What Mainstream Media Think of Gaming

John Callaham writes "Video and PC games are a multi-billion dollar entertainment industry. So why don't they get the attention of movies or TV? FiringSquad interviews several members of the mainstream media, including reporters from Time, USA Today, Entertainment Weekly and more, to find the answers and see how journalism will cover games in the future." From the article: "I guess all I'd add is that gaming journalism is at a very interesting place right now. There are still a lot of people who are suspicious of games, and who don't understand their appeal, and there's an opportunity for people who write about games, if they do it well enough, to bridge that gap, and make games interesting to people who don't get them yet."

Comments

One Reason

[Rydia]

The sad and pathetic state of the "games media." Mainstream media likes to deal with a certain level of what they collectively define as professionalism; proper sourcing, investigation past press releases, no rumormongering, staying out of bed with the subject. Now, that sure as heck isn't always adhered to, but in the "games media," it's almost never adhered to. People reprint press releases, rampant speculation, and in almost all cases play favorites. Journalists talk to each other. To whom is a TIME reporter going to talk to about games? Kotaku? IGN? Joystiq? IGN separates their writers based on what company-based bias they have. Joystiq revoked an internet poll they themselves put up for discussion because they disagreed with the results. Kotaku is amusing, but rough around the edges and doesn't exactly reek of credibility. EGM and its ilk share similar problems. The only group I can think of that would qualify would be Magic Box, but I'm still not convinced that the site isn't just a giant spider script (which would explain a great deal about the write-ups that they do print.

That said, for stories that they can simply go it alone with, such as interviews, overviews of systems or financials, the mainstream media does a servicable job. TIME's article on Nintendo's new direction the day before E3 (in addition to having the first good set of Wii screens) was the best I saw before or during the show. It's just that there's not a whole lot of news to go around, and getting the extra news to fill in the gaps requires either rampant speculation or dealing with "unprofessional" people. To be quite frank, I don't blame them.

Re:One Reason

[cgenman]

Not to point fingers, but when developers that I work at have been interviewed by the press, generally the gaming press gets things right and the mainstream press is the one that doesn't fact check. Gems have included referring to us as "The publisher" (we're the developer), "The guys who made the music" (outsourced), the guys who were just bought by Activision (our publisher did that). We've been accused of making other people's games, of making games for platforms that had died before we were around, or the game not having features that it did, or running on PC hardware that hadn't been released yet, etc.

The frustrating thing about all of the above examples, is that in all but one case the person doing the interview had been told everything correctly, they just completely mis-remembered it and didn't review their notes... at all.

Game journalism isn't professional in that their writing style is frequently juvenile and bass, but at least they generally get the facts straight. "Real" journalists don't seem to think that stories about videogames are worth even the most cursory of fact checks.

Should we care?

[vertinox]

Think about it like this...

The video game and computer game industry make more money than TV and movies combined.

But the porn industry makes more money than the TV, Music, and video game industry combined.

Yet we don't hear mainstream media talking about porn all that often other than the "Think of the children!" diatribes by hotair pundits.

Re:Should we care?

[Chainsaw]

But the porn industry makes more money than the TV, Music, and video game industry combined.

Can we please stop the lies about the porn industry, please? All of the porn industry combined doesn't really make that much money. Try to name one company in the porn industry that is within the Fortune 500. You can't, because there is none.

Hate to break it to you, but the porn industry isn't bigger than Haliburton.

Re:Can't Wait Until the Boomers Retire

[crunch_ca]

Bah, my mom is in her 70s and finished Baldur's Gate (and Baldur's Gate II). She's now trying her hand at slash'em.

There are always exceptions to the rule..., or in other words, all generalizations are false.

How about the freaking BBC!

[Anonymous Coward]

"To whom is a TIME reporter going to talk to about games?"

They could try the BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2207229.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5040188.stm
The BBC even does events in Second Life, they are ridiculously online-savvy.

Or the Guardian (one of the most serious UK papers):
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/games/

p.s. the dedicated games press does all the rampant speculation stuff because it's what their readers want! I was interested in all the articles about how Nintendo's Revolution (before the Wii name and controller details came out) was going to have a VR interface with your brainstem and be capable of showing love.

Re:Can't Wait Until the Boomers Retire

[aichpvee]

Here's a hint: when playing card games, you're looking at the other people, and frequently talking about things.

When playing video games, you're just involved directly in the game with little to no social interaction.

Then you're playing the wrong games. Or more likely, not playing the right ones. Or most likely, not playing any at all. There are tons of multiplayer games that are either single screen or split screen that are a blast to play with friends and encourage a lot of social interaction. Some of them even require it.

I don't personally find playing online "social", and definitely not on public servers. But a buddy of mine plays online against his old roommates as a way of hanging out with them when he can't just pop down the street to hang out since they live two states away. Seems a whole lot more social than using the phone if you ask me, and I somehow doubt you'd label using the telephone "anti-social".

Here's a hint: you don't get it, just like most everyone else. Even (especially?) most of the kids who'd claim that they do.

Thoughs

[Lifelike]

I would say it has more to do with the movie and TV industry being OVERhyped relative to games rather than the inverse. At the supermarket yesterday every single magazine I could see had Angelena on the cover.

And I think a major rationale behind movies and games being so strongly hyped is that the actor/celebrity is so much more than the role that s/he plays. The mags these days don't talk exclusively about the current star's acting, they talk just as much if not more about said actor's glamorous life. People read the magazines to have a taste of stardom and fantasize what they would do if they were as glorious as the stars. Videogames don't offer that about their characters, their limited to the world of the game. There's no profit to be had hyping the (probably not-tremendously-glamorous) videogame celebs, so they don't.