this is something that occurs pretty frequently in the gamedev patreon crowd, especially since many of their projects aren't put up for sale to begin with.
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Games Journalism! Wainwright/Florence/Tomb Raider/Eurogamer/Libel Threats/Doritos
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this is something that occurs pretty frequently in the gamedev patreon crowd, especially since many of their projects aren't put up for sale to begin with.
It's not just a matter of 'reaping profits'.
When someone donates money every month, it goes beyond the specific product/work.
He may have faith in the talent, or just wants to support a friend regardless of quality.
So, a journalist may promote a game and praise it just for the sake of helping out.
You cannot know his intentions, but it casts shadows of doubt on his opinion regardless.
Conflicts of interest go beyond 'big publisher buys reviews'
Rats Off To Ya
Banned
Maintaining journalistic integrity is just as much about avoiding the appearance of impropriety even if no ethical line was actually crossed. I think a Patreon ban is a reasonable thing for an editorial outfit to enforce. The site works on periodic payments to a single person, so there's a much more continuous and personal relationship than you get from Kickstarter.
You guys do good work. I know you get a lot of flak, more than most it seems, but ironically I feel that Kotaku does more honest-to-goodness reporting than any other site out there. I assure you it doesn't go unnoticed or unappreciated.
lol Patreons are conflicts of interest? Disclose your financial interest and it's fine. The backer isn't getting money back no matter how successful. Wanting something to succeed because you like it is a part of what the media (in particular a blog like Kotaku) does. Stick to complaining about journalists getting money to give something positive reviews or something.
It's okay to buy regularly distributed games but not support smaller games that have no usual means of funding?
This decision is illogical and actively contributes to the marginalizing power structures in video games.
If they want to fund lifestyles of people who may or may not create a non-commercial product, they can still do it non-publicly at least.
Less obvious that way.
What do you mean non-publicly? It would be much worse if they did so and didn't disclose it. At least with full disclosure you give the audience an opportunity to determine for themselves whether to trust you. Why would doing it in secret be better?
Rentahamster
Rodent Whores
This is the first time I'm hearing of that War for the Overworld game. Looks...interesting but still early. Promising, though.
Because apparently, supporting lifestyles of indiedevs is more important than not having conflicts of interest.
I personally do not have any faith in gaming journalism any more either way.
Though it is telling that Joystic for example had clear guidelines for this sort of thing already
That optics are literally the most important thing in determining people's opinions?
RockTurtle
Member
Funding a patreon is not supporting smaller games; it is giving direct financial support to someone. A game journalist giving direct financial support to a game developer strikes me as a pretty glaring conflict of interest that should probably be avoided if possible.
Not sure I follow your train of thought.
Because of the walls of separation. When you preorder a game, you are doing so just to consume a game. There is no smiling face there saying they get to eat or make this their full time gig because of you. It's like trying to give impartial coverage your local high school sports team while giving donations to them every season. It's just weird. You should try to remove yourself from the story as much as possible.
As a member of the independent press it's your job to "not cheer in the press box." You want to eliminate these ties as much as possible, not embrace them.
RockTurtle
Member
if it's not apparent right off the bat, i don't want to derail the thread explaining. let's just leave it here.
i'll stick to discuss this from the angle set up right in the OP. the theme of the topic. The discussion being the responsibility of those with an audience that try to present an unbiased (or as much as they can) opinion as a critique of video games ( a product they are not directly profiting from).
EDIT: if you still want me to elaborate you are more than welcome to send me a PM so we can discuss it there.
Yes, they are.
The "appearance" is the most important thing and is so often overlooked. Even if there is no actual conflict of interest (eg money exchanging hands for good reviews), journalists have to avoid the perception of one. How can a journalist maintain their integrity when they write a postive review on a game they donated to? Even if the review is completely free of bias, the very fact that people can say "but you donated to their game" every time the journalist tries to defend themself, is enough to bring their integrity into doubt.
"How it looks" is just as important as "what it is".
Tell your boss to read his Twitter and read the criticisms of this decision.
Also, "odd to allow oneself to dutifully observe the rules of engagement set by corporations, but reject those set by starving marginalized indies"
And ": Singling out Patreon in particular as a conflict of interest colludes in the hegemonic and exploitative interests of capital."
JesseEwiak
Member
Yes, I have no problem saying most of the "games journalism is corrupt" idea is entirely overblown by a bunch of people, largely consisting of people upset the games they don't like aren't getting the attention the other games are.
