Game Journalism: A Table of Doritos

There's no money in video game reporting.

James

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Originally Posted by Some Stupid Japanese Name

Why can't the game business be like film? Steven Speilberg isn't going to lose his back end deal if Ebert gives his film a shit review. Can you imagine if film producers tried to pay actors based on the Rotten Tomatoes aggregate? Games need to grow up. There are a million reasons why one game does well and one doesn't, and quality usually isn't one of them.
I also don't get why sites give a shit if a vocal minority gets all up in arms about a review. Whatever happened to no press is bad press?
How many sites got a click out of me because one of you asshats posted a link and said, "check this out! It's crazy insane!!"

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Because game devs/publishers are horrible business people for the most part. They listen heavily to the vocal minority, and invest heavily in them leaving them unable to adapt quickly to changing markets. Plus look at a big difference between Hollywood and Games, the budgets. A romantic comedy doesn't have the same budget as say the Avengers. Movies typically have budgets based on how they think it will perform, and Hollywood realizes that not every move needs to be/can be Avatar. Video games on the other hand are run by the mentally challenged, they seem to think that every game needs to have the same budget as the latest Call of Duty and should therefor sell the same 20 million copies CoD will. Except it doesn't fucking work that way. It's gotten this way because they've chosen to listen to a very vocal minority that demands every game have the most mind blowing amazing graphics and there for giant ass budgets. There are no middle ground games any more. We're quickly spiraling into only having 2 types of games out there. Small, cheap Indy games that are usually distributed digitally, and giant AAA massive budget blowouts.

It was said by some one from the studio that makes Darksiders, that for there to be a 3rd game in the series they needed DS2 to sell 4 million copies.

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Originally Posted by Razor Ramon

I've been saying it for years video game "journalists" are not actual journalists. They're writers at best, PR extensions at worst. This is all of them. At least the writer of the article left his publication. He's probably the only one worthy of the title.

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Fully, FULLY agree with this. These people are not journalists in the slightest. There is a really small number of actual journalists in the game industry, the rest of them are barely acceptable writers.

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Originally Posted by Some Stupid Japanese Name

Why won't (or if someone has, please point it out to me) some journalist do a piece on Gamestops trashing of video games?
It's bad enough when they trash the packaging, but Gamestop recently tossed all the PS2 games that they had priced $.99 or less. "Big deal, it was probably all sports games or bad games", you might say. But no, there were cool games like Okage, Stuntman, and Ace Combat 4. Do they recycle all that plastic or just throw it into a dumpster?
I feel like there's a real story there, how come I'm not hearing about it.

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That would take effort, and wouldn't net them any free stuff. Plus one of the bigger mags out there is owned by Gamestop so it'll never say anything bad about it. There's plenty of stories out there, that aren't OMG here's a preview of the latest AAA HOTNESS! Why did it take so long for the media to talk about the RRoD situation, and why was it not given more attention once they did? Why is no one talking about how budgets are killing the industry? Why is no one talking about how every halfway decent smaller dev gets bought up by one of the larger publishers? I'm am sure there are a million other stories out there too, and maybe if more of the people working in the gaming media were actual journalists you might see some of them.

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Originally Posted by Razor Ramon

I've been saying it for years video game "journalists" are not actual journalists. They're writers at best, PR extensions at worst. This is all of them. At least the writer of the article left his publication. He's probably the only one worthy of the title.

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And he doesn't even want the title.

Ramon, Shin and Diff are on point.

This used to be something I really cared about, but I just don't give a fuck any more. The industry refuses to mature (not feature games that have "mature" ratings), and this is manifested in its media. I have better ways to spend my time and money.

I some how doubt that.

