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Geoff Keighley will be responding to Doritosgate

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W

WickedCobra03

Member
Fuzzy said:
tumblr_mav19uKgUj1qa41ozo1_r1_500.png
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Thumbs up

Anyway, the Doritos King speaks. It feel like its going to be a very blah and PRish response to everything.
 
D

Dali

Member
What response is there? I mean I understand he's a working stiff like everyone else. Maybe gametrailers or spike made him do it. That's fine, but it doesn't exonerate him from the charge that he's a supposedly objective journalist that sold out to the people he's supposed to be examining as an independent unswayable source. It doesn't change the impression that everyone in his profession is controlled by the ad dollars.
 
M

MechaX

Member
I don't know how to feel about so many people latching onto Keighley despite missing the true purpose of Florence's article and how that particular female journalist at the center of it proved him right in real time.
 
L

L00P

Member
The jokes, photoshops, and dramas that were born after seeing the image are pretty damn funny, but c'mon guys. It was just a weird way of advertising. Most things in the media needs ads to keep em running. Hell, GAF is no exception to this, as far as I know.

I do think they went a little too far with the physical products being displayed on the table behind him, but he doesn't deserve the hate some posters are implying here. The VGAs is a different matter though, but I don't really follow that

I just hope that Geoff sees the Doritos Pope as nothing more than a harmless joke. If I was him I'd joke about it, too.
 
T

The Albatross

Member
MormaPope said:
Way off in left field analogy that doesn't make any sense.

Football players can't influence or endorse people to buy products with their opinions or words, they can be in Nike commercials and Deodorant commercials, but their opinions don't sway anyone, they can't for a ton of reasons.

One of them being you can't buy $60 of football based on a football player's opinions or reviews.
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My post was a blatant joke, but then you took it seriously.

...
And then said two of the most untrue, stupid statements (sentences 2 and 3) in this thread. Football players opinions don't sway anyone? "You can't buy $60s worth of footballs."

wut
 
F

FStop7

Banned
Rab Florence's original article does a great job of summing up why the Doritos thing does matter.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-10-24-lost-humanity-18-a-table-of-doritos

Geoff Keighley, meanwhile, is sitting beside a table of snacks. A table of delicious Doritos and refreshing Mountain Dew. He is, as you'll see on Wikipedia, "only one of two journalists, the other being 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace, profiled in the Harvard Business School press book 'Geeks and Geezers' by noted leadership expert Warren Bennis." Geoff Keighley is important. He is a leader in his field. He once said, "There's such a lack of investigative journalism. I wish I had more time to do more, sort of, investigation." And yet there he sits, glassy-eyed, beside a table heaving with sickly Doritos and Mountain Dew.

It's an important image. Study it.
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B

BlackJace

Member
Valnen said:
Do you know what the purpose of a job is? To pay your bills and put food on the table. They can't work for free.
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I'm pretty sure the job description of a game journalist (or journalist in general) doesn't include being paid to hock fucking snack and soda products, as well as big name video-games.

If that's what they think their job entails, then they're in the wrong damn "profession".
 
C

Combichristoffersen

Combovers don't work when there is no hair
I haven't followed Doritosgate, but from what I can gather people are upset because he did a Halo 4 video with some doritos and mountain dew used as product placement. Is that it?
 
O

Oersted

Member
The Albatross said:
To those who are so offended by Keighley:

Encourage more mainstream journalists (ie, NYT, WSJ, WaPo, Fox News, MSNBC, etc) to cover your games instead of ripping them whenever they have an opinion that doesn't match the Gaf-videogame-elitist-theory.

Also:

Top10_ProductPlacement10.jpg


If Mountain Dew has such control over the gaming industry, MetaCritic scores, funding of videogames, etc., why hasn't there been a critically acclaimed Jet Moto game in 10+ years?
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Why are you making points up?
 
