Topic: The Issue With Gaming Journalism/Gaming Industry {Updated}

Warning The Following Videos Contains Content That Are Not For Young Viewers I don't know if anyone here knows what's going right on in the gaming industry. I'm not going to give my two cents because I want to hear what you think. This forum has to do with the issue between Zoe Quinn and Phil Fish and the gaming journalism/Gaming Industry.

Links:

Ok I found out there's more to this. So I came on here and updated.
The following links contain subjects that are not for young viewers

Links

https://soundcloud.com/ben-kuchera/jaffe-confrontation — Some recording of a comfortation

The only good reaction from this story (for the most part at least) has been the people avoiding it like the plague.

This is a minefield I'd rather not go into...

My only suggestion for people is to look for patterns and motives before deciding someone is stating the truth.

This is not my two cents but I will say this. This to me is just a show....There has to be more to it...

_{First of all, this comment is entirely inappropriate via our rules.}

_{Second, you have no say in whatever topics get deleted, so you have no business mentioning it -Lz}

The fact no one in the industry talks about it is perfect evidence that the industry is corrupt as heck and acts to protect itself rather than serve gamers. Did you know that journalists have nearly gotten fired because they dared complain about the lack of coverage on the issue?

WARNING: NSFW, writer discusses behind the scenes stuff

The issue also highlights the generally selfish, nasty attitudes of many involved in gaming media and indie development, and their general contempt for gamers in general. In any other industry, these people would be fired (especially for attacking gamers, calling them subhuman, talking about how people online are 'evil', etc). The fact the gaming industry is like that should be evidence that something is terribly wrong within certain sections of it, and that some people there do not deserve to be employed.

Anyone who actually cares about this situation (I didn't even know who Zoe Quinn was before I clicked on the link above my post) or cares about the 'credibility' of video game journalism really needs to find a new hobby and get out more.

I give us much thought to gaming journalism as I do to wondering who writes Bazooka Joe comics.....none.

There really isn't anything with the current gaming Journalist that really affect people like Zoe Quinn and Phil Fish, they seem to be well liked by the outlets I frequently visit. I don't know much about the Quinn controversy or why its casuing a ruckus, but I found Depression Quest to be a pretty cool experince when I played it, seeing a few parallels in my own life.

Phil Fish's problems come as a result of his own making regardless of his mental issues. Fez is a pretty awesome game and high concept like Myst, the problem with fish is he has pretty thin skin and goes off but can;t take the responses he gathers. He reminds me of Johnthan Blow were making one good game had swelled his ego up so high that he could glide off one success and treating his fans like crap.

The issue with Gaming Journalism is the actual Journalism has pretty much died in place of Talking Heads and personality based websites.

When Polygon started a year or so ago, they promised to rectify this with a focus on hard hitting Journalism as well as in depth features. They were putting out interesting long from articles on al aspects of game development and detroit. But it seems with thier recent change in staff they're going away from this, to focus on the buzzfeed style click bait articles that are plentiful across the internet

http://www.polygon.com/features

With those style of articles being a niche were not even seeing more hard hitting questions in interviews or editorials with the press being an extension of everyone's marketing department. Sure we get exclusive story of the month from Gameinfromer and IGN, but these really aren't doing alot for the industry in a whole. I still go to IGN and giantbomb but its mostly for the video content or when they're doing big confrence covergae, which brings another problem. Were seeing more and more the big three holding their own shows and weekly events throughout these big event, and the press only there to be pundits to give their take on the news.

It seems to be getting worse cause I just read an article that SOE president flight got grounded by the hackers who claimed to have hacked Playstation as well as those people. They called in a bomb threat...Which is sickens me to hear that a bunch of lowlife hackers would go to the extreme and do this....So this matter that floating around the gaming industry is real. As for the gaming news & the gaming industry is corrupt.

I compleatly agree with you because from what I heard & I rather not say is that the gaming industry itself is corrupt but just like you said if it was other industry like movies or music a lot of those people would be fired or in jail.

That doesn't make the game Industry corrupt. I mean it sucks but what she describes isn'ta problem only in the game industry, the tech and overall most corporate environments tend to suffer the same problems.

