Gaming Journalists Make No Damn Sense

[Thaluikhain]

So, some people want games to have an easy mode, and someone else thinks that the easy mode on a particular game (which is apparently not the easiest mode) is too easy, perhaps implying that there should be some other mode between normal and easy.

Not seeing why we should assume all games journalists are terrible people.

 

[Worgen]

I don't see the point of not having an easy mode or journalists having to be hard core. I mean these are people that have to run through a game really fast to get the review out, its not like the old days when they tended to have enough time to play the game at a more leisurely pace. Some publishers don't even send out early copies or don't have all the features working, like Doom Eternal's battle mode, but we still expect them to have reviews out. If they need an easy mode to clear a game in a day or 2 then whatever. I have long ago realized that not everyone is as good as me at games so I'm not going to take it personally if someone can't pick up and play any game on hard mode. I mean even Civvie 11 had to turn down the difficulty of Doom Eternal.

 

[Adam Jensen]

There's no such thing as video game journalism. There's a bunch of people writing about video games on the internet that we call journalism for the lack of a better word. But real journalism is more than just writing and reporting about stuff. Most video game "journalists" never went to a journalism school, never took a course in journalism, don't know anything about the ethical guidelines that all journalists should follow. They're essentially just bloggers and vloggers.

 

[09philj]

Most video game "journalists" never went to a journalism school, never took a course in journalism, don't know anything about the ethical guidelines that all journalists should follow.

Bit of an odd standard to use. Hunter S Thompson never even graduated high school. I don't see anyone accusing him of not being a journalist.

 

[Worgen]

There's no such thing as video game journalism. There's a bunch of people writing about video games on the internet that we call journalism for the lack of a better word. But real journalism is more than just writing and reporting about stuff. Most video game "journalists" never went to a journalism school, never took a course in journalism, don't know anything about the ethical guidelines that all journalists should follow. They're essentially just bloggers and vloggers.

So then what would you call Kotaku's investigations into various game dev's crunch cultures and exposing of employee abuse?

Inside Rockstar Games' Culture Of Crunch

In the final year of development on Red Dead Redemption 2, the upcoming Western game, the top directors decided to add black bars to the top and bottom of every non-interactive cutscene in hopes of making those scenes feel more cinematic, like an old-school cowboy film. Everyone agreed it was...

kotaku.com

 

[BrawlMan]

So then what would you call Kotaku's investigations into various game dev's crunch cultures and exposing of employee abuse?

Inside Rockstar Games' Culture Of Crunch

In the final year of development on Red Dead Redemption 2, the upcoming Western game, the top directors decided to add black bars to the top and bottom of every non-interactive cutscene in hopes of making those scenes feel more cinematic, like an old-school cowboy film. Everyone agreed it was...

kotaku.com

That part is legit journalism, but unfortunately an example such as this is the exception, and not the rule. Especially if we're talking about Kotaku. I admit, I gave some minor respect for Kotaku and certain others for doing this, but it does not make up for all the bullshit from beforehand, Yes, I know these websites all of have different writers, but are times many of these articles are written by the same person or they share the same mentality as the other person who wrote the other articles. I just wish more gaming sites would do more articles like the one you showed. Instead, we get ones with political or gender politics unprovoked, the with me or against me attitude, calling all gamers entitled and selfish because we call out bad DLC, MicroTransX, and loot boxes. Some of these same game journalists were trying to claim publishers/developers were doing us peons a favor by holding content back or screwing us over. That is just straight up corporate dick sucking. Or my personal favorite: blaming an audience for a reboot game's failure, even though game (average or mediocre) or marketing behind was complete shit and insulting its own target audience. For those that don't know specifically, I am talking about DmC: Devil May Cry (2013). Game Journalists still do this claiming DmC was some misunderstood masterpiece. Like it's some underdog narrative they keep pushing, regardless of the actual success DMC5 had and proved.

