Game Journalism Fart Sound: 2012 Edition

Yes, it's a good idea. But then you have game journalists making friends with studio developers and / or being wowed by them, or writing freelance for certain gaming studios (like John Walker of RPS did for Revolution Studios on Broken Sword) or even starting their own game studio (such as Jim Rossignol of RPS did with Big Robot, and has used RPS to publicise their recent Kickstarter).

A key problem is that games writing doesn't pay well if you are in the trenches, so game writers supplement their income in other ways. And then there are games writers who are doing it because they want to break into the industry.

I think a positive to come out of this would be an actual game writer code of ethics so that it is a little clearer about what should be disclosed and where. Wainwright was hit very hard by the internet outrage machine for not properly disclosing her conflicts of interest (which she should have been better at, given that she did list work in her Journalisted profile) but what she did for the gaming studio she worked for isn't very clear. If all she did was write some sample reviews as some have claimed, it shouldn't be seen to corrupt her for all time.

It's not just about improper disclosure. Wainwright should not have been making copy for any of those games where there was a conflict of interest in the first place, and she should have shown the integrity to excuse herself from being the one to write said reviews, as opposed to taking the opportunity for personal gain.

Doesn't this just mean that "she was deemed too incompetent to keep on after the first three months"?

Oh shit, she was still in her probationary period? Wow. You'd have to be a hell of a writer to keep on after pulling that shit in your first few months, I would imagine.

I kind of feel bad for her. She doesn't seem to understand what she did wrong, reacted poorly to the accusation and is very likely radioactive to anyone who might consider hiring her.

If she can't comprehend what she did wrong she's clearly a dullard and her opinions are of no interest to me.

I could give a damn about her opinions. I just hate to see this kind of self-immolation. It probably could have been avoided.

Sometimes a person has to become the lesson.

I agree. Which is why I object to RPS' behaviour in this area, with John Walker taking the high ground against MCV after writing up articles on RPS' Jim Rossignol's own Kickstarter (after Jim has written articles on his own company as well) being a bit hypocritical. That's the kind of thing you can't just slap a "there's a conflict of interest here, LOL" sign on and call it good enough.

That's if what RPS does is games journalism, of course. If RPS is just games writing, it can be held at a lower standard.

If Wainwright is a junior writer at a trade publication (that doesn't impact on Metacritic scores, if I read it correctly) where everyone else is doing similar things, it can be difficult to see where potential conflicts exist and how to handle them. Even the kind of journalism courses taught in universities would have difficultly in preparing students for remaining objective when faced with, "Here are some free games and an open bar at a press event for big name title two days before launch!" that their more senior colleagues dig into with both hands.

And then there is the question about what you think she did wrong - was it not disclosing her potential conflicts of interest? Reviewing games that she's a big fan of? Making Eurogamer remove her name from Florence's article?

Although I think Wainwright certainly should have been more diligent in identifying potential conflicts of interest and trying to edit the details out of publicly accessable materials was an exceptionally bad idea, I think she's become the scapegoat for a lot of games "journalism" issues that were way above her pay grade.

Maybe. But then I have to wonder, what was the lesson and who learned it?

If you are on the take, keep your mouth shut.

Ha, good enough.

"Write up your ex writers kickstarter" isn't exactly Columbia school of journalism, but I think it's a whole difference class if bribery than we're discussing. At least they're not handing them envelopes of money, I guess.

Probably a product of the "youtube reviewer" era of companies sending popular kids free stuff for "reviews" which are glorified unboxings.

Bastion review in OXM UK - http://www.oxm.co.uk/31487/reviews/bastion-review/

She may have missed the ethics course, but she was certainly present for the 'threaten to sue' module.

How about reviewing games made by a company which employs you?

Very possibly, but the cleansing has to begin somewhere...

RPS didn't exactly hide their link to BigRobot. They wanted to write about SYABH, they wanted Jim to talk about it, and they made sure that no-one was left in any doubt about their ties to the game. It's still exactly the kind of thing that RPS readers are interested in.

That kind of open disclosure is exactly what is needed. Then the readers can make informed decisions. Fancy that.

Current writer, if you are responding to my point - he got to write his own Kickstarter article on RPS. And being able to post on RPS and have it picked up by sites like Eurogamer have helped push the second paid project from a pretty unknown indie studio to success with about £70k in funds raised with still over a week to go.