Even on NeoGAF, which has a decent signal:noise ratio, for every decent post on the problems there are within the game industry, there are 10 to 20 posts consisting of the IGN Mass Effect gif, implying that Gerstmanngate means everybody is bought off, and so on.
Especially after the last two weeks, yeah, game developers and reviewers should largely be wary of their own audience, as too much of it is made of 15 year olds and 20-somethings that are still 15 mentally.
But yeah, if they donate to Patreon or Kickstarter, they should note it. But, it won't stop the idiots from implying reviewer x is bought off when they rate a game too high or imply a game reviewer doesn't know anything when they rate a game too low.
The Wall in journalism is not relevant just for corporations.
It's a nigh universal standard for a reason.
Or maybe it's a friend and they support with money and promote content regardless of quality?
Or are you going to say 'that never happens'?
Doubt can easily exist there as well
Reviewing games of a former roommate without disclosure is gross.
Ben Kuchera isn't someone you should ever read/follow and it has to do with competence not ethics. He has shown for years to support the worst tactics in the industry, make up blatantly false nonsense, and write clickbait garbage. He probably is only qualified to write hot singles near you copy for porn ads, even then I'd doubt his ability.
Ben Kuchera isn't someone you should ever read/follow and it has to do with competence not ethics. He has shown for years to support the worst tactics in the industry, make up blatantly false nonsense, and write clickbait garbage. He probably is only qualified to write hot singles near you copy for porn ads, even then I'd doubt his ability.
Less confident. As someone who wishes to be a journalist, you have a responsibility not to become too invested in the thing you are covering. It's about being above the general fan and realizing you run the risk of being so infatuated in one thing that you overlook the faults in the product or game. You give more press coverage to something because you already hold the feelings that you are helping something get created.
In the case of some of these games, you aren't paying for a good product. You are paying for specific people to be able to live off a product of unknown quality.
I do has less confidence in the opinion of someone who already has an investment in a person and the games they create. I feel you would not only give a product more coverage, but you would also be more forgiving of its faults.
When you donate money to someone directly it goes beyond being a professional relationship. You become closer to an evangelist or a buddy. I think that's too much of a gray area. It's worthy of scrutiny, and I wouldn't want journalists to put themselves in that position.
It's an ethical area that is unnecessary to wander around if your job is to be an independent journalist.
DICKS AHOY
Banned
Outside the context of reviews, what if a news story crops up concerning a particular individual and the journalist tasked with covering them is also supporting them via Patreon? Having that even slight relationship declared means they can avoid that situation by simply giving it to another unrelated writer, even if just to avoid another dumb 'Quinnspracy'-style fiasco exploding among the readers.
This is exactly why I try to be as upfront as possible when it comes to reporting on developers and the gaming news, because if you aren't it will just bite you right back. Why risk losing integrity over favourable reviews that are biased? Why would I want to lose a job that I absolutely love coming to each day just for something extra on the side?
If I donate to this Patreon thing and then cover the developer, that is indirectly influencing my choice of stance, be it negative or positive. If I interview a developer and then donate to Patreon but do so in a public fashion then I don't see that as a bad thing because those on the Patreon thing deserve all the money they can get (if the product is good), and I'm being upfront about it.
Its the slimey way of going behind the backs of your readers to influence them because you have a stake in the relationship that I don't like. By not being honest you are doing a disservice to your community and to your profile, is that really worth it?
I would argue that you can have an investment in a game, be it something you play on your break or in your spare time, and still have a valid opinion without it sounding like you sway to one side. Obviously when you are changing your influence because you love that game or the developer is when the problem arises.
If I donate to this Patreon thing and then cover the developer, that is indirectly influencing my choice of stance, be it negative or positive. If I interview a developer and then donate to Patreon but do so in a public fashion then I don't see that as a bad thing because those on the Patreon thing deserve all the money they can get (if the product is good), and I'm being upfront about it.
Its the slimey way of going behind the backs of your readers to influence them because you have a stake in the relationship that I don't like. By not being honest you are doing a disservice to your community and to your profile, is that really worth it?
I would argue that you can have an investment in a game, be it something you play on your break or in your spare time, and still have a valid opinion without it sounding like you sway to one side. Obviously when you are changing your influence because you love that game or the developer is when the problem arises.
