Games Journalism Fart Attack: 2013 Edition

he didn't. What?

To clarify, we didn't pay for anything outside of the costs of sending myself and our video producer out to Poland for a few days.

Obviously we think our cover has worth, though, so in that sense we've "paid" for an exclusive.

I could make a laundry list of companies and games that would gladly tell of how being on the GI cover helped them get more exposure and sell a lot more games than they would have otherwise, but that'd be boring for everyone. Suffice it to say that people with a lot more skin in the game than John Walker have decided that there isn't one marketing strategy to rule them all (which coincidentally includes making sure John Walker has everything in nice high-res watermark-free versions to post on his website).

This is what I meant by 'paid'. I didn't think money passed hands, but some mutual beneficial deal was struck, otherwise why grant an exclusive?

Being on the cover (and having a huge multipage feature within) of practically the only remaining US game magazine is a pretty sweet deal.

Yes?!

Sure. I didn't mean the post as any kind of attack at you; sorry if it came off that way. Just wanted to clarify. Turns out I'm rather sensitive whenever the "paid-for content" phrase pops up.

And I didn't take it that way, so no worries. I just wanted to clarify, that I wasn't a complete idiot.

I know that we usually focus on bad writing itself, but I wanted to take a moment to celebrate the practice in mainstream media sources of padding the article with "expert" opinions, no matter how out-of-ass they are, even to a cursory reading. Scholars of the field know this as Pachter syndrome (analistas bullshittus), but I thought the Dead Space 3 non-scandal as examined in the BBC was an excellent example of this phenomenon.

Keep an eye on Leo Kelion, this fellow's going places.

Wow. I mean, just wow. Like, I think we can just stop and call that article the winner for 2013's Dumbest News story of the year.

I think you're something of an optimist.

I hate you, because you're probably right.

From that BBC article:

Citation needed.

That's quite the interview technique.

So: Polygon. Did it really Press Reset?

I'm voting for 'no'. It has some nice long-form articles, but there's also still plenty of breathless myth-making, such as their recent visit to the Bungie Studios one. A lot of articles are still a re-working of what appears on other sites, which is standard for the industry. The layout style is better than it was at launch, but the use of big pink quotes to break up text but are also things I've just read doesn't work in my opinion.

I'm also watching my way though the Press Reset videos and will review them fully at some point.

Nice find, I wouldn't have made it that far on my own.

I was thinking of posting that, but I didn't want to really make this the "Rockpapershotgun sucks" thread.

Though, RPS really does these days.

I liked that article, it's a refreshing poke at the standard formula of tech-specs and regurgitated buzzwords. The interview is silly but unsurprisingly so after the tounge in cheek description of playing the demo.

Also, this exchange made me smile.

That interview isn't brilliant, but everything is better than a standard press junket interview.

Plus it's Crysis 3 - perhaps the dullest game known to man.

I dislike interviews that make it about the journalist games writer. Not all of them - there are some good point-of-view articles that help bring insight into the subject they are examining - but that interview wasn't one of them.

Even the headline - "Cara Vs Crysis 3" tells you that the article will be "look at me, look at me, look at me".

Sometimes, when the interview goes badly or the subject is a lot less interesting than it should be, there is the opportunity to use the material to report on reporting itself. We can learn more about the context of interviews, the personalities involved in the discourse, get a flavour of the rivalries or camaraderies between the reporting agencies. I find this sort of study interesting, like the TOUGHPAD conference or Cara vs. Crysis 3. In the latter case, one of my take-away points was how she was already engaged with the game play and the rest of the dog-and-pony show stood in contrast by how out-of-place it seems by its quality. This is an interesting thing, that people now feel moved to "dress up" decent games with the frippery of other games or even other media in a cargo-cult "this is how things get sold" kind of way.

Sure, some people find it very hard to avoid writing about themselves, but I would argue we must have some reflection in even the driest of journalism - and even the most navel-gazing newspaper columnists sometimes accidentally let slip an interesting fact.

Well, RPS is unabashedly New Games Journalism so it being about the journalists experience is pretty much their MO.

The headline is phrased such that it's RPS/ED introducing her article btw. not the journalist herself. Sorry to rain on that spiel.

Writing about themselves or their experience at whatever press meeting or junket they're at, is a mistake every young or untrained journalist makes early in their career. One job of the editor and subeditor is to tell them in no uncertain terms, that "the reader doesn't give a fuck - rewrite!" Not writing about yourself is one of the most basic rules of journalism.

Of course the truly great journalists/writers breaks all the basic rules of journalism.

Unfortunately not very many journalists are truly great, but most think they are - and with more and more media firing sub-editors to save money, it means that more and more self-centered dreck is being published.

