Current state of video game journalism

[Voidgazer]

I know I'm a little late with this, and probably some people here have alraedy read it, but I just wanted to share the full, uncut, article with you guys. It cost the author his job at Eurogamer.

There is an image doing the rounds on the internet this week. It is an image of Geoff Keighley, a Canadian games journalist, sitting dead-eyed beside a garish Halo 4 poster and a table of Mountain Dew and Doritos. It is a tragic, vulgar image. But I think that it is the most important image in games journalism today. I think we should all find it and study it. It is important.

Geoff Keighley is often described as an industry leader. A games expert. He is one of the most prominent games journalists in the world. And there he sits, right there, beside a table of snacks. He will be sitting there forever, in our minds. That's what he is now. And in a sense, it is what he always was. As Executive Producer of the mindless, horrifying spectacle that is the Spike TV Video Game Awards he oversees the delivery of a televisual table full of junk, an entire festival of cultural Doritos.

How many games journalists are sitting beside that table?

Recently, the Games Media Awards rolled around again, and games journos turned up to a thing to party with their friends in games PR. Games PR people and games journos voted for their favourite friends, and friends gave awards to friends, and everyone had a good night out. Eurogamer won an award. Kieron Gillen was named an industry legend (and if anyone is a legend in games writing, he is) but he deserves a better platform for recognition than those GMAs. The GMAs shouldn't exist. By rights, that room should be full of people who feel uncomfortable in each other's company. PR people should be looking at games journos and thinking, "That person makes my job very challenging." Why are they all best buddies? What the hell is going on?

Whenever you criticise the GMAs, as I've done in the past, you face the accusation of being "bitter". I've removed myself from those accusations somewhat by consistently making it clear that I'm not a games journalist. I'm a writer who regularly writes about games, that's all. And I've been happy for people who have been nominated for GMAs in the past, because I've known how much they wanted to be accepted by that circle. There is nothing wrong with wanting to belong, or wanting to be recognised by your peers. But it's important to ask yourself who your peers are, and exactly what it is you feel a need to belong to.
2

Just today, as I sat down to write this piece, I saw that there were games journalists winning PS3s on Twitter. There was a competition at those GMAs - tweet about our game and win a PS3. One of those stupid, crass things. And some games journos took part. All piling in, opening a sharing bag of Doritos, tweeting the hashtag as instructed. And today the winners were announced. Then a whole big argument happened, and other people who claim to be journalists claimed to see nothing wrong with what those so-called journalists had done. I think the winners are now giving away their PS3s, but it's too late. It's too late. Let me show you an example.

One games journalist, Lauren Wainwright, tweeted: "Urm... Trion were giving away PS3s to journalists at the GMAs. Not sure why that's a bad thing?"

Now, a few tweets earlier, she also tweeted this: "Lara header, two TR pix in the gallery and a very subtle TR background. #obsessed @tombraider pic.twitter.com/VOWDSavZ"

And instantly I am suspicious. I am suspicious of this journalist's apparent love for Tomb Raider. I am asking myself whether she's in the pocket of the Tomb Raider PR team. I'm sure she isn't, but the doubt is there. After all, she sees nothing wrong with journalists promoting a game to win a PS3, right?

Another journalist, one of the winners of the PS3 competition, tweeted this at disgusted RPS writer John Walker: "It was a hashtag, not an advert. Get off the pedestal." Now, this was Dave Cook, a guy I've met before. A good guy, as far as I could tell. But I don't believe for one second that Dave doesn't understand that in this time of social media madness a hashtag is just as powerful as an advert. Either he's on the defensive or he doesn't get what being a journalist is actually about.

I want to make a confession. I stalk games journalists. It's something I've always done. I keep an eye on people. I have a mental list of games journos who are the very worst of the bunch. The ones who are at every PR launch event, the ones who tweet about all the freebies they get. I am fascinated by them. I won't name them here, because it's a horrible thing to do, but I'm sure some of you will know who they are. I'm fascinated by these creatures because they are living one of the most strange existences - they are playing at being a thing that they don't understand. And if they don't understand it, how can they love it? And if they don't love it, why are they playing at being it?
3

This club, this weird club of pals and buddies that make up a fair proportion of games media, needs to be broken up somehow. They have a powerful bond, though - held together by the pressures of playing to the same audience. Games publishers and games press sources are all trying to keep you happy, and it's much easier to do that if they work together. Publishers are well aware that some of you go crazy if a new AAA title gets a crappy review score on a website, and they use that knowledge to keep the boat from rocking. Everyone has a nice easy ride if the review scores stay decent and the content of the games are never challenged. Websites get their exclusives. Ad revenue keeps rolling in. The information is controlled. Everyone stays friendly. It's a steady flow of Mountain Dew pouring from the hills of the money men, down through the fingers of the weary journos, down into your mouths. At some point you will have to stop drinking that stuff and demand something better.

Standards are important. They are hard to live up to, sure, but that's the point of them. The trouble with games journalism is that there are no standards. We expect to see Geoff Keighley sitting beside a table of s***. We expect to see the flurry of excitement when the GMAs get announced, instead of a chuckle and a roll of the eyes. We expect to see our games journos failing to get what journalistic integrity means. The brilliant writers, like John Walker for example, don't get the credit they deserve simply because they don't play the game. Indeed, John Walker gets told to get off his pedestal because he has high standards and is pointing out a worrying problem.

