Totally Not Corrupt Professional Objective Gaming Journalism DRAMA

[evdk]

It was in his interest to promote CoD heavily in Eurogamer, because Activision was paying him to do it. Where's the conflict, grotsnik, show me the conflict. Protip: you can't.

 

[grotsnik]

Where's the conflict, grotsnik, show me the conflict. Protip: you can't.

 

[evdk]

Where's the conflict, grotsnik, show me the conflict. Protip: you can't.

picture

At least do it properly.

 

[grotsnik]

Well, if you want to be competent about it, sure...

 

[Menckenstein]

Can't wait to see EGM's BLOPS2 review and see how it stacks up to their Halo 4 review.

 

[sea]

So this is/was apparently from the LinkedIn of Julien Chevron, who reviewed Call of Duty Black Ops 2 today for the French division of Eurogamer. He gave it 9/10, and called it 'the best in the series'.

PR Manager - Activision
August 2004 – Present (8 years 4 months)

Achievements :
- The 2 most imposing and important PR campaigns by Activision-Blizzard France for Call of Duty : Modern Warfare 2 and Call of Duty : Black Ops, the 2 biggest launches in the history of entertainment in France and the world.

Infuckingcredible. But remember, you armchair conspiracy theorists, you need to have a little trust in games journalists. They conduct themselves just fine, even if we don't always see it. THERE ARE NO CONFLICTS OF INTEREST.

Are you fucking kidding me?

What a fucking disgrace. I was going to post on their forums about it, but PERMISSION DENIED etc. I guess they are into censoring opinions of readers as well. I cannot believe they learned a thing after the recent controversy.

 

[Jaesun]

What a fucking disgrace. I was going to post on their forums about it, but PERMISSION DENIED etc. I guess they are into censoring opinions of readers as well. I cannot believe they learned a thing after the recent controversy.

Eurogamer banned you on their forums?

 

[sea]

What a fucking disgrace. I was going to post on their forums about it, but PERMISSION DENIED etc. I guess they are into censoring opinions of readers as well. I cannot believe they learned a thing after the recent controversy.

Eurogamer banned you on their forums?

No, they just don't let users make new threads in the "site feedback/discussion" forum. Seems to kind of defeat the purpose of a feedback forum if the only thing you can talk about is pre-approved topics.

 

[Infinitron]

Wow.

 

[Dexter]

Here's his LinkedIn btw., apparently he updated it xD
http://fr.linkedin.com/in/julienchevron

http://www.eurogamer.net/forum/post/9149660

In answer to those who have mentioned the Eurogamer France review, that came as a surprise to us in the UK too.

For those confused about how Eurogamer.fr's review can be possible after the new editorial policies I wrote about on Friday, our European sites (Eurogamer.fr, .de, etc) are all operated by independent editorial teams and it's up to them whether they want to adopt the same working practices we have. In the same way we don't tell Rock Paper Shotgun or VG247 what to do with their sites (even though we are partnered with them in similar ways), we want the editors of those local editions to make their own decisions about editorial conduct.

With that said, I shared our plans with all the European editors before we pulled the trigger and have been in discussions with many of them since then about whether they want to do similar things. Obviously if we were talking about Eurogamer.net then that review would contravene our policies, specifically the one we clarified last week that goes like this: "Staff and contributors may not write about a company they have worked for in any capacity within the last two years."

Anyway, we obviously decided on that rule for a good reason, and notwithstanding the stuff I've said above, we're in contact with the French team to share our views about it.

Tom

UPDATE 14:53: I've spoken to the boss of Eurogamer France and he tells me that the review was commissioned before he got to see Eurogamer.net's new policies last week, which meant that they couldn't be considered before the review was commissioned. I shared them late Thursday, so that makes sense.

The editor is going to add a disclaimer to the review making the author's circumstances clear, and in addition to that they are planning to do a separate review of the PC version written by another writer to help settle any of their readers' lingering concerns.

This is the latest I have although they are still in the process of sorting this stuff out, so if it's not apparent on their site immediately then please bear with them a little longer.

