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[Dukey]

You know I've always wanted to go to Sweden - my family from both sides emigrated in the late 1800s/early 1900s.

But why go when I can take in the view from Stockholm from the comfort of GAF?

That's exactly my point.

 

[disastermouse]

That's exactly my point.

I don't think you understand. See it points at people who defend bad practices and bad players. That would be you - because you're not arguing that the gaming press isn't doing what it's accused of, but rather that it SHOULD be doing what it's accused of doing - which is obfuscating and misleading.

 

[amar212]

I will burn for this, but controlling the access will forever be a problem. It is not on "journalists" side, but on publisher side. You can't make a pie without apples.

Back in the rampant PS2/GC/Xbox piracy rates, situation was crazy different. Every normal console could become "debug" and early leaks of preview codes where allowing anyone interested to check any game and decide what he want to play. It also gave small mags and small sites an oportunity to get early access thus preventing access side control.

Fair access under the same conditions to all outlets would be the only solution. It was closest to that in piracy days as I can remeber. Best solution today is self-informing.

 

[mclem]

I will burn for this, but controlling the access will forever be a problem. It is not on "journalists" side, but on publisher side. You can't make a pie without apples.

Except, I'd go a stage further: Control of access *wouldn't* matter if the mass market of readers of game journalism didn't set so much store from it. If sites that gave reviews two weeks after release were as profitable as those that had one a week before launch.

Access is powerful because we - and that's the collective we, not the direct we - regard it as such. The solution to this problem is kinda reliant on changing the mentality of the audience for games journalism, and that's... nontrivial.

It's not on journalists side, it's not on publisher side - it's on our side. But to change it would require changing the practices of a crowd.

 

[Terrell]

Except, I'd go a stage further: Control of access *wouldn't* matter if the mass market of readers of game journalism didn't set so much store from it. If sites that gave reviews two weeks after release were as profitable as those that had one a week before launch.

Access is powerful because we - and that's the collective we, not the direct we - regard it as such. The solution to this problem is kinda reliant on changing the mentality of the audience for games journalism, and that's... nontrivial.

It's not on journalists side, it's not on publisher side - it's on our side. But to change it would require changing the practices of a crowd.

Or starving that crowd out of existence with content across the board that's antithetical to their desires. Which falls back onto the media itself.
And let publishers control access and wield it as some sort of threat and see how far it gets them. When journalistic integrity is in play, you just stop covering people in your field of reporting who don't give you what you need or tell people exactly why they aren't getting the whole story. This isn't some new foreign concept.
And if people in gaming journalism had the balls to do that, the threat of being blacklisted would disappear. But no, they prefer to be at their mercy in the hopes that it will get them somewhere or pay them some dividend.

 

[Sword Of Doom]

1. Support developers who aren't don't primarily make games for the money. Support developers who aren't in "the industry" at all, and just make games as art or expression.

2. Support alternative means of publishing games.

3. Support journalists and media critics who cover the two things mentioned above, and who lay a critical eye on the for-profit games industry.

Mainstream = bullshit. Thats how it usually works

 

[OldAsUrSock]

I'm going to add some other things since some good fellow GAFfers already mentioned some nice ideas.

- Presentation:

Just like any other press you should be able to dress properly, talk properly and act properly when doing an interview with a developer/anyone in the industry. Clean haircut instead of the oily look, clean clothes with a casual yet respectable look and a good vocabulary avoiding cursing or faking emotions.

- Separate Real life from Work:

This applies to the social media such as Twitter. People follow you the gaming press sir/lady because he want to be able to keep up with the new in the gaming world. The follower on twitter does not want to know what you ate on breakfast, how cool your name looks on the cup of Starbucks or which is your favorite football team.

- Improve your writing skills and be more to-the-point:

Lately we have seen a lot of articles that start like this: "5 Reasons to be excited about X" "Why you should consider X" "How gaming changed X" "The 10 most something, something" it lacks creativity and it shows that it's just some article to fill the pages or headlines with the "How, why, Top 10, Top 5" and so on.

- Represent & respect your viewers:

If you are in this press it means that before wanting to make a quick profit you probably also like game and you may like to play some of them too. Faked interviews have become bland and pointless. The answers that most people what to know never come in said interviews, it always comes down to "So tell me about this new feature" and "So when can we expect this game to be released and on what platforms" The hard questions are avoided to also avoid some damage I believe but making a video interview that is bland is just that... it's bland and adds nothing. Then there's the people who watched them, the viewers who's age may vary from a lot, they demand to be respected and by doing a good, professional job you are already respecting your audience because without them you wouldn't be in the gaming press in the first place.

- Be done with your Persona:

You work in the gaming press. You might consider yourself a Journalist, act like one. Have a real name, not angry, grumpy, annoyed, something something. Let people now who you are and let them remind who you are by your quality not by a silly name to express some sort of feeling you have towards this industry.

EDIT: I might have miss something, correct me if I'm wrong in case you read all that, thank you.