Geoff Keighley, meanwhile, is sitting beside a table of snacks. A table of delicious Doritos and refreshing Mountain Dew. He is, as you'll see on Wikipedia, "only one of two journalists, the other being 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace, profiled in the Harvard Business School press book 'Geeks and Geezers' by noted leadership expert Warren Bennis." Geoff Keighley is important. He is a leader in his field. He once said, "There's such a lack of investigative journalism. I wish I had more time to do more, sort of, investigation." And yet there he sits, glassy-eyed, beside a table heaving with sickly Doritos and Mountain Dew.

It's an important image. Study it.

Further reading:
Video Game Journalist Robert Florence Leaves Eurogamer After Libel Complaints
All The Pretty Doritos: How Video Game Journalism Went Off The Rails

These two articles with commentary on the original one, surprisingly, come from a blog of a writer for Forbes. Erik Kain is the name, he also often makes some interesting posts concerning video game industry or, well, just games.

[Redblade]

Interesting read.

Can't remember when a game dev was asked a tough question last, it's all puff pieces with obvious leading questions these days.

[Zorohon]

Totalbiscuit has a very informative and interesting video on the matter in one of his mailbox shows. It sheds more light on the industry as a whole and is definitely worth a listen. The question begins at about 30 seconds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2keH...ure=plpp_video

[Wilian]

I think this article by grotsnik in RPGCodex sums the whole thing quite well.

(Original with all the source links: http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=8579)


‘Sad thing is, they’re all too horrid to see what they really are.’
Former PR rep and multi-award-winning game journalist Dave Cook

‘If a company is making money from your work then you should be getting paid for it.’
Multi-award-nominated game journalist and hopeful future PR rep Lauren Wainwright

There’s been a scandal. And even the RPG Codex, which loiters on the most remote, obscure, and inhospitable periphery of the melange of enthusiast blogging, barely-disguised vicarious advertisement, amateur comedy, Kotaku, gushing overuse of superlatives, pre-pubescent social-issue handwringing, cosplay, and press-pack-goodie-photoshoots that’s collectively and misleadingly described as ‘games journalism', just can't stay away. Because we love mainstream games journalism; we really do. And this scandal demonstrates exactly why.

If you aren’t already aware, the trouble kicked off with a short Eurogamer article written by Rob Florence, which comments upon the hilarious image of one Geoff Keighley, supposedly a gaming journalist, caught on camera setting a high bar for criticism as an art-form by advertising addictive junk for overweight American kids (as well as Doritos and Mountain Dew) with a facial expression that perfectly displayed his inner turmoil as he tried to figure out exactly how he could permanently end his own suffering with such a limited assortment of tools at his disposal.

Florence's article, however, only really touches on this photo as a springboard to talk about the Games Media Awards, which he characterises as an event at which ‘games PR people and games journos voted for their favourite friends, and friends gave awards to friends, and everyone had a good night out’. At this orgy of mutual congratulation, Florence continues, a number of journalists demonstrated their unshakeable integrity by advertising ‘groundbreaking transmedia experience’ Defiance (it’s an upcoming shitty MMO that’s going to be set in the world of an upcoming shitty SyFy Channel show starring Dexter’s wife and a guy from Ugly Betty, in case you were wondering about 'transmedia') to their own Twitter followers, as part of a ‘contest’, in exchange for free PS3s. A few commentators - including RockPaperShotgun’s John Walker - took public issue with the fact that a bunch of professional journalists, at an event celebrating journalistic quality, had allowed themselves to be bought off with a console that most of them probably already owned. To this a couple of his peers responded by snapping at him, ‘It was a hashtag, not an advert. Get off the pedestal’, (multi-award-winning journalist and former Ink Media PR man Dave Cook), and shrugging, ‘Urm... Trion were giving away PS3s to journalists at the GMAs. Not sure why that's a bad thing?’ (Lauren Wainwright).

And so Florence uses this story to put it to his readers that when a journalist like Wainwright publicly admits that they don’t see anything wrong with shilling for a game they haven’t actually played in exchange for free goodies, it’s kind of understandable that people might suspect that journalist of being a shill; and he quotes a tweet from Wainwright gushing about the upcoming Tomb Raider reboot as an example of how any sort of harmless endorsement can appear suspicious when you’ve already stated that you don’t have an ethical problem with making endorsements based on nothing more than receiving free shit in return.

