Game Journalism: A Table of Doritos

IP. Ruining threads since 2001

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Originally Posted by Fe 26

Ok. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

Lets say you weren't trying to point out some kind of contradiction.

What was the joke? What would the punchline be? If it isn't "Hur Hur, you called yourself dumb" what is it?

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I don't think he was really going for a "gotcha" moment so much as trying to rile you up a little.

Hard to tell if it worked or not.

IP: The great stone face!

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Originally Posted by Brisco Bold

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.

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There are those in the industry who sadly, don't care.

FGC is going through similar bullshit in terms of profit, growth and development.

I kind of wish that more game journalists would take their work seriously. Too many times I've read articles that are only sourced off the web or have just a single source. Part of doing good work is to thoroughly research the topic, and I've read far too many poorly researched pieces "professional" sites and magazines. It kind of pisses me off that so many are published and widely read, when those of us who actually take the time to get things right have to struggle for exposure.

I just want people to read my stuff, but I'm not after hits or views. I actually don't even know if Sega-16's traffic is decent, great, or bad. What's the standard for a "popular" site?

And the problem with that sort of lazy journalism is that it compounds the sourcing errors. Even lazier journalists use the lazily-researched articles as sources, and suddenly something added by a random moron on Wikipedia becomes common knowledge.

Now, to be fair, doing proper research about games is actually probably more difficult than most topics, because a lot of major things happened in company meetings behind closed doors or can only be inferred through the barest mention in some mouldering old magazine. Frogacuda wasn't aware of the Bethesda and Madden connection until I pointed it out in a thread here, and I have no doubt that he did a most thorough job in researching his "History of Madden" article. And the best that I could do to substantiate that (because, like a good journalist, he asked me for evidence) was a couple short news bits in magazines and some snippets about lawsuits.

Not to mention the language barriers that prevent most journalists from directly accessing sources in Japan or France, two very significant non-English-speaking countries when it comes to the history of gaming.

But just because something is difficult doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. The real problem is that readers are morons. What is going to get more hits, an investigative piece about the ESA's political activities or a news post about the cover athlete of Madden?

The "journalists" caught within in the industry have no power to stop how gaming journalism works now and to be honest, this is a consequence of all of the BS started from the 90's. I am going to stereotype here but many of the people in this industry are there because they've failed to become something else and using it to bide their time before the next step. The lifers are trying to ride the wave out as long as they can. In either case, they aren't going to cut off their life line by poopooing how their industry works and really, they don't have the influence (ie money) to change anything. It's the same case in Japan, where the publishers control your salary and coverage. You don't play ball, you don't get ads or PR support then go out of business.

I'd like to think most of the people on this forum can think enough for themselves that they can form better opinions than anything that's in print today.

Game Journalism is barely better than urban myth slinging.

Just take the Poison's Gender issue for example. Most people still believe that urban myth about her being made trans because Americans thought it was ok to beat up trannies in the 80s/90s.

1 person actually went to the trouble of researching it. And it wasn't even a lot of work on the writers part. He looked at the character sheet.

I think the real killer is how even "corporate" entities know that Gamers Are Moron Douchebags and leverage that to make their heavily-marketed material seem Legit.

Take Giant Bomb - they are all about content of playthroughs, quick-looks, podcasts, and crowd-sourcing (read: getting dumbasses to do it for free) for a games encyclopedia. The site design has always been kind of rough around the edges. They omit or get details wrong in quick looks that would take 2 minutes of research to fix (such as getting pricing and release dates wrong). They do this and then act blasse about it, like fuck you, we're punk rock gaming and Such and Such Game we cover wasn't even worth the iota of professional research we should give it.

They get bought by CBS and what changes? NOTHING. Why? CBS knows this amateur-hour will always be seen as more trustworthy, or at least resonate more, with the common gamer douchebag than if GiantBomb tried the professionalism (ish) of...CBS. That would make it too boring or sellout, or whatever.

Don't get me wrong - GiantBomb can be very entertaining. Yet it's that, and tries to act like some tastemaker/trendsetter/voice of reason/source of fact when it can't even do beginning-level homework? It's insane.

People are so fucking lazy these days.