Editorial RPG Codex Editorial: Games Journalism Scandal

[Infinitron]

Another scrap of detail - I asked Stu Campbell about his Colin Campbell/IGN accusation.

I imagine nobody’s followed it up because it was a long time ago and it’s my word against his, with no evidence either way. But Colin is the only person in my career who’s ever tried to get me to review a game on the understanding that it had to receive a certain minimum score to keep the publisher happy and taking out adverts. It was Domark’s skanky conversion of Super Space Invaders for the C64. I refused, and Commodore Format, which Colin was editor of at the time, ended up giving it 92%.
(I think Colin was also publisher of Amiga Action when it reviewed Rise Of The Robots, but I can’t say for sure – the issue it was in hasn’t been scanned on AMR yet.)

Wow, that's ancient history.

 

[Stainless Veteran]

 

[Jaesun]

http://wosland.podgamer.com/the-players-and-the-game/

This is a really good and informative read.

 

[Ninja Destroyer]

Excellent reading grotsnik , many thanks to you.

Also

(..) 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

 

[Spectacle]

http://wosland.podgamer.com/the-players-and-the-game/

This is a really good and informative read.

Also, I can confirm that Lauren is Dave's boyfriend.

Tranny detected!

 

[LundB]

A true bro would tweet this picture to him so he knows what to expect. Maybe with hugz&kisses from @ rpgcodex. Looking at you, Crooked Bee

Goddamn, Ulm. I posted a screencap of his reaction just a page before your post. You got short term amnesia bro?

 

[villain of the story]

That's it? You got into game journalism for free games?

Assuming that's actually true - and I find it hard to believe anyone would aim so incredibly low - why the fuck go into game journalism? Wouldn't a career in game development or on the genuine advertising side be much more logical places to go for free shit?

Getting into game development & advertising require actual study & skill. Entering gaming journalism just require low morals, fandom and some friends.

Pete Hines (former editor at Adrenaline Vault, a shitty games website owned by ZeniMax and former fanboy and suck-up to "game journalists" way back from early 90s; current VP of PR and Marketing at Bethesda) says hello. So does Emil Pagliarulo, also a former editor at Adrenaline Vault.

As long as you have a half-functioning brain and more importantly, the right connections, you can get into anything. Whether you actually do something good with where you land is another matter. Emil did some good at Looking Glass, for instance, but that he went from one ZeniMax owned platform to another couldn't possibly be a coincidence. When you throw Pete Hines into the equation as well, it's obvious there is some serious closed-circle cocksucking going on in there. I don't even know just who else at Bethesda passed through a similar process.

 

[Ulminati]

A true bro would tweet this picture to him so he knows what to expect. Maybe with hugz&kisses from @ rpgcodex. Looking at you, Crooked Bee

Goddamn, Ulm. I posted a screencap of his reaction just a page before your post. You got short term amnesia bro?

Alzheimers runs in the family, so probably.

 

[Jaesun]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2012/oct/30/video-game-journalism?CMP=twt_fd

A VERY good write up of this on the guardian UK.

a snippet:

Access to preview and review material is now tightly controlled in this industry. This is partly because the threat of software piracy is ever present and terrifying to companies that have spent millions of dollars and countless working hours to produce Triple A titles. But it's also because publishers want to engineer an environment in which their products are viewed and discussed favourably. Getting access to new games now involves a relationship between journalist and producer, an understanding that there are two motives being uneasily aligned. We must now consider this properly.

 

[dextermorgan]

http://p4r.buzzleberry.com/?p=319

In a shocking turn of events, Square Enix has announced that Lauren Wainwright, a supposed video game journalist, is fictional and that her love of everything Square Enix was just a marketing ploy.

This a spoof or what?

Edit:
Yes, it is.

Geoff Keighley Dies After Going On Mountain Dew and Doritos Binge
Geoff Keighley, famed video game journalist, has passed away earlier this morning due to a binge eating incident that occurred late last night after reading a Eurogamer article condemning him for his actions in an interview about Halo 4.

 

[Jaesun]

Geoff Keighley Dies After Going On Mountain Dew and Doritos Binge

 

[Jarpie]

I'd be very surprised if anything changes, this all will blow over and everything will return to normal, unfortunately.

 

[Jaesun]

I'd be very surprised if anything changes, this all will blow over and everything will return to normal, unfortunately.

Yeah even eurogamer's and RPS articles basically say "Well this is what happened recently. Wow that's terrible".

And that's basically it.

That epic neoGAF thread however doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon and in fact, it is basically starting to be a huge collection of videogame scadal, lies and mis-information database.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

Finally got around to reading this. Now where the fuck is grotsnik so I can brofist him?

Best bit of journalism I've read on gaming in forever.

 

[Brother None]

She apparently studied Journalism and whatever "Game Studies" is at London Met-U.

Yip. One of GB's worst universities, per Guardian. It's always the really terrible universities that offer gimmicky degrees like "game studies", where clearly you don't learn that much, if Wainwright is anything to judge by.

