EMC And DEFY Media Build Searchable Collection of Video Game Journalism

[Fanghawk]

EMC And DEFY Media Build Searchable Collection of Video Game Journalism

The Escapist's news, reviews, and editorials will soon be part of the world's first searchable video game writing collection, managed by the Entertainment Media Council.

<a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/90905-Entertainment-Media-Council-Looks-to-the-Future-of-the-Industry>The Entertainment Media Council and DEFY Media have announced a new partnership to preserve the history of video game writing and criticism. This new initiative aims to build the world's first nonprofit media library, offering a searchable collection of news, reviews, and other video game writings that will be maintained for corporate and academic research.

"We are losing our history," EMC president and CEO Morgan Ramsay said. "Although the video game industry has become an essential feature of popular culture, until now there has been no compelling effort to preserve the journalistic lens through which we have watched this industry evolve. Our initiative, in cooperation with every media company that has played a role in the conversation about video games, will ensure there is a singular resource for serious research, for those who would remember our past to shape our future."

While the internet has taken great leaps to <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/139325-Internet-Archie-2400-Free-MS-DOS-Games-Doom-Quake-Wolfenstein>archive video games for future generations, video game journalism hasn't always received the same attention. As more and more video game criticism is produced, researchers have to rely on web search engines that provide unfiltered results. It's an important distinction with huge implications for academia, which is why compiling writings in a research database is so useful.

"The video game industry has produced some of the most trailblazing editorial and journalistic content in entertainment," Adam Silverman, SVP of Business Affairs at DEFY Media explained, "and we're proud that The Escapist editorial team, who stand among the most respected and followed game-focused journalists in the world, are part of this legacy. The introduction of the EMC database provides a fantastic opportunity to centralize the history of the video game industry in a manner that will provide accessible information to journalists, audiences craving more content, and gaming enthusiasts for generations to come."

EMC will be procuring and licensing full-text historical and editorial content about video games throughout the next year. Once complete, it will be made available to corporate and academic researchers as an online subscription service.

Source: <a href=http://emcouncil.org/entertainment-media-council-and-defy-media-enter-into-content-partnership>Entertainment Media Council

Disclosure: The Escapist is a property of DEFY Media.

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[Fappy]

I'm actually surprised it took until 2015 for something like this to happen. Sounds like it could be a useful resource. Hopefully this means we'll see an increase in quality in game journalism but I won't hold my breath

Research is still an expense after all, and publications love saving dat dough.

 

[Andy Shandy]

Sounds like an interesting enough idea, although I admit I'd struggle to come up with many good/famous pieces of video games journalism.

Maybe the Rab Florence "A Table Of Doritos" piece [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-10-24-lost-humanity-18-a-table-of-doritos] from a few years back. And even then, that's more criticism of video games journalism, more than anything else.

 

[Kameburger]

I'm surprised someone would want to do this after 2014...

 

[CpT_x_Killsteal]

Wow. Did not expect this in the slightest.
This will be interesting. Who will EMC include in this database, and who will they omit? Only time will tell.

I'm glad they started with The Escapist. I can't think of a more centrist gaming publication.

 

[VanQ]

Hey, this sounds like a pretty cool idea. Will there be a way to filter out results for searches? Like, I'd love to be able to filter out any crap affiliated with Gawker for example.

 

[Gennadios]

I look forward to reading articles in chronology to see how game journalism has evolved. Part of me thinks I'll walk away in tears, but eh.

Will print magazines take part or only online publications? What about GameSpy? Direct Hit?

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

congratulations escapist!

this idea doesnt sound bad at all, maybe journalists will become more conscious of what they say if we make the pieces they write less disposable

 

[Strazdas]

Well that is strange. considering the status quo is to delete the article as soon as the write is compromised nowadays this may actually archive it for future reference. this sounds like a good idea.

 

[IndianaJonny]

Sounds like a good idea. I still treasure my copy of 'The PC Gaming Reader' book that came as a freebie with a PC Gamer issue back in 2011 so to see something that would make similar content accessible to wide spectrum of people is great.

I can understand the subscription-model basis, but I'd echo people's concerns about what the benchmark/criteria would be to get material included on the database.

 

[Ncrdrg]

That's a really great idea. Kudos to EMC and Defy Media for starting that initiative.

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

I hope they put the back issues of the Escapist Magazine in this archive; it's what brought me to this site and kept me around for years before I decided to make an account and actually participate. I'll join the chorus interested in who the other partners will be; the EMC website has a bunch of people from game-MAKING companies as "leadership", but not a lot of reporters.

 

[Morgan Ramsay]

Sounds like an interesting enough idea, although I admit I'd struggle to come up with many good/famous pieces of video games journalism.

I'd estimate that there are 300-500,000 articles published every year by video game publications, including print and digital but not including the indie press, and that number is increasing every year as well. Statistically, since nobody reads all of that content and most people read only a fraction of that content, there must be more great works than popularly thought. Regardless, our initiative is not about collecting specific articles but rather about collecting all of them.

I'm surprised someone would want to do this after 2014...

I've been considering creating a research database for many years. In fact, I've been compiling my own personal database, comprised of content delivered by public RSS feeds, for awhile. I was driven to finally do something when I saw how much interest there was in my data set last year, and I knew I couldn't share the data set for licensing reasons. The solution then was to license the content and provide researchers with access to the type of database with which they'd be familiar.

Hey, this sounds like a pretty cool idea. Will there be a way to filter out results for searches? Like, I'd love to be able to filter out any crap affiliated with Gawker for example.

Every article in a research database is described with metadata, including publication title. A researcher could filter the results that way if they so desired. A researcher could also filter the results by author, date, whether an article is about a specific company or product or topic, whether an article contains specific keywords or related words, and so on. We want to put all of the content we can get in one place and then provide you, the researcher, with the tools needed to retrieve exactly the content you want.

I can understand the subscription-model basis, but I'd echo people's concerns about what the benchmark/criteria would be to get material included on the database.

We operate under the principle that more data is good data. We'll leave the problem of whether to return certain results to the search engine, and the queries, of course, up to the user.

I hope they put the back issues of the Escapist Magazine in this archive; it's what brought me to this site and kept me around for years before I decided to make an account and actually participate.

Back issues of participating publications will be included. DEFY Media has provided us with a broad license to The Escapist, extending all the way back to the day that the publication launched. We'll also be doing a fair amount of digitization work for publications who have not made their print content available on the web, and eventually, we hope to provide and index transcriptions of audio and video content. For now though, we're focusing on full text.

 

[Andy Shandy]

Sounds like an interesting enough idea, although I admit I'd struggle to come up with many good/famous pieces of video games journalism.

I'd estimate that there are 300-500,000 articles published every year by video game publications, including print and digital but not including the indie press, and that number is increasing every year as well. Statistically, since nobody reads all of that content and most people read only a fraction of that content, there must be more great works than popularly thought. Regardless, our initiative is not about collecting specific articles but rather about collecting all of them.

That is certainly a fair point. Although I suppose when the objective is collecting all articles, the point itself is rather mute.

I wish you the best of luck anyway. Like you said, with the amount of articles published, it would be one hell of a fine resource.

 

[ChaoGuy2006]

Great to see this. A central archive that is completely impartial will help academia and future journalists (here's what we used to do. Here's what we should and shouldn't do). Unlike other groups (like that one that rhymes with rigda) who prefer to push certain ideals, the source can speak for itself.