Gaming Journalists Make No Damn Sense

[Dreiko]

In a way, I don't know if I see the point in game journalists anymore. You can get so many opinions from actual gamers on YouTube that they are kind of obsolete. No idea why people continue to read and watch their stuff. I guess they are trying to appeal to very casual gamers that don't want to do the research and aren't interested in a game that plays like a challenge and just want some easy entertainment.

I just don't see why you can't have actual gamers whose skill is worth respecting be the journalist. The issue is a lot of failed writers end up doing this work and those people weren't passionate about gaming or they'd be streamers or pro gamers or something instead of getting writing or journalism schooling.


There needs to be a system where you get mechanical education in the genres you wanna report about and there should be a diploma of skill that you can stick to your reviews like those old gold Nintendo stickers to mark your review for quality. In South Korea they have gaming coaches so it could be a thing here too to have a specific skill barometer and have people deemed skilled enough for their opinions to hold more weight than that of the average dude.


As it is now, we're just expected to treat those people as though they have the gold sticker, we're supposed to treat them as experts. Experts! When they're below average. So when there's huge disparity between this false advertising we're being sold and reality, you have the angry reactions that you see.



As for the uber-casuals, they'd just go on twitch or on youtube and watch gameplay. They'd listen to their favorite streamer's opinion. They don't need journalism for this job. This is only useful for some hypothetical older person who is also a casual but who isn't into streaming or youtube culture at all and needs his Walter Chronkite to tell him if the next call of duty is good or not. There really are not a lot of that type of people out there.

 

[dscross]

I just don't see why you can't have actual gamers whose skill is worth respecting be the journalist. The issue is a lot of failed writers end up doing this work and those people weren't passionate about gaming or they'd be streamers or pro gamers or something instead of getting writing or journalism schooling.


There needs to be a system where you get mechanical education in the genres you wanna report about and there should be a diploma of skill that you can stick to your reviews like those old gold Nintendo stickers to mark your review for quality. In South Korea they have gaming coaches so it could be a thing here too to have a specific skill barometer and have people deemed skilled enough for their opinions to hold more weight than that of the average dude.


As it is now, we're just expected to treat those people as though they have the gold sticker, we're supposed to treat them as experts. Experts! When they're below average. So when there's huge disparity between this false advertising we're being sold and reality, you have the angry reactions that you see.



As for the uber-casuals, they'd just go on twitch or on youtube and watch gameplay. They'd listen to their favorite streamer's opinion. They don't need journalism for this job. This is only useful for some hypothetical older person who is also a casual but who isn't into streaming or youtube culture at all and needs his Walter Chronkite to tell him if the next call of duty is good or not. There really are not a lot of that type of people out there.

I'm not even sure if I'd class either movie or game reviews as more than just opinions rather than proper journalism generally tbh. They can tell you about mechanics etc but more gamers seem to be able to do that these days. You can also try and be objective but so much is dependent on individual enjoyment that you might as well just get varied opinions online from content creators who aren't professionals but are passionate about them.

I used to work in journalism. They teach you to have principles like ensuring you write about what's in the public interest for people to know etc. While news usually doesn't end up being put out there without bias these days in the national press (because of ulterior motives from editors), journalism is SUPPOSED to give you an objective look at things that are in the public interest. Is it still in the public interest if you can find out what games are like from a million different perspectives easily from people who probably know more about it than journos? Can game reviews ever be objective anyway? You can find out about new games from everyone and their mum now so it just seems pointless having journalists tell you what to think when they are usually not as good as non-professionals at knowing the genre that they love.

 

[Dreiko]

I'm not even sure if I'd class either movie or game reviews as more than just opinions rather than proper journalism generally tbh. They can tell you about mechanics etc but more gamers seem to be able to do that these days. You can also try and be objective but so much is dependent on individual enjoyment that you might as well just get varied opinions online from content creators who aren't professionals but are passionate about them.

I used to work in journalism. They teach you to have principles like ensuring you write about what's in the public interest for people to know etc. While news usually doesn't end up being put out there without bias these days in the national press (because of ulterior motives from editors), journalism is SUPPOSED to give you an objective look at things that are in the public interest. Is it still in the public interest if you can find out what games are like from a million different perspectives easily from people who probably know more about it than journos? Can game reviews ever be objective anyway? You can find out about new games from everyone and their mum now so it just seems pointless having journalists tell you what to think when they are usually not as good as non-professionals at knowing the genre that they love.