C

Currygan

at last, for christ's sake
Dali said:
What response is there? I mean I understand he's a working stiff like everyone else. Maybe gametrailers or spike made him do it. That's fine, but it doesn't exonerate him from the charge that he's a supposedly objective journalist that sold out to the people he's supposed to be examining as an independent unswayable source. It doesn't change the impression that everyone in his profession is controlled by the ad dollars.
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that's why his reply is going to be interesting. People always find creative ways to justify even the most blatant fuck-ups
 
M

MormaPope

Banned
Valnen said:
Do you know what the purpose of a job is? To pay your bills and put food on the table. They can't work for free.
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How about they get paid for legitimate reasons and not be scrutinized or they get paid for illegitimate reasons and get scrutinized. You can't have it both ways, sorry.
 
V

Valnen

Member
BlackJace said:
I'm pretty sure the job description of a journalist doesn't include being paid to hock fucking snack and soda products, as well as big name video-games.

If that's what they think their job entails, then they're in the wrong damn "profession".
Click to expand...

That's not your place to say that.
 
O

Oersted

Member
Valnen said:
Do you know what the purpose of a job is? To pay your bills and put food on the table. They can't work for free.

Do you seriously expect game journalists to work for free?
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Every journalist investigating on Microsoft should be paid by Microsoft.
 
boutrosinit

boutrosinit

Street Fighter IV World Champion
Valnen said:
Advertising is not illegitimate, unethical, or wrong. Period.
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Specific methods of use and disclosures, or lack thereof is where advertising becomes unethical.

Even TV ads and the way they constantly bombard you and ruin your entertainment every 5 minutes on PAID cable TV, is unethical, but we're used to / apathetic to it largely.
 
B

Barbacoatl

Banned
Companies extort gaming bloggers if their games don't get glowing reviews by banning them from future events, blocking access to new content, blacklist them, etc. It matters because the corporations "invest" money to inflate their products and now they have the gaming enthusiast media by the balls. If you don't see how this can affect the consumers (misleading, half truth reviews, hype machinery), there's not much to do about it. Perhaps your daddy works in advertising or something so you have no ethical qualms with this kind of corruption because it's the norm in your "capitalism übber alles" world.

Yes, it's no different from the rest of enthusiast media, but it caused such a ruckus because people thought the self -proclaimed gaming journalists were actually passionate about games, when in fact, they were passionate about ebay-ing the last assassins creed flag they got from ubi, or becoming community managers.

Geoff has nothing to add. Vote with your money/time. Not a click for the dicks.
 
M

MormaPope

Banned
The Albatross said:
My post was a blatant joke, but then you took it seriously.

...
And then said two of the most untrue, stupid statements (sentences 2 and 3) in this thread. Football players opinions don't sway anyone? "You can't buy $60s worth of footballs."

wut
Click to expand...

When during a football game does a football player stop and hunker down to talk about why Nike and Gatorade are the best respective products? When is there a 20 minute interview with a football player where he talks about how refreshing Gatorade is and how it turns him into a real athlete?

Football players endorse things with their image alone, not with words or opinions.

Your joke and post before that clearly paints a picture of your stance on the issue, that's why I talked about your joke/analogy.

Also reread my post, you paraphrased it in the most idiotic way possible.
 
Teletraan1

Teletraan1

Banned
Keighley is what we thought he is; he is what we thought he is. We played Bonus Round in in some janky browser player — who the hell takes a third of a show and releases it every week like it's bullshit, bullshit!? We played Bonus Round in thirds — everybody played three Bonus Rounds — Geoff is who we thought he was! And that's why he did the Doritos/Dew interview. Now if you want to crown him the Doritos Pope, then crown his ass! But he is who we thought he was, and we let 'em off the hook!
 
T

The Albatross

Member
Oersted said:
Why are you making points up?
Click to expand...

I'm actually kidding with those things posting the pictures of Mountain Dew Jet Moto and Teddy Bruschi holding gatorade, mocking the sense of injustice that so many around here feel when Keighley appears with Doritos sponsors. Although one person did say that the Doritos sponsorship leads to unfair scores, which contributes to metacritic scores, which leads to companies greenlighting games. I was making fun of that too.

