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Rest In Print, Gaming Journalism
Phaethon360 writes "The film industry, the music industry and the gaming industry — three factions of entertainment in the grasp of a vicious and unbridled tyrant. The internet is a toddler with a handgun, and its whims shall be met — and with great abandon. It can be a source of great wealth or utter failure. But what's striking is the fact that no one seems to be taking the necessary precautions to ensure a smooth and prosperous transition. I'm talking, of course, about doing away with the middle man; the gaming magazine."
Dan Amrich, former editor of OXM, recently argued the other side of this issue, saying that game-related print media doesn't get the respect it deserves for breaking stories earlier than online media, and for not just waiting "until the information came to them, in the form of a PR release and a video." A related piece at GameSetWatch suggests that the print media is doing a decent job of undercutting itself through unsustainably-low subscription fees.
I'm unfamiliar with OXM, but if they were of average quality, then that's not saying much at all, and usually online sources were superior at that time.
(Of course, they kept sending these which were unsolicited for a year, then sent a bill. After being told they'd sent it to us unsolicited mail sent to us through the US Postal Service and to shove off, they did, suggesting that they employed that tactic on others. So they were probably higher on the slimey scale than most.)
Gaming journalism has long been dead by any traditional standard of "journalism". I worked in games nearly ten years ago, and even then, reviews were easily influenced by ad revenue, "exclusive" deals and such. Some magazines put on a show claiming they weren't like the others, but everyone knew that was a scam.
The game I worked on became "game of the month" in Germany's largest gaming magazine solely because we threw in a pile of merchandise they could use for a raffle. We didn't come up with the idea, the magazine did.
With this kind of conduct increasingly apparent even ten years ago, the only thing that surprises me about this is how this sham has been shambling on. But there are enough other branches of worthless journalism (i.e. men's and women's magazines which recycle the bulk of their material every two years), so go figure.
blow your mind already
I stopped reading gaming mags/sites years ago, too many puff-pieces for vapourware, or people telling me I'd be sooo much more competitive if I just spent loadsamoney on their hardware. Instead; I tried asking real people what games they played, how well it played, and if online play was fun or just a button-twitch fest.
You might find Rock Paper Shotgun refreshing, then.
Pirate Party UK
Funny that,
having picked up an Xbox 360 at the weekend, now they're not supposed to crash or die much, I got an Official Xbox Mag (UK) just to see what was what...
Apart from being thinner than a steamrollered snake, it seemed to have lost interest and heart in the subject matter. Most of the writers seem to be the same old faces from way back, so perhaps gaming mags need to cull their staff and hire the keen young web-types to inject some enthusiasm.
But, overall - I didn't find anything new in the mag that I couldn't read online, so (despite their claims for exclusives) mags seem to have no purpose.
Caveat - it is summer so there's less newsy stuff about
If he's the Walrus then can I be a penguin please?
I used to read PC Gamer until I got sick of it getting thinner and thinner, while the price went up and up and the amount of crap on the coverdisc multiplied. Now I read GamesTM (UK mag) and it's pretty good- it feels like it's written for adults, which is bloody refreshing in a games mag.
(No, I don't work for them, just pointing out that it's not all as bad as PC Gamer!)
And accurate or not, I'm not sure we should be thrilled to see the most pompous and tenuous form of new media preaching to the converted on the death of the old media.
It all seems like everyone jumped the shark shortly after PC Gamer's Coconut Monkey became an interactive video on the attached CD-ROM.
Some of the demos were okay, but most were blindingly atrocious, with more and more of the disc being taken up by Coconut Monkey easter eggs and such. That was around 1996?
Computer Gaming World, and most other magazines equally rapidly became less and less about information, and increasingly about the tepid sales pitch and promo tie-ins.
But, someone might as well call time of death on the notion of print media covering games, particularly PC games.
People want to actually get their hands on games. Gamers are getting more jaded with release after release of blatant shovelware, most of which needed at least another year of fully funded development (cough, EA, cough).
Almost everyone knows by now, most of the trailers, screenshots, and even occasionally demos (although demos are RARE nowadays) are all carefully staged to make something look awesome, but in the end, it's a 1/10 POS.
Despite making profits that make non-casual gamers turn mauve in disgust, game companies are having trouble selling the flaming piles they have almost-exclusively in recent years. If nobody produces truly good, inspiringly made games, nobody's going to want to read about it, either. That's kinda like adding Director's Commentary to Tom Arnold comedies. Nobody wants to listen to commentary about something that's akin to self-harm.