So, the actual bill of goods we're sold is something like this:

"This person is an expert, they have played various hundreds of games more and at a higher level than the average person has, they can make references and talk about key factors the everyday person wouldn't begin to know about. Due to this, their opinion is more fully formed and carries more weight than your layman opinion, because you lack their vast chasms of experience and knowledge. While you may disagree with their feelings on a certain game, you still ought to at least respect their words, as they are those of your betters, those of experts!"

So when you realize that this person who you thought, but more importantly, behaves like, they know more than you do and is more important than you are, because they write on Kotaku and you're just a neckbeard playing final fantasy all day, in actuality is in possession of vastly lesser expertise than you are, yet still acts all haughty and presumes to tell you what their opinion is as though it's important, when in a just world they'd be begging you for your opinion, when you're in that set of circumstances, you can't help but be frustrated.

My approach was to simply ignore them and only very very rarely read some things as a form of entertainment, amusing myself with the ignorant, silly things they say about things they don't understand.

I can see how someone else may be more of an angry person and take to the internets to rage about them publicly every time they write something dumb but I tend to just shake my head and move off. Though I admit I did have a strong urge to say a few words at someone who complained about the story not making sense because he skipped the cutscenes in this one visual novel Srpg hybrid (tears to tiara 2).

I can see putting up as a negative "this game wasn't interesting to me so it made me wanna skip the story", that's fair. But "this game's story doesn't make sense if you skip a 2 hour chunk of cutscens" is the most infuriatingly unfair complaint I've ever read. You SKIPPED THE STORY, of course it won't make sense! Fuck me man.

 

[CriticalGaming]

I just want to reiterate what I've said, because I feel like there has been a lot of back and forth about a lot of things in this thread. As a result i want to clarify my opinion again, just so that ya'll can jump off of it I guess.

I don't care if a journalist finds a game too hard, or too easy, or whatever. My problem is journalists that post articles, that have no basis in gaming common knowledge. When you read an article like the original article linked in the thread, or the article about Cuphead's tutorial being too hard, I start to question these editors and webmasters or whoever is in charge of approving shit to appear on the website. Because they always read like they are coming from a person who has never picked up a video game controller in their life before. That's the problem I have because you would (as a reader) assume that the website you are getting reviews and video game news from would have a team of writers that were gaming fans in some respect.

Instead you have writers who are just.....I don't know.....taking a freelance gig to write about something they don't know anything about. Which doesn't make sense.

Look it's one thing if you want to write about your first gaming experience, so long as it is disclosed in the article. For example, "Dark Souls should not have been the first video game I ever tried." Or something like that. Because then when the writer expresses that the game is mindbogglingly too hard, the read already knows what to expect. But if you write an entire article about Dark Souls being hard, and it reads like the author clearly doesn't know their analog sticks from their d-pads, then you have a problem.

It ruins not only the crediblity of the writer, but also the website. Why do we all think Kotaku is a joke at this point? Because they've posted bullshit for so long that we all kind of expect it and I don't understand why they went down that road to deliberately allow for such nonsense.

Bottom line is this. If you are writing for a big named website about ANY subject, you should be expected to have a certain level of expertise in that subject.

You wouldn't have a sports writer on ESPN who doesn't watch sports. Right?

 

[Smithnikov]

....

I've been waiting for someone since time inmemorium to actually codify an iron clad system of determining who is qualified to talk about games and who isn't. Even if there's holes in your idea, sir, you have my gratitude for at least breaking ground.

Now if I can only do similar so that we can finally settle the "who is a REAL gamer and who isn't."

 

[Dreiko]

I've been waiting for someone since time inmemorium to actually codify an iron clad system of determining who is qualified to talk about games and who isn't. Even if there's holes in your idea, sir, you have my gratitude for at least breaking ground.

Now if I can only do similar so that we can finally settle the "who is a REAL gamer and who isn't."