This went down rather badly, perhaps because Wainwright, as it later turned out, had in fact worked as a creative consultant for Square Enix - Tomb Raider’s publisher - to the point of listing them as a current employer on Journalisted, and had provided several Square Enix products with previews and reviews for various publications, in which words and phrases such as ‘badass’, ‘awesome’, ‘innovative’, ‘deep’, ‘additive’ (sic), ‘fantastic’, ‘Lara Croft is a feminist symbol’ (sic), ‘breath-taking’, and ‘extraordinary’ predominate (after these revelations were made public, by Stu Campbell and others, this information began to magically disappear from the internet, although more material continued to surface including posts on Wainwright’s blog that reference her close friendship with Square Enix Marketing Manager Korina Abbott, repeatedly regurgitate Square Enix press statements, describe her trip to the Square Enix offices in Japan, encourage fans to vote for her in the very same GMAs organised by her employers at Intent Media who she later felt the need to defend against Florence, announce her intention to go into Games PR herself, show off the free ‘swag’ she’s been given by publicists, and explain that ‘when I was a little girl I wanted to work for Square Enix.’ Obviously, though, there's no way you can take any or all of this information to cast any doubt on the impartiality of the journalist.).

Florence claims that Wainwright or one of her superiors made a libel threat against Eurogamer after the article was published, forcing them to remove the paragraph that mentioned her. Wainwright’s boss, Intent Media’s Michael French, who’d incidentally provided Defiance with some free advertising himself in an MCV article announcing the vital bit of retail news that Defiance would be sponsoring the drinks at his company’s awards show, dismisses this as a lie; ‘there was no legal action taken from Intent. We asked Eurogamer to remove cruel content about a staff member. They obliged.’ Either way, Eurogamer edited all reference to Wainwright and Cook out of the article and apologised publicly (again, on Twitter) for the emotional distress they’d caused the two journalists by cruelly reporting the truth about them. Florence quit his job in protest, then proceeded to tell all of his followers online exactly what had happened.

The story exploded. Wainwright closed down her Twitter page, so as not to feed the trolls who were criticising her maliciously based on nothing more than the various things she’d done and said, while Cook began to communicate with Florence, complaining that republishing something he’d written on a public social network ‘makes me look like a cunt’, that the article ‘could have done without it,’ and that all of the negative attention made him ‘properly miserable.’ Our sympathies must surely go out to Cook, who can be read here describing his thoroughly uncunt-ish attitude towards journalism with the memorable words, ‘We only report on what Sony tells us’.

And on the larger scale, gaming journalists everywhere took to each other’s Twitter pages to rally against the charges that they were a chummy, insular community with an unhealthily comfortable, even downright incestuous relationship with PR representatives, a bunch of deluded hypocrites who preferred to close ranks, justify their friends’ misconduct, and attack their own readers than consider the possibility of any sort of collective wrongdoing. ‘In theory I don’t have a problem with this article’s point,’ complained Mark Lawson of Britxbox, the UK’s ‘best XBox fansite’. ‘How he hurts (Wainwright) and (Cook) sucks though’; a sentiment which Lauren Alesandra, PR manager for Gaming Union, agreed with (‘As someone who’s apparently a “journo” he should know better’) as well as Cook himself (‘We’ve been singled out and dragged through the muck about it, which is fun’). ‘Wondering if publicists are actually as all-powerful as message board conspiracy theorists make them out to be,’ chortled N’Gai Croal, formerly a gaming journalist and currently the head of creative consultancy firm ‘Hit Detection’, which, as he described in a Game Informer article, provides feedback on gameplay decisions and ‘shapes public relations plans’. John T Drake, Director of Communications and Brand Management at Harmonix, Matt Helgeson of Game Informer, Chris Norris of Ubisoft, Kotaku’s Evan Narcisse and Jason Schreier, Maurice Tan, Community Manager at Deepsilver and formerly a Destructoid editor, and Ryan Luckin, a PR Manager at XBox, all shared their own amusement at Croal’s silly joke about these paranoid internet weirdos who believe that some games journalists and games publicists have become basically interchangeable. Joseph Walsh, a PR guy at Namco Bandai and former writer for Entertainmentwise, argued fiercely that ‘Rab Florence’s article on Eurogamer is massively flawed and a bit out of order towards nice and honest journalists’, before telling Wainwright herself that ‘it’s badly written, inaccurate and clearly written from (sic) a bitter individual’; Wainwright’s response is not visible, although it led to Walsh replying, ‘Pleasure. There aren’t enough letters in a tweet needed to embarrass this sorry so and so’. And so on, and so on. Not so much a circlejerk, perhaps, as a large group of people simultaneously burying their heads up one another’s arses.

Then came the weekend; and our stalwart journalists decided that it was time to stop fellating one another on social networks and address the subject in their own publications, sort of like real reporters might do. Kotaku editor Stephen Totilo took to the comments page of a ‘Best Of This Week’ article to explain why his website hadn’t covered the affair: ‘I don’t think it’s a pretty important story. I think it’s the same tired nonsense about games journalism that some folks love to carry on endlessly about. If we had more clear facts about whether one journalism outlet or journalist really threatened to sue another and if that other outlet buckled under that needlessly, then maybe we'd have a small story. But that would take reporting to find it out, and I just don't care enough about the latest supposed media scandal to ask my reporters to look into it. You know what's important? Doing good games journalism, which is what we did this week and highlights in this list above.’ Well said, Stephen. Who watches the watchmen? Who the fuck cares about that? Now let’s all get back to genuine quality reporting such as Sexy Video Game Hallowe’en or It Only Took Seven Months For Apple To Make Me Feel Like A Chump. More depressingly, even the articles that acknowledged and condemned a substantial industry-wide problem took pains to emphasise that the silly old gaming public was kicking up a fuss about nothing by suggesting that there might be a substantial industry-wide problem. ‘I’m not going to recount the series of events,’ GiantBomb’s Patrick Klepek declared, rolling his virtual eyes, ‘that lead (sic) to much of the Internet getting up in arms for the umpteenth time about the supposed widespread impropriety of the profession I dedicate my waking life to.’ ‘Llama-drama’ was the verdict of professional hippo Jim Sterling.

