The Craft of the Graft

Joe Markert writes "Gamehelper.com's Mike 'Vansau' Thompson takes a look at integrity and graft in the world of gaming journalism in his recent article, appropriately titled: Integrity: The Craft of the Graft From the article, '...it's easy to play the card of honesty, objectivity, and moral nobility when you have the financial backing of a major publisher like Ziff Davis or IDG. Without that support, though, the thought of advertisers threatening to take their business elsewhere creates valid concern.'" A follow up to Dan Hsu's editorial about pay-for-play in game reviews.

Comments

True across other industries

[MBraynard]

It is nearly impossible to get an objective or head-to-head review of triathlon gear from either of the two major publications - Inside Triathlon or Triathlete Magazine.

The latest example was a review of the latest wetsuits. No word on what they thought was best - nor were there any negative words about ANY of them. Absolutly useless.

And as you flip through the magazines - over half advertising - you never find a negative word about any equipment.

There are a lot of debates between the lower-weight versus better aerodynamics for bikes - but they NEVER do a head to head to show which bike is tops. Does that have something to do with not ever wanting to say something bad about the people paying for three of the four covers on the magazine?

This is probably less of an issue for the gaming zines in question. Do GOOD reviews with GOOD articles and snappy writing and people will go to you - and let the adword-types pay your bills. The more savage a reviewer is known to be, the more readers he tends to have, and the advertising services of Google/Yahoo/MS don't care what you say about them or their games (in the case of MS - hell, they even advertise here on hashpot, home of the MS Haters).