This doesn't make sense. Would you believe Shuhei Yoshida giving Uncharted 4 a 10/10 review? Of course not, the guy probably helped assign development funds to help ND make the game. How can you be so sure he genuinely loves the game, or is just promoting it to ensure that it succeeds because of the money he put into it? Even if he 100% genuine, people can always accuse him of promoting the game for his own interest. It's the perception that is important. The same goes for a journalist who puts money into a Kickstarter or Patreon.
This post is why I trusted giantbombs coverage of bastion and not the recent examples in this thread. If you don't mention the connection you either A. A dumbass or B. Trying to hide said connection for some shitty reason.
Though it's not the only issue at play here, cognitive dissonance is a huge factor here. Studies have shown that people are more likely to speak favorably of something when they have invested their own time or money into that thing. Your mind naturally wants to believe that you make good decisions and will make adjustments to perception in order to justify to itself that your decisions are good.
So in your example, I think in a lot of cases "I liked this thing enough to spend money on it" is an acceptable metric for a recommendation. But if it is your job to recommend one product/work over others, it is quite likely that you would be somewhat biased towards recommending the one you personally donated towards, and can credit yourself with having financially contributed towards it's creation.
Now naturally, games media will have to spend their money on games at some point. It's unavoidable. But they absolutely can avoid directly paying money to an individual creating games that they may at one point have to cover. There could definitely be other ways to address that issue than a blanket ban, but that is the easiest and safest.
I think people getting mad at Totilo's stance aren't too familiar with Kotaku's history. This isn't them giving in to anyone, nor is it out of line with their other policies. Their stance has *always* been far more strict compared to most sites, they don't even accept airfares from pubs for events (which even Giantbomb does).
They're not singling out poor, minority devs. They're continuing their status quo.
They're not singling out poor, minority devs. They're continuing their status quo.
There doesn't have to be anything to "gain", all that there needs to be is a conflict of interest.
The games reviewer has the primary interest "Present my personal opinion on a game, free from influence from outside sources."
If a reviewer then donates to the indie Kickstarter for Demonsfall, he takes on a secondary interest, "Ensure Demonsfall succeeds". If he then is to review Demonsfall for the website he writes for, then it becomes possible that this interest may unduly affect his primary interest, and that's where his professional integrity can come into question.
KS and Patreon both hinge on emotional investment, it's a core part of why they work. They turn backers into emotionally invested advocates very much by design. That's why backers get backer-only perks, dinner with the dev team, their name in the credits, etc.
KS and Patreon also encourage rational actors to become advocates. If more people donate to a KS then in theory the project is better and your investment is wiser. If more people donate to a Patreon that artist can dedicate more time and money to their work, again making your personal investment reap higher dividends.
That's not true of pre-ordering. (At least not to nearly the same extent) And nothing prevents KS/Patreon people from selling wares.
The dichotomy between Patreon/KS and big publishers selling games is a false one - any indie developer can sell a game the ole fashioned way or offer it for pre-order. KS/Patreon are additional, not alternative.
And if a developer gets a significant portion of funding by the games media to me that's a huge red flag - their livelihood is based on getting the people who cover them emotionally and financially invested?
Kudos to Kotaku for not burying their head in the sand. I think the conflict of interest here is fairly glaring but it still takes some guts to admit that policies need revision.
KS and Patreon also encourage rational actors to become advocates. If more people donate to a KS then in theory the project is better and your investment is wiser. If more people donate to a Patreon that artist can dedicate more time and money to their work, again making your personal investment reap higher dividends.
That's not true of pre-ordering. (At least not to nearly the same extent) And nothing prevents KS/Patreon people from selling wares.
The dichotomy between Patreon/KS and big publishers selling games is a false one - any indie developer can sell a game the ole fashioned way or offer it for pre-order. KS/Patreon are additional, not alternative.
And if a developer gets a significant portion of funding by the games media to me that's a huge red flag - their livelihood is based on getting the people who cover them emotionally and financially invested?
Kudos to Kotaku for not burying their head in the sand. I think the conflict of interest here is fairly glaring but it still takes some guts to admit that policies need revision.
I think it was clear earlier that I basically agree with you on this. But the standard defense of this type of "appearance of bias" rule runs the argument in a different direction from how you're thinking it has to go. That the journalist donated to, say, a political party is not what makes them untrustworthy. It shows that they are untrustworthy. It's not about whether they're honestly partial to whatever-it-is; it's that they're partial to it full stop.