There's no such thing as video game journalism. There's a bunch of people writing about video games on the internet that we call journalism for the lack of a better word. But real journalism is more than just writing and reporting about stuff. Most video game "journalists" never went to a journalism school, never took a course in journalism, don't know anything about the ethical guidelines that all journalists should follow. They're essentially just bloggers and vloggers.

Most forms of "journalism" are a complete joke nowadays. Especially if all you get your news from is CNN, Fox, or MSNBC. Whether they be from cable or online. Most of those people could not give a shit about the actual truth or care about most people. Not unless, it's the case of having their gentle sucked or being of the same political mind set.

Bit of an odd standard to use. Hunter S Thompson never even graduated high school. I don't see anyone accusing him of not being a journalist.

Heard of the name, don't know shit about him though. For some reason, I have the feeling he had more standards than the usual game journalist by comparison. Or actual legit standards in general.

 

[09philj]

Heard of the name, don't know shit about him though. For some reason, I have the feeling he had more standards than the usual game journalist by comparison. Or actual legit standards in general.

Thompson was a pioneer of Gonzo journalism; that is to say, journalism presented from a first person perspective, without any claims of objectivity. Conventional journalistic ethics and standards are rejected in favour of finding the most interesting things to write about, sometimes regardless of how factual they actually were. In the case of Thompson it also meant doing work while taking copious amounts of drugs.

 

[Worgen]

That part is legit journalism, but unfortunately an example such as this is the exception, and not the rule. Especially if we're talking about Kotaku. I admit, I gave some minor respect for Kotaku and certain others for doing this, but it does not make up for all the bullshit from beforehand, Yes, I know these websites all of have different writers, but are times many of these articles are written by the same person or they share the same mentality as the other person who wrote the other articles. I just wish more gaming sites would do more articles like the one you showed. Instead, we get ones with political or gender politics unprovoked, the with me or against me attitude, calling all gamers entitled and selfish because we call out bad DLC, MicroTransX, and loot boxes. Some of these same game journalists were trying to claim publishers/developers were doing us peons a favor by holding content back or screwing us over. That is just straight up corporate dick sucking. Or my personal favorite: blaming an audience for a reboot game's failure, even though game (average or mediocre) or marketing behind was complete shit and insulting its own target audience. For those that don't know specifically, I am talking about DmC: Devil May Cry (2013). Game Journalists still do this claiming DmC was some misunderstood masterpiece. Like it's some underdog narrative they keep pushing, regardless of the actual success DMC5 had and proved.

Then link some of those, show us what you think are bad articles that are pushing the gays, or the liberal agenda or promoting loot boxes and microtransactions. Give us the examples you seem to be saying are all over the place, they should be easy to find since you make it sound like there are so many of them. And since I am sure you will find so many of them, try and keep the publish date within the last few years.

Also, I've got friends who love the Devil may Cry series and still love DMC so you get absolutely no points for that. I thought it was kinda stiff, but I always liked Bayonetta more then Devil May Cry.

 

[Nick Calandra]

That part is legit journalism, but unfortunately an example such as this is the exception, and not the rule. Especially if we're talking about Kotaku. I admit, I gave some minor respect for Kotaku and certain others for doing this, but it does not make up for all the bullshit from beforehand, Yes, I know these websites all of have different writers, but are times many of these articles are written by the same person or they share the same mentality as the other person who wrote the other articles. I just wish more gaming sites would do more articles like the one you showed. Instead, we get ones with political or gender politics unprovoked, the with me or against me attitude, calling all gamers entitled and selfish because we call out bad DLC, MicroTransX, and loot boxes. Some of these same game journalists were trying to claim publishers/developers were doing us peons a favor by holding content back or screwing us over. That is just straight up corporate dick sucking. Or my personal favorite: blaming an audience for a reboot game's failure, even though game (average or mediocre) or marketing behind was complete shit and insulting its own target audience. For those that don't know specifically, I am talking about DmC: Devil May Cry (2013). Game Journalists still do this claiming DmC was some misunderstood masterpiece. Like it's some underdog narrative they keep pushing, regardless of the actual success DMC5 had and proved.