Spare a thought for these wronged souls; it really must be irritating to keep on hearing that same tired old canard about misconduct, foul play and publisher influence in gaming journalism, just because a journalist, having made the tentative suggestion that somebody (who after five minutes of investigation turned out to have worked for Square Enix) was reviewing Square Enix games while cheerleading Square Enix products and that might look a bit bad to some people, was immediately dogpiled upon, rubbished, and censored by his own colleagues. And actually, the journalists (such as RPG Codex alumnus, games critic, and amateur PR man Ian Miles Cheong) who bleated that ordinary gamers didn’t have the whole story and were just wildly speculating as usual based on what little they could see of the inner workings of the media, are quite right to say as much. Ordinary gamers don’t know exactly how much journalists allow themselves to be affected by publisher influence, possibly because ordinary gamers don’t put in the hours at the publicists’ parties, preview events and launch events, or the various free publicist-organised jollies at castles, hovercraft classes, nightclubs, Porsche driving schools, etc, that would be required to make a fully-informed judgement on this subject. Ordinary gamers can't witness first-hand whether reporters are gently implicitly nudged towards favourable judgements, or, as in the case of Wainwright, whether they appear to have a blatantly obvious bias based upon personal relationships and career hopes; all they can see is the plethora of near-perfect scores and the meaningless superlatives that are farted out from the back end of the press machine with a disheartening regularity. All that ordinary gamers have to go on is the image the gaming media presents, which, to put it mildly, does not inspire confidence - and, every so often, a toxic story or memoir that comes seeping out through the cracks.

This is the real, harmful, bloody-minded naivety of the gaming media community; a collectively-affirmed belief that their closeness with the industry makes them specially qualified to pass judgement upon it, without being able to accept that it might also have legitimately compromised their opinions - a little in the manner of a mother who believes it’s perfectly okay for her to be a juror at her son’s murder trial because she knows him much better than anybody else. And this translates into a defensiveness on behalf of the entire profession; Klepek's article, and to a lesser extent Sterling's, takes a moment to acknowledge the inexcusable (of course it isn't right to consult with a company whose products you're reviewing) before avoiding any in-depth commentary on this undeniable glimpse of an industry operating like a swingers' party - in which journalists are invited to become PR reps by PR reps at PR events, transform into creative consultants, then turn into reporters again, jumping back and forth directly between poacher and gamekeeper without ever having their credibility questioned until a bunch of internet detectives on Neogaf happen to notice their CV details - in favour of abstracts and private reflection; really, this story is all about trust between you and me. Really, it's all about how us critics sometimes can't take criticism. Even John Walker and Rob Florence themselves issued milquetoast oil-on-troubled-waters follow-ups to their initial condemnatory statements, urging the gaming public not to think too badly of gaming journalism as a whole, since from personal experience they can testify that most of the people they know are hardworking, decent, and trustworthy.

It’s a pity. Because what the Walkers and Florences (who must genuinely want to improve the situation, indeed, who wouldn’t have spoken out in the first place if they weren't passionate about doing so) have to understand is that for them to start producing apologetics on behalf of a silent majority of honest hacks is completely futile, since nobody believes that every single gaming journalist is corrupt. What people believe is that gaming journalism is institutionally corrupt, built around an imbalanced professional relationship that frequently challenges (and, if appearances are anything to go by, frequently overcomes) writers' principles, and this image is not going to improve as a result of journalists penning earnest columns about how, a few bad apples aside, in their personal experience journalists are honest, (honest!). This image is going to improve if the wider public is provided with tangible evidence that games criticism can occur in a reasonably effective vacuum - that the clowns who announce quite gleefully that they're riding the gravy train of expensive press tours, who copy-paste press statements into their articles and use the word ‘awesome’ in their ‘previews’ and who think they might get a job in the industry themselves one day because that nice PR man gave them a business card are not the same people providing supposedly in-depth objective analysis of any commercial product, that critics are sending back or at the very least declaring the free tat they’ve been plied with (no, saying after the event that you’d meant to give it to charity all along doesn’t count), that editors never have the ability to alter review scores or excise harsh criticism, that advertising is entirely divorced from the journalistic process - and that writers can and will speak up and be heard by the public whenever they encounter misconduct both on the part of the industry and on the part of their peers. Continuing to say, ‘You don’t have the full story, but we do, and we’re telling you that aside from the specific stuff that you already know about, everything is fine, trust us,’ after everything that’s happened, is simply indefensible.

In the wake of the UK phone-hacking scandal last year, in which the fields of political and celebrity journalism were found to have undeniable systemic problems with misconduct, unethical behaviour, and an extremely troubling hand-in-glove relationship with the subjects of their own reportage, journalists were at pains to explain exactly why any form of regulation, transparency or scrutiny of their activities would be a very bad thing; regulation, they argued, would provide the government with opportunities to bully them into censoring their stories, it’d diminish the free press. Gaming journalists, alas, have no such excuse, which is why their arguments in favour of being trusted to keep their own houses in order tend to carry the distinct whiff of undiluted delusional bullshit. ‘I agree that games media should always be scrutinizing itself and trying to get better. I don't necessarily agree that games media should be scrutinizing and criticizing each other, you know?,’ reasoned Kotaku’s Jason Schreier on Neogaf, before adding, ‘I criticize Kotaku (especially my own work on Kotaku) all the time! Just not publicly. Internal criticism can lead to improvement; public criticism leads to nothing but embarrassment. That's one of the reasons I try to think twice before publicly criticizing one of my colleagues or fellow media outlets. It's often a lose-lose situation. People are far more inclined to listen to advice or criticism when you approach them privately and politely rather than calling them out on a website read by almost 5 million people a month, you know?’ (Thank God we have professional journalists like Jason to tell us that he isn’t afraid to do the right thing and keep the public uninformed when he thinks informing them could cause embarrassment to his colleagues). In the same thread, an anonymous journalist, nicknamed Dawg, explains why he can be trusted to remain unstained by publisher influence even while he's wallowing in a colossal muddy pool of it; ‘I'm a VIDYA GAME JOURNALIST for an European gaming website (which I shall not name for obvious reasons). I've had my fair share of PR events, previews and such. During one of the previews, we dined at an expensive restaurant with the PR guy from a publisher I will not name (again, for obvious reasons). It's fun and all, but at the end of the day, I just care about the game and I write my opinion about that game. Sure, dining at a fancy restaurant is fun and all, but it shouldn't cloud your judgement. If they want to give me free food, that's their decision. It's not hard to still write an unbiased (although every review is subjective because of OPINIONS) article after getting all sorts of things from them.’

My suspicion is that a number of journalists share Dawg’s perspective; that it’s perfectly acceptable to enjoy the attentions and the courtship rituals and the little gifts provided by the industry, because like Penelope refusing her army of suitors or the goddamned Batman, you’re basically incorruptible, immune to external influence, and the gaming public should just be able to trust you about that. But the logic of this deluded self-belief, this talk of, 'Yes, I receive free goodies and I enjoy a cordial relationship with PR reps, who court me as if I was a potential business client or someone thinking about buying a timeshare, rather than a supposedly detached commentator on their products, but that's never influenced my critical judgement. I mean, I'd know if it did, right?' doesn't even stand up to scrutiny in a vacuum, since none of the luxuries are necessary for the journalist to do their job; the risk of being unduly influenced simply doesn't need to exist in the first place. The PR rep has no reason to offer these perks other than as tokens of small-scale, soft bribery, and the journalist has no reason to accept them other than being a greedy, unprofessional sucker (hey, we're all human, right?!), someone who thinks that if he knows it's a honeytrap he can go ahead and marry the Russian prostitute anyway without fear of being compromised. And when a group of professional reporters (some of the best ones in their field, according to the GMAs!), like a shit version of the Stanford Prison Experiment, prove under laboratory conditions that their ethical code and good sense can be swayed in thirty seconds by exactly one Playstation 3, when professional reporters shout down and censor one of their own for naming names, when major publications refuse to cover misconduct in their own profession, the idea of games journalism as a medium being just fine and dandy where industry influence and peer-to-peer cronyism is involved becomes utterly laughable; an infant bawling that it doesn't need nappies but continuing to wet the fucking bed all the same.

What those journalists who count themselves as honest have to accept is that what they see as an unfair, cynical caricature of their vocation is not the result of wild conspiracy theorising and groundless internet paranoia on the part of the gaming public, but stems from the collective perception of a system that has quite visibly been formed around a particularly wealthy and disproportionately powerful industry with an eye towards manipulating, wooing, and managing a particularly inchoate and frequently impecunious press - some of whom would apparently be delighted to be invited over onto the other side of the fence anyway. Even more worryingly, it's a system that continues, despite the protests and the eye-rolling, to give the outward impression of being compromised, frequently to the point of absurdity, from the inbred closeness of that relationship. Defending their profession might be their first reaction to all of this mess, but regulating their profession is the only sensible reaction. If gaming journalists and editors want to enjoy genuine credibility amongst their public, untainted by any suspicion of misbehaviour, they’re going to have to demonstrate that they're bold enough to take three steps back from that system, that they have proper visible safeguards in place to maintain a healthy, professional distance between themselves and the manufacturers of the product they’re supposed to be commenting on, and that any misconduct will be recognised, publicly acknowledged, and stamped out, whether by whistleblowers or by watchdogs.

