The State of Game Journalism

[DANGERMAN]

the internet is great when it comes to stuff like this. Taken from Gaf (read the tweets bottom up)

the writers response on twitter

the article:

the updates:

and guess who wrote MCV's preview of this Square Enix game

[radiofloyd]

Quality.

[Hendo]

It is somewhat amazing. I hope people calling this shit out doesn't stop or slow down.

[DANGERMAN]

I'd stop short of describing it as good news, but it probably should have happened sooner, it seems Lauren Wainwright has been let go from MCV

John Walker@botherer

Oh, and @MCVonline - whom did you let go on Friday, after hanging out to dry for so long?

according to Gaf she's not on MCV's drop down list of writers anymore

edit: this has just popped up on their twitter

MCV @MCVonline

It is true that Lauren Wainwright no longer works for us. She did not pass her probation. We wish her well.

wonder why she failed her probation?

[Sly Reflex]

When will they learn?

[DANGERMAN]

I'm not entirely sure why she's bringing all this back up again, but Lauren Wainwright is in the neogaf thread about this (or was yesterday) talking about it. I haven't read all of what she's posted but there was nothing especially new that I saw, and she's taking a bit of a kicking

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=497024&page=187

[Sambob]

I think she is just a bit of an attention whore to be honest, nobody really gives that much of a fuck about it, its just something for the masses to moan about really. Her going in to the Forums, although on one level is admirable, is really just courting it. I worry that this goes down the awfully beardy road of having big names in an industry that should really be about anonymous, faceless people. Why are we in a situation where I should give a shit about what Journalist A says about PR person B, thats the real problem, these behind the scenes type people now have their names being bandied around and its all going a bit Im a Celebrity Big Brother on Ballroom Ice Factor.

[Sambob]

Looks like Florence is on one again, this time he is after EGM for giving Aliens: colonial marines a much higher score than anybody else has given it.

[HandsomeDead]

It got a solid review from The Guardian too, weirdly. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2013/feb/12/alien-colonial-marines-game-review?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

And sometimes the 'it's just someones opinion' doesn't hold water. I can see why Dead $pace 3 may still get good reviews, but this?

[DANGERMAN]

I'm a little reluctant to join in that a game has been reviewed for cash/content. I'm sure it happens, but there is also the chance that the 'wrong' person reviewed the game. It's an old example but I remember Eurogamer giving the ps2 remake of Sensi Soccer 9/10. In no world was it anywhere near that good, but I'm guessing the guy reviewing it was a fan of the franchise who went in wanting to like it.

There is also the possibility that other reviewers are being a bit too harsh, I'm sure that's happened before. Either way I've not played it to condemn, but I do think Sega can rightly feel pissed at Gearbox (a year late and reviewing shite, with bugs)

[Craymen Edge]

I think Rab talks a lot of rubbish sometimes (e.g. his rants about established developers on kickstarter) but this one is entertaining.

I have no idea how such a massive outlier comes up when even the most charitable reviews from everywhere else are 'average'. You sometimes expect it from the no-name amateur looking sites that seem to be able to get on metacritic, but not known name like EGM.

(That said, and not really relevant: despite being reverred by US games press, EGM always seemed pretty crap to me)

[wholehole]

This is getting a bit old now. So what if a reviewer gave a game 4 arbitrary stars out of 5, they clearly enjoyed it and I'm sure others will as well. We really shouldn't go around calling foul or conspiracy whenever a review score doesn't follow suit with the rest or doesn't fit in with an average consensus. Should the reviewer mark it down so it's more in line with the rest? Of course not. I'm not really sure why we can't just make our own minds up after just playing it instead of this culture of a heavy reliance on review scores and other media tainting opinions before it's even in our hands.

I'm a little surprised at the bad reviews tbh, it's not the worst game ever created, certainly no Duke Nukem. If you're a fan of the Alien franchise you'll get some enjoyment out of it, even if it is just a superficial "the Pulse Rifle sounds cool." ASMR. I knew it wasn't going to be an excellent game, I'd also read some of the bad reviews it had received. Despite this, I played it for over an hour last night and whilst it's flaws are plain as day, I still enjoyed playing it just because of the ties to the franchise and I'm glad I bought it.

[radiofloyd]

It goes to show that nobody reads previews because all the previews I read for the game were overwhelmingly negative and pointed out all the bugs in it.

[HandsomeDead]

People can enjoy whatever they damn well want, but if I want to know if anyone enjoyed it I'll just find anyone on the internet. What is done with some of these reviews is plain bad criticism. A way art can grow and improve is through learning from the past and good criticism is part of that. Earlier today Rab was tweeting quotes from the EGM review that are just plain lies about the game.

There is nothing wrong with ratting out the reviewers that are fucking idiots that are incapable of their job. From what I can tell, the game is objectively bad. It's not much to expect honesty and not apologetic bullshit.