Game out how this usually works. Something newsworthy has happened. Someone writes about this newsworthy thing, with implicit or explicit judgments. Maybe Obama comes out with a budget proposal, and someone writes about how the budget proposal is socialist and is punishing success, etc. Lots of people are going to be very interested in knowing what that writer's opinions were before Obama released that budget proposal. If the writer is a Democrat, the writer's judgments are going to be taken to be a lot more reliable than if the writer is a Republican, because of course a Republican would say that about an Obama budget. Donating to Republicans doesn't make pundits more likely to unfairly criticize Obama, but a pundit who donates to Republicans is more likely to unfairly criticize Obama than a pundit who does not. Pundits who would otherwise like to donate to Republicans therefore have a reason not to, because if they spend a lot of time being critical of Democrats they want to be perceived as being as left-wing as possible (usually "moderate" is all they can plausibly go for) because it signals to the audience that the pundit's judgments aren't knee-jerk partisan responses but are considered and unusual departures from the norm that ought to be listened to.
That's basically a good strategy for an audience, if everyone is accurately representing their bias. People are going to pay less attention to your recommendation of this dumb podcast than they would to my recommendation of it if I make clear that I don't even like writing and listened to an episode only after you made me but I ended up loving it (note: this is not true and I am not endorsing this dumb podcast). It's got to be pretty good if it turned someone very likely to be a non-fan into a fan. Obviously the problem is that people have a lot of reason to misrepresent their prior biases (see all the faith-affirming stories that start out "I used to be an atheist..." or "I always thought homeopathy was nonsense..."). Edit: Or to make this more gaming related: "I own all the consoles..." (whether true or not).
So the media's ended up with a rule of avoiding any appearance of bias. This satisfies the people who don't have the game theory to grasp that in fact a lack of appearance of bias is not a trustworthy signal given that there are strong incentives to avoid an appearance of bias, but I don't think it's fair to say that this is all about fooling the rubes. People in the media think of themselves as unbiased, or as delivering the news or making judgments about the news in some sort of ideally neutral way. And so that's what they want to communicate to their audience. Even if they personally are huge fans of Obama's policies, because (they think) they're providing a neutral viewpoint on them, they think it's important to signal that they have that neutral viewpoint, by not doing the sorts of things that would reveal them to be huge fans of Obama's policies (because this would lead to what they think is the mistaken impression that that's coloring their reporting and punditry).
Any additional backing the project receives makes your fixed investment more valuable. A better return on investment is financial interest, even if that interest isn't in the form of simple monetary revenue.
Rock Hardy
Banned
Games journalism and games pr are the exact same job. There is no coincidence there is so much overlap. They are both tasked with promoting a game to the public. One is just supposed to be independent.
Games journalists came about in the print era because game publishers lacked the resources and distribution channels to reach gamers at large. Magazine pubs were convenient then. It's no coincidence journos were generally better back then, even if the editing was worse.
Now, journos are largely superfluous due to social media, and should have died off long ago. The advent of ad blockers would've been their death knell if they didn't start forging these tight relationships with game pubs to become essentially third party pr firms.
Be honest, what do you need game media for? Reviews are the only thing they can provide that publishers can't. This must clearly be a smaller part of their business than the previews, which are pure pr. Gaming media have found themselves the useless middle men walking the printed forms from one end of the building to the other, when the rest of the world has moved on to email.
Journos can try and spin it as if they're trying to be more transparent, but they've been crystal from jump. Any game gets only one review. There are multiple previews. That means previews generate more revenue than reviews. That means the previews are where the junkets and swag have their influence. It's nice to say they will not allow corporate gaming to corrupt their messages, but is that even realistic?
The gaming media isn't needed. The pr departments have access to the gaming public without the need for journalists. The media is at the mercy of the pubs now. It's the reality of the situation, regardless of efforts for maintaining integrity. Accept that your media are basically multi-developer pr firms, because I'm not convinced they can be anything else and not close shop.
Games journalists came about in the print era because game publishers lacked the resources and distribution channels to reach gamers at large. Magazine pubs were convenient then. It's no coincidence journos were generally better back then, even if the editing was worse.
Now, journos are largely superfluous due to social media, and should have died off long ago. The advent of ad blockers would've been their death knell if they didn't start forging these tight relationships with game pubs to become essentially third party pr firms.
