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Adverjournalism - The Role of Ad Dollars in Media
Gamer 2.0 writes "The Gamer 2.0 site has a look into the role of advertising in gaming journalism, with a few reflections especially topical given the Jeff Gerstmann controversy. From the article: 'It should come as no surprise that just about every gaming forum on the internet is ablaze right now following the news of GameSpot's termination of long-time editor, Jeff Gerstmann. This article, however, is not an exposé or look into what really happened at GameSpot this week. Rather, consider this a look at the direction of gaming journalism, advertising, and how this all plays a role in the content you read.'" There have been a few more developments in the situation since Thursday night, with rumours, scuttlebutt, analysis, and cynicism reigning on every message board from here to C|Net. There has even been a spontaneous act of solidarity from elsewhere in the games journalism field.
While we're at it, how about a solution to the other two big problems on tech and game journalism's part? Even The Register is starting to show cracks of laziness (and occasionally outright fanboyism) in their articles nowadays.
The dead tree media may not be perfect, but at least they do have one thing they can rightly claim over most tech and gaming journals online: they have and at least halfway adhere to a code of ethics and diligence.
There's a couple places online which still do at least some due diligence and hold onto their ethics (hexus.net comes to mind), but they're getting rare. Question is, how do you fix it (short of hunting down the paid-for/fanboy shitheads like, oh, Rob Enderle, and subjecting them to a public stoning)?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I'm a bit tired so pardon my rambling. I tried to make this post as coherent as possible.
I wonder if all these sites are bringing this issue to light to rake in more revenue through advertising a "hot topic"(TM). But let's game something straight:
Corruption in game journalism (if you can even call it that) is nothing new. I am disgusted because I cannot believe it's being brought up now, at this very moment, AFTER someone has been fired. That is to say, after something has happened which, *gasp*, shatters a gamers wild imagination that in a world controlled by money, game reviews are as well.
I've had a run-in with GameSpot a few years ago as well. I should have posted as AC but fuck it; bottom line is: GameSpot threatened to lower reviews because of an incident regarding a game who's demo was launched before their official premier. Yeah, it's a rather sad state of affairs. I've hated GameSpot ever since, but it seems like people were locked in to GS because it seemed like the only good place to get reviews -- that is to say, they didn't give a shit about my little story.
Well, I hope they realize it now, because it seems - a lot - of people dislike companies doing what companies do: try to stay alive.
It's rather obvious, but I do find it laughable. Honestly, GameSpot's website was covered in ads for a few years now -- and you are only bringing it's "corruption" to light NOW? What kind of a sick joke is this? Of course they are going to be paid off by game companies, they have ads all over their websites for christs sake. It's their source of income and they will do anything to defend it.
Including firing an employee, which I'm sure you're all familiar to companies doing, all the time. I wonder why this is any different.
Anyway, I didn't even bother reading the article (who would?) because it's clear it doesn't tell us anything new. It's the same old mindless rambling meant to rake in the dollars.
Speaking of which, today IGN posted their 100 Top Games List (or so I am led to believe it was today). I love their strategy: 1 game per page, 100 pages, and each one is full of ads. Have fun clicking the "next page" link guys!
Yeah this is no big surprise. Nor are the pieces with no new information surfing the outrage. However, there are good review sites out there and there is an easy test for them. Read the latest 10 reviews. If at least 2 aren't trashing the object of the review as junk, there just might be a bias somewhere. This is for games, tech, TVs, cars, food or whatever. If everything you see is fantastic, I don't want your opinion.
After a while of playing clone after clone after clone, you somehow get sick of games in general unless they're groundbreaking. Clones sell though because there will always be people new to playing video game, while you... the game reviewer become sick of the same ol same ol. Yes, payola is bad. But if you were an honest game reviewer, you could easily lapse into,"Man, this game is just like Un Squadron, which is just a better version of Gradius, which is just a better version of River Raid." And if I was a serious game reviewer, I'd probably write a tree of games, just so I could place any new game down on a new node, but inheriting the properties of the parent games. At least that's just my first thought. What does it take to be a real game reviewer if your goal isn't to get paid?
God spoke to me.
I actually read TFA, and it's basically the guy saying, "This happens all the time!" over and over. I'm not even being reductionist here:
"And let me be the first to come out and say that what happened to Jeff Gerstmann happens all the time." (Hmm, let's see. You're not "the first" by a long shot; Penny Arcade said the same thing days ago, and even then it was just reiterating a point they'd been making for YEARS, which was in fact so self-evident that ANYBODY paying attention to the industry was aware of it.)
"And if you look outside of the world of gaming, you will see this is not an isolated event; it happens in more mainstream forms of journalism, and I might add that this could be even seen as a sign of growth for our industry."
"As the industry grows, more money is circulated, and money begets corruption. It's a fact of life and it's a fact of capitalism; this is America after all."