The argument around games journalism is interesting. Because a lot of people push this, but then never cite the journalism they actually want and it more so boils down I don’t like these opinions so it’s bad journalism.

As someone that’s covered games for a decade now...there’s not a whole lot of investigative reporting to be done in this industry unless you’ve got the time and money to track down every bad business deal, every underreported HR issue and the stories people actually want to read like Jason’s exposes on troubled game development.

The main issue though is nobody wants to read about that stuff. Everybody yells about wanting good games journalism, but then never actually supports it.

I agree that a lot of people call themselves journalists while not having the credentials to do so nor acknowledge that writing op-eds and such isn’t really traditional journalism.

But again, I think the issue boils down to people only paying attention to the mainstream media, which very often all play up the same narratives, that I agree on.

Expand your horizons and read the smaller site if you don’t like what mainstream offers.

I can tell a lot of you haven’t read much of the new Escapist lol. People on Twitter still think we’re “apolitical” cause of what Russ said, but that was never the case. We just don’t push our personal politics front and center in our work.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Snip

I'm sorry I should have linked some Articles that I felt were genuinely great. And I dont have examples on hand at the moment.

But Schierer's article about what really went down with Anthem is a great article.

Jim Sterling's Videos about Brash Games, and his long Digital Homicide saga are other examples. Jim Sterling in general does great work when he is actively reporting on things, like everyone his opinion pieces are hit or miss but at least they all come across like he knows what he is talking about which is my problem with other writer's work.

I want to stress it IS NOT the subject of the articles I object to, it's the way they are written as I feel they have too much of an air of ignorance to them.

On topic of difficulty, Jim Sterling also happened to do a great video about Sekiro and easy modes.

In general I find video work just better, Yong Yea, Sterling, etc seem to present and report information with a knowledge and ethics level that I don't get much from bloggy articles.

Admittedly I will say that I've only been using Escapist Magazine for the forums for a long time as for a while it seemed like site content dried up completely except for Yahtzee and Chipman. I'll have to look into the articles itself.

Do you have an article you've written in the past that you are proud of, link it, i'd be glad to take a look and give you a fair shake.

 

[Nick Calandra]

I'm sorry I should have linked some Articles that I felt were genuinely great. And I dont have examples on hand at the moment.

But Schierer's article about what really went down with Anthem is a great article.

Jim Sterling's Videos about Brash Games, and his long Digital Homicide saga are other examples. Jim Sterling in general does great work when he is actively reporting on things, like everyone his opinion pieces are hit or miss but at least they all come across like he knows what he is talking about which is my problem with other writer's work.

I want to stress it IS NOT the subject of the articles I object to, it's the way they are written as I feel they have too much of an air of ignorance to them.

On topic of difficulty, Jim Sterling also happened to do a great video about Sekiro and easy modes.

In general I find video work just better, Yong Yea, Sterling, etc seem to present and report information with a knowledge and ethics level that I don't get much from bloggy articles.

Admittedly I will say that I've only been using Escapist Magazine for the forums for a long time as for a while it seemed like site content dried up completely except for Yahtzee and Chipman. I'll have to look into the articles itself.

Do you have an article you've written in the past that you are proud of, link it, i'd be glad to take a look and give you a fair shake.

I haven't written a whole lot lately because I'm working on lots of other things behind the scenes, but the projects I'm most proud of by far and away are the documentaries I've done.


We did a whole bunch on Gameumentary before I sold it to Escapist's parent company, Enthusiast Gaming, and then when they hired me to be EIC of Escapist, we merged Gameumentary here.


Next doc is Darkest Dungeon releasing this month.

 

[Elfgore]

Then link some of those, show us what you think are bad articles that are pushing the gays, or the liberal agenda or promoting loot boxes and microtransactions. Give us the examples you seem to be saying are all over the place, they should be easy to find since you make it sound like there are so many of them. And since I am sure you will find so many of them, try and keep the publish date within the last few years.