[DANGERMAN]

the things Rab was saying were fact, like bad level design, aren't, they're opinion. If it's just that there's bugs then every positive review Hotline Miami has received should have someone fired. We seem to be using the outlier scores to compare against too, there's plenty on metacritic giving it a 6+

EGM may well be shills, it may be all advertising based, it's happened before and it'll happen again, but it doesn't mean that this score is corrupt, especially as the Guardian have written a positive review. The game press does like to take a massive shit on things from time to time, 1up gave DNF an F (or 0 in metacritic currency), there were plenty of 2's. The game isn't great, but it's not so fundamentally broken it deserved that

I'm all for this hyper-attention on the press continuing btw, I'd rather this climate than one of blind acceptance. But I know there's games I'd have scored high most reviews scored low and vice versa

[Jimboxy]

Although it is telling that EGM have a massive Alien strap picture surrounding their entire website.

[Uncle Dokuro]

Just found out that Future Publishing has pulled the plug on the North American version of PlayStation: The Official Magazine.

Kinda of sad ... that just leaves Gameinformer, PC Gamer, @Gamer and The Official Xbox Magazine as North America's gaming publications. Two of them you can only get via in-store membership programs - Gameinformer (GameStop) and @Gamer (Best Buy).

[DANGERMAN]

To try and get a bit of discussion, what's your opinion on the proximity of the press to developers?

the obvious example is probably Giant Bomb, I used them in a bitparade article I posted up last week (I wrote it a few weeks back). Rather than pick on the usual suspects, which I still did tbf, it was inspired by Patrick Klepek praising Threes whilst revealing he works out of the same office as the developer.

I couldn't find the source for it so I had to cut it from the article, but I'm sure there's a relatively well known British journalist that hailed 'Sir, You Are Being Hunted' as on of the games of last year, a game that is still in early development, before revealing that he used to be housemates with the developer. This example stuck with me as I remember Jim Sterling making the point that some of the people who are the most up on their ethics when it comes to social causes in games are the ones guilty of shitty ethics elsewhere.

I'd guess you can probably take a wild stab at where I stand on this without reading the article, but I do have some sympathy. If you worked on a site with someone and they go off and write for or develop a game, your contact with them is unavoidable, you can't suddenly un-know them. Klepek presumably needs an office to work from sometimes, the guy from Cards Against Humanity works in the same city as him, has an office, it makes sense to use it if it's offered, that there's a developer working there is an unintended consequence

That said, I do think the press should have more awareness and show more responsibility, distance themselves from the games their friends make.

I've put the article in a spoiler because I'm not fishing for clicks, I just thought it might be an interesting topic [edit: or not apparently ]. There are links to references that haven't copied over though

I can be relatively cynical when it comes to the gaming press. I feel bad for them in some ways, they’re on to loser, where no matter what they do there’ll always be someone saying they’re wrong. There’ll always be someone watching them, quoting them, misrepresenting what they’ve said, and never, ever forgetting that one stupid thing they said or did.

On the other hand though they don’t half do some stupid, questionable shit. I think most of it is without any ill-intent, they just don’t think how things will look. Take for example a little iOS game called Threes, out on Android this week. As I understand it Threes is a game where you aim for a high score by finding multiples of 3 (I haven’t played the game, so excuse my ignorance of it), and I’ve been told by someone whose opinion I respect that it is a good game. So why have I brought it up?

If you haven’t heard of Threes then it’s because you’ve not been watching and listening to the ‘right’ podcasts, nor following the ‘right’ people on Twitter. It has taken the gaming press by storm. My first encounter with it was it being mentioned on Giant Bomb, where Patrick Klepek mentioned that one of the developers worked out of the same office he does, the Cards Against Humanity office. I don’t mind Klepek, I know some don’t like him, but at least he was open enough to mention his connection to the game. However it does sit ill with me that he’s talking about, and praising publicly a game he is so closely related to. He even says in the original podcast that he’s had an early build for a while. There’s a certain amount of irony to Jim sterling being on this episode, as he recently talked around this subject, due to his appearance in Jazzpunk, in a video about the trustworthiness of Youtube

This is a problem Giant Bomb have bumped up against repeatedly. They have a core selection of guest, who were even pitted against each other in a competition for the best Giant Bomb friend. Giant Bomb themselves have countered criticism by saying that they would like to get all kinds of developers in, but it’s only the ones they’re personally friends with that agree to come on. Unfortunately it doesn’t solve the problem that Double Fine, Harmonix and the like get heavily featured on the site, even directly showing off their games. I shouldn’t know who Dave Lang is, and that they were involved in a Kickstarter to track Harmonix’s PR man John Drake’s air travel is disgraceful.

