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[Tuba]

So, a lot is being talked lately about what games journalism is and what it should be. I've seen this discussion going on in a lot of sites and forums mostly from consumers and enthusiasts. But here we have a different audience with a lot of people that study and make games, so I was curious to know what the TIG community think about game journalism, what's wrong with it, how it could be better and what it could do to actually help the medium.

I should add that while I consider myself a developer I also have a small gaming blog which has news, reviews and all that stuff. And though I don't really consider myself one, I've been called journalist a bunch of times.

By the way, Even though the current circumstances motivated me to make this thread, this is not about Gamergate, there is already a thread to discuss that, go there if you want to.

[s0]

I already said some of this in other threads but I think what needs to happen in game journalism is this: Less consumerism, more actual criticism.

Videogames are becoming more and more culturally relevant and reviews and news articles geared towards telling "consumers" which new games to buy simply won't cut it in the future. What we need is critics who can put games into a broader context, both within their own "medium" and within (popular) culture at large. In other words, there needs to be a move away from "is this fun?" towards "where does this game fit in the grand scheme of things?".

From that it follows that game journalists should also: a) take more interest in the history of videogames (srsly, there's nothing wrong with occasionally referencing games that are older than 5 years). and b) take more interest in cultural products/art/watever else outside of videogames and incorporate that into their writing. Even just taking non-digital games into account would be a huge step forward imo. Also game journalists shouldn't feel obliged to cater to fanboy culture.

[Schoq]

Everyone should be running adblock and most of its problems would go away overnight

[Nillo]

I think games journalists as a whole, and especially indie games journalists, need to acknowledge and carefully disclose the connections they have with the subjects they are covering. The indie scene is a small world, and its inhabitants very often get together in less than formal ways like game jams and game nights. This makes it all the more important to be honest about who you're buddies with, who you personally dislike, and to resist the influence these ties can have on your reporting. There's no shortage of authors willing to write games articles and you can always find someone else to write about a particular topic if you find yourself unable to separate your personal life from your role as an investigator and an observer.

[OttselKnight]

I just want to see honest and pure passion. Dont relate a game to how you think the public will receive it. Dont try to make every game related to pop culture or trends or other trivial things that will be dated in a few years. Tell us how it relates to you, the journalist, and how you feel about it.

If I reviewed a game I would talk about design elements that I loved, thought were questionable, or surprised me. Visuals that impressed me, moments that made an impact for better or worse. Things that I care about in a game, and what this particular one might mean to me.

I dont want to know how it relates to current pop culture unless that is the games purpose. If the game had significant meaning for you that happens to be pop-culture related, then write about that. But dont add it in because thats what you think the public wants to read about, it comes off as insincere at best.

I think Tomb Raider was a shitty game, and Id love if more people who agreed talked about its design flaws. Wouldnt matter if you played as Lara Croft or Indiana Jones in that game, the main flaws would be the same and the game would still suck. Its frustrating how hard it can be to find a good video game review that dives deep into the gameplay instead of talking about surface issues, many of which are issues that are assumed by the viewer and subject to interpretation.

Everyone should be running adblock and most of its problems would go away overnight

Meaning many of our favorite personalities and shows would disappear permanently? I have never run ad-block. If I dont like someones content, I dont give them views. How is everyone running ad-block and every youtuber losing all income going to help? While JonTron shutters his virtual doors Kotaku will just put up a pay wall, or have intractable ads (website backgrounds like Gamasutra). The corporates will still exist, only the independents will be shut down. We will have fewer voices, not more.

I dont understand why people run ad-block on sites/people they like, nor do I understand why they give views to people they dislike. I dont run ad-block on PewDiePie, I just dont ever watch his videos! (Nothing against him, I just find Lets Plays to offer nothing of interest to me in general)

[ink.inc]

i agreee wit cas

[Schoq]

1: you can't tell from a youtube url what it links to

2: there are other (better) ways to finance youtube shows and than ads, like patreon and subbable

3: not everyone does it as a full time occupation


But mainly, and obviously, the structural problem of producing click/link bait would go away. There would be no incentive to maximise click rate against production time.

[OttselKnight]

1: you can't tell from a youtube url what it links to

2: there are other (better) ways to finance youtube shows and than ads, like patreon and subbable

3: not everyone does it as a full time occupation


But mainly, and obviously, the structural problem of producing click/link bait would go away. There would be no incentive to maximise click rate against production time.

