5 ms·

As far as I can tell, games "journalism" has been a cesspool of corruption and wink-wink kickbacks since the "old" E3. Semi-professional reporters w/ unsustain

by ethbro 9y ago

As far as I can tell, games "journalism" has been a cesspool of corruption and wink-wink kickbacks since the "old" E3. Semi-professional reporters w/ unsustainable income streams + large studio advertising budgets + massive investments in AAA games != recipe for integrity Steam refunds did more for game quality than most of the game journalism industry.

googletazer 9y ago
right on all counts
PhasmaFelis 9y ago
Rock Paper Shotgun[1] is really good for the most part, co-founded by the writer of The New Games Journalism[2]. Their reviews don't have explicit ratings, which neatly sidesteps the fooforaw over giving things the "wrong" rating. They're on GamerGate's hit list (because somebody's girlfriend allegedly slept with one of their writers), which is another point in their favor. They're PC-specific, though. Any other good gaming sites out there I should check out? [1] https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/ https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/ [2] http://gillen.cream.org/wordpress_html/assorted-essays/the-new-games-journalism/ http://gillen.cream.org/wordpress_html/assorted-essays/the-n...
- megaman22 9y ago
  Rock, Paper, Shotgun also used to run a regular column called Saturday Morning Crapshoot, which covered a lot of old, weird, and less than stellar games. I think they stopped, but the archive is good for a chuckle every now and then
- sprafa 9y ago
  rock paper shotgun used to be amazing, but a lot of the early staff left to make their own games I think
  - taohansen 9y ago
    they are still amazing. see any of the recent articles on Observer or playing a spacefaring race of tortoise in Stellaris.
- Uhhrrr 9y ago
  I think Nathan Grayson writing about his friends is pretty well established at this point: http://www.deepfreeze.it/journo.php?j=nathan_grayson http://www.deepfreeze.it/journo.php?j=nathan_grayson Although he now writes for Kotaku, not RPS. techraptor.com and nichegamer.com are pretty good.
  - abritinthebay 9y ago
    Well established amongst the GamerGate crowd, yes (which is what deepfreeze is all about). Though you know that - after all the two sites you mention were leading on that trash-fire of a movement.
  - PhasmaFelis 9y ago
    > I think Nathan Grayson writing about his friends is pretty well established at this point: http://www.deepfreeze.it/journo.php?j=nathan_grayson http://www.deepfreeze.it/journo.php?j=nathan_grayson That's...alarmingly obsessive. The article, I mean, not Grayson.
    - Uhhrrr 9y ago
      It is probably just a product of Nathan Grayson being visibly dodgy over a long period of time.
    - JCSato 9y ago
      That's kind of the failure of Deepfreeze - GG wanted to prove that their claims about journos held water, but when they provided and standardized their data it's so off-putting and clinical that it's hard to not dismiss as a little creepy.
      - moomin 9y ago
        The GGers who genuinely thought it was about ethics in journalism were completely missing the point though. I want you to imagine we were talking the defence industry. Imagine it was public knowledge that billions of dollars were being skimmed by defence contractors. Then imagine someone shows up and says “Hey, this guy’s been telling people to go to gun store A and getting $20 store vouchers.” Then imagine that turned out not to be the case. Now, here’s the point: you could spend the next year meticulously documenting every last store voucher the guy had ever received from gun shops B to Z and still no-one would care, because everyone knows that, even if it was true, it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference in the grand scheme of things. If you then announced that this was part of a larger campaign for “Clarity in Defense Spending” people would conclude that either a) you were truly clueless or b) you had an axe to grind with this guy that was nothing to do with gun store vouchers. Anyway, that’s what people mean when they say “It was never about ethics in computer game journalism.”