As I said on Twitter, we'll use this as an opportunity to have a broader discussion about how we work with our European partner sites and how we share and act on editorial guidelines. As ever, thank you for your patience as we try to do this stuff better. I promise we won't stop talking about it and won't brush things under any carpets, however inconvenient that may be for us in practice.

 

[Tommers]

Never mind if they had seen the "new guidelines" or not. Surely employing somebody to write a review of a game which they are RESPONSIBLE FOR THE PR ON, is a bit of a no-no?

 

[Dexter]

Never mind if they had seen the "new guidelines" or not. Surely employing somebody to write a review of a game which they are RESPONSIBLE FOR THE PR ON, is a bit of a no-no?

Well, obviously not.

Apparently if you are en Editor and know that he can obviously be objective about it you can let him write it, since he is the most qualified person for the job, since he knows more about Call of Doody than anyone else and is the obvious choice for the job.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/for...wards-and-most-of-game-critics-corrupt/page40

 

[Tommers]

Wow. Just. Wow.

 

[Dexter]

Btw. more circle-jerking: http://www.kotaku.com.au/2012/11/why-games-journalism-is-in-much-better-shape-than-you-think/

Spoiler

Why Games Journalism Is In Much Better Shape Than You Think

David Rayfield 12 November, 2012 1:00 PM

In a past life, David ‘Raygun Brown’ Rayfield was a music journalist. Nowadays he writes about video games. In the wake of Dorito Gate, and an inordinate amount of introspection, he takes a look at the differences between games reporting and music journalism. You might be a little surprised at the differences.

It’s a little childish to hold a grudge against Method Man but on some unconscious level, I still do. Three times in a row, the former Wu-Tang Clan member cancelled an interview I had scheduled with him. Well, he didn’t cancel it. His PR people did. Every time, it was all very last minute. I understood he was a busy man but it was getting rather frustrating. He was touring at the time, possibly with Redman, I don’t quite remember. I shuffled around my life at the drop of a hat every time I received a call and was told he was ready to be interviewed within a few hours. Alas, I didn’t secure the interview and eventually managed to squeeze a reason out of his PR people afterwards. I’m paraphrasing here so my apologies if I remember this incorrectly but the interviews kept getting cancelled because Method Man was “stoned out of his fucking mind”. In retrospect, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised.

For the most part, my time writing in the field of music journalism was rewarding and fun. As a contributor and part-time deputy editor for a music street-press magazine here in Brisbane, I met tons of great people, travelled, covered countless live shows and on the whole, helped shaped me as the starving writer I am today. Sonic Youth were extremely friendly, Simon from Basement Jaxx didn’t bite my head off when I mistakenly called him Felix and the boys from Kasabian bought me a drink over our shared dislike for My Chemical Romance. I learned a lot and wouldn’t have changed it for the world. Even though the music industry was incredibly self-important and filled to the brim with people who thought they were changing the world, I still consider it a rewarding time in my life.

But in over five years, not once did I hear anyone take issue with the state of music journalism as a concept. Not another writer, editor, musician, publicist, event coordinator either here or overseas ever said to me that they believed music journalism was ‘broken’. Not once. Despite regurgitating PR email after PR email and being slaves to the advertising dollar for our very survival, there were never any cries of corruption or bias from any corner of our industry. Sure, musicians and PR responded to bad reviews or questionable interviews but our main concerns were:
1. Making damn sure we had our VIP passes for an upcoming music festival.
2. Pretending you actually liked Spiritualized or My Bloody Valentine.
3. Bragging to other music journalists about how some crappy indie band from Brooklyn formed last week and can barely play one song but they’re so amazing and you know the bass player.

These were our worries. Don’t get me wrong, stellar writing and journalists were everywhere but nobody gave a damn about whether an excess of untoward influence ran through music journalism. No constant rage or mocking of other publications and how they weren’t keeping up to some invisible standard of a Lester Bangs or a Mark Jacobson. There were no regular columns or articles discussing music journalism and what can be done to improve it.