Print magazines have been on the decline for a long time, but it's been the canary in the coalmine as far as quality vs. quantity in the gaming industry goes. Now you've got a dead canary, and the miners can't be arsed to fix any gas leaks before they all suffocate.
"A Goddess rarely smiles for she is forced by others to be an island unto herself." - Zephiris
Maybe it's just me, but I can't help thinking that's an excellent premise for a game...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I think I got stung by the cancellation of like 3 gaming mags, each worst than the last, when I actually tried to subscribe to one. So I gave up for awhile.
Then, after the third month in a row, buying this "Edge" magazine deal from the UK for like $18.95 at Chapters, I finally pulled the trigger and subscribed. (expensive still but a lot cheaper than chapters)
Worth a shot if you're on this side of the pond and looking for something to read on the crapper!
Edge is the best gaming magazine I've read in years, it reminds me of the old Next Gen, but is probably better than that. You get previews where they, GASP, actually dare to say a game looks like it's probably going to suck. The reviews are well done, and they seem to use the full 1-10 scale. Plus you get long interesting articles on a variety of game industry stuff; retrospectives of older games, in depth looks at various game houses etc.
And it's actually more than a 10 page flyer! And not stuffed with ads.
It's just so expensive (like $80-$90 per year in Canada), but on the other hand it's pretty much the only mag I buy.
Let's face it, why did we read game mags. To see what new games hit the market? Ok, true, to some degree. But be blunt and honest here, we wanted to know how to spend those 50 or 100 bucks we had per month. What games are worth our dough? If you can only buy one or maybe two games a month, you have to make a selection. Back in the days, often getting a "trial" wasn't easy (no internet, you whippersnappers!), if you got one it was, you guessed it, bundled on a CD with a game mag. And even then, what does a preview show you? That yes, it has spiffy graphics and that you don't go nuts immediately at the crappy interface, but what trial gave you more than 3-4 hours of gameplay? And pretty much any game is fun after just 3-4 hours. Even Spore was.
So we relied on experienced, hardcore gamers to sift through the pits of rubbish to unearth the gem or two that this month held in stores for us. The one or two gems a month that we would spend our pittance... I mean, allowance on.
And what did we get, more and more often as time went on? Overhyped crap, that had flashy graphics, no doubt here, but games that looked great... on paper. Choppy animations, horrible bugs (and try to get patches, still no internet you young'uns!) and a general feeling of being ... fuck, you've been ripped off! By the company that released this cheesy, half-baked excuse of a game, but also by the game mag that gave this turd stellar reviews. What the (censored to protect the squeamish)???
Later, when I went into writing, I learned that the whole biz is a lot of "scratch my back, scratch your back". You gimme good reviews, I give you exclusive material. You gimme sneak previews, I don't talk about the glaring bugs. You gimme free samples, I give you a review that doesn't make your material look like the pile of turd that it is. I'll even photoshop your graphics a little...
That's also why you can't find any "bad" reviews anymore. When was the last time you saw a game getting a score of 50 or lower (on a, theoretical, 0-100 scale)? A 60 already means "reeks like my old running shoes". Back in the days, before it got turned in the complete joke it is today (read: When you could at least assume that there were non-payola reviews), a review of 90+ meant that this is gold, an epic piece, a milestone that will be the measuring stick for the next decade. A 80+ was a good game, worth the dough. 60+ was still good, if it was your genre you could still get that. A 40+ at least meant that it would be ok if it was in the bargain bin and you had those odd 10 bucks to throw at something. Around 20, you found really stinkers, often included for kicks or to find the "lemon of the month".
Today, 90+ is the standard for A material games. No top level studio title will ever get anything but a 90+ rating unless it's really bincrap. 80+ is fairly good, 70+ could possibly be considered if you're a fan and stay the hell away from anything getting a rating with a 6 as the first digit. No, I'm not talking about reviews below the 60s. It's moot. The simply DO NOT exist.
And here's where the internet comes in. The internet is brutal. Unforgiving. People who do not get paid and thus have no interest at all to pull punches. They will shower you with praise if you should get it, but they will cover you in rubbish if you deserve it, too. Of course, you're dealing with another form of payola today: Paid reviews that push the "review meter" this way or the other.