Also, I've got friends who love the Devil may Cry series and still love DMC so you get absolutely no points for that. I thought it was kinda stiff, but I always liked Bayonetta more then Devil May Cry.

Linking the Quartering or YongYea would just reveal their hand.

In general I find video work just better, Yong Yea, Sterling, etc seem to present and report information with a knowledge and ethics level that I don't get much from bloggy articles.

I'm sorry, Yong Yea? The dude who literally grabs news articles and forum posts then regurgitates it in a drawn out YouTube video to hit ten minutes? He has like... two videos last I checked I'd consider journalism, both of them are good. Actually, they're really freaking good. His regular videos are far from anything resembling journalism.

 

[Nick Calandra]

Linking the Quartering or YongYea would just reveal their hand.


I'm sorry, Yong Yea? The dude who literally grabs news articles and forum posts then regurgitates it in a drawn out YouTube video to hit ten minutes? He has like... two videos last I checked I'd consider journalism, both of them are good. Actually, they're really freaking good. His regular videos are far from anything resembling journalism.

YoungYea and The Quartering are commentators through and through. From what I've seen of YongYea, he at least doesn't play too hard into stirring up drama for the sake of filling his pockets like TheQ does. But yea, neither of them are journalists in any sense of the word. And when they say they investigated something, it's more...I saw this on Twitter or Reddit, etc.

 

[BrawlMan]

But again, I think the issue boils down to people only paying attention to the mainstream media, which very often all play up the same narratives, that I agree on.

Expand your horizons and read the smaller site if you don’t like what mainstream offers.

I can tell a lot of you haven’t read much of the new Escapist lol. People on Twitter still think we’re “apolitical” cause of what Russ said, but that was never the case. We just don’t push our personal politics front and center in our work.

I do. I mentioned it in the first post before this one and the second one. Albeit, they are usually independent commentators, analysis, or reviewers on YT. And event then, I avoid certain individual YouTubers like The Quartering, Angry Joe, NoBullshit, ReviewTechUSA (which stopped reviewing tech around 2014 and became another loudmouth that acts like he knows everything), and others I can't think of at the moment. RTUSA encouraged the harassment of a Nintendo fan, just because Yoshiller, the fan in this case, happened to wear a Yoshi hat during a news interview at E3 2014. Because of that, I unsubscribed and wanted nothing to do with RTUSA right then and there.

I go out of my way to avoid major sites because they are the worst kinda of BAD. Boring, Annoying, Dumb.

As for your actual articles, they're okay, but most I have no interest in reading. At least you guys actually bother to write legit articles, regardless if I agree with you certain stances or not

Thompson was a pioneer of Gonzo journalism; that is to say, journalism presented from a first person perspective, without any claims of objectivity. Conventional journalistic ethics and standards are rejected in favour of finding the most interesting things to write about, sometimes regardless of how factual they actually were. In the case of Thompson it also meant doing work while taking copious amounts of drugs.

You know what, we learned a little about this guy in my junior year in high school in literature class. Some of it's coming back to me. Thank you.

Then link some of those, show us what you think are bad articles that are pushing the gays, or the liberal agenda or promoting loot boxes and microtransactions. Give us the examples you seem to be saying are all over the place, they should be easy to find since you make it sound like there are so many of them. And since I am sure you will find so many of them, try and keep the publish date within the last few years.

Also, I've got friends who love the Devil may Cry series and still love DMC so you get absolutely no points for that. I thought it was kinda stiff, but I always liked Bayonetta more then Devil May Cry.