Complaining about trying to make that four hundred word interview somehow seem coherent because Red Bull marketing takes up three quarters of the page? Who cares? I wrote it, so just pay me my money and give me that sweet Batman Begins jacket and Radiohead tour poster while you’re at it. When it came to the actual practice of music journalism, nobody spent too much time thinking about it. True, I wasn’t editor of Rolling Stone or NME but in five years, it stands to reason I would have at least heard about such a thing happening somewhere.

Games journalism seems to be a different beast. It has come a long way from the mainstream media discussing games with sentences like “Games have come a long way since (insert obsolete video game here)” but it still struggles for legitimacy outside of the world it lives in. Ironically, this doesn’t seem to hold it back. Whereas the music industry thrives on growth-crippling cliques and self-obsession, the games industry (whether press, PR, developers or fans) is inherently global. Everyone just naturally pays attention to everyone else. And despite all the constant criticism, this watchful attitude is strangely healthy. ‘Keep the bastards honest’, to quote a former Australian politician.

Most of the accusations against games press are exaggerated and sometimes insane but if there’s even a hint of impropriety these days, it is immediately clamped down upon and laid bare in gruesome detail. No other form of journalism, from music to sport to political to imbedded war reporting, has the kind of ravenous wolves scratching at the door like this one. They are always there, hungry for more evidence of wrongdoing. You think the slightest dip in writing quality or a random misspoken comment on Twitter will slip through their net? You better think again. They make sure nothing gets past. Their instantaneous nature brings these ‘issues’ to light and breaks them down under a microscope. If they smell the faint whiff that you were somehow influenced by a publisher or you’re ‘trolling for hits’, then you might as well be on trial for murder. Because the Internet is representing for the prosecution and your past deeds will be exposed for everyone to see. We shouldn’t exactly thank them, but the state of games media isn’t in the dark hole everybody seems to think it is either. And it’s because everyone involved won’t allow it.

Nothing like this existed during my time in music journalism. True, I mostly wrote for a print magazine but the feedback was always there. In the space of half a decade, it would make sense that even a vague notion of this same deranged authority would present itself. But it never did.

Here’s a small example of how different the two worlds are. During the time I was covering such events, Boy George came to town to DJ in one of those multi-million dollar super-nightclubs. That night, any media or VIPs that went anywhere near him was given a strict set of instructions by his PR team. One of these rules was ‘Unless he is talking to you, don’t look him in the eyes’. If he didn’t ask you to get him a towel or a drink, it was forbidden to make eye contact. I’m dead serious. I wasn’t up to speed on what the consequences were if such a rule was broken, but that’s beside the point.

Can you imagine if anyone in the video game industry had such a stipulation? Their reputation would be in ruins and they would become a laughing stock. Half a dozen articles across many different sites would be written about what this means for the industry and whatever game or site they were connected to would be shredded to pieces and a hundred career-ending memes would be created within the hour. In the music industry however, it was laughed off as yet another example of a prima donna, celebrity attitude and forgotten in a haze of free booze, dancing and “ooh, is that the guy from The Presets?”.

The general consensus seems to be that games journalism is ‘broken’. When compared to any other field of journalism, this criticism has been blown out of proportion to a staggering degree. If you say it’s broken enough times, then maybe you might start to convince yourself and others that it’s true. Like telling everyone a new Syphon Filter game will be totally awesome or repeating the word ‘Candyman’ three times while looking in a mirror. In reality, this just isn’t the case.
Games journalism is perfectly fine. It’s safe and sound because we have our own twisted police force protecting it. On some macabre level, all the nutcases who cry foul of games journalists being influenced on a game review by giving it a 7 instead of a 9 or yelling from the highest rooftop that all games journalism is recycled PR, help to highlight the fact that nobody can hide. Anything that they might deem to be anything less than in-depth, solid and groundbreaking games journalism is studied and analyzed as if it were a treasure map leading to a pot of Mountain Dew. There’s no chance of the industry press getting worse because anything that’s even slightly questionable gets stopped in its tracks and torn apart in excruciating detail. Game journalism as it is today can only get better because it picks up after itself like a drunken yet responsible maid of honour at a wedding.