[quote]There really isn't anything with the current gaming Journalist that really affect people like Zoe Quinn and Phil Fish, they seem to be well liked by the outlets I frequently visit. I don't know much about the Quinn controversy or why its casuing a ruckus, but I found Depression Quest to be a pretty cool experince when I played it, seeing a few parallels in my own life.

The game itself is fine, What's not fine is the way their enemies and critics are being painted as trolls and 'bullies' by a media that's supposed to represent gamers. They're acting like you can take bribes, sleep with people in the industry and shut down dissent and somehow not get called out over your crap.

The cartel behaviour aspect is not hugely surprising (there was a similar controversy over Google and Facebook and a bunch of others agreeing not to hire employees from the other companies to suppress worker wages). What is surprising is how clique like the profession has become, and how they seem to be actively working against their audience rather than with it.

Just look at any article from a 'mainstream' gaming site (or games industry site) and note the obvious, obvious bias in favour of Quinn and Fish and others and against the gaming population. Note the complete lack of remorse for giving someone a platform based on personal affairs and corruption rather than skill or effort. Or the way the sites are very cleanly 'censored' to remove anything that might call out the gaming media as the liars many of them are. There's also a rather disturbing aspect to how many sites seem willing to work against their own users outside of the gaming world, with mods from 4chan and Reddit taking sides with the cartel and anyone on staff who disagrees being quietly fired.

True. It's also a rather common problem with a lot of 'famous' indie devs in general, who seem to have forgotten that insulting their customers is not good business logic.

The issue with Gaming Journalism is the actual Journalism has pretty much died in place of Talking Heads and personality based websites.

Very true. It's what a few people criticised as 'new games journalism', the focus on the menial, uninteresting, unrelated personal affairs and opinions of the writers in place of anything actually being written about the games themselves.

When Polygon started a year or so ago, they promised to rectify this with a focus on hard hitting Journalism as well as in depth features. They were putting out interesting long from articles on al aspects of game development and detroit. But it seems with thier recent change in staff they're going away from this, to focus on the buzzfeed style click bait articles that are plentiful across the internet

http://www.polygon.com/features

Part of the reason for this comes down to the following:

Gaming journalists are too scared of offending or criticising anyone (outside of the gaming population, who they seem to see as easy targets).

This partly comes down to 'access', too many of them would rather get early 'review copies' and act like good little sheep rather than call the companies out on their mistakes and have to buy things themselves. In contrast, look at some of the best magazines in the film, cars and music fields. They stuck to their opinions so much companies actually withdrew advertising and stopped sending them free products. But guess what? They continued. They decided that journalistic integrity was better than 'free stuff' . And people respected them for it.

It also partly comes down to fear of any kind of 'consequences'. In non gaming fields, journalists do things that are sometimes seen as legally risky. They've been sued, imprisoned or even killed for reporting on certain topics, and for doing things like reporting on stuff given to them by whistleblowers like Edward Snowden. Gaming journalists don't seem to have the same level of bravery. A genuine journalist would report on insider information from gaming companies. They would say 'screw that' to embargoes and post what they think people should know. They'd be willing to criticise other journalists or the industry in general for their corruption and bad practices. Journalists are not in the business to make friends with their targets. Actual journalists and reviewers and other media people are often hated by the people they cover, not liked by them. Ian Hislop, the editor of Private Eye (a UK satirical magazine) is the most sued man in the country. They've been taken to court hundreds of times and fought their ground every time. Has a gaming journalist or writer or editor ever been that brave?

With those style of articles being a niche were not even seeing more hard hitting questions in interviews or editorials with the press being an extension of everyone's marketing department. Sure we get exclusive story of the month from Gameinfromer and IGN, but these really aren't doing alot for the industry in a whole. I still go to IGN and giantbomb but its mostly for the video content or when they're doing big confrence covergae, which brings another problem. Were seeing more and more the big three holding their own shows and weekly events throughout these big event, and the press only there to be pundits to give their take on the news.