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Originally Posted by Shin Johnpv

Because game devs/publishers are horrible business people for the most part. They listen heavily to the vocal minority, and invest heavily in them leaving them unable to adapt quickly to changing markets. Plus look at a big difference between Hollywood and Games, the budgets. A romantic comedy doesn't have the same budget as say the Avengers. Movies typically have budgets based on how they think it will perform, and Hollywood realizes that not every move needs to be/can be Avatar. Video games on the other hand are run by the mentally challenged, they seem to think that every game needs to have the same budget as the latest Call of Duty and should therefor sell the same 20 million copies CoD will. Except it doesn't fucking work that way. It's gotten this way because they've chosen to listen to a very vocal minority that demands every game have the most mind blowing amazing graphics and there for giant ass budgets. There are no middle ground games any more. We're quickly spiraling into only having 2 types of games out there. Small, cheap Indy games that are usually distributed digitally, and giant AAA massive budget blowouts.

It was said by some one from the studio that makes Darksiders, that for there to be a 3rd game in the series they needed DS2 to sell 4 million copies.

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reviewers are part of the problem. They have a habit of blasting any game with pregenenration graphics.

I remember when Metal Saga came out, everyone was pissing and moaning that it looked like a late ps1 early ps2 game

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Originally Posted by Hero

Wonder if a site could subsist on just those then? Screw game advertising entirely.

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I don't think it's as big of a conflict as people think. Yeah, there was the Gamestpot kerfuffle a few years back, but editorial integrity won that day. Generally, there isn't really pressure to review a game positive or negative, only to review it responsibly and with accurate information. Even at the TNL/GotNext level we never really had that issue.

The fact is, even without pressure of advertisers, or the temptation of delicious doritos, reviewers have their own biases and opinions. You know when you're reading a good review versus when someone is just vomiting emotions and opinions onto your screen. The biggest mistake people make is thinking audiences don't know the difference between good writing and bad.

I have to say the "integrity" of reviews has been a non-issue in my writing career. Personally what bothers me is how goddamn cynical a lot of publications and writers are of the audience. They talk about their readers like they're a bunch of mouth-breathing morons and then write these calculatedly stupid or simple articles for them. It's arrogant and it's also incorrect.

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Originally Posted by Frogacuda

I have to say the "integrity" of reviews has been a non-issue in my writing career. Personally what bothers me is how goddamn cynical a lot of publications and writers are of the audience. They talk about their readers like they're a bunch of mouth-breathing morons and then write these calculatedly stupid or simple articles for them. It's arrogant and it's also incorrect.

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I'm not so sure it is incorrect. I think it is obvious by now that readers of the big sites want their opinions validated. Remember how angry people got when Eurogamer gave Uncharted 3.... an 8? It is generally accepted today that U3 was weak compared to U2, but when the hype was in full swing, people had no interest in hearing that.

If you give a game a good review, you're a shill, if you give a game a bad review, you're a jerk looking for clicks.

"You know why my show is good? Because the network officials say you're not smart enough to get what I'm doing, and every day I fight for you. I tell them how smart you are. Turns out, I was wrong. You people are stupid."

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Originally Posted by Diff-chan

if you give a game an okay review, you're a jerk looking for clicks.

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Fixed.

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Originally Posted by Diff-chan

I'm not so sure it is incorrect. I think it is obvious by now that readers of the big sites want their opinions validated. Remember how angry people got when Eurogamer gave Uncharted 3.... an 8? It is generally accepted today that U3 was weak compared to U2, but when the hype was in full swing, people had no interest in hearing that.

If you give a game a good review, you're a shill, if you give a game a bad review, you're a jerk looking for clicks.

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I was speaking more about the non-review content. Writing these dumb features with salacious headlines like "Are Videogames Porn?" or "Top 5 Head Explosions" or what have you. They'll turn down a long, detailed article with insightful first-hand interviews in favor of something with a picture for every paragraph like the audience is on the reading level of Clifford the Big Red Dog.

I'd like to make a distinction between game journalism and game criticism. They're not the same thing.

That stuff gets written because it gets a lot of hits. You might think that authors/editors are treating their readers like morons when they write them, and they might be.... but they wouldn't be writing them if they didn't get hits.