My actual point is this, from the first part of my post:

"To those who are so offended by Keighley:

Encourage more mainstream journalists (ie, NYT, WSJ, WaPo, Fox News, MSNBC, etc) to cover your games instead of ripping them whenever they have an opinion that doesn't match the Gaf-videogame-elitist-theory."

Generally, if you pull up any thread where mainstream press covers videogames, Gaf collectively loses itself over how none of the mainstream press "gets it." The most current post I remember was some article about the new Modern Warfare game, and it had dozens (hundreds) of posts lampooning this non-industry guy for just being so out of touch when it came to videogames. Here's the thing, he wasn't out of touch, he was representing the overwhelming mainstream that plays games that do share his opinions, and we're so hyper elitist about what entertains him that we all just lost it that any non-insider would even waste his time covering something that he, clearly, knows nothing about.

The result of our exclusivity when it comes to videogame coverage is that those in the industry, those people who do cover videogames have to get their revenue from two places:

a) Video game producers themselves (which are the majority of advertisers, and historically always have been)
b) Key industry advertisers like Mountain Dew, Doritos, Ax body spray, and whatever the other mainstays are.

And then we see this advertising and, again, collectively lose our minds. My point is: We should be happy that it was Doritos -- a non-videogame producer -- advertising and not Microsoft or Sony or Nintendo, AND that we have created this environment by ridiculing mainstream coverage of our cherished hobby.
 
M

MechaX

Member
Combichristoffersen said:
So the whole brouhaha is over gaming journalists/reviewers being marketing shills for devs/publishers, basically?
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More or less (or at the least, Wainright possibly being an example of a larger trend in the industry). Had things ended with Florence's articles, I doubt there would even be a real "Doritosgate" as opposed to people being like "Huh."
 
U

Uncle Rupee

Banned
to play devil's advocate... as if the guy has any control over what sponsors want on the show. What, is he supposed to risk his livelihood by walking off a set that has been dressed by corporate? I'm sure he was about as thrilled to do that as anyone else would be. Yet nobody seems to mind the rampant merching of every other industry, especially movies and comics. And it's not like he was pimping cigarettes. It's junk food. Who cares?
 
J

jwhit28

Member
Teletraan1 said:
Keighley is what we thought he is; he is what we thought he is. We played Bonus Round in in some janky browser player — who the hell takes a third of a show and releases it every week like it's bullshit, bullshit!? We played Bonus Round in thirds — everybody played three Bonus Rounds — Geoff is who we thought he was! And that's why he did the Doritos/Dew interview. Now if you want to crown him the Doritos Pope, then crown his ass! But he is who we thought he was, and we let 'em off the hook!
Click to expand...

Classic, but seriously, the guy is an entertainer, entertainers use their fame to advertise products. Do we have to have a sneakers gate because Michael Jordan said Jordans make you jump higher?
 
P

Pociask

Member
BlackJace said:
Again, do you know what a journalist is? I don't think you do.
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Wait, I see the problem. There are people that trust the integrity of journalists and expect them to only ever present the truth.

Here, I'll let you know a secret. Journalists are people like you and me. They went to college and got a degree in journalism usually, but usually not for video games journalists. Video game journalists are dudes who played a lot of video games and found someone to pay them to write about video games. Anyway, that's it.

They're just people. They report from their perspective. They hide a million biases, known and unknown, behind their neutral facade. Many of them don't very much about what they're reporting, and have to rely on others to make informed opinions. They are just as prone to group think as anyone else. They are just as prone to making mistakes as anyone else. They have opinions like everyone else.

I keep imagining some poor dude crying in the street, holding a copy of some shitty game to the sky as the rain pours down. "Why, Geoff, why?! I trusted you when you said this game was the most exciting third person shooter of the year! And it's terrible! WHY???!!!" And then, in that moment, the dude remembers, and it all comes together. The game's closing credits. Promotional consideration for Dudebro3: The Shoot/Slicening was provided by Doritos. Geoff - he is paid by Doritos. Oh.... no.... Geoff has betrayed us all for a few over-flavored chips. The precious opinions on video games we all relied upon were just lies! The dude's tears washed away by the rain, he is left with only cold fury. Geoff will feel his rage - oh yes, he will pay! Because now, the dude is going to blog about this - on the internet. I hope you enjoyed your Doritos and Dew while it lasted, Geoff - because now, he will link to his blog posting on his Twitter account - hashtag Doritogate.
 