- JCSato 9y ago
  Used to love RPS, before most of its best writers left. Now it's a not particularly exceptional group of writers and the most whinging, entitled EiC/owner I've ever seen. There's nothing quite like seeing John Walker act like a 2 year old in every comments section. As far as other good outlets, I think Techraptr is the only one I know of that holds water these days. Loved Tom Francis' work at PC Gamer back in the day too, before he left.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
yborg 9y ago
Video game journalism peaked too soon with Old Man Murray. It's mostly been a vast wasteland of shilling since.
- VonGuard 9y ago
  This is absolutely the best comment on HN in years. OMM turned game reviewing into a SCIENCE with TTC ratings.
VonGuard 9y ago
The games press has always had one central problem: their main source of revenue is advertisers of games. When a bad game gets a bad review, the advertisers pull their ads, and the outlet goes down. I was fired for exactly this type of bullshit back in 2001. It's not even kickbacks. It's free games. It's sustaining paychecks. It's free food, booze and t-shirts. It's free steam keys, and trips to LA to meet developers. It's not kickbacks. It would have amazed me to have even had that option of money bribes on the table: all I ever got were chocolates, plush dolls, a miniature plastic trebuchet. In the end, I never changed a rating because of any of that junk. But smaller outlets where they can't afford to be honest are swayed by this stuff. Most osf these folks you suspect are probably cheap fucking dates: bought with a game branded bottle or scotch. There's a lot of money to be made by being a "Cheerleader for the Industry," and not as much in being the bastion of good content, honestly. That's because the first option requires no real readers or followers, just sponsors. The second requires your content to be somehow better than everyone else's, and today that means competing with like, 10,000 other people one URL away.
rjbwork 9y ago
Man, I was subscribed to EGM for years, from my childhood to the end of their publishing it on paper. Since then, I haven't really seen any publications online that I really trust or like a whole lot. It's a sad state of affairs really. The thing that I find most troubling is publishers of video game review and news sites buying up publishers and distribution platforms, the latest being j2 Global, which owns Ziff Davis, IGN, PC Mag, Geek.com, and many more buying up Humble bundle on October 13.
moomin 9y ago
I remember reading, in print, when print was still a thing, an article explaining that the single biggest revenue driver was exclusive reviews, and that to get them you negotiated a review score. I remember realising slightly later than something similar was true for most magazine reviews. It still is. That’s why I read Which.
pjc50 9y ago
The thing is, there are three kinds of things people want from games journalism: 1) Consumer product reviews, as if games were fridges or TVs. 2) Artistic engagement; either trying to be the "Roger Ebert of games", or the NGJ approach of self-interrogating the reviewer's feelings while playing the game, or the cultural studies/media studies approach of techniques and influences. 3) Sense of belonging to a fandom, like sports, and competing for victory. Either within the game or between competing fandoms. The trouble with (1) is that it's at best dull and very easily degenerates into payola. (2) had the potential to be far more interesting, but collided very badly with (3). Critique requires standing at a distance. When people identify themselves very strongly with the object of critique, they turn critique of the thing into criticism of themselves, and get very upset. And finally (3) has the same problem that football(+) has long struggled with: hooligans, "ultras", and extreme partisanship taken out of the game. For football, this was to streets and pubs. For games, it's voice chat and forums filled with a never-ending torrent of abusive language. Eventually gamergate provided an opportunity for (3) to mobilise, nominally against (1) but in practice destroying (2) in the process. (+) "Soccer"

