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The Game Industry Is About The Games
Over at Gamespot Bob Colayco fires back at David Jaffe, who you may recall referred to game journalists as vultures, saying that Jaffe's ideas about what journalism should be are just as uninteresting as the most sycophantic game plug. From the article: "Am I the only one who picks up rags like Entertainment Weekly, skips the fluff in front, and goes straight to the reviews sections? Maybe that attitude is really dehumanizing. But I don't think it's any coincidence that other entertainment industries started going to crap when people started caring more about our manufactured pop stars and their gossip than they did about the product. This is why we have reality shows with the likes of Jessica Simpson."
The movie industry is about movies.
The television industry is about television.
That is all.
vi ~/.emacs
As much as I always enjoy this sort of crotchety-old-man grumbling about how the world has completely gone to hell, and things aren't like back in the good old days of the 1980's -- "manufactured pop stars and their gossip" have been around for centuries. Does Bob Colayco think Hollywood was any different in the 60's, in the 40's, in the 20's?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I'm not saying shut down all the media, I'm saying shut down the media ego. Yes, thank you for playing the game long before I can. Yes, thank you for telling me the quality of the graphics and sound. No, thank you, I'd rather not read a fourteen page blowout of Halo 2/DOA Ultimate/Fable. No, thank you, I don't need you to fill half the rag with opionions from editors about what it was like to be at E3. And so on...
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
If bones were content and reality, and flesh was hype and illusion, then critics would be vultures, telling us what all these phony advertisements surrounding us really are. At least, from their perspective, which is the only one they really have. Some people hate critics, some people like crappy games. Some people watch reality t.v. At least I know the critic is educated and has somewhat refined taste.
And I actually got a response from Jaffe ...
- plea-to-game-journalist.html
http://superrob.blogspot.com/2005/11/david-jaffes
This thinking can be extrapolated to all sorts of things:
In the consumer world, the dollar is king. If people are willing to spend time or money on something, there's a profit to be had. In this case extremely large amounts of people are willing to spend time reading reviews. Advertisers are willing to pay for hacks to spew out garbage reviews as long as people read them. If you think the guys a hack, stop reading. If enough people think he's a hack, and stop reading his stuff, the advertisers will move on.
Simply saying "it's all about the games" does not do the "problem" justice. As long as there is money to be made with advertisements, reviews of all sorts, and pandering to all demographics will exits.
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Assume that a video game magazine just published reviews of video games. It's a pretty good place for a video game magazine to start. However, another magazine starts in competition to this first one and decides to include previews as well as reviews. Now this second magazine has more to offer than the first. Some people might no care about previews, but if the company publishing the first magazine doens't start adding previews they might lose a good deal of business to their competitor. So they decide to include previews as well.
This process continues and the whole thing escalates to what we see today. Not only do game magazines, websites, or newsletters contain reviews, they also contain previews, editorials, letters from readers, fan art, comics, and loads of other stuff.
The base problem is that these publications are generally not created for gamers to get informed opinions, that's just a side product. The real reason these publications exist is to make money. It's a true fact, so just get used to it.
If you wanted to, you could start a "free" website that just reviews games. If you become popular you start getting more traffic which bumps up the bandwidth costs. You have a few options now, charge people to increase revenue, let people advertise on your site to increase revenue, or have a website that doesn't work well because it's constantly over its bandwidth limits.
You could probably make a lot of money with such a site from advertisement and paid for content. Hell, that's what IGN and other sites have been doing. Of course if people stop visiting your site you lose advertisers, people who'll pay for content, and a lot of the money you're making. Unless you're rich and doing this as a hobby you need to keep the people coming. Unfortunately this means adding the "fluff" content. You might not like such-and-such content, but there might be several thousand others that do, and might be willing to pay for it as well!
If they can't find what they want from your site, they'll most likely go somewhere else, taking their money somewhere else.
Is a minimalist site bad? No. Is it for everyone? No.
The real problem is that the majority of "games journalists" are starry-eyed kids (adults now, I suppose), who really wanted to be that guy making a game, or that guy who got to play games all day. They're not going into this because they want to inform people. Sure, they might have a desire to do it, but for the vast majority of people, it's a mix of wanting to play games and wanting to tell people what you think.
That is a really, really bad mix for any sort of journalism that isn't strict opinion/editorial.
Add in the fact that these people are now working at getting information from companies who made the games that sparked this desire in the first place, and you have a real conflict of interest problem. You can't get objective analysis, because everyone is so bent on what their favorite genre is, or what type of art they like, or whether they think graphics are as important as sound or story or vice versa. The only real hack I've seen that's come close to working is IGN's system of just separating the fanboys and having them write on specific companies, but even then there's a problem because they then want to rate highly games they think will help their system of choice "win."
It's really a sorry state of affairs, and I'm happy that someone called them all on it.
I NEVER said game journalists were vultures. That was Next-Gen.Biz....they were talking about my blog entry when they said that. I swear, I didn't expect people to be so upset because I was asking for something I wanted (meatier game writing). To those offended- and it seems there have been a good amount- sorry if there are some folks who don't agree with my request. I didn't know having an opinion or desire contray to your own was so offensive. David
just go to www.gamerankings.com , they use multiple reviews to create an average, no bias there. is it just me or do reviews help you decide which games are good and which are not? or am i missing something here..