B

BlackJace

Member
Pociask said:
Wait, I see the problem. There are people that trust the integrity of journalists and expect them to only ever present the truth.

Here, I'll let you know a secret. Journalists are people like you and me. They went to college and got a degree in journalism usually, but usually not for video games journalists. Video game journalists are dudes who played a lot of video games and found someone to pay them to write about video games. Anyway, that's it.

They're just people. They report from their perspective. They hide a million biases, known and unknown, behind their neutral facade. Many of them don't very much about what they're reporting, and have to rely on others to make informed opinions. They are just as prone to group think as anyone else. They are just as prone to making mistakes as anyone else. They have opinions like everyone else.

I keep imagining some poor dude crying in the street, holding a copy of some shitty game to the sky as the rain pours down. "Why, Geoff, why?! I trusted you when you said this game was the most exciting third person shooter of the year! And it's terrible! WHY???!!!" And then, in that moment, the dude remembers, and it all comes together. The game's closing credits. Promotional consideration for Dudebro3: The Shoot/Slicening was provided by Doritos. Geoff - he is paid by Doritos. Oh.... no.... Geoff has betrayed us all for a few over-flavored chips. The precious opinions on video games we all relied upon were just lies! The dude's tears washed away by the rain, he is left with only cold fury. Geoff will feel his rage - oh yes, he will pay! Because now, the dude is going to blog about this - on the internet. I hope you enjoyed your Doritos and Dew while it lasted, Geoff - because now, he will link to his blog posting on his Twitter account - hashtag Doritogate.
Click to expand...

Oh believe me, I know journalists have their own skeletons in their closets. This guy is trying to downplay the situation by stating that shameless shilling is a part of the trade.
 
C

Combichristoffersen

Combovers don't work when there is no hair
MechaX said:
More or less (or at the least, Wainright possibly being an example of a larger trend in the industry). Had things ended with Florence's articles, I doubt there would even be a real "Doritosgate" as opposed to people being like "Huh."
Click to expand...

I see. I can't really say it bothers me personally though, as this has been known for quite some time, how there's a 'scratch my back and I'll scratch yours' relationship between devs/publishers and gaming journalists/media, with cat helmets and elaborate swag boxes being given to reviewers to make them fluff up reviews and scores. The only way to avoid this would, I guess, be to have larger media outlets that aren't dependent on dev/publisher goodwill do reviews and news articles.
 
T

The Albatross

Member
MormaPope said:
When during a football game does a football player stop and hunker down to talk about why Nike and Gatorade are the best respective products? When is there a 20 minute interview with a football player where he talks about how refreshing Gatorade is and how it turns him into a real athlete?

Football players endorse things with their image alone, not with words or opinions.
Click to expand...

Is one better than the other? Seems like your implying that athletes are justified because they "don't talk about nike" on the sideline. If Keighley were playing Halo 4 and then snacking on some delish Cool Ranche and washing it down with intense Code Red, without mentioning the products with his dulcet voice, that would have been okay? Advertising in other areas, like for instance sports, is much more pervasive. There is a reason players, teams, and the league have "MOTOROLA" Headsets with the logo emblazoned, Nike Pro Combat uniforms, special Nike Air-Jordans (jesus christ, an entire brand built by one dunk by one player at one moment in sports history), and advertising logos everywhere on the screen.

Also reread my post, you paraphrased it in the most idiotic way possible.
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Because you took my joke seriously. Me trying to deduce your self-indulgent indignity over a bag of doritos is far less idiotic than you trying to extract a serious point out of a joke photo of Bill Belichik being soaked by a gatorade bath.
 
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