Awareness is crucial to successful Kickstarters. Being able to pitch your idea to the masses through a site like RPS is a privilege that most indie studios would kill for - if it appears on RPS, there's a degree of endorsement to the project. People were outraged over games journalists tweeting to win a PS3, so I find it hard to see that directly leveraging your own gaming site to raise money for your company as something that's acceptable if you also wish to hold a position as "games journalist".

RPS wanted Jim to write about his own Kickstarter? How fortunate for him! It's like they are all friends or something and perhaps not the most objective people to judge such things. I look forward to when they want to review his title, promote it on Steam Greenlight or a whole host of other things that Rossignol could directly financially benefit from.

It's my view that this is a situation where it isn't good enough to just say there's a conflict and then go full steam ahead. The article shouldn't be written at all on RPS. It's way too close.

If this is acceptable behaviour, the future is studios going for their Kickstarter hiring game journalists as "freelance writers" or producers or something and then getting those journalists to write articles that push their awareness up i.e become their PR agents inside games news sites. It'd be a cheap investment, especially if all it takes is a quirky sentence or two ("Jim Sterling wrote a bit o' the ol' text for this here video game, so BIAS!") for your project to be put on the front page of a site seen by a million-plus people, and then re-blogged as news on other sites that follow on from there.

More important than disclosure is avoiding conflicts of interest. It's not always possible, but in this case I think it was very avoidable by RPS staying completely away from Big Robot's games.

it's the same situation Giantbomb had with Bastion, with all the guys being best mates with Kassavin. Full disclosure, lots of in-depth coverage, but a commitment to NOT write a review, which they fulfilled. Not a problem at all with any of it. (talking about GB here. No idea if RPS has been as forthcoming or clear that there will be no review. Just saying the situation is the same, and this is what they *should* do)

Also, this isn't the thread for this, exactly, but I didn't know where else to put it. I've been finding myself liking Jim Sterling more and more, and this review is pretty scathing:

http://www.destructoid.com/review-c...declassified-238995.phtml#8iXJOvgPuBI7O8Lo.99

God. Forget her conflicts of interest. This review here is shit.

No, there isn't. Do you mean they both sound like black guys? Cos if not, I do not see where you're coming from.

At no point does the narrator sound like he's about the get all bombastic.

Cos he's a white guy?

Lordy, please, don't.

Yeah, I think her exile from game journalism isn't so bad. Samuel L. Jackson, wtf is she getting that?

The narrator basically IS Sam Eliot's character from The Big Lebowski. They even have the same name -- "The Stranger". They also have the same mustache. Subtle, I know!

I am never a fan of projecting intentions onto developers or insulting them personally when reviewing a game. Nobody sets out to make a bad game.* I know a lot of really nice, earnest, talented folks that have worked on products that didn't turn out well because of one thing or another. I've always thought that it sucks enough to have a game you have worked on for the last two years get torn apart in reviews, even when you know it deserves it. Some asshole with a fresh English degree and a part-time gig writing for a second-tier site** who thinks his path to square-crotched noodle-armed fame is to drop Sick Burns on your studio and its ineptitude...that's just an extra unnecessary shitty topping on a crap sandwich.***

* Well, Gameloft probably excepted.

** This is a general Sick Burn, not anything aimed at Sterling -- I don't know him personally at all, though I dislike the persona he affects in his reviews.

*** I'm aware that this is Sterling's schtick. I don't care for it.

**** Five months.

If they were really nice people, perhaps they shouldn't be charging full price for a game they know is bad.

Damn those programmers and artists setting the price for the game they got contracted to make for Activision!

I think you're missing the point. The vast majority of RPS' readership would want RPS to do exactly that - review the game, promote it, tell people more about it. It's practically The Game That RPS And Its Readers Want, and it's clear from the comment threads that people are very happy that RPS are talking about it.

The only way this would be a problem is if they weren't constantly and unfailingly honest about their ties to the game and to Jim. RPS is a success precisely because it gets crazily enthusiastic about oddball stuff and has been a promoter of all kinds of PC games, some of which - *shock* - have been made by people they'd consider friends. And somehow the world has survived.

