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.

This is ridiculous

[Irish_Samurai]

I have never heard a journalist whine that their sources weren't cooperative as a justification for why they are mostly advertainment.

The real problem is the underlying business model, if you need advertising to generate revenue you're going to leave out stories and content that has the most journalistic integrity in favor of profitable material. That's just a fact of life. That having been said, don't try to defend the position as something else.

Journalists must posess a certain amount of leverage in order to get sources to talk, video game media doesn't have that leverage. What are they going to do, tell a publisher that they won't print a story about thier product in their magazine? Hideo Kojima would laugh that shit off in a second. Go ahead and take the loss in sales that month while I give exclusives to the competition.

Game publications have no leverage in the game world other than the review section, and even that is pretty minute and after the fact. Until a publication gains the subscription base to influence the market, getting good content will be an uphill battle. Unfortunately, alot of publishers think the way to get that base is by serving up content using demographic information - which causes a catch 22. How do you gain credibility and market influence when the only way to do it is by providing polished marketing fluff?

Peole like magazines like "US" because their trash, not because they're chock full of journalistic integrity. It's the same thing with video game mags. Publications with a percieved journalistic integrity will publish stories that will outright piss off the population with their content, but it will also cause the reader to think. All it takes is one game mag revealing a "travesty" in the gaming world to gain this type of credibility. They have passed on multiple opportunities (EA and the NFL; Jack Thompson) because they didn't want to loose advertising revenue or the ability to do reviews (EA).

Someone is going to have to grow a pair and lay it out there.

I don't frequent 1up because I don't like discussions consisting of "OMG! did u c the l8est scrns?" But, I do subscribe to OPM and their reviews tend to be pretty accurate and uninfluenced, so I think they're trying. Yet the harshest stance I could see on the EA and NFL was "It could stifle improvements and innovation." No shit. How about coming to the defence of the industry as a whole and calling EA out as the profit driven asses they are, then maybe a smaller game studio would see that you care about the industry in a more mature manner than fanboyism and would probably grant you some never before seen level of access. Rinse and repeat until you have leverage in the industry as an agent of journalsim.

Unfortunately this will never happen until a publisher decides to sacrifice short term profits for long term gain.