Game Journalism Fart Sound: 2012 Edition

I don't know that an "appearance of impropriety" story can be written without including examples: being polite about how "this could very well just be the appearance" is merely being civil, not some acknowledgement that one is on shaky moral, legal or factual grounds.

UnSub The funny and tragic thing is that upon much closer scrutiny it would appear that the main thing Florence was wrong about Wainwright was when he said he was sure she wasn't in the Tomb Raider's PR team pocket.

In her defense, this is, of course, just how journalism works.

When I was younger and working as an intern in DC I attended a Conservative Young Leadership seminar (yeah, I know). For all you might say about the conservative movement in this country, they certainly understand how to spin and control public image. Most of the seminar was basically how to control public opinion by controlling media, and what she did with Eurogamer was like the number 1 thing they taught you should never do - if you want to make something that paints you negatively to go away, under no circumstances engage or even comment on it, just let the news cycle move on. Controversy of any sort is blood in the water for the media and public alike. They also taught how to do the opposite and slow-roll and provoke news to make big stories out of jack-all, but the point remains true.

I think the way you fix it is to do stuff exactly like what Florence did. You don't say "well, it's a problem, but everybody does it, and there's not much we can do about it." You point out specific examples and call specific people out when they slip up.

It's similar in some ways to the sexism, racism, and homophobia in games and the tech world in general. There are a bunch of reasons why it keeps coming up over and over again. One of the major reasons is that people keep treating it like some poorly-defined issue with tons of varying viewpoints, and there's not much to be done about it other than being aware of this amorphous blob of "14-year-old boys on XBLA" or something. That's part of why I like Fat, Ugly, or Slutty so much: they post specific examples with user names, instead of saying "there's a lot of blatant misogyny out there." The people who are guilty of it are held accountable and given a clear message that it's unacceptable. The people who still try to deny that it's that big a deal have to come up with an explanation for the thousands of explicit examples.

Florence did no mud-slinging based on "very little evidence"; he was specific in what "allegations" he was and wasn't making and precisely why it looked sketchy. And the fact that Wainwright called it "libelous" when it was clearly wasn't, demonstrates exactly why it was important to name names. If he'd posted another "game journalism is in a sorry state oh well what are you gonna do?" then she would've likely said "Yeah, shame on you, Geoff Keighley!" to herself and gone about her business.

She wasn't picked at random; she was picked because, in the face of a clear case of where journalistic ethics need to be more rigidly defined, she fired back at John Walker saying "I don't see the problem." Not seeing the problem was the problem. (And then of course, it turned into unfounded threats and attempts to silence another journalist, which is obviously an even bigger problem).

Actually I think that's one of the main things people say about the conservative movement in this country.

Gerstmann said some good stuff about this in the last Giant Bombcast. He may be a giant manchild but he's a giant manchild I can trust.

"Need" is such a misleading word. Of course he could have written the article without mentioning her, but the real question is whether doing so served a constructive purpose. I would argue it clearly did, because it gave a concrete example of what he was driving at by criticising that 'win a PS3' competition.

Moreover if you read the full article again he's not using those examples to demonstrate a pattern of behaviour. He's explicitly using them as examples from the PS3 competition issue. The extrapolation to a general indictment is, if anything, implicit in the fact that all this is going on in the context of the GMAs.

Finally his point - that a journalist acting in a way which could easily be interpreted as promotion, rather than journalism, casts his or her reputation into doubt - was best made with a concrete example rather than talking vaguely. If he had done the latter it would have been very easy (and inevitable) to simply write him off as talking paranoid nonsense. Which people still try to do, of course, but less successfully I think.

I think they went on for waaay too long on this topic. Game reviewers talking about their job is never interesting for long, yet many of them just love to talk about it.

I wish the entire podcast was them talking about stuff like this. I love inside baseball.

I wish the podcast was 40% Vinny talking about teaching his baby to build a tortilla press out of ham radios for his bugout bag, 40% inside baseball, and 10% games. And emails in there somewhere too.

More Vinny in everything.

And Jeff talking about his sketchy past. That's good podcast, right there.

I think the key takeaway from this page is that Reldan voted for Bob Dole.

Wasn't quite old enough to vote in that election actually.