1. Youtube changed its monetization to payout based on how long the video was watched for. Clicking a link, watching for 10 seconds out of 15 minutes, and then hitting Back on your browser pays nearly nothing, if anything. Also, its not very common that someone posts a link without at least a basic description.

2. There is no better way that lets the user watch for free. You have to have a fan base before Patron works anyway, you cant start out as a nobody. With ads, random netowrks pay without being able to directly influence content and people get to watch and spread it for free. I can follow hundreds for free, I can support maybe two with Patron. I wouldnt call it "better" in all regards.

3. No, but it is a massive time consuming effort to make a high quality video. Not only will we see less content if they dont get returns, we will stop seeing quality content. Plus, why would you want to cut off those doing it full time? They put in a lot of effort into getting to their position.

Clickbait will never go away because even if you arent paid per view, it grabs attention. People just need to learn to not click the bait. There are plenty of producers out there who dont have click bait that would be affected, and plenty that do run click bait that would continue to do so if ads were no longer viable. Clickbait would not go away, you see clickbait on the evening news, in tabloids, in magazine covers, in movie trailers, and a million other things that dont have this monetization. Generating false interest based on a viewers emotional triggers will happen until people learn to guard against it, and I wont hold my breath for that.

[Alevice]

re:cas

pretty much agree with all of it, which is why I love RPS. Despite (or probably because) it is pc centric, it has coverage of tabletop, simulators, wargames, etc etc. Kinda wish there was the borader videogame context sites like hg101 have, but at least in enjoy their article diversity.

[Blademasterbobo]

i think the problem will be solved when video games are gone from this shit earth, launched into space on a rocket headed for the sun

following closely behind: a rocket filled with all nerds

[ink.inc]

hahaha

[joseph ¯\_(ツ)_/¯]

i think the problem will be solved when video games are gone from this shit earth, launched into space on a rocket headed for the sun

following closely behind: a rocket filled with all nerds

[Dragonmaw]

i think the problem will be solved when video games are gone from this shit earth, launched into space on a rocket headed for the sun

following closely behind: a rocket filled with all nerds

Yes.

I already said some of this in other threads but I think what needs to happen in game journalism is this: Less consumerism, more actual criticism.

Videogames are becoming more and more culturally relevant and reviews and news articles geared towards telling "consumers" which new games to buy simply won't cut it in the future. What we need is critics who can put games into a broader context, both within their own "medium" and within (popular) culture at large. In other words, there needs to be a move away from "is this fun?" towards "where does this game fit in the grand scheme of things?".

From that it follows that game journalists should also: a) take more interest in the history of videogames (srsly, there's nothing wrong with occasionally referencing games that are older than 5 years). and b) take more interest in cultural products/art/watever else outside of videogames and incorporate that into their writing. Even just taking non-digital games into account would be a huge step forward imo. Also game journalists shouldn't feel obliged to cater to fanboy culture.

Sinclair hits it on the head. This is what the majority of the big name journalists want. We're tired of regurgitating PR shit; we want to be critics, first and foremost. Unfortunately, gaming consumerism is so toxic and gross that it's fighting back against this shift, even though it represents the maturity of games as an art form.

Oh well.

I think games journalists as a whole, and especially indie games journalists, need to acknowledge and carefully disclose the connections they have with the subjects they are covering. The indie scene is a small world, and its inhabitants very often get together in less than formal ways like game jams and game nights. This makes it all the more important to be honest about who you're buddies with, who you personally dislike, and to resist the influence these ties can have on your reporting. There's no shortage of authors willing to write games articles and you can always find someone else to write about a particular topic if you find yourself unable to separate your personal life from your role as an investigator and an observer.

The majority of game journalists are able to separate their personal lives from their professional duties. I'm friends with Paul Eres, for example, but that doesn't prevent me from offering him my personal opinion on Saturated Dreamers (I think it's a trainwreck, or at least the last build I played was).

Disclosure and recusing yourself is definitely important when you have to be totally neutral, but game journalists should not be neutral; they speak to a personal truth. Part of that means accepting and amplifying (or mitigating) their biases in a way which speaks to their audience or to their personal purpose.