This is an incredible leap from what's actually happening. It adds exactly the layer of dishonesty and obfuscation that RPS have worked hard to avoid.

It comes down to something very simple. Are you doing your readers a disservice with your actions?

I mean, would it make sense for readers to read a promotional piece that's clearly stated as being such on said site? I think in the case of this situation with RPS, the answer is yes.

But if your readers would turn away in distaste or have a "WTF?" moment if they knew all the details, that's where the problem lies. I think if you were publishing reviews under the guise of objective, honest truth and you slapped a big 'ol "The author of this review currently works on the side for the publisher of the game." on top, the readers would have that "WTF?" moment. If they're aware of what's going on, a large portion would feel you're doing them a disservice - wasting their time and not giving them what they thought they would be getting. If you have to misrepresent or hide the stake that the writer has on readers reading his work because otherwise it would diminish the perception of that work, that's a problem. Not just making your readers consider the work in a different light, but actually think less of the work as a whole.

I don't have a problem with disclosed conflicts like this. I have a problem with sites with conflicts-of-interest giving those games disproportionate attention.

I don't know whether RPS is doing that or not.

I think context plays a big part in what's acceptable.

In RPS's case they've never pretended to be an objective conglomerate of gaming journalism, as some of the bigger sites arguably do. They're a small group of guys who write about what interests them and what they think their readers will be interested in. This is no less gaming journalism, but to me it makes the choice to cover a game being made by one of their own benign. Partly because it's exactly the sort of thing they'd cover anyway, and partly because their readers would expect them to. If it was a big site with corporate backing, like Gamespot or IGN, I might feel less comfortable, because it would be much more difficult to make clear what the motivations are, who's benefiting and so forth.

I also don't feel they've posted about it more than you'd expect. Four news type posts (reveal, trailer, kickstarter, kickstarter reaching goal) and two personal type posts (interview, development update) over an 8 month period does not seem excessive to me. It's pretty typical of their coverage. Most importantly, of course, they've made the conflict of interest explicit, and they haven't posted anything evaluative yet.

I'll be interested to see how they deal with a review because I'm less convinced there's a way for them to do that without it being problematic. They may not do one at all. They might get an external personage to do one. They might do a conversation-which-isn't-really-a-review-depending-on-how-you-look-at-it thing. They might just bite the bullet and review it. I can't judge until that time. I do think the strong conflict of interest (they are long-term friends if nothing else) combined with the weight their opinions carry with their readers gives it serious potential to be A Bad Idea.

For me personally the issue is that it is never acceptable for a journalist to be writing articles that aim to generate revenue for a company they own. This is regardless of source or industry.

In my scenario above, the journalist isn't being dishonest at all - they are openly saying they have been hired to work on a title. But they are leveraging their position as a journalist to promote that title in a way that will directly benefit them.

Someone should introduce me to a game journalist who generates revenue.

I want to shake his hand.

(womp womp)

Vinny Caravella puts asses in seats.

Your hyperbole is amazingly terrible.

Charles, we must be looking at different lists. I see Torchlight 2, The Last Story, Dishonored, XCOM, Xenoblade, and Guild Wars 2, and I adored all of those games.

I think it would need to be comprised of clever indie titles and have Dark Souls at #1 (and possibly #2 and #3) to satisfy Charles.

While the games on the list are mainly mainstream or "safe" titles, they have generally been well-received. It's only a terrible list if you rank innovation above all else. And that's fair if it's your thing. But it's not everyone's thing.

Oooh, let's have a top ten argument!

I donno if it's even that safe. Was Xenoblade Chronicles a breakout hit? I'm surprised Charles would be so negative on it since I doubt we'll be seeing XC showing up during most peoples' GotY deliberations. I get that any list that doesn't have Dark Souls on it is a list created by assholes for assholes in a magazine dedicated to asshole fancying for asshole enthusiasts published by the asshole branch of the American Asshole Association, but there's still stuff on there that's deserving. Though maybe not AC3.

But yeah, overall the list in terms of the games it highlights and most of what it's actually saying about them seems fine. In fact, given where it's published, I'm ready to consider it a good article in the brave new world of assimilated games journalism.

No, I'm pretty sure multiple people accurately called out your own brand of shitfuckery.