Again I want to stress that I’m sure that it is all done unthinkingly, Jeff Gerstmann, whatever his views on NiGHTS, has earned himself a chunk of credibility, but it still looks bad. That I can hear them talking about Broken Age, flagellate themselves in to a sweaty mess over Divekick, and recently heap praise on Threes, and not be able to take what they say at face value is a problem of their making.

It’s not just Giant Bomb though, if anything they’ve been the focus because they are a site I like, and are also fairly open. I’ve got a lot of time for Garnett Lee, but his crush on all things Pixel Junk ended up gaining him a voice credit in Pixel Junk Sidescroller. Even before that, knowing he had become such good friends with them meant I had to take his opinions of their games with a pinch of salt. Similarly 8-4 Play, how many other translation houses could you name? When I hear them being singled out for praise I can’t help but question why, is it because 2 of the staff used to write for an American gaming magazine?

Thanks to the incestuous nature of the games media, particularly the American side (as it seems to all be based around the same area), everyone seems to know each other. People have worked together, or at least are friends of friends, I suspect this is why Threes seems to have caught on so much with the press. It’s a problem endemic in the industry, Telltale Games’ staff members got singled out for praise, some of them worked in the press, now those people have left it’ll be interesting to see if that trend continues.

I’m starting to sound like a tinfoil nutter so I’m going to wrap this up (not in tinfoil), but that darlings of the games press such as Gone Home and Bastion had ex-members of the press working on them, it’s hard not to question whether they would have got the attention they did otherwise. It’s not just an American problem either, the developers of Sir, You Are Being Hunted and Gunpoint are members of the British gaming press, and both games have found support on British gaming sites.

Now, please let me stress something. In an industry where the press is made up of enthusiasts, where theoretically the only thing stopping you from becoming a developer rather than a critic is learning to code, it’s hardly a surprise that there’s crossover, and that’s not even factoring how many people end up in non-developer roles. There’s nothing malicious about it, I doubt there’s even anything deliberate about covering the games, at worst you’re just helping a mate out.

Only that’s not really true, at worst you’re convincing people to part with their money for your friend’s game without letting on that you have a vested interest in it, that you aren’t as objective as you should be. You’re also not giving the same attention to similar games, Dear Esther didn’t get anything like the attention Gone Home did and it’s the better experience. I do believe that it’s more naivety than anything else, but it’s still a problem, not just an ethical one, but also for how you, the journalist look.

There’s a simple solution to it though, if you’re in a position where a good friend of yours is putting out a game, maybe he even works in the same office as you, don’t cover it. Play it sure, and if someone else, a guest for example brings it up then chime in and acknowledge your ties to the game, but have the integrity to not start the conversation. If half the staff on your site are drinking buddies or ex-colleagues with someone who worked on the game, take a step back, have a think about why you’re about to spend 30 minutes talking about it, but only 10 minutes on everything else. If it’s the only game everyone on the team has played ask yourself why that is. I get that it’s a difficult balance, but it’s one the press need to start getting right.

[HandsomeDead]

I think I agree with that but overall I can't think of any game that got some attention that may of may not of been the result of some developer/press friendship not deserving it. Like, I think Gone Home would have got quite a bit of attention anyway, especially since some of the other developers worked on BioShock 2 (Minerva's Den specifically, I think) and Gone Home was pretty much the result of thinking if it was possible to do a BioShock game without the combat; I think that pedigree and premise would have got it attention alone.

Same with Bastion as it had some attention grabbing things about it.

There was a guy a Destructoid called Nick Chester and he went on to work at Harmonix and I certainly don't feel like their coverage of Harmonix games all of a sudden became more frequent or insincerely enthusiastic after the move. And of course you have the big thing around Gearbox. Anthony Birch was the lead writer on Borderlands 2 but despite that link it didn't stop Jim Sterling from shinning a big light on the bullshit that happened in regards to Aliens:CM while he was at Destructoid, and they even did numerous things together while they were both working at the site.

So it's not all buddy buddy between the developers and the press.

But transparency is key. To go back to Jim Sterling again he has been showing up as a voice actor in quite a few games recently. He was in Jazzpunk and he's also set to be in Mike Bithell's (Thomas Was Alone) next game. And since he reviews games for The Escapist now some people did ask what was going to go on there, and all that's happening is Sterling won't do the review and a disclaimer will be on the review saying an Escapist staff member is involved with the project.

You can still conjure up a conspiracy if you want but all the info is up front. Do with it what you will.

But maybe something like that could happen with ex-colleagues but it would be a bit strange, and I wouldn't know where you draw the line.

[HandsomeDead]

Something of a confessional from some bloke who has drifted around the UK games journalism scene which is worth a read - http://blog.disappointment.com/2014/06/07/apologies-from-a-man-leaving-the-games-industry/

Here's a wee snippet:

And when I said “this game isn’t going to change the world” in the last paragraph, I meant “I’m sorry I waited this long to try and tell you that this game looks utterly shit”.