Still, it's much harder to silence (or pay) a few thousand voices than to nudge a single one in the "right" direction. And that's why online review pages take over. Credibility. As odd as it may sound, but yes, a few thousand anonymous amateurs are more credible and reliable than a single expert. At least when it comes to opinions and taste.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I've been part of the 'gaming media' for nearly 20 years now, writing game reviews occasionally for print magazines, but mostly for websites.
My take is that gaming magazines miss their target completely.
Firstly, gaming magazines are nothing more than previews, reviews, and columns. When's the last time you opened a gaming magazine and actually saw a STORY about UI developments, the moral stance in violent videogames, or something that wasn't a poorly-camouflaged (if they bother) extended preview of something in development? Frankly, it would not be a bad move for a gaming magazine to publish the sort of thing that is on Gamasutra, as some of those articles are in-depth, technical, and worthy of mental digestion, instead of just extended adverts?
Second, their credibility is universally shot. In the real world of journalism, there's at least some degree of credibility to the print media (although that's fading too), with formal fact-checking offices and editors that review the stories for meaning in value. Gaming mags ape the worst habits of the cheapest websites. Their review scales (1-10, stars, whatever) are meaningless, as games fall clearly into three categories: the uber-mega hit, the merely interesting, or the scapegoat category. Their scores will be (on a 1-100 scale) 97+, 89-96, or 50 or lower, respectively. Generally the whole thing is a quiet circle-jerk, where the gaming companies provide free games and buy copious advertising space, while the magazines quietly agree to make sure that the review is generally good but in any case always contains a few hyperbolic quotes that are good for box text. There are a *few* games that even the publishers regard as stinkers, and are so obviously bad, they serve as useful 'credibility' anchors, because pretty much everyone agrees to pile on and downrate it, so there's no danger of a publisher/developer getting their feelings particularly hurt. You might think that mags could buy their titles, but this would put them MONTHS behind their peers, who all get pre-release gold copies for their reviews. They are already hostage to their print schedules, distribution, etc which handicaps them in breaking any new information vs. websites.
Third, even if the reviews are genuine, the nature of reviewing is personal and very subjective. I'd suggest that most gamers browse reviewers widely, until they land on a handful that seem to mirror their own opinions closely enough. There is a quite natural advantage to websites that can be hotlinked, browsed widely, and cost nothing to sample widely (they're not really free, you as a gamer are paying a microtransaction in every game purchase to subsidize the free review games and advertising fees, but it's nearly invisible).
Fourth, in regards to pretty much any modern game aside from Dwarf Fortress, a huge selling point of any game is the graphics. Websites can simply link a screenshot, and you can see what the game will look like at full resolution (boo to the retarded game sites that display their graphics in some sort of non-capturable popup so this is impossible). That's tremendously important to most players who either want to see the pretty flashes and chrome, or have a more tangible question about whether the UI is readable, etc. Magazines are stuck with (good resolution but) usually smaller than 4x6 images, which simply can't carry the details. Websites can also carry video clips which SHOW gameplay (boo again to the websites that accept the bullshit cutscene videos which show neither actual gameplay nor game resolution).
Finally, there's the matter of space: while editorial review is a good thing (don't ever let my editors hear me say that), magazine editors are more about the chopping than the refining. A good editor helps a writer be more succinct and convey their points more clearly. Magazines like all print media have a zero-sum hard cap on the amount of space stories can take up - if a game is alloted 18 column-inches, or 750 words, or whatever, that can't be changed with
-Styopa
I've been reading gaming magazines for nearly 20 years now and can confidently say that they have been very informative overall. Unlike most websites which regurgitate press releases, magazine editors build relationships with game developers and are invited to visit their offices to get their hands on alpha builds or deathmatches with the team. They then go back to the office where they put their professional writing skills and industry experience to proper use.
Games journalism is unquestionably real journalism. It covers news about an industry I care about, and it acts as consumer reviews of expensive products that I will buy or avoid based on their comments.
Plus it's something to read on the can.
magazine editors build relationships with game developers
I'd rather read the thoughts of someone who developed a relationship with the game, not the developer. Of course, that takes time but that's ok with me. Just like any other media, our understanding of its quality matures as time goes by.
Plus it's something to read on the can.
Reading on the toilet increases your risk of hemorrhoids. Just do your business and leave.
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