If you like DmC, I have no problem with it. My problem is a lot of journalists were trying abandon the classic DMC as if they were archaic or "behind the times". When DmC has aged worse in story, characters, and tone (the game reeks of 2012/13 in terms of following trends). The gameplay is better than DMC2, but that is not much of an achievement. DmC was just a lesser version of DMC4 & Bayonetta. I like the DE version of DmC (PS4 & XONE), but that is because they fixed a lot of the bad gameplay design from the vanilla release. Actual lock-on, bringing back the trickster dash as angel evade, God Must Die mode, Hardcore mode which makes enemies more agressive and does not lift demons helpless in the air, and fixing the whole your weapon bounces of the enemy if they're not the matching color. Color coded enemeis are a lazy design, and shows the combat was severly limiting in the original release. Now DmC is better than most Western style hack n slash/brawler action games & Ninja Gaiden 3, but can't hold a candle to the original DMCs nor Bayonetta. Not to mention, DmC was supposed erase/replace classic DMC, before all that backfired, because Capcom could not understand its own core audience. A lot of problems were going on with Japanese corporations in this time period. Trying to appeal to the Western crowd, while abandoning what made them special or unique in the first place, while trying to suck up to the COD/GTA/Gears crowd. The crowd who could not give a rats ass no matter how much Capcom and certain others had tried.

As for articles pushing gays, that is not exactly what I meant. I just meant politics in general regardless if your left or right. I noticed that there were cases of journalists (not just gaming either) calling certain groups or all people being anti-gay/racists/anti-women or whatever due to some loud assholes, yet throwing a label under everyone. That I do have problems with. Like I said before, these articles are have the with me or against me attitude or are sucking up to their corporate overlords. And honestly, don't feel like digging up any these of articles again, because they are not worth my time nor frustration. I am all for being inclusive when it comes to gaming, so I figured out to do things my own way a long time ago. Actually giving people legit info about games whether and helping them as best they can about what they're looking. I can't do everything, but I do the best I can. If not, I link them or show them something with more info or trustworthy than me.

I just don't have a patience nor care anymore for a majority of these mainstream articles. If it's easy as you described, go for it. I am sure as hell not gonna stop you.

EDIT: fixed grammatical errors.

 

[Nick Calandra]

I do. I mentioned it in the first post before this one and the second one. Albeit, they are usually independent commentators, analysis, or reviewers on YT. And event then, I avoid certain individual YouTubers like Angry Joe, NoBullshit, ReviewTechUSA (which stopped reviewing tech around 2014 and became another loudmouth that acts like he knows everything), and others I can't think of at the moment. RTUSA encouraged the harassment of a Nintendo fan, just because Yoshiller, the fan in this case, happened to war a Yoshi hat during a news interview at E3 2014. Because of that, I unsubscribed and wanted nothing to do with RTUSA right then and there.

I go out of my way to avoid major sites because they are the worst kinda of BAD. Boring, Annoying, Dumb.

As for your actual articles, they're okay, but most I have no interest in reading. At least you guys actually bother to write legit articles, regardless if I agree with you certain stances or not

Sorry, I should have made it clearer I wasn't directly saying "you' should do that, just a general rule of thumb.

And yes, YouTuber's often aren't much better because you have to be a "personality". You probably pay more attention to them then me, but aside from something like IGN's Daily Fix, I bet you couldn't find another gaming "news" channel that's just the news and not a personality infront of it pushing their views and opinion into it.

I'm of the mind that I like my news filtered. I just want the facts. I want to get in, get what I need and get out without someone forcing their views down my throat when I'm trying to figure out what the hell I should wear outside today.

I know for a fact that outlets like VG247 or Kotaku think embedding their "voice", which usually means their political ideology, into their articles makes them more interesting. And for their audiences they're courting, it does. I think that becomes a problem when someone writes or makes a video to counter them on something they put out there, where things get nasty real quick and they (often times both sides) start defending their point of view as the ONLY point of a view.

That's something I personally have a problem with in today's gaming media, and all media in general really.

The best example I can think of, and this is one I covered in our Kingdom Come: Deliverance documentary, was Eurogamer's allegations that Warhorse Studios is racist because there aren't people of color in the game, citing a historian that incorrectly told them the Silk Road ran through Prague. To this day they have not amended that review or apologized for it, and Warhorse got a ton of shit for it on social media.