So maybe you shouldn’t worry so much about that less than glowing review or a guy sitting next to a bag of Doritos. Because when you step back from it all, everything seems ludicrous. It’s okay to think twice about raging about a writer not meeting a level of quality that some other writer displayed last week. Hundreds of other people will take care of that for you.

And yet, I still think Method Man is a bit of a ponce. I guess games journalism can’t fix everything.

 

[evdk]

What is the NeoGAF's simplistic view on games journalism? Do not review games of companies you PR for?

 

[Weierstraß]

So, "there's nothing wrong with games journalism because music journalism is worse"?

 

[evdk]

And "Why are you being mean to us, no one in my previous job was so mean to me, you meanies"

 

[Tommers]

I liked the bit about how if Boy George were in video games he'd be derided and made fun of... whereas he isn't in the music busine... oh yeah. right.

And his argument is basically "music journalists are really, really, shit at their job and do all the things you accuse game journalists of and so games journalists are great because they are A BIT LESS SHIT at their job than music journalists."

 

[Jick Magger]

It's as though his mother never told them that two wrongs don't make a right.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-11-09-editors-blog-new-editorial-policies

For the last few years we've maintained a public "How We Work" document that makes it clear to anyone who uses the site what policies we have in place to govern our actions.​

Following recent events, we've decided to update these policies. Some of the additions were already informal guidelines and some are based on internal discussions in recent weeks.​

While these discussions were going on we chose not to attend a Call of Duty review event pending a final decision on how we would approach such things in future. As a result, our review of the game will probably be a couple of days late next week.​

You can read the whole updated "How We Work" document if you like, or alternatively here are the key additions:​

• We do not attend "VIP" review events at hotels or abroad.
• If it is ever necessary to review games at a company's offices then we will cover travel and accommodation costs ourselves and disclose the conditions under which the game was reviewed.
• If we accept travel or accommodation from a company then we disclose it.
• We will only accept games, items for reviews and things that enable us to do our job (i.e. consoles, peripherals).
• Games and other items received through work may not be sold or traded. If they are no longer useful for work then they will be given to the GamesAID charity.
• Staff and contributors are not permitted to do "mock reviews" for or provide consultancy to games publishers.
• Staff and contributors may not write about a company they have worked for in any capacity within the last two years.

if eurogamer.it is owned by the same people at eurogamer.net, i can say that's bullshit, just some good words thrown around with no real backing.

 

[Gord]

if eurogamer.it is owned by the same people at eurogamer.net, i can say that's bullshit, just some good words thrown around with no real backing.

Una mano lava l'altra

Isn't that anyway just a very recent reaction to the accusations of potentially conflicting interests leveled against the gaming press?

 

[CrustyBot]

I wonder how all these game journalists will look back on their careers and actions when/if they have children. I mean, some may already have children but you'd think one day, many more would mature or move onto another career path where they can get separation and an outside perspective of things (like publisher PR ).

This entire ordeal has been very odd and while I never had much respect for video game "journalists", I'm shocked at how many of them act like (wo)manchildren and spoiled or entitled brats. The constant circlejerk and passive aggressive snipes at gamers on their twitter pages, of which this is just the latest example.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised, as game journalists are gamers by occupation, but it's as if the industry is littered with the 11-16 year old retards who inhabit CoD servers, except they're 10 years older and are more literate.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

I wonder how all these game journalists will look back on their careers and actions when/if they have children.

"i have money, i have a family and i didn't work a single day in my existance. life is good".

 

[bminorkey]

He gave it 9/10, and called it 'the best in the series'.

To be fair - and I don't play these games so call me out if I'm wrong - the series has been about reiterating the same tried-and-true formula for the past 11 titles. It makes a lot of sense the latest edition would be the best, having better graphics and more polish than previous iterations.

 

[tuluse]

He gave it 9/10, and called it 'the best in the series'.

To be fair - and I don't play these games so call me out if I'm wrong - the series has been about reiterating the same tried-and-true formula for the past 11 titles. It makes a lot of sense the latest edition would be the best, having better graphics and more polish than previous iterations.

It doesn't have better graphics. There is no such thing as better graphics on a console title this late in the cycle.