Your presentation is 100% spot on. Some of these guys have no class and look like they came straight out of bed.

 

[FryHole]

I've got a similar background to the one you detail in your thread - although my magazines of choice at the time were Your Sinclair and Super Play - and I agree with it in principle, but I think the fundamental issue with that is that I don't think people with our viewpoint are a large enough group to be profitable, and that's where the danger lies.

Unfortunately I think you may be right, after I put together that post detailing the sort of thing I'd like to read I made myself sad realising it'd probably never happen.

While Giant Bomb isn't quite for me, I think they've got the right idea. I think something like Giant Bomb's financial model with Eurogame's writing style and irreverence would be right up my street.


Actually, as a little bit of a side note, there is a completely independent body I'd love to see dive into the fray: The BBC. They've dabbled in it briefly with Gameswipe but on paper they ought to be able to be independent. Alas, I think that's too much to hope for.

Yes, Eurogamer-flavoured Giant Bomb could work. As for the BBC, if the corporation as it is today tried anything I've no doubt they'd find a way to fuck it up. The idea of the BBC of a few decades ago - the kind that allowed Douglas Adams to haemorrhage money getting a sound effect right for HHGTTG - having a go, though, is the stuff dreams are made of.

 

[unbias]

Why should they do this? What other entertainment media are held to this ridiculous standard? Entertainment Weekly runs ads from the very same networks and studios that they review movies/TV for. Know what you dont see? An uproar that they're biased. The last thing the gaming press need to do is listen to gamers about how they should run their business.

Because the other entertainment industries are not selling you product on the same scale. Game journalism should be closer to the tech press. Hell, I'm not even sure why game sites dont turn into tech/game sites as a whole. Seems like it would help with the whole "1 type of advertising" thing.

 

[BlackJace]

You know those threads we have about cryptic tweets from Geoff, and other press figures?
Stop having those.

 

[CamHostage]

I will burn for this, but controlling the access will forever be a problem. It is not on "journalists" side, but on publisher side. You can't make a pie without apples.

Back in the rampant PS2/GC/Xbox piracy rates, situation was crazy different. Every normal console could become "debug" and early leaks of preview codes where allowing anyone interested to check any game and decide what he want to play. It also gave small mags and small sites an oportunity to get early access thus preventing access side control.

Except that the journalists were no better in the piracy days of game coverage either (though I do agree that those were wild and exciting times to be a game fan.) Democratizing and decentralizing game coverage did not lead to more honest or open game coverage, zine writers (and now Youtube video bloggers) working with bootlegged games were just as wrapped up in the console wars and the scoop race and the quest for fame as the pros, if not moreso. They're chasing after the same thing: hits and recognition.

You don't see democratized press elevating the quality bar in other fields of journalism either, unfortunately. Take a gander at Bleacher Report and see that sports journalism is shockingly way more hype-driven in the hands of amateurs than professionals. (The site has cleaned up its act a lot over the years, but that's in part thanks to a reliance on a growing stable of featured columnists, aka amateurs going pro.) Even step outside of journalism and look at just the service of Youtube bloggers: I'd kill for their to be a really quality clip of Demon Chaos PS2 to go up, but despite my begging for it for years, instead Youtube fills up every day with more COD, GTA5 and Kingdom Hearts clips. There's relatively little interest in making the internet a better place for gamers, and more interest in getting involved with the already-packed crowd of hypers.

(One difference worth a note is that the pros are salary, not on commission, so they want high hits but their overall goal is a sustained popularity/viability, whereas bloggers need the biggest paydays possible or they will not rank... by the way, it's crazy how often people still seem to think the opposite, that somebody at a site took a payday for a review because a site is draped with ads, as if that journalist is pocketing all that money himself instead of it going into the coffers of the 150+ staffers of the media conglomerate that he works for while he still draws the same 2-week paycheck during the GTA5/next-gen launch new explosion that he did during the doldrums of the January release calendar...)

I like your thinking though. There was good shit (hyphy or not) going up in the crazy pirate-fueled boom days of internet gaming journalism.

 

[crozier]

Do away with letter/number grades for games. Period. Metacritic is a blight on the industry.

 

[akachan ningen]

The gaming media is just there to create hype and help publishers sell more games. It's just another form of marketing. But think about what a sweet deal it is for them. They get to play and talk about games for a living. Why would they ever stop the gravy train? Even if they read threads like this, they'll never take it to heart. They'll just rationalize away every questionable decision they make.

Even though publishers can now directly market to people via the internet, it's not as effective because people automatically think that the publisher will present their game in the most positive light possible and otherwise lie about their product. But with the gaming press, there is at least a facade of impartiality. That shit works. Publishers just need to pay up.

The only thing we can do is ignore them and educate others on the broken nature of this system.

btw, I don't think that the gaming press consciously has this diabolical intention in mind as they conduct their business. But rather, I think it has been naturally evolving since the first gaming press began and only those who fit themselves into this mold are capable of surviving long-term.