Obviously, none of this is ever going to happen. So we should be glad at least that consumers can (probably) rely on amateur reviewers and niche review sites which are, if nothing else, small and arcane and (in the case of the Codex) completely beyond-the-pale enough to avoid getting themselves caught up in this kind of nonsense; and in the meantime we’ve got Stu Campbell’s unequivocal statement that IGN’s Colin Campbell, yet another multi-award-winning games journalist, is directly implicated in selling review scores for advertising. Since Colin himself, having won his second ‘Games Media Legend’ award at the GMAs, told MCV just last year that ‘it would be great to see more searing reporting exposing corruption,’ presumably in the next few days we’ll see some of our self-proclaimed honest gaming journalists giving column space to these serious allegations against a reporter at one of the biggest gaming publications out there, before investigating them thoroughly and without any fear of stigma.

There are 322 comments on RPG Codex Editorial: Games Journalism Scandal

[Voidgazer]

Continuation of the story, a new article by based Kain.

Eurogamer Confirms Journalist Lauren Wainwright Threatened Legal Action

[Remilia]

Some commentary of an LPer I watch.



It's just a terrible state really that I personally end up watching LPs rather than reviews for my decision.

[Rennadrel]

The video game business has become such a corporate sham in the last several years, it's embarrassing to say the least. Everyone is a corporate shill and willing to do whatever it takes to get freebies and some are willing to take bribes to give crappy and mediocre games good reviews. Anyone with half a brain would have rated the last few CoD and Halo games as more of the same with no innovating features to speak of, yet they still give those games 9/10 or higher ratings. IGN has no integrity left, Gamespot hasn't had integrity since prior to the last console generation, since then they just constantly bash unique games, innovative gaming concepts and anything that isn't more of the same. There are no unbiased review resources out there anymore, everyone in the gaming media is just looking to line their pockets with money rather then having any shred of integrity towards an art form.

[FlawlessSoul]

I've not paid attention to any reviews before purchasing a game for as long as I can remember.

I admit that I watch "review" videos - I watch Ben Croshaw's ZeroPunctuation for the humor more than anything, and occasionally John Bain's (TotalBiscuit) videos for entertainment (though apart from the WTF series, I'm uninterested in most of his work).

I do this so I can stick to first-hand experience, gameplay videos, etc. It's not as if I actively avoid reviews, I just have no interest in reading someone's view on game when I can quite easily form my own.

Shills are to be expected in any journalist niche, because it's a way for people to get paid for doing something they enjoy doing. In other areas, journalism is held to high standards by rules and laws - as Bain said (paraphrasing), there are no such standards in games journalism. It's up to the journalist.

And it's up to the reviewer's fans to tell them when they're being twats.

[Clockwork Pinkie]

Well, he messed up by doing the one thing you never do in journalism. Voice your own opinion.

[Edge-]

People are getting caught up on the reviews side of this, this potentially affects all sides; what people cover, how they cover it, what they promote on their personal social media channels ect. There's a much bigger picture than just the review score people love to focus on so much.

One the one hand, I sorta agree with Totilo that every now and then this thing flares up and becomes and issue, but it gets overblown. Finding journalists in the pocket of a company is definitely the exception rather than the rule. Yes, everyone has their biases as it's impossible to be 100% objective, and most journalists/editors will make theirs clear, but they still do a great job of staying that one layer detached.

At the same time though, this is something that is becoming a bit more of an issue due to how social media has become such a powerful tool for developers and publishers and how widespread the use of it is amongst gaming journalists (i.e. almost all of them use it). So there is absolutely value in bringing up this topic, especially in an age where companies will spend big bucks to sway media opinion.

Having been a part of all of this for a bit, I can say that there are definitely some issues, and it's by no means all happy and perfect. But at the same time, I can pretty confidently say that I've yet to come across a journalist who I've ever considered to be in anyones pocket. I've come across some that have their obvious biases, but that's their own personal taste and everyone knows that. Developers/publishers do go out of their way to do everything possible to influence opinion, as it's in their best interest, too.

This is a great topic for the industry to re-visit from time to time since it's kinda a dirty one that nobody wants to really deal with, and I LOVED almost all of the original article. I feel it would have held more weight though, if he hadn't called out specific individuals to begin with. He could have easily gotten the point across by using examples while staying vague enough to no incriminate anyone. That alone would have sparked up the discussion again. Instead, we now have a bit more nastiness to all this, and it's not really needed. Not heaping blame anywhere, but this hasn't been the best way to go about re-visiting this topic as a whole -_-

Well, he messed up by doing the one thing you never do in journalism. Voice your own opinion.

Journalists do that all the time in gaming. It's called blogs/columns, and reviews. That and frequently you'll get places like Kotaku or Destructoid that are more blog than news, so personal opinion is injected into almost every post. That's not a bad thing though, as it gives more character to the stories/announcements, more character to the writers, and can make things much more interesting.

[Voidgazer]

I feel it would have held more weight though, if he hadn't called out specific individuals to begin with. He could have easily gotten the point across by using examples while staying vague enough to no incriminate anyone.

And why exactly he shouldn't call the names? These are greedy, corrupt and stupid people. They're doing atrocious things to the image of our precious type of media. Being called out and publicly embarrased for what they're doing is THE LEAST of what they truly deserve.

It's actually really disturbing to see how a person, who did nothing but quote info already freely available info, get thraetened with lawsuits and lose the job. No doubt, this scandal will have much more serious negative impact Wainwright's carrier than the original article could ever do. But what's even more disturbing is how absolute majority of these so-called gaming journalist first openly criticized Florence and Eurogamer, even though it had nothing to do with them... unless, of course, they did assume that the article about dishonest and outright sold out journos was about themselves (and why else would you see this as a personal attack on you if you WEREN'T corrupt to some degree?).

Now they're trying to hush it down, like if it has nothing to do with them or the video game industry, that it's no big deal, just stop staring at us, ok? There's definitely a major issue on institutional level here, and instead of trying to fix it, they dismiss it or even defend it. That's is so WRONG.

[Clockwork Pinkie]

Journalists do that all the time in gaming. It's called blogs/columns, and reviews. That and frequently you'll get places like Kotaku or Destructoid that are more blog than news, so personal opinion is injected into almost every post. That's not a bad thing though, as it gives more character to the stories/announcements, more character to the writers, and can make things much more interesting.

Indeed, it does make things more interesting, it seems like the gaming community gets up in arms every 6 months when the same thing happens. For the job he had, I believe he went far out of line, but if he was a blogger, it would of been a nice piece of work.

"Another journalist, one of the winners of the PS3 competition, tweeted this at disgusted RPS writer John Walker: "It was a hashtag, not an advert. Get off the pedestal." Now, this was Dave Cook, a guy I've met before. A good guy, as far as I could tell. But I don't believe for one second that Dave doesn't understand that in this time of social media madness a hashtag is just as powerful as an advert. Either he's on the defensive or he doesn't get what being a journalist is actually about."

Like seriously, wtf was the point of this part.

[Powerogue]

Some commentary of an LPer I watch.

[video=youtube;QZtjLNZsXIk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZtjLNZsXIk[video]

It's just a terrible state really that I personally end up watching LPs rather than reviews for my decision.

as long as the lets players aren't paid by the companies, I find it a much better actual judge of how good a game is. And of course then we end up with potential laws that would file lets plays under piracy. None of them have passed yet.

[Deleted]

Indeed, it does make things more interesting, it seems like the gaming community gets up in arms every 6 months when the same thing happens. For the job he had, I believe he went far out of line, but if he was a blogger, it would of been a nice piece of work.

"Another journalist, one of the winners of the PS3 competition, tweeted this at disgusted RPS writer John Walker: "It was a hashtag, not an advert. Get off the pedestal." Now, this was Dave Cook, a guy I've met before. A good guy, as far as I could tell. But I don't believe for one second that Dave doesn't understand that in this time of social media madness a hashtag is just as powerful as an advert. Either he's on the defensive or he doesn't get what being a journalist is actually about."

Like seriously, wtf was the point of this part.

The point is if this had been done in politics, everybody would be making a fuzz about corruption. "He gave me a gift, what's the problem with that - not like it alters my perception/decisions in any way". The problem is not whether it actually does change it, but how the voters/readers can actually be sure that it didn't.

I have to agree with the "far out of line"-thing you wrote. The article is pretty much a full front attack on the integrity of the media-circus around games but the writer is personally a part of this circus when working for Eurogamer. I doubt that attacks like that would go unnoticed in any branch of the media. It does however raise the question about whether the readers are aware of the source of what they read - and use that awareness when they read the reviews. This isn't a problem only related to games but rather a problem connected to all parts of the media.

Do we as readers/viewers consider the origins of the history we are reading? This goes for pretty much everything. Let's say you read something about pollution in the arctics - if it's written/signed by i.e. Greenpeace, you know it's bias'ed towards "don't go there - stop using oil and start worrying about the effects of human on this fragile planet" - the point might be true and valid, but you know that Greenpeace will have this agenda regardless of what any studies shows, thus you can expect their article to show that human exploitation of the area it is negative. Depending on your personal view, you will probably pass at least partial judgement on the content before even reading it. However if you took the same article, and changed the author to "Dr. Fancy Professor with six phd's from Harvard, special advisor to the President of USA", your view on the article might be different, because you view the source of the article in a different light.
(I'm in no way trying to be negative about neither Greenpeace or "Dr. Fancy", but just trying to make an example).

Human objectivity is probably reserved for 1% of our race - the people who are dedicated to solely uncovering the facts. However most of what we do and most of what we hear, read or see in the media is colour by some "hidden" agenda. If I give you a PS3 to write about my game or if I let you in on a "secret" contest to #tag it, then I probably expect you to be positive about it - or at least not to be negative. Thereby your personal beliefs about X (in this case Halo) might be pushed aside or compromised. You will think better of Halo because you now connect it with something positive besides the game itself. And the sole fact that you mention it will give your readers a thought of "hey, let's try this out".

"Freedom of speech" and "freedom of the press" was values that grew due to politicians who started to care more about their own ideas than the foundation for their election. We as a people wanted someone to look into the dirty little secrets of the people who where supposed to lead us. However who are watching the people who are watching us? We as consumers of the media needs to be critical about who is serving us what news. Sadly it seems like this is going the wrong way.