Be honest, what do you need game media for? Reviews are the only thing they can provide that publishers can't. This must clearly be a smaller part of their business than the previews, which are pure pr. Gaming media have found themselves the useless middle men walking the printed forms from one end of the building to the other, when the rest of the world has moved on to email.
Journos can try and spin it as if they're trying to be more transparent, but they've been crystal from jump. Any game gets only one review. There are multiple previews. That means previews generate more revenue than reviews. That means the previews are where the junkets and swag have their influence. It's nice to say they will not allow corporate gaming to corrupt their messages, but is that even realistic?
The gaming media isn't needed. The pr departments have access to the gaming public without the need for journalists. The media is at the mercy of the pubs now. It's the reality of the situation, regardless of efforts for maintaining integrity. Accept that your media are basically multi-developer pr firms, because I'm not convinced they can be anything else and not close shop.
Does the same not go for a journalist who buys the game a day after it comes out?
Exactly this. Not like many of us were even donating to game dev patreons in the first place. But Stephen is very strict when it comes to journalistic ethics, and I imagine he feels uncomfortable with the idea of one of his reporters financially supporting a game developer. I certainly agree with him there.
The comparison is apt. Regardless of whether it's a company president or a games journalist, if they hold both interests "Review game X" and "Ensure X succeeds", then it's a conflict of interest.
With KS or Patreon you donate at a fixed level, then the output quality/quantity is determined by the total donation level. If the total donation level rises the output quality theoretically increases, meaning you have not only a strong emotional reason to advocate but also a strictly rational one.
Even without stretch goals the understanding is that more investment results in higher quality work. Maybe the Patreon guy now doesn't need a full time job anymore so they can spend more time working on their game thus making it better.
That is not the case with pre-orders. When you pre-order a game there's no understanding that total pre-order dollars will make the game better. Maybe they'll determine how much the game is stocked or chances for a sequel, but most people don't expect that a game that does better than expected pre-orders is going to funnel money back into development of that same game.
So there is some financial-ish incentive to advocate. But even without that emotional investment is a huge part of KS/Patreon and emotional investment presents a conflict of interest. When you donate to a KS/Patreon you want to believe in the product and the person, you want it to succeed, and you want to believe that it's good if for no other reason than to rationalize your prior decision to donate.
The human brain is very good at post-facto rationalization. If you donate a bunch of money to a game and it turns out poorly maybe you find the silver lining that pushes it from a 6 to a 7 - you have incentive to do this so you can feel that your decision to donate wasn't a poor one.
...
By merely covering videogames you are financially supporting developers. Doing it more or less directly is going to paint a different picture, but as long as people are honest about this, I don't see any problem with supporting people whose projects you want to see more of.
Also, if we're going this far then offering any financial support should be banned, including purchases. Bias exists and there's nothing really wrong with that.
More than that though, it also discourages helping people who actually need financial help versus those who do not (i.e. big publishers), and discouraging that seems hurtful to those most in need of empowerment.
The fact that you have this perception in the first place is telling of the problem.
Which is what exactly? Visibility sells products. If you put a product on a highly visible site like Kotaku, whether you say anything, good or bad, the product will do better than those with less visibility.
And visibility is what small developers need more of. It should be encouraged to help those with less.
Laughing Banana
Weeping Pickle
"They really love it" is different than "They can be honest about it."
If they really love it so much to the point that they donate to it, how can any reasonable person expect that they can be honest in their opinion regarding the game's shortcomings? Personal bias, or "they love it", is a very powerful thing that can obscure one's perception about the reality of things. In addition, the fact that they donate money will push their bias even further.
It's basically similar to asking someone who is a fanboy of, say, Xbox, about what they think of XboxOne. Or fanboy of [product A/game A] about what they think of [product A/game A]. They also have no monetary or personal gain, but any reasonable person wouldn't do that if they expect/wish for a honest review of the product/game.
I see a significant difference between buying or funding a project and directly funding a person. I think the latter brings up ethical questions that I'd rather just avoid entirely.
So if a videogame was made by one person would you have problems supporting that?
To me this line of argument just seems like an exceptionally slippery slope.
As long as their Kickstarter promised that they were willing to die of starvation/exposure while working because they wouldn't spend the money on essential life-supporting needs, I think it would be okay.
Gotta dedicate yourself to your craft, you know?
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