because they understand their audience and can tailor information. Taking Gamer Network as an example, their 'gaming culture' sites like RPS, VG247 and Eurogamer don't seem to have an obvious readership so often rely on tourist clicks earned through conjecture and discussion about problematic things. By contrast, their specialist sites such as Nintendo Life and Push Square are more informative because they write towards a specific audience.

I think the same thing can be enlarged to explain why general sites such as IGN, Destructoid, The Escapist, Polygon, Destructoid, PC Gamer, etc do what they do. None of these write towards specific audiences so rarely offer anything resembling clear and obvious product information. Again, by comparison, specific websites such as Siliconera (Japanese gaming) and Adventure Gamers (obvious) are better at it because they curate their content to people who wouldn't be visiting their sites if they had no interest in those things.

That was the crux of it. Competition between gaming websites has forced a bit of a race to the bottom.
 
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Dr. Claus

Banned

Seems like Siliconera has fallen far these days. Spoke with a number of people within the Siliconera community and they were banned, silenced, or had posts deleting when speaking against the moderator who made claims that Trap *is* a slur, despite it not being considered such by the majority of the trans community. Apparently the authors and administrators are backing up the moderator claiming they were in the right.

Meanwhile posts who claim it is and back up the moderator are perfectly A-Okay to stay up.
 
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S

SLoWMoTIoN

Unconfirmed Member

Seems like Siliconera has fallen far these days. Spoke with a number of people within the Siliconera community and they were banned, silenced, or had posts deleting when speaking against the moderator who made claims that Trap *is* a slur, despite it not being considered such by the majority of the trans community. Apparently the authors and administrators are backing up the moderator claiming they were in the right.

Meanwhile posts who claim it is and back up the moderator are perfectly A-Okay to stay up.
puchinri has been a retard for the longest time man. But like who cares? It is just a "disqus" community at best.
 
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Dr. Claus

Banned
puchinri has been a retard for the longest time man. But like who cares? It is just a "disqus" community at best.

It was one of the few gaming sites that wasn't steeped in ideological dribble. Seeing that the authors of the articles as well as the administrators themselves are backing up the actions of puchinri - that is a sad step into the realms of tripe and garbage that we see with the majority of gaming "journalism" nowadays.

That is my issue with it.
 
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SLoWMoTIoN

Unconfirmed Member
It was one of the few gaming sites that wasn't steeped in ideological dribble. Seeing that the authors of the articles as well as the administrators themselves are backing up the actions of puchinri - that is a sad step into the realms of tripe and garbage that we see with the majority of gaming "journalism" nowadays.

That is my issue with it.
I can't think of a single similar gaming website that is different.
 

Dr. Claus

Banned
I can't think of a single similar gaming website that is different.

Siliconera, Gematsu, and Exclusively Games were generally the go-to for non-ideologically driven game-focused news and articles. Siliconera is quickly moving towards the same garbage as Kotaku/Polygon if these recent actions are anything to go by.
 
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SLoWMoTIoN

Unconfirmed Member
Siliconera, Gematsu, and Exclusively Games were generally the go-to for non-ideologically driven game-focused news and articles. Siliconera is quickly moving towards the same garbage as Kotaku/Polygon if these recent actions are anything to go by.
is the guy with the Roy Mustang avatar still over at Gematsu? Because he was just as bad.
 

GreyHorace

Member


What the actual fuck? :messenger_tears_of_joy: :messenger_tears_of_joy:

Please tell me that's not real. That can't be an actual game journalist making such a retarded statement. It must be a parody account.

Clicking on the link though, Holy Shit I cannot believe what goes on in the idiot Schreier's head. Does he realize the industry he's making a living in? Videogames? Consumer entertainment? An industry that makes more money than even the movie industry? What are the people who buy these pieces of interactive entertainment if not consumers? And why shouldn't they voice their displeasure if these corporations screw them over? And as a 'journalist', he should be championing the rights of these consumers and not the poor widdle game developers he seems to enjoy talking to.

But oh wait, he's blocked anyone who puts up a decent refute to his position. What a soy cucked pussy.
 

Shai-Tan

Banned
I'm pretty sure that timeline Jason is operating on is wrong i.e. the info was already leaked by the time they published.
 
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