The big three holding their own shows and events is both a brilliant idea (on the companies part) and one of the reasons gaming journalism needs to evolve; it's brilliant because it takes away a lot of media bias (they just target their events and reveals directly to consumers rather than going through a middle man who might have a differing opinion), it's a reason gaming journalists need to evolve since just reporting news doesn't really work any more.

Gaming Journalism is rotten to the core.

They all just copy and paste each other sometimes adding more words without any substance.

Stuff like paid review scores does exist. (Someone was fired from Gamespot for that reason - I think reinstated after a backlash).

Looking at the big picture on something like Metacritic is another (Highest rated publishers with absolute rubbish games).

That was Jeff Gerstman who was fired for his kayne and lynch review. He left and created Giant Bomb which was sort of the pioneer of personality and more video content game coverage. They're also one of the few sites that haven't been hurt by the new pedgiree.

They handled this E3 well skipping out the consoles s they sit and talk over the live streams which was pretty funny and insightful.

I felt the right in the moment talk to be far more interesting when watching the conferences.

I compleately agree on that statement, but the fact that a bunch of wannabe hackers hacked into Phil Fish personal information and put it on the internet for the hopes of someone **Bleep** is out-right wrong and lowlife. I understand the guy is a **Bleep** but to go that low and docc someone's information and put it on the internet is wrong. I hope they get caught. I do say that there has to be more to this information.

There seems to be more then meets the eye, I assume in the next couple of weeks some thing bad is going to pop out....

Another problem is that the customer is the game publishers (Who buy the advertising).

The older system with print magazines had a much better balance of power. There were advertisers but the people buying the magazine were important as well (No circulation no advertisers interested). Plus if someone else strongly disagreed with a review (Whether they thought it was better or worse it often got printed).

What I want is no embago's but review (Not preview) the Japanese version as soon as possible when it is practical. Don't mind waiting the real review.

I also don't like it when it is glaringly obvious the reviewer hasn't even finished the game. (When there is a big problem in a late level for example with almost unplayable levels of slowdown that doesn't happen on the real game). I suppose with save states that should be less of a problem.

No good solution that doesn't involve money from the readers. (But the people doing it would also need to prove that they can be trusted).

Well there aren't any prominent gaming magazines anymore. Game Informer is Literallly owned by Gamestop and is huge conflict of intrest, than you have Edge and Fatisumi or Europe and Japan.

Honestly my gaming news coverage has come down to

Nintendolife and its sister sites
Neogaf
Reddit
Xbox and Playstation fansites
Gamasutra for insider coverage
Plus podcasts.

The only real way too fix the proble would be to do something similar to NF magazine or an upstart gaming website for all the systems with partial coverage.

The bolded reminds me of Gamespot's Luigi's Mansion 2 review. They complain about the difficulty in the third boss battle and don't seem to ever actually finished the game or experienced any of the interesting stuff that happens afterwards. It makes their mediocre 6.5 review a complete shambles.

Your list of choices is pretty good. Especially the point about visiting fan sites, they're often much better at covering games than any big media site, simply due to not being tied down by embargoes or marketing deals.

Gamasutra has ended up on my bad list recently though. I still visit it, but their coverage of the Zoe Quinn conspiracy is really, really shoddy, and paints an unfair picture of anyone who disagrees with the media being evil trolls.

http://gamasutra.com/view/news/224053/This_Week_in_Video_Game...

The comments kind of say my point pretty well.

Two observations. One comment.

Obs. 1: Depression Quest is free.

Obs. 2: I have yet to see a critical discussion of this woman that wasn't filled with the most disgusting sort of misogynistic sentiments.

Comment: It never has been, nor will it ever be any of your business who this woman chooses to sleep with.

That is as far as I am wading into this.

Yeah my gaming news site would be Reviewtechusa, Nintendolife, Inside-gaming (which I enjoy) & Or IGN, Gamespot. But even IGN & Gamespot seem to be losing interest in the real matter of Videogames. Now it click-bates & random articles. Things are changing and we shouldn't put up with the **Bleep**. As for the issue between the people like Phil Fish & the girl it seems to be getting worse. From What I heard the hackers that hacked Phil Fish were the ones who made the bomb threat against the SOE president & supposedly there's this girl on Twitch that was a victim of the Playstation Network attack....

Link: