I’m not agreeing or disagreeing, I’m simply curious in asking can you link some specific examples?
As is been said dozens of times, if women have a problem with sexism in games than they should get involved in development and support games starring females (unless they suck obviously). Shantae kickstarter struggled to make it’s 400K goal until the last few days, where were all the outraged women then?
As i said before, It would be nice to have more female protagonists, not that that would be the cure, but it would be a nice change of pace, but unfortunately some publishers/developers don’t feel women are marketable due to their perception that a mostly male audience doesn’t want to play as females.
WTF is an “expert” gaming website? And someone laced your Molly water if you think gamers will pay for gaming news content.
I don’t agree with most of Jim’s reviews, and sometimes he says dumb shit, but overall he’s a very outspoken and funny guy who I respect as a journalist, his PAX panel with Adam Sessler was hilarious. As for Polygon I like that they want to create a different type of game media site that stands out from the likes of IGN and Gamespot, and they often have great content, but they have so many bitchmade tendencies. Read my link about Polygon earlier in this thread for proof.
Also, if you haven’t done so already go read the link in my OP, it explains exactly what’s wrong with gaming journalism.
Where the reviewer for each genre/series is an expert of that genre/series and can articulate well enough to show said expertise. For example if MVC4 comes out, someone like Viscant would be reviewing it.
Everyone with half a brain can do news. I’m talking about reviews and actual insights. Writing a good review is not something that can be done in a few days, just like you can’t summarize a fighting game in a few days.
So you have 2 options- Either get a shitty review early, or get a great review for example 2 months later (while having the option to be updated a year later to reflect the changes in the game) but most gamers would rather have immediate bullshit than late insight.
In my opinion good reviews are worth direct payment from me, if they give me insight that I can trust so that I don’t buy shitty games, or I buy great games that I would have otherwise missed. (Even if you can get all said games for free, time still equals money.)
Remember how old EGM would have 3-4 guys reviewing a game and each reviewer would have specific genres they specialized in?
For example, if it was a fighting game, someone like Sushi-X would be the main reviewer, but you would have two to three other opinions to filter out any potential bias he might have. That system allowed for very fair, well rounded opinions to be formed on a title.
There was even a flap back in the day where some company (I think it was EA or Acclaim) got pissed at EGM for their constant low scores on a lot of their titles, so they started sending review copies in late and pulling advertising… How did EGM respond?
Not naming names, they called them out in an editorial and said that they would never compromise the integrity of their reviews by cow-towing to developer pressure.
They basically said, “You want your games to score higher? Start making better games, because we’re going to review them fairly.”
I don’t know what happened between then and now, but clearly that level of integrity and pride in their position as journalists and critics is now the exception rather than the rule.
Gamepro did something similar having one person do the main review of a game and another person had a little column to the side offering a second opinion, usually the two scores didn’t differ wildly, but it was a really nice feature to have.
wow… did you just list Katie Couric as some saint of journalism? damn son, you need to pay more fucking attention if you think she’s a tough journalist… all the “journalists” on corporate news are robots more or less. If you want to talk about actual journalists that dig into stories and tell uncomfortable truths then talk about people like the guardians Glenn Greenwald or rolling stones Matt Taiibi (who’s name i just butchered i think). you know… an actual journalist.
Funny enough, whats happened to gaming journalism and what happened to journalism as a whole are identical. Journalists traded independence and integrity for access, and in so doing sold their objectivity down the river all in the hunt for “exclusive” content.
That was near their end, Ubisoft didn’t like their poor reviews of Assassin’s Creed so they pull advertising and what-not. As you said, they didn’t really give a shit. I hate to think that that attitude could have been their downfall:(
EDIT: I might add that I think the scores they gave AC were 6s and 7s, which isn’t that bad. I’d have to go dig up those issues though, and I don’t want to sift through them again.
And what kind of standard of “hard journalism” are you referring to?
Katie Couric is an amazing journalist so I dont know how you can even IMPLY that shes not good at what she does. She isnt rude or disrespectful but she has a way with words and great at pulling an interviewee back if they try to dance around the question or answer in pieces.
Nevermind I just re-read it and what youre talking about doesnt even have anything to do with the topic. All journalists for major news corporations are NOT “robots more or less” that just shows how out of the loop you are. Youtube is just a click away if you ever question someones credibility, especially an established news reporter.
who cares if kotaku is taking notes at anything beyond “how to go out of business for dummies”? they can go fuck themselves, right after they take a nice big gulp from the antifreeze flavored kool-aid.
EGM’s downfall started way before that. It started when Shue took over as the man in charge. He did start cow towing to all the big names companies and let them buy reviews. EGM lost all their good reviewers and editorialist in the process, it was not until about the last 6 months when Shue resigned that EGM got good again and it was too late by then.
Not that Polygon is perfect themselves as I already noted my gripes with their staff, but it was more of a contrast showing that 95% of gaming media especially gossip sites like Kotaku would never in a million years write an article approaching the same dimension of journalistic integrity and due dilligence shown in that article.
And even if MS did buy Polygon what relevance does that have to the article I just posted? Your post sounds almost like an ad hominem attack on Polygon. But since you brought it up, they shitted on the Xbone and still gave it a higher score than the PS4
What a way to reach onn what i said, i only pointed that i thought that they were bought by M$, which is why i am surprised they did an article expossing them, nothing more nothing less
I wouldn’t say this is a rare or inside story. It’s not corruption as such. This is how most businesses, especially the large corporations work. Whenever someone new comes in, be it a senior executive or a full project team, their first priority is to make an impact. Look at outsourcing. How many jingle bell wank CEO’s have you heard singing the same song about “common processes across business divisions”, the “break down of silo’s”, and “moving roles from high cost to low cost geographies” and more of that bullshit bingo stuff?
They come out like rockstars, convince the shareholders or stakeholders about the savings, cut out the talent, outsource operations, and then move on to another company to do the same. And what happens to the first company? It collapses because of malpractice, loss of customer trust and sales. But by then the rockstar executive is long gone.
It’s a painful consequence of the explosive growth of the videogame industry. Game journalism can report on it, but in essence I doubt a lot will change. With regards to the subject of critics getting paid for a biased review: one way to circumvent that is by having a journalist (or media company) that is not financially dependable on the game publisher. Nowadays I’m more content reading a review in the entertainment section of a massive newspaper, because they can be reasonably honest about the game without risking anything. The downside is that not many journalists at established papers are indepth game experts.
As always, make up your own mind and don’t take news sources as the single point of truth.
How is your explanation still not corruption? A guy delays a game for no reason other than to make his pet project look more appealing. Microsoft hired him to do a job and he intentionally sabotaged it for person gain. That’s not “business”, and that’s why Defense Grid 2 is basically a PC oriented game. Hidden Path has a real relationship with Valve oriented around business: the act of offering a good or service for profit. Only one is healthy, the other is corrupt.
That depends on your definition of corruption. I don’t mean to downplay the severity of their tactics (MS) but they stay within the limits of the law. Most of the time. When large companies like MS have business dealings with other companies, there is a chain of events that precedes it: They start with an informal introduction, followed by a non disclosure agreement, followed by a memorandum of understanding, followed by a statement of work. Then at some point there will be a work breakdown structure with billable time and resources against it. That’s before any invoicing or payment approvals take place. It’s not always set in stone like that but most companies work in similar ways. All these items are documents, made by humans, and are subject to interpretation. That’s why corporate lawyers make money; they pick holes in documents like that for (financial) gain.
I hear you though - I guess what I’m trying to say is that whilst their business practices are questionable, they are still legally safe to continue. Personally when I use the word corruption, it’s mainly in the context of white collar crime that can be prosecuted or considered a punishable offence.