Was it you, who did the same gaming "jurnalizm" beatdown at NMA a few years back? With links etc?

Nvm. Found it.

This one? Wasn't so general though, more about one specific trick game journalists do to seem legit while being shills. At the bottom there's some links to good articles, though some might not be available anymore.

The sad truth is this criticism of game journalism has been around forever, often coming from noteworthy people and even on noteworthy outlets, but these controversies aren't going to get them to change. We just have to hope they keep piling up so the general populace knows to start doubting the integrity and trustworthiness of game journalists. And then things might change.

There's just too little impetus for people like Wainwright to change, right now, or for sites to stop hiring people like her.

EDIT: well, or TotalBiscuit is right and this format of journalism is just going to die. Though he may be overrating the importance of Youtube commentary reviews.

 

[almondblight]

Yeah even eurogamer's and RPS articles basically say "Well this is what happened recently. Wow that's terrible".

That RPS article pretty much shows what's wrong with the industry. "We didn't write about it before because it's not about games." You know, widespread corruption in gaming journalism doesn't affect games as much as "games as art?" debates or EA manufactured boycotts of Mass Effect 3 (John Walker writing an article to praise EA for that). 95% of the comments are "I never doubted you guys, I'd trust you forever!" and "How could anyone of ever doubted you guys! Begone trolls!".

Yeah, it's not like RPS didn't refuse to review Dragon Age II because they didn't want to give it a bad score or called Mass Effect 3 "a worthy conclusion," not mentioning the ending at all until fan outrage caused them to write another article defending it.

 

[Stinger]

I blame the mainstream gaming audience that wants all the hype, flips out at 8.8 scores, cites metacritic as objective measures of a game's worth, and generally attempts to suppress any form of discussion or critique or anything beyond "LOL DIS GAEM WAS AWESUMMMM! I LOVED IT WHEN HE HIT A GUY FUS ROH DAH XDDDDDD"

This industry wouldn't be allowed to perpetuate without an audience that was this vapid.

So basically, Fuck you America!

 

[sser]

Great article. The sharp incline of positive reviews regardless of content is impossible to ignore. We live in a gaming world where "everything is good" no matter what and any criticism is just there to give a semblance of impartiality. Kind of irritating. Maybe we should get some alpha males in the gaming journalism business who won't be so easily bought off by Porsches and hookers.

 

[waywardOne]

Here's an idea: Review the game after launch, then all this integrity bullshit goes away. Why doesn't this happen? Because these slimeball "journalists" could never compete with actual, knowledgeable reviewers, aka us, the players.

 

[Jaesun]

Here's an idea: Review the game after launch, then all this integrity bullshit goes away.

They already do that:

Gamespot UK journalist Guy Cocker revealed the tactic in a Twitter post on Wednesday that said: “call from Eidos–if you’re planning on reviewing Tomb Raider Underworld at less than an 8.0, we need you to hold your review till Monday.”

Robert Florence ‏@robertflorence
It's a disgrace that some industry figures suggested that readers who demanded greater transparency were conspiracy theorists.

 

[J1M]

Heh, this guy seems pretty ok. Pity about the popamole.

Seems to have enough of a sense of humour to last longer than many other devs have, provided he doesn't make an account and see GD.

Fools, he is probably a long-time Codexer. Nobody sane would have kept reading this site after seeing 3 pages of comments discussing the article's formatting.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

Fools, he is probably a long-time Codexer. Nobody sane would have kept reading this site after seeing 3 pages of comments discussing the article's formatting.

Heck even I didn't and I'm at work trying to kill time.

 

[Fens]

this old (1995) amiga power article has been mentioned before and now a scan surfaced in the guardian article comments:

 

[Harold]

Looks like I'm late to the party, can I still get a free PS3? trololo
Great writeup grotsnik. You should do this more often.

Also

Gamespot UK journalist Guy Cocker revealed the tactic in a Twitter post on Wednesday that said: “call from Eidos–if you’re planning on reviewing Tomb Raider Underworld at less than an 8.0, we need you to hold your review till Monday.”

Gamespot UK journalist Guy Cocker revealed the tactic in a Twitter post

Gamespot UK journalist Guy Cocker

Guy Cocker

Alright Jaesun, time to fess up! You're a Gamespot double agent, aren't you? No one else would've picked that name for his journalist persona.

 

[7hm]

The thing is, game reviews aren't journalism, in the same way that Consumer Reports isn't journalism. It's consumer advocacy. They are different things.

(What's really bad is that the standards of integrity for consumer advocacy are normally even higher than for journalists.)

There is very little actual journalism, and the integrity of the people doing consumer advocacy is largely suspect.

But people still buy / read the content, so there is no incentive to do anything different.

Honestly, there is probably a market for a Consumer Reports of gaming. A website or publication that solely does after-release reviews with specific emphasis on integrity. Perhaps offering an AP style publishing model where other websites could purchase the rights to the review. If "previews" were separated from "reviews" the fact that these journalists have no integrity would matter a lot less. That would still leave the question of who does the actual journalism, but it's a start at least.