Such ridiculous BS. Your "industry" is "burgeoning" at the exact time when it's becoming redundant and useless. If I want fluff-laden previews, game trailers, interviews with developers, and press releases, I have the friggin' Internet at my fingertips here; I don't need Gamespot to aggregate that stuff for me. In fact, the ONLY thing sites like Gamespot have to offer that I can't get somewhere else with far fewer annoying ads (and at least one less layer of crappy-journalistic obfuscation) is their professional reviews. That's the ONLY content worth having, and Gamespot just screwed it up.
I like the complaints about how things getting "big business" is inevitable. Why? A review is a few pages of plain text with a couple JPEG screenshots; hardly a bandwidth hog. To create that review, you need ONE guy who can string together legible prose and is willing to play a wide range of video games for hours on end. Is that really a hard niche to fill on the goddamned INTERNET? All this could easily be paid for with AdSense ads, which (by their very randomness) would pretty much prevent any kind of coercion, unless Google started making games.
I'm just waiting for the Penny Arcade guys or someone else with enough "e-credibility" among gamers to start pimping a site like that. A huge influx of gamers would at least check it out, along with plenty of linking from reputable sites, which would lead to a high Google rating, and before you know it, LegitGameReviews.com is the top hit every time you type "$gamename review" into Google. Hell, there are probably a dozen sites like that around already that I just don't know about - anyone wanna help me out here?
Actually a long time prior to this--I wasn't really all that clued in; I just had a vague suspicion that magazine reviews were skewed somewhat. And then a few months ago I received my copy of PC Gamer that had Valve's "The Orange Box" plastered on the front cover with an exclusive review inside. I'd been anticipating this title for a while and I pretty much knew it was going to be pretty good based on Valve's track record. I got around to reading the review a few days later and figured that if it was already in a printed magazine then the game surely must be out on the store shelves. I decided I would go out later that day and buy the box. This was October 8th.
Guess what! When I went into the store looking for the game, I learned it wasn't due out yet for another couple of days! With a slow sinking feeling I realized that there was no way a magazine that is planned months in advance would be able to review a retail copy of a game when the game's ship date is later than the magazine's. Had I known the ship date I probably would have spotted the disparity right away, but alas-- I knew it was some time in October and that was all. Hmmph. Anyway, in my mind, review = available for purchase while preview = early build not available to public. Since the game shipped on the 10th of October and I got my magazine on the 6th, the mag was probably finalized at least ten days earlier, say September 26. That "review" was written at least two whole weeks before the game was available for purchase, and I'm a damned sight sure that Best Buy hadn't been sitting on it since the end of September.
Sure, maybe PCG did get a pre-shipped retail copy reserved exclusively for the print media, and maybe it was all above-board in that respect, and thirdly yes I understand that "the big scoop" is what makes or breaks any periodical, especially those trying stupidly enough to compete with electronic media. But. This was just blatant, and I'm sure it wasn't the first time and won't be the last time something like this goes down...
Luckily for everyone involved, the game (or games I guess) turned out to be a smash success (and I have really grown attached to my weighted companion cube), otherwise we probably would have heard some negative press about this a while ago. Valve was lucky in that they knew that they were sitting on solid gold, and PC Gamer was lucky that they also knew this when they accepted Valve's big pile of cash for the review and magazine cover. This may all be obvious in retrospect, but I guess my cynicism towards "the man" is still in the growing stages (dangit. I've cultivated it for a number of years now, how didn't I spot this?) I'm walking away from this whole experience feeling kind of duped and disheartened and I don't think I'll be renewing my PC Gamer subscription again. Or GFW. Or MaxPC. Or, now, buying anything produced by Ziff Davis.
Growing up sucks. Disillusionment sucks. Rampant and obvious greed sucks. I guess I'm starting to fall in the demographic that has learned that all advertizing is crap so maybe, hopefully I'll be able to spot it more easily in the future when it masquerades as legitimate journalism. Time to tune my filters I guess; all the while it will be interesting to watch how this unfolds--I'm just sad to finally realize that I've been not only blind to it but also a part of it for so long.
Cheers~
There is simply too much glass..
PA's coverage has been great. What I find amusing is the fact that anyone is remotely surprised by any of this. Perhaps it's my own experience in the industry (I reviewed games for a living for several years, and I too lost my job because of an unfavourable review I gave a particular title. This was five years ago), but the sheer surprise so many people seem to be experiencing over this is just staggering. How could people not see this is the case? In an industry that relies on whoring itself to the games developers and publishers, why is everyone so surprised that someone up and got pimp slapped? Is it just because it was such a notable name this time? Because that I could understand. But if it's shock and surprise at a writer losing his job because he dared upset an advertiser... Then you've clearly been living under a rock.
He was not the first (and I certainly wasn't either) nor will he be the last. The entire reviewing industry is corrupt. Anyone paying attention knows this. Some groups are more corrupt than others, certainly, but this is not news. Certainly no more so than "the sun rose in the east today".