Everyone's qualified to merely "talk" about games but these journalists aren't portraying themselves as "just another dude with an opinion as regular as that of everybody else", they're couching their "talk" in phantom expertise and speak from a place of authority. One needs to, yes, earn such status.


If everybody made it abundantly clear that they're just some random asshole talking about games and nobody should care more about what they have to say than they do about what their friend Bill has to say, there'd be no issue here.


The problem is that there's this air of expertise that causes people to expect someone to at the VERY least be more informed than they themselves are. Because if you're not then why would they want to hear what you have to say?

 

[Smithnikov]

Everyone's qualified to merely "talk" about games but these journalists aren't portraying themselves as "just another dude with an opinion as regular as that of everybody else", they're couching their "talk" in phantom expertise and speak from a place of authority. One needs to, yes, earn such status.


If everybody made it abundantly clear that they're just some random asshole talking about games and nobody should care more about what they have to say than they do about what their friend Bill has to say, there'd be no issue here.


The problem is that there's this air of expertise that causes people to expect someone to at the VERY least be more informed than they themselves are. Because if you're not then why would they want to hear what you have to say?

While we're at it, can we also do something similar for fighting games? Sick of people like LowTierGod, DarksydePhil and NetoTigr claiming they're masters of the craft without proof.

 

[Nick Calandra]

Everyone's qualified to merely "talk" about games but these journalists aren't portraying themselves as "just another dude with an opinion as regular as that of everybody else", they're couching their "talk" in phantom expertise and speak from a place of authority. One needs to, yes, earn such status.


If everybody made it abundantly clear that they're just some random asshole talking about games and nobody should care more about what they have to say than they do about what their friend Bill has to say, there'd be no issue here.


The problem is that there's this air of expertise that causes people to expect someone to at the VERY least be more informed than they themselves are. Because if you're not then why would they want to hear what you have to say?

I think "earning the status" is really just down to whether the audience chooses to accept that personality / writer. And a lot of times that really just comes down to whether the audience likes what the person is saying or not, because how much credibility do you really need to talk about video games?

Look at all the YouTubers that are out there that do deep dives into game design, but as soon as you show those videos to someone actually in game development, they'll tell you it's a bunch of nonsense, even if interesting coming from a "players" perspective. And even then it doesn't matter, if the audience finds what the person is saying interesting enough, they'll continue to consume it.

 

[CriticalGaming]

While we're at it, can we also do something similar for fighting games? Sick of people like LowTierGod, DarksydePhil and NetoTigr claiming they're masters of the craft without proof.

DSP is a master of nothing but debt. That dude is a giant piece of poison in the youtube/streaming community.

 

[CriticalGaming]

I think "earning the status" is really just down to whether the audience chooses to accept that personality / writer. And a lot of times that really just comes down to whether the audience likes what the person is saying or not, because how much credibility do you really need to talk about video games?

Look at all the YouTubers that are out there that do deep dives into game design, but as soon as you show those videos to someone actually in game development, they'll tell you it's a bunch of nonsense, even if interesting coming from a "players" perspective. And even then it doesn't matter, if the audience finds what the person is saying interesting enough, they'll continue to consume it.

I disagree. You need credibility in all things if you are putting your work out there as a source of opinion and news. The fact that you dismiss it like "who needs status in video games" is dismissive and disrespectful.

If you are in the news space of ANY subject, and are contributing in a formal capacity to a news/review site, then the readers deserve that you have some expertise in said subject. Youtubers are not officially members of the press out of the gate, any Youtuber who earns media badges at E3 or where ever EARNS credibility through the build up of an audience and sometimes not even then. Yes, anyone can put shit on Youtube, but not anyone can build audience or earn Media rights from publishing companies to report on their products in an official way.

Earning the status comes from writing or publishing videos that prove your expertise or knowledge and show your opinion comes from an informed place. And it comes from over time. Angry Joe didn't get his position in the Youtube space over night.

 

[Dreiko]

While we're at it, can we also do something similar for fighting games? Sick of people like LowTierGod, DarksydePhil and NetoTigr claiming they're masters of the craft without proof.

Nobody who is anybody thinks these people are masters. Hell I've never even heard of this tiger person before. They may have their cliques filled with sycophants (or more realistically people who enjoy watching the train wreck with morbid fascination) but popularity isn't the same as prestige.