I dunno. I find that a lot of games journalism intends to do objective reporting but mainly falls into regurgitating press releases or 6-9 scaling reviews. Reporting journalism is so bad so often in so many fields that when someone who's obviously passionate enough to go a different route and not just be a competent games describer I give them a lot of credit just for that.

Wether Ellison will provide material that justifies that I have no idea. I do know that Crysis 3 piece has the advantage over most previews by not being mind a numbingly tedious list of developer blurb checkboxes ticked.

marry me

Holy shit, it's even worse when you actually click the link. As a rule of thumb, reviewer's name in title = terrible, but this is still worse than I would have ever guessed. Wow it's bad.

The people in the comments are gushing with admiration.

Instead it's mind-numbingly tedious self-serving garbage. It's pompous, it's pseudo-clever, it's terribly written, and I'm pretty sure it used up all of the world's supply of italics for this month. She also appears to have gone to the Brad Wardell school of em dash use. You're right that most game previews are boring, but the solution to that problem is not to start writing previews that stand out by virtue of how irritating they are.

Christ, I wish you hadn't said that, because now I've gone and looked at the comments, and as bad an idea as that always is it's even worse here because now I know that this is the kind of tripe that tomorrow's game journalists are looking at and getting inspired by. And why not? "Oh, wow," I can practically hear them saying to themselves, "I didn't know I could just write a masturbatory diary entry with a lot of italics for emphasis in lieu of the kind of word choice that good writers use and call it a preview and get paid for it! Sign me up!"

How long before literally every single thing published about a video game is either this kind of pseudo-intellectual bullshit or IGN-style third-grade-level prose that says "8.4" at the bottom?

I would hand-wring alongside you, but the bolded part possibly isn't true by the time these people grow up.

Figuratively speaking.

Also, RPS is but a drop in an ocean of article lengths in self-absorbed bullshit compared to the mastery of the form as practiced by Tim Rogers.

I could only read so much of that article before my eyes started glinting over.

I've been comparing it with run of the mill crapqoute previews for a reason. I know there are good writers out there, some of them even appear here, but they are fairly rare. Given the sea of bland mediocrity in wich my gaming news float, I'll take excessive italics and trying too hard over excessive bulletquotes and not trying at all.

To build on what Equis posted, I would say that games journalism is a product in need of sustainable business models at the moment, regardless of its form, and that is the fundamental crisis at its core along with most forms of traditional journalism. Style or quality isn't the key variable in that broader existential question. It survived Wagner James Au, and it will survive this [tiny, relatively harmless if amusingly overdone] article. The rule of thumb for discussing anything on the internet without losing all hope remains "ignore the comments".

Are you sure?

Since I'm reaching back to the classic points-of-no-return, I think I should mention that my all-time favorite thing about Kieron Fucking Gillen's monument to autoerotic asphyxiation/review of Darwinia is that it includes both the [Ed. comment in brackets] schtick and, simultaneously, evidence that the editing was top notch. So I guess "survive" is not the right word.

Are you rich?

I married for love once. I think my second marriage should be for money.

Oh shit, suddenly Ely is interested in Kieron Fucking Gillen.

This isn't theft, it's "unjust enrichment" at best (don't get me wrong, it's a very lame thing to do). Theft is the taking of another's property with the intent to permanently deprive the person of it. There's no taking here at all, there's a giving.
(Unless there is a legal burden a person to rectify the mistake of another in UK law.)

This lawyer has crafted an example to specifically meet the intent requirement by saying "knowing" and the permanent deprivation by "walk away". But ignores the first question of theft.

Gentlemen, prepare to get a hate-on.

http://www.egmnow.com/articles/reviews/egm-review-aliens-colonial-marines/

Spoiler alert: 9/10. EGM gives Aliens: Colonial Marines a 9/10.

Most inconsistent game of the year, with one entire level based 100% on not shooting anything and just crawling slowly.

I finished the game. I beat the campaign. I enjoyed most of it. I'm being generous giving it a 4/10. The AI was full on retarded, even by xenomorph standards. The squad forgot aliens are things to shoot half the time, and more often my deaths were the result of them walking right in front of an underbarrel grenade and getting it to explode in my face.

Remember when EGM was the serious, well-thought-out response to GamePro? GamePro was like Halo frat boys before those were a thing and EGM was the nerd who occasionally tried to get whacky but mostly had his integrity?

Well, those days are sure fucking over aren't they?



9/10



9/10



9/10



9/10



NINE SLASH FUCKING TEN



NINE



OUT



OF



TEN



"Yeugh."