Game Publishers Contribute To Bad Journalism

AmpedIGO writes "1up editor-in-chief Sam Kennedy finally decided to comment on the ongoing discussion of games journalism. The interesting twist is that Kennedy's comments don't revolve around 'editorial integrity,' but rather delves deep into one of the issues that game journalists have known about for quite some time: developers and publishers don't help. 'That all said, I find our industry's reluctance to actually help push journalism forward a mighty shame. I can't tell you the number of times I've worked on potentially incredible stories that just fell apart because of the uncooperativeness from a publisher. Perhaps this speaks to Aaron's editorial in some manner, but it seems as though a lot of companies are simply reluctant to give you access to their talent unless it's directly tied to the promotion of a game.'"

Comments

Journalism requires cooperation? Huh?!

[potus98]

> I can't tell you the number of times I've worked on potentially incredible stories that just fell apart because of the uncooperativeness from a publisher.

Assuming "publisher" refers to a game publisher... Since when were the subjects of journalism required to cooperate on a story? The mainstream media (I hate that term) have been publishing solid, thought-provoking stories for hundreds of years -and not always with the cooperation of their subjects.

Assuming "publisher" refers to a game magazine publisher... Since when were the publishers of journalism required to cooperate on a story? Many journalists have been publishing solid, thought-provoking stories for hundreds of years -and not always with the cooperation of publishers- thanks to the Internet, copy machine flyers, and printing press pamphlets.

Re:Journalism requires cooperation? Huh?!

[iocat]

Disclaimer: I used to edit a videogame magazine, and I currently work at a videogame company (and I didn't RTFA; just commenting on the comments).

You are being far too hard on the 1up guy, and it could come from a lack of understanding. Sure, a game journalist could forgoe the publisher cooperation and call up a game developer directly to talk about something. But its extremely unlikely the developer is going to say ANYTHING unless the contact (if not the content) is approved by the publisher. Doing so could totally screw up the marketing plan -- really hurting your game's sales -- piss off the publisher, and no smart developer wants to do either of those things.

Plus, a lot of developers are afraid of game journalists. Despite the best journalistic intentions, errors sometimes creep in, the writer may not understand the context of a comment, the developers are (almost always) bound by multiple NDAs that cover different things, the developer may have trouble articulating himself -- all these things combine to make many, many developers feel much more comfortable when contact with journalists goes through PR people, at the publisher.

This comment doesn't go any way towards addressing the merits of the original article, just wanted to point out that it isn't like political reporting: in large part, journalists do require publisher cooperation to get good access to developers.

Having now read the article, I can further say that once a publisher cooperates in getting access to the team, there's also little a game journalist can do if the team blows it by not doing a good job answering the questions! That's irresponsible to the marketing effort for the game and disrepectful to readers and fans.