Am I saying journalists shouldn't disclose a relationship? Of course not. But most of this talk of "relationship disclosure" is ridiculous, especially in an enthusiast industry. Meeting and having drinks with and being cursory friends with somebody is not a relationship worth disclosing. Simply knowing somebody is not a smoking gun. If that was the case, I never would've written about all the indie games I did in my early career.

Long story short: Disclosure is important if there is a clear conflict of interest. So far, though, this talk of disclosure is being used as a club to try and discredit people talking about interesting or obscure games, primarily because they find those games through the creator instead of through a generic PR blast.

Oh, and to the implied threat of "anybody could write about it": very few people are actually self-aware enough to write about art. Just because anybody could ~technically~ write about it doesn't mean that anybody could do it to a satisfactory level. After managing a group of amateur writers trying to do game journalism, that much is self-evident.

Everyone should be running adblock and most of its problems would go away overnight

Only if they pay into Patreons or subscriptions instead.

[Schoq]

just work overtime ten minutes a week instead of spending that time watching youtube ads and even at american minimum wage you'll have extra funds to donate worth tens of thousands of times more than the ad revenue you'd have generated
if you're that concerned

[Nillo]

Oh, and to the implied threat of "anybody could write about it": very few people are actually self-aware enough to write about art. Just because anybody could ~technically~ write about it doesn't mean that anybody could do it to a satisfactory level. After managing a group of amateur writers trying to do game journalism, that much is self-evident.

Many of these publications have at least 10 different journalists working in some capacity. By assigning tasks responsibly it should easily be possible for them to avoid the most significant conflicts I was referring to without needing to employ more journalists. For example, if a writer is dating a developer and wants to write an article about their game, then they can just assign the task of doing that to another person within the same organization, in order to preserve the integrity of the article.

I never claimed that "anybody can write about games", just that these major news companies do have the necessary resources to resolve the problem of conflicts of interest.

[SirNiko]

Why can't anybody write about games? Even if a person lacks 'self-awareness' they can still point out games they enjoyed, or games they did not. The idea that a person needs to be trained and qualified before they're allowed to express an opinion on something as subjective as art is wildly elitist, and makes it easy to dismiss the different conclusions of others by virtue of impugning their intelligence, based on the circular logic that their lack of intelligence is proven because they came to a different conclusion.

[s0]

Oh, and to the implied threat of "anybody could write about it": very few people are actually self-aware enough to write about art. Just because anybody could ~technically~ write about it doesn't mean that anybody could do it to a satisfactory level. After managing a group of amateur writers trying to do game journalism, that much is self-evident.

i'd say anyone who is familiar enough with games can write "consumer-level" game reviews. i actually trust "user" reviews more than "pro" reviews when i'm just trying to decide whether to buy a game. which is part of why i think pro journalists should move beyond consumer level stuff.

[Nillo]

Why can't anybody write about games? Even if a person lacks 'self-awareness' they can still point out games they enjoyed, or games they did not. The idea that a person needs to be trained and qualified before they're allowed to express an opinion on something as subjective as art is wildly elitist, and makes it easy to dismiss the different conclusions of others by virtue of impugning their intelligence, based on the circular logic that their lack of intelligence is proven because they came to a different conclusion.

Right, anyone can write about games they like and games they don't like. That's fine. TotalBiscuit and many other youtubers actually operate in this manner (they just plainly say what they think about something). However, youtubers, generally speaking, do not claim to be journalists. To be a journalist you have to aspire to a higher writing standard than just being a blogger with an opinion. It's the difference between being the guy who reports stories in a newspaper and the guy who writes a letter and sends it in to the paper.

[rj]

but both people get a say in the paper, in the same forum, with the same visibility; lots of people pay more attention to who's writing the opinion pages than any other writers, even

to be a "journalist" yes, you should be able to step it up from "literally anyone on earth could comfortably replace me;"  unfortunately, few do, honestly. especially with web publications.

[Nillo]

but both people get a say in the paper, in the same forum, with the same visibility; lots of people pay more attention to who's writing the opinion pages than any other writers, even

to be a "journalist" yes, you should be able to step it up from "literally anyone on earth could comfortably replace me;"  unfortunately, few do, honestly. especially with web publications.

That's true. I generally pay more attention to gamers with game opinions than proper news articles, myself.

I suspect that games news sites feel threatened by the rise of self-promoted critics in communities like YouTube and Twitch, and this is what led them to adopt more "clickbait" headlines than what they used to have.