Source 1: https://www.ancient.eu/image/8327/map-of-the-silk-road-routes/

Source 2 and Quote: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-02-20-kingdom-come-deliverance-review

"We know of African kings in Constantinople on pilgrimage to Spain; we know of black Moors in Spain; we know of extensive travel of Jews from the courts of Cordoba and Damascus; we also know of black people in large cities in Germany," the historian, Sean Miller, tells me. Czech cities Olomouc and Prague were on the famous Silk Road which facilitated the trade of goods all over the world. If you plot a line between them, it runs directly through the area recreated in Kingdom Come. "You just can't know nobody got sick and stayed a longer time," he says. "What if a group of black Africans came through and stayed at an inn and someone got pregnant? Even one night is enough for a pregnancy."

 

[Nick Calandra]

Another example was Days Gone where a reviewer wrote their review, gave it a really bad score, then went on Twitter to call the game racist because all the infected were white, when it was openly explained in the narrative through a cutscene that the infection caused people's skin to pigment to be albino.

There's a lot of stuff like this that people get mad about, and in cases where media members make these scathing allegations against developers, I can't say I blame them when it can be easily dis-proven. But having an opinion about a game being too easy or too hard and having everyone jump down your throat over it and call it bad journalism? Yea, that's just stupid.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Another example was Days Gone where a reviewer wrote their review, gave it a really bad score, then went on Twitter to call the game racist because all the infected were white, when it was openly explained in the narrative through a cutscene that the infection caused people's skin to pigment to be albino.

There's a lot of stuff like this that people get mad about, and in cases where media members make these scathing allegations against developers, I can't say I blame them when it can be easily dis-proven. But having an opinion about a game being too easy or too hard and having everyone jump down your throat over it and call it bad journalism? Yea, that's just stupid.

I mean this was the gripe people had with Anita Sarkesian's whole nonsense. There so many videos about her taking things completely out of context or ignoring context completely just to paint her picture.

 

[BrawlMan]

The best example I can think of, and this is one I covered in our Kingdom Come: Deliverance documentary, was Eurogamer's allegations that Warhorse Studios is racist because there aren't people of color in the game, citing a historian that incorrectly told them the Silk Road ran through Prague. To this day they have not amended that review or apologized for it, and Warhorse got a ton of shit for it on social media.

I nearly forgot about that. Thanks for the info. Eurogamer, I never like even back then.

But having an opinion about a game being too easy or too hard and having everyone jump down your throat over it and call it bad journalism? Yea, that's just stupid.

Usually. You should not jump down their throat, yes. Yet there are times when you need to call them out something they're exaggerating or outright lying about. Or acting like a whiny b#tch because the person in question can't be the first stage (IGN God Hand review) or the game did not "explain" enough (GameXplain's 3/10 review of Wonderful 101).

Dunkey sums up my most of my feelings best about game critics and journalists.

 

[SilentPony]

Have YOU ever made a game OP?

That's never been a good argument against criticism. I mean yeah I've never made a game - but I've also never A. Claimed to and B. sold customers a bad one.

That's like saying unless you can preform open-heart surgery on yourself don't bother getting mad at the doctor when he staples a live chicken to your lungs and smacks you in the face with a dick. I'd like to see you preform a better surgery!

When someone creates a product with the intent of selling it, be it a game, car, article, a surgery or a bat and farts burrito, they open themselves up to the idea of criticism. And 'You do better' isn't a valid defense when we didn't attempt to.

 

[Nick Calandra]

I nearly forgot about that. Thanks for the info. Eurogamer, I never like even back then.




Usually. You should not jump down their throat, yes. Yet there are times when you need to call them out something they're exaggerating or outright lying about. Or acting like a whiny b#tch because the person in question can't be the first stage (IGN God Hand review) or the game did not "explain" enough (GameXplain's 3/10 review of Wonderful 101).

Dunkey sums up my most of my feelings best about game critics and journalists.

Again, I think at that point you just know that's not a writer's opinion you would trust haha. I've talked with hundreds of developers during my time as a games reporter and I can tell you first hand that stuff like that doesn't bother them, unless it transfers to social media and becomes a targeted campaign against them directly.