[Wilian]

Well, atleast someone is taking their professional integrity seriously. Funnily enough many reviewers of other sites have already attacked on vg247 newly laid out principles because, if they would follow them aswell it would directly cut into their benefits! How horrible that would be.

http://www.vg247.com/2012/10/31/dori...-ourselves-up/

I’m glad Doritosgate happened, even though many people in the UK games journalism trade have had a terrible week. It’s been a long time coming, but we now have to openly accept that cosying-up to the people selling the products on which we’re reporting is blatantly unethical. It’s common sense. While I have total faith in both myself and my team, in our passion for the subject and our ability to be professional, I think that, honestly, we have all been professional in an unprofessional situation for far, far too long. While we certainly are independent in mind, we must, at this point, become independent in action. “You have to trust us,” after Doritosgate, is no longer enough.

As a result, I’ve decided to put the following rules in place for our staff, effective immediately. I’m ashamed I didn’t do this last year. I would encourage other websites to follow suit. Several of the US games publications adhere to similar guidelines, but VG247 will be, as far as I’m aware, the first UK games site to adopt anything like this.

No flights or hotels. We’ll no longer accept flights and payment for hotels from third-parties.

No hospitality. No more free bars. I mean, I’m sure there’ll be free bars. But our employees won’t be drinking at them. This rule also includes food. As of now, VG247 staff will buy their own vittles when they’re “in the field” wherever possible. If, for whatever reason, a VG247 staffer eats or drinks at the expense of a publisher, it’ll be disclosed.

Any gift over £50 disclosed. We regularly get sent promotional materials by games publishers. From now on, all “swag” will be either given away on the site or through social media, or donated to charity. This doesn’t include games, or at least it doesn’t include all of them. We need to play games a lot, and the only way we can keep up is through promos.

No engagement in publisher-held competitions. VG247 staff will never again enter a competition hosted by a publisher or platform-holder.

Any coverage resulting from press trips to be disclosed. Self-explanatory. If we do decide that we’re going to pay our own way to attend a publisher promo event, we’ll clearly say so in any resulting copy.

Writers will never report on companies or products in which they have financial interest, or on companies which employ family members or close friends. Most games journalists have friendly relationships with some publisher PR. As of now, those friendships will prevent staff members from writing about any related company’s products. Similarly, our staff will now not write about products and companies in which they have a vested interest: this includes any crowd-sourced projects they may have backed.

We will always protect the identity of our sources. VG247′s sources will never be disclosed it they speak to us under condition of anonymity. It’s normal that VG247 journalists’ sources aren’t even divulged internally.

A note on advertising. VG247 is always likely to be primarily funded by video games advertising, for reasons I hope are blatantly obvious. We will never carry advertorial. Our ads our sold by Eurogamer Network’s sales team, which is based in Brighton, UK, and is independent to VG247′s editorial staff.

A lot of good standards there to be kept and I hope they show the way for others. Too bad that gamers are seemingly bunch that forget things rather fast so I doubt anything positive long term was really gained.

[Redblade]

A lot of good standards there to be kept and I hope they show the way for others. Too bad that gamers are seemingly bunch that forget things rather fast so I doubt anything positive long term was really gained.

Doubt game journalists as we know them will be around for much longer to be fair, streams, YouTube profiles and the general word on the web is by far more informative and will over time reach more and more people in one way shape or form.

[Cyclone Jack]

Best reviews ever, IMO, were from PC Accelerator. They never pulled their punches (I still love their Tomb Raider 3 review). Of course, this ruffled too many feathers and they lost ad revenue, killing the mag. What I'd love to see is a site that gets their income from non-gaming sources so that they can review without care of revenue repercussions. I just can't go to a review site and hope to see an honest review these days. It's part of the reason I browse through this misc forum, as I know there's going to be a thread or two about a new game that I am curious about, and I'll see a wide variety of viewpoints allowing me to make a much better judgement.

[Rennadrel]

Best reviews ever, IMO, were from PC Accelerator. They never pulled their punches (I still love their Tomb Raider 3 review). Of course, this ruffled too many feathers and they lost ad revenue, killing the mag. What I'd love to see is a site that gets their income from non-gaming sources so that they can review without care of revenue repercussions. I just can't go to a review site and hope to see an honest review these days. It's part of the reason I browse through this misc forum, as I know there's going to be a thread or two about a new game that I am curious about, and I'll see a wide variety of viewpoints allowing me to make a much better judgement.

Kinda amusing how the truth tends to hurt businesses and people. It makes me ashamed that there is no integrity in journalism of any kind. We are so afraid of hurting people's feelings and juggling around with the truth out of fear of negative repercussions. My motto is 'take no prisoners', don't be afraid to hurt some feelings, if people want to be butthurt because you tell the truth, they need to go back to sucking on their soothers like a bunch of babies. I don't care if what I say gets me into trouble or someone disagrees with me, that is the way the world works. Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one and they all stink and some stink worse then others. Video game reviews are no different, they are an opinion, and some of those opinions are bought with money.

[Redblade]

We are so afraid of hurting people's feelings and juggling around with the truth out of fear of negative repercussions.

It's a product of todays "No child left behind", "There are no losers" society where everyone strives to be politically correct in fear of being called this that or the other due to their opinions.

At least that's how I see it.