by ethbro 9y ago

googletazer 9y ago

right on all counts

PhasmaFelis 9y ago

Rock Paper Shotgun[1] is really good for the most part, co-founded by the writer of The New Games Journalism[2]. Their reviews don't have explicit ratings, which neatly sidesteps the fooforaw over giving things the "wrong" rating. They're on GamerGate's hit list (because somebody's girlfriend allegedly slept with one of their writers), which is another point in their favor. They're PC-specific, though. Any other good gaming sites out there I should check out? [1] https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/ https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/ [2] http://gillen.cream.org/wordpress_html/assorted-essays/the-new-games-journalism/ http://gillen.cream.org/wordpress_html/assorted-essays/the-n...

megaman22 9y ago
Rock, Paper, Shotgun also used to run a regular column called Saturday Morning Crapshoot, which covered a lot of old, weird, and less than stellar games. I think they stopped, but the archive is good for a chuckle every now and then
sprafa 9y ago
rock paper shotgun used to be amazing, but a lot of the early staff left to make their own games I think
- taohansen 9y ago
  they are still amazing. see any of the recent articles on Observer or playing a spacefaring race of tortoise in Stellaris.
Uhhrrr 9y ago
I think Nathan Grayson writing about his friends is pretty well established at this point: http://www.deepfreeze.it/journo.php?j=nathan_grayson http://www.deepfreeze.it/journo.php?j=nathan_grayson Although he now writes for Kotaku, not RPS. techraptor.com and nichegamer.com are pretty good.
- abritinthebay 9y ago
  Well established amongst the GamerGate crowd, yes (which is what deepfreeze is all about). Though you know that - after all the two sites you mention were leading on that trash-fire of a movement.
- PhasmaFelis 9y ago
  > I think Nathan Grayson writing about his friends is pretty well established at this point: http://www.deepfreeze.it/journo.php?j=nathan_grayson http://www.deepfreeze.it/journo.php?j=nathan_grayson That's...alarmingly obsessive. The article, I mean, not Grayson.
  - Uhhrrr 9y ago
    It is probably just a product of Nathan Grayson being visibly dodgy over a long period of time.
  - JCSato 9y ago
    That's kind of the failure of Deepfreeze - GG wanted to prove that their claims about journos held water, but when they provided and standardized their data it's so off-putting and clinical that it's hard to not dismiss as a little creepy.
    - moomin 9y ago
      The GGers who genuinely thought it was about ethics in journalism were completely missing the point though. I want you to imagine we were talking the defence industry. Imagine it was public knowledge that billions of dollars were being skimmed by defence contractors. Then imagine someone shows up and says “Hey, this guy’s been telling people to go to gun store A and getting $20 store vouchers.” Then imagine that turned out not to be the case. Now, here’s the point: you could spend the next year meticulously documenting every last store voucher the guy had ever received from gun shops B to Z and still no-one would care, because everyone knows that, even if it was true, it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference in the grand scheme of things. If you then announced that this was part of a larger campaign for “Clarity in Defense Spending” people would conclude that either a) you were truly clueless or b) you had an axe to grind with this guy that was nothing to do with gun store vouchers. Anyway, that’s what people mean when they say “It was never about ethics in computer game journalism.”
JCSato 9y ago
Used to love RPS, before most of its best writers left. Now it's a not particularly exceptional group of writers and the most whinging, entitled EiC/owner I've ever seen. There's nothing quite like seeing John Walker act like a 2 year old in every comments section. As far as other good outlets, I think Techraptr is the only one I know of that holds water these days. Loved Tom Francis' work at PC Gamer back in the day too, before he left.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

yborg 9y ago

Video game journalism peaked too soon with Old Man Murray. It's mostly been a vast wasteland of shilling since.

VonGuard 9y ago
This is absolutely the best comment on HN in years. OMM turned game reviewing into a SCIENCE with TTC ratings.

VonGuard 9y ago

The games press has always had one central problem: their main source of revenue is advertisers of games. When a bad game gets a bad review, the advertisers pull their ads, and the outlet goes down. I was fired for exactly this type of bullshit back in 2001. It's not even kickbacks. It's free games. It's sustaining paychecks. It's free food, booze and t-shirts. It's free steam keys, and trips to LA to meet developers. It's not kickbacks. It would have amazed me to have even had that option of money bribes on the table: all I ever got were chocolates, plush dolls, a miniature plastic trebuchet. In the end, I never changed a rating because of any of that junk. But smaller outlets where they can't afford to be honest are swayed by this stuff. Most osf these folks you suspect are probably cheap fucking dates: bought with a game branded bottle or scotch. There's a lot of money to be made by being a "Cheerleader for the Industry," and not as much in being the bastion of good content, honestly. That's because the first option requires no real readers or followers, just sponsors. The second requires your content to be somehow better than everyone else's, and today that means competing with like, 10,000 other people one URL away.

rjbwork 9y ago

Man, I was subscribed to EGM for years, from my childhood to the end of their publishing it on paper. Since then, I haven't really seen any publications online that I really trust or like a whole lot. It's a sad state of affairs really. The thing that I find most troubling is publishers of video game review and news sites buying up publishers and distribution platforms, the latest being j2 Global, which owns Ziff Davis, IGN, PC Mag, Geek.com, and many more buying up Humble bundle on October 13.

moomin 9y ago

I remember reading, in print, when print was still a thing, an article explaining that the single biggest revenue driver was exclusive reviews, and that to get them you negotiated a review score. I remember realising slightly later than something similar was true for most magazine reviews. It still is. That’s why I read Which.

pjc50 9y ago

The thing is, there are three kinds of things people want from games journalism: 1) Consumer product reviews, as if games were fridges or TVs. 2) Artistic engagement; either trying to be the "Roger Ebert of games", or the NGJ approach of self-interrogating the reviewer's feelings while playing the game, or the cultural studies/media studies approach of techniques and influences. 3) Sense of belonging to a fandom, like sports, and competing for victory. Either within the game or between competing fandoms. The trouble with (1) is that it's at best dull and very easily degenerates into payola. (2) had the potential to be far more interesting, but collided very badly with (3). Critique requires standing at a distance. When people identify themselves very strongly with the object of critique, they turn critique of the thing into criticism of themselves, and get very upset. And finally (3) has the same problem that football(+) has long struggled with: hooligans, "ultras", and extreme partisanship taken out of the game. For football, this was to streets and pubs. For games, it's voice chat and forums filled with a never-ending torrent of abusive language. Eventually gamergate provided an opportunity for (3) to mobilise, nominally against (1) but in practice destroying (2) in the process. (+) "Soccer"