Since I go to CNBC for all my video game news, I was shocked, shocked to see this presented unironically.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/49730809?slide=1

He just looks enraged, like he's screaming WHERE DOES THIS THING PLUG IN!?!? or THERE'S NOT ENOUGH BUTTONS TO PLAY ASSASSIN'S CREED!!!

Maybe he's angry because he ran out of lotion.

The real question is what his other hand is doing under the table.

I know nothing about Nintendoland or Papa & Yo, but the rest of the choices seemed fine. Journey - Collector's Edition definitely seemed like a choice from somebody who knew about games.

Would have liked to have seen Guild Wars 2 on there, but that's about it.

Clearly this man made out like a bandit during a GOG sale and is playing all the Wing Commanders simultaneously.

I think this may have been mentioned in this thread already, but...

I went to Polygon to look for the article on Kaos Studios they mentioned on Idle Thumbs. From the trailer for Press Reset: The Story of Polygon I thought this site was supposed to be some kind of serious, high-brow look at games journalism. Then I actually go there and the front page is full of hard-hitting articles like "Indie Royale's Harvest Bundle packages five different games for under $10" and "Telltale titles 80 percent off on GOG.com, full Interplay catalogue half-off." Can we press reset on their front page again?

To be fair, it's not so much an article as a post on their forum from someone who doesn't work there.

That said, your criticisms are spot-on.

Ugh, okay, that's back into terrible. Yeesh.

I dunno, do you mean off the hook like blameless or "off the hook!" like Guy Fieri says it?

And is it wrong that I kind of like that they put stuff like that on the front page? Obviously they need to do a better job of curating, and Mr. BreadKnight needs to learn the difference between "number" and "amount." But I like that they're giving such a public nod to their forum members as an important part of the site. And I like that they took The Verge approach of "everything that could possibly be construed as tech-related" and applied it to "everything video games," including press releases, reviews, and longer features. They've got all that space and have to fill it with something, so why not everything.

I wouldn't be able to explain why I like it for Polygon, but would be annoyed at getting "off topic" or "having no focus" if a regular blog tried to do it.

The only person who is really to blame is Speak With Bread. You need to have a word with him about his grammar, Speak!

I read up six posts and still barely understand what's going on, but yeah, that's awful. I shall send word through the High Council of Baked Goods and they shall smite him with the Toaster of Doom.

I've been subscribed to the Polygon RSS feed since they set up the website and I'm also starting to wonder what's supposed to be so good about it. All I see is an endless flood of trivia, apparently compiled with no editorial judgment whatsoever.

The big problem with serious journalism is that it takes time to develop. But Polygon is also a gaming site and has to update every hour or so. The two don't mix well.

I wonder how long Polygon has before things start to implode - if they can't get the eyeballs, those advertisers aren't going to hang around. And then it's back to the normal problems of the big publishers being your major ad clients.

Yes, it's early days, but they've also built themselves up a lot and other gaming writers will have no hesitation in tearing them down.

Why do they have to update every hour? All my other gaming subscriptions update more slowly than Polygon. Usually Polygon has as many new posts as all other gaming feeds combined. It's ridiculous.

"Every hour or so" was a bit hyperbolic, I admit. But they are a new site that has to grab hold of readers as quickly as possible and one way of doing that is replacing the other sites people could choose to visit. So they may be trying to outpost Kotaku and Destructoid and the like while also writing much longer pieces.

Guess I'll have to watch their documentary one day and find out.

so apparently Lauren WainWright got unceremoniously fired last Friday. Twitter rumors only so far, but yeah. Not that she's a great loss to journalism, but the rag she worked for is awful and paid her to do exactly what she did, so now them carefully (and quietly) distancing themselves from her is more than a little bit pathetic

Of course, the question is (if rumours are true) what she was fired for. If they found her taking bribes directly from Ubisoft, that's one thing, If it is for not disclosing conflicts of interest, hmm, that's possible, but it was listed publicly.

This could go one of two ways - games writers are more open about conflicts of interest, or they shut the hell up and keep their head down.

EDIT: Alright, seen MCV tweet that Lauren Wainwright didn't pass probation:

It is true that Lauren Wainwright no longer works for us. She did not pass her probation. We wish her well.

— MCV (@MCVonline) November 19, 2012

You don't think "game writers avoid conflicts of interest" is a possibility?