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

Can't Wait Until the Boomers Retire

[Slider451]

And let the Gen-Xer's cover games. Generations that didn't grow up on games just don't get them, and don't want to get them.

Re:Can't Wait Until the Boomers Retire

[0racle]

You might want to give up that teenage angst one day, there's nothing to 'get' about video games. The answer to why games aren't covered the same way as TV or movies is quite simple. They aren't TV shows or movies. Shocking isn't it? There is no big star to know the intimate details of or be called this seconds sexiest man or woman. You don't go out for an evening to sit back and watch a movie, or spend a quiet night at home watching something. You don't have to do anything to enjoy a movie or TV show and the reviewer of them had the same experience that you did. It's not like that with a game, unless the game was so poorly done as to give the player no control over either the characters or the outcome of events.

Re:Can't Wait Until the Boomers Retire

[rholliday]

Bullshit. "Boomers" get video games just fine. They're just like any other non-sports game, just they involve a TV. If you get card games, if you get board games, you get video games. The fact that it is apparently acceptable to spend upwards of $600 and spend hours playing video games, that one is a little harder to stand. I don't play Monopoly because it takes too long to play. I can't imagine spending hours playing the same video game. The whole anti-social aspect of games (no, online doesn't count) is also confusing - half the point behind games is to be sociable with other people.

Way to prove his point. Card game and board games have little to do with most video games, beyond the fact that you need your brain to play.

As for the social aspect, how is playing video games (online or otherwise) any less social than staring at the TV, or going to the movies, or playing cards, for that matter? Four of my friends around the poker table is just as social as those same four around the XBox.

Ummm..

[Dutchmaan]

""Video and PC games are a multi-billion dollar entertainment industry. So why don't they get the attention of movies or TV?"

Aren't they making a movie out of World of Warcraft? Perhaps they are getting to the point of popularity that movies and TV ARE starting to take an interest.

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.

Because it needs 5-10 more years

[suv4x4]

Video and PC games are a multi-billion dollar entertainment industry. So why don't they get the attention of movies or TV?

First, who the heck concluded it doesn't get enough attention. I'd say it gets enough attention, notice the E3 coverage on Internet... And there we get to the point.

TV and Movies have been here for over 70 years, part of our culture. If something is on TV, "it gets enough attention".. Aparently TV is shown on TV, and movies are shown on TV and cinemas as well.

We're used to considering what's on TV "important". The fact that thousands of online media followed who sneezes at E3, is a lot less important.

Conclusion: we just need some more time so that Internet truly becomes a respected mainstream media to non-techies, where "important" stuff can happen. Gaming is the same. Give it more time, let the gamers grow some more.

Article in a Sentence

[Kesch]

The mainstream media doesn't write much about games because it doesn't appeal much to a mainstream audience.

Slashdot

[soft_guy]

Are you trying to tell me that Slashdot isn't the mainstream media??

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?

[edunbar93]

Two things: There's a big difference between net profits and gross sales. They're talking about gross sales. That's the amount of money that we the public spend on the products they produce. A $7 movie ticket is a wee bit smaller than an $80 game. Thus you need 1/10 the audience to produce the same sales numbers.

Second, there's kind of a fake-out, like how the porn industry can rake in as much in sales as the "mainstream" movie industry. How many movie studios are there left? There's about 3 or 4 big ones left after all the mergers. How many porn producers are there? Thousands. Heck, tens of thousands. Porn is cheap to make, and many thousands of titles are released every year. How many game studios are there that make the biggest hits? Dozens of big players like Sony, Nintendo, and EA, and at least hundreds of smaller ones like Pandemic, ID and Ubisoft.

Blurb

[Mitaphane]

That blurb is misleading; it sounds as if the article is talking about how the video game medium is represented in other media like TV and film. The topic is how the gaming industry is covered by the big news media(e.g. CNN, Wall Street Journal, etc.) compared to other entertainment industries that make just as much money as the video game industry.

The underlying assumption here is that if the gaming industry makes as much money as the movie industry it should be covered in the news as much as that other industry. Of course that's not the whole picture. People in big media report things that are important, but they also have to report things that people want to hear about. There is a huge audience that want to hear what Brad Pitt's new movie is, who's playing in the World Cup today, what Microsoft's business plans for future are, and what is going on in Capital Hill. The audience that wants to hear what John Carmack's new game engine will do is small.

Also, just because the gaming industry makes as much money as the movie industry doesn't mean it reaches as many people. The entry level cost to get into gaming is much higher. The learning curve is much steeper too, especially if you've never grown up with videogames. However, the time that can be spent on game(vs. a book, movie, or tv show) is much higher. In short, gaming has a significantly-sized, time-dedicated audience compared to other entertainment media; however, other media have a much larger audience and probably always will(unless you make video gaming cheaper and easier to learn). Thus, the gaming industry will never be covered in big news media as much as other entertainment industries.

About time

[Municipa]

I have become increasingly concerned that mainstream media's opinions on things were not getting enough attention. Thanks, slashdot, for at long last shining a spotlight on the mainstream media's take on gaming.