The irony of all this is that if a journalist is seen to be given free games, they're considered corrupt. Now if a journalist buys/pre-orders/backs (which, in my opinion, is an elaborate pre-order) they are having their legitimacy and objectivity called into question.
Rock. Hard place.
Of course backing a Kickstarter (et al) project is investment, but not in the same sense as a venture capital or business would invest in an idea.
There is no financial gain in backing a project, merely the personal gratification that you have - in some way - helped a game get produced that perhaps wouldn't have been otherwise. That, to me, suggests a level of excitement and interest outside of the raft of other games being made.
I find it very cynical to expect journalists to avoid any kind of backing. They are, ultimately, gamers, and I find it ridiculous to expect them to not get excited enough to want to help a game get made - in much the same way that many of us do.
And the argument that by backing a game to make it successful and, therefore, lead your own site to benefit from the content created for it? That's utterly ridiculous.
First off - if a game was that popular on Kickstarter (I'm talking Double Fine/Pillars Of Eternity, very little else) then it wouldn't need the journalists backing in the first place. It is popular already, what is another $20?
And if it is so popular, then any content produced is going to be popular - regardless of the writer's interest in the game.
And a writer being interested in a game, is that really any different than any other articles they write? Look at Christian Donlan on Eurogamer - he writes about a lot of indie/unknown games because he is excited, because he is passionate, because he wants other people to be excited too.
You can bet you ass he'd paid money to see these games made, I should bloody well hope so. If he's excited enough to show us these games, should he not be excited to spend money on it as well?
The argument really comes down to whether we should be calling games writers 'journalists' at all. I'm not going to argue whether or not what they do is journalism, but at it's very core it is hobbyist writing. It is people who are interested in our subject writing about something they care about. I would want them to spend money on things that excite them.
Let's take an extreme equivalent - someone who writes for a snowboarding magazine. You'd expect these people are excited about snowboarding; would they have their favourite styles? Their favourite brands? Their favourite snowboarders? You can guarantee they will, and they shouldn't need to defend themselves.
Ultimately you think of games journalists as newspaper/news media journalists, and hold them up to some weird kind of pedestal. But newspaper journalists are considerably more corruptible and biased than any games writer, at least games 'journalists' have the passion to actually care about what they write, what they spend money on and - ultimately - the things they publish in print and online.
Rant over.