They're basically not laughing with them but at them.

I think "earning the status" is really just down to whether the audience chooses to accept that personality / writer. And a lot of times that really just comes down to whether the audience likes what the person is saying or not, because how much credibility do you really need to talk about video games?

Look at all the YouTubers that are out there that do deep dives into game design, but as soon as you show those videos to someone actually in game development, they'll tell you it's a bunch of nonsense, even if interesting coming from a "players" perspective. And even then it doesn't matter, if the audience finds what the person is saying interesting enough, they'll continue to consume it.

What you're talking about is not journalism. It's blogging. You're a videogame blogger. You have a fanbase and they like your personality and takes and want to hear what you think. Cool. You're an influential blogger. Not a damn journalist lol.

I think the issue is one of prestige and expectations. You don't get this mantle of significance to wrap around you when you say you're a youtuber. You do when you say you're a journalist. I don't expect angry joe to be my portal to game design. He's just some amusing dude. Even Extra Credits (before they went to shit) was just a small group of people with their own views that I would take with a grain of salt.

The expectation there is totally different. You can promise the sky and the moon but as long as people don't expect you to deliver it in the first place cause you're just a youtuber they won't be disappinted when you fail to do so and if you succeed then that'll be seen as a surprise. Meanwhile if you're a journalist you're expected to be the expert here, and failing to do just that is as disappointing as it is surprising for the youtuber to be correct about game development.

 

[Nick Calandra]

I disagree. You need credibility in all things if you are putting your work out there as a source of opinion and news. The fact that you dismiss it like "who needs status in video games" is dismissive and disrespectful.

If you are in the news space of ANY subject, and are contributing in a formal capacity to a news/review site, then the readers deserve that you have some expertise in said subject. Youtubers are not officially members of the press out of the gate, any Youtuber who earns media badges at E3 or where ever EARNS credibility through the build up of an audience and sometimes not even then. Yes, anyone can put shit on Youtube, but not anyone can build audience or earn Media rights from publishing companies to report on their products in an official way.

Earning the status comes from writing or publishing videos that prove your expertise or knowledge and show your opinion comes from an informed place. And it comes from over time. Angry Joe didn't get his position in the Youtube space over night.

I think you read too much into my post about not needing to be credible. Of course you SHOULD be credible, but in a lot of cases, it doesn't matter to people because they'll just follow whomever says the "right things" in their book.

There's a lot of great YouTubers, streamers and personalities, but there also A LOT that claim to be credible sources when they are not, citing things as fact with no actual sources to back it up, or grabbing all their information from Wikipedia or Twitter, etc.

Also "earning" a badge at E3 isn't a good argument. All E3 cares about is how many people are paying attention to the show, it has nothing to do with credibility and it's all about numbers.

So yes, you SHOULD be credible in the things you talk about if you really want people to take you seriously, but social media doesn't care about credibility or actual facts, it's all about who says the "right" things.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Also "earning" a badge at E3 isn't a good argument. All E3 cares about is how many people are paying attention to the show, it has nothing to do with credibility and it's all about numbers.

But those number give you the credibility because you've EARNED those numbers. That's the difference there. I can't post one video game review and then get a media pass to E3, no I have to build an audience through people enjoying my opinions and thus giving my work credibility.

So yes, you SHOULD be credible in the things you talk about if you really want people to take you seriously, but social media doesn't care about credibility or actual facts, it's all about who says the "right" things

I've never once argued in terms of social media. Every point I've ever brought up has been directed towards "official" gaming sites. Kotaku, Destructoid,Escapist,PCgamer, whatever it is. I could care less about posting whatever trash on Twitter, Facebook, or whatever. So that was never in the line of my fire so to speak.

 

[Nick Calandra]

But those number give you the credibility because you've EARNED those numbers. That's the difference there. I can't post one video game review and then get a media pass to E3, no I have to build an audience through people enjoying my opinions and thus giving my work credibility.

I've never once argued in terms of social media. Every point I've ever brought up has been directed towards "official" gaming sites. Kotaku, Destructoid,Escapist,PCgamer, whatever it is. I could care less about posting whatever trash on Twitter, Facebook, or whatever. So that was never in the line of my fire so to speak.

Well that's the thing though. I bring up social media because being an online personality on Twitter is how writers promote themselves to get people to read content. So the articles you've mentioned in the very beginning of this post...those are all designed to create chatter on social media, which then drives followers to those authors and traffic back to the website.

Social media, whether you like it or not, is basically essential to the job of being a journalist because it's your direct connection to readers and building an audience. And that ties right back to what I said about people following journalists, bloggers, YouTubers that they align with, thus giving them credibility based on numbers alone.

So yes, people do EARN those numbers, but be careful that you're not conflating numbers with actual credibility. There is a difference. And I'm not saying just because someone has the numbers they're not credible.

 

[Nick Calandra]

[


What you're talking about is not journalism. It's blogging. You're a videogame blogger. You have a fanbase and they like your personality and takes and want to hear what you think. Cool. You're an influential blogger. Not a damn journalist lol.

I think the issue is one of prestige and expectations. You don't get this mantle of significance to wrap around you when you say you're a youtuber. You do when you say you're a journalist. I don't expect angry joe to be my portal to game design. He's just some amusing dude. Even Extra Credits (before they went to shit) was just a small group of people with their own views that I would take with a grain of salt.

The expectation there is totally different. You can promise the sky and the moon but as long as people don't expect you to deliver it in the first place cause you're just a youtuber they won't be disappinted when you fail to do so and if you succeed then that'll be seen as a surprise. Meanwhile if you're a journalist you're expected to be the expert here, and failing to do just that is as disappointing as it is surprising for the youtuber to be correct about game development.

That's kinda the crux of it though, right? There are a lot of people masquerading as journalists when they're really just blogging. Both have a place and unfortunately a lot of people use "blogging" as a derogatory term now to put down writers. But what it means to be an actual journalist has kinda been lost in translation, and is part of the reason I think there's so much animosity towards journalists.

It's why I'm a big advocate of separating fact from opinion in general news. A lot of editors justify it because it adds a "voice" to their work, but when I'm personally reading news, I don't want any of that. I just want the facts, and if I want to read the author's own opinion on the matter, I'll go read that later or whatever.

 

[Dreiko]

Well that's the thing though. I bring up social media because being an online personality on Twitter is how writers promote themselves to get people to read content. So the articles you've mentioned in the very beginning of this post...those are all designed to create chatter on social media, which then drives followers to those authors and traffic back to the website.

Social media, whether you like it or not, is basically essential to the job of being a journalist because it's your direct connection to readers and building an audience. And that ties right back to what I said about people following journalists, bloggers, YouTubers that they align with, thus giving them credibility based on numbers alone.

So yes, people do EARN those numbers, but be careful that you're not conflating numbers with actual credibility. There is a difference. And I'm not saying just because someone has the numbers they're not credible.

Yeah I'll just repeat what I just said above. This isn't really journalism.

I think because of the financial woes with the availability of opinion content, journalists are trying to become youtubers or bloggers, but they want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to be this superior type of blogger that is the same as the regular blogger but gets to enjoy the prestige attached to journalism. That is an untenable situation.

I think if these people had the chops to just be full on bloggers and youtubers and could build a fanbase without needing big website/institution names backing them, they'd jump at it without a second thought. The fact that they can't, hence, means that what we have is second rate bloggers all peacocked up and pretending to be better than everyone else.

That's kinda the crux of it though, right? There are a lot of people masquerading as journalists when they're really just blogging. Both have a place and unfortunately a lot of people use "blogging" as a derogatory term now to put down writers. But what it means to be an actual journalist has kinda been lost in translation, and is part of the reason I think there's so much animosity towards journalists.

It's why I'm a big advocate of separating fact from opinion in general news. A lot of editors justify it because it adds a "voice" to their work, but when I'm personally reading news, I don't want any of that. I just want the facts, and if I want to read the author's own opinion on the matter, I'll go read that later or whatever.

I'm glad you agree with me on this because I was almost feeling guilty a bit for being too critical towards you. That's definitely the crux. They do say first step to solving something is identifying the problem so that's good I guess.


I think it's fine if you have someone you understand the biases of to have them offer their perspective, that way you can know how much weight to put on things. They just have to actually tell you when they're doing that. Too often people will state their opinion as fact. Sometimes people aren't even aware they're doing it. They think they're being "normal", but they don't understand that the reason they have their job is because of the form that their "normal" takes, and that they're just as much in an echo-chamber as anybody else.

 

[Nick Calandra]

Yeah I'll just repeat what I just said above. This isn't really journalism.

I think because of the financial woes with the availability of opinion content, journalists are trying to become youtubers or bloggers, but they want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to be this superior type of blogger that is the same as the regular blogger but gets to enjoy the prestige attached to journalism. That is an untenable situation.

I think if these people had the chops to just be full on bloggers and youtubers and could build a fanbase without needing big website/institution names backing them, they'd jump at it without a second thought. The fact that they can't, hence, means that what we have is second rate bloggers all peacocked up and pretending to be better than everyone else.


I'm glad you agree with me on this because I was almost feeling guilty a bit for being too critical towards you. That's definitely the crux. They do say first step to solving something is identifying the problem so that's good I guess.


I think it's fine if you have someone you understand the biases of to have them offer their perspective, that way you can know how much weight to put on things. They just have to actually tell you when they're doing that. Too often people will state their opinion as fact. Sometimes people aren't even aware they're doing it. They think they're being "normal", but they don't understand that the reason they have their job is because of the form that their "normal" takes, and that they're just as much in an echo-chamber as anybody else.

Your first point is what the "issue" is. IF you've got the chops to be a personality, websites like IGN, Gamespot are now a stepping stone rather than the destination. You show up, you get to embed yourself with an audience of millions, you spend some time there, learning, honing your craft and making connections, and when you're ready, you go out on your own.

And it's impossible not to see the success people have had doing this. Danny O'Dwyer with Noclip, the Prepare to Try guys from IGN who made their own platform, Easy Allies, Chris Bratt from Eurogamer who made People Make Games.

Until actual journalism is not tied to an advertising model for sustainability, the problems highlighted in this thread will persist and people will use these larger platforms not because they're journalists, but because it's a means to an end to launch their own platforms.


To your second point, I used to declare myself as a journalist when I was doing actual journalism back on Only Single Player. I even went to school to get a degree in multimedia journalism so that I had some form of credibility. Now with The Escapist, and this was a recent update for us because the original V2 launch indicated that the site was all about journalism again, but that's not the direction I'm taking.

We are leaning into three things. Storytelling, critique and commentary, while still covering news because we report on things our readers will find interesting. So I don't consider myself a journalist working on The Escapist anymore, but more so a content creator. That's a title I'm fine with having because I'm down with the fact were mostly creating content now for reader's / watchers enjoyment, rather than hard-hitting journalism, and was a distinction we wanted to make for ourselves to separate from the likes of Polygon, Waypoint, IGN etc.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Until actual journalism is not tied to an advertising model for sustainability, the problems highlighted in this thread will persist and people will use these larger platforms not because they're journalists, but because it's a means to an end to launch their own platforms.

Basically until these websites actually hire these writers rather than leave them on whatever freelance hook they offer.

Because one thing you're right about for sure, is that when I use sports as a comparison it's not really fair because those writers WORK for the company in question. FOX, ESPN, whatever.

So these writers putting articles up on Kotaku are probably not hired by the site and in some cases they might only be paid in "exposure". Though any writer taking their work seriously should never work for exposure ever because Brash Games is a thing that happened.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Look at all the YouTubers that are out there that do deep dives into game design, but as soon as you show those videos to someone actually in game development, they'll tell you it's a bunch of nonsense, even if interesting coming from a "players" perspective. And even then it doesn't matter, if the audience finds what the person is saying interesting enough, they'll continue to consume it.

Could you list an example or two possibly? Are you talking about people just over analyzing stuff like coming up with some insightful reason a character wore a red shirt and the author is like 'I gave the character a red shirt just because I was wearing a red shirt that day'? Or just being straight wrong over the reason a major mechanic is in the game? The former happens all the time and more of fun thought experiment vs the latter being more so misinformation.

 

[Nick Calandra]

Basically until these websites actually hire these writers rather than leave them on whatever freelance hook they offer.

Again, tied to advertising....unless you're a major corp racking in cash and giving millions to the CEO obviously.