BlackListed

[Loonyyy]

Well, I guess more info could be gained from interviews, but companies have every right to say no to those and very few indivuals would be willing to risk their job so the masses can hear about the new AssCreed setting early.

No. But it'd be nice to have a heads up before an Asscreed Unity or Arkham Knight drops.

Companies announce games months, often years in advance with or without the involvement of the press. It's to their advantage to keep the consumer aware of their product.

That's not what I mean. Those games were infamous for being buggy, broken messes. They weren't worth picking up day 1, because, especially with Arkham Knight, you probably couldn't even play it.

The way the press works now, we don't know about that until launch.

Unity had a review embargo in place until the noon of launchday: http://www.wired.com/2014/11/assassins-creed-unity-embargo/

Even if the reviews covered the massive technical failings of the game (And not all of them did), nobody got to hear about it until after a bunch of people had bought it.

There was minor controversy about how late review code went out for some reviewers on Arkham Knight as well. http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2015/06/11/batman-arkham-knight-review-copies-wont-go-out-until-launch/

The way the press works at present, they regurgitate the releases the company wants,

Like I said before, if a company is both subject and source, press releases will be a big part of news. What the press should do, is be critical towards both subject and source. Obtaining those press releases and sharing them in a manner that's useful to readers, that is their service towards their readers.

Yeah, and that makes sense. But there's two important things here: The press must be free to be negative. If we've got people refusing to be negative for fear of losing the ability to have a review ready for launch, or get any response to their queries, then we all suffer for it.

And they don't necessarily need to cover everything the publishers want. I know this one is less likely, but reproducing every bit of advertising just makes you an advertiser.

they write a review to release at launch,

Well, yeah, that's when people want to read reviews, not weeks after.

You know, it's really rude to snip that out of it's context, to misrepresent it.

I've already made clear why blocking outlets from review copies is poor. It prevents them from releasing a timely review. They can buy it on their own (Kotaku certainly can), and race through it on launch day and put out a poorly edited review, without footage, that skims over the game (Like used to happen very often), or they can wait, and release a complete, useless review, after the majority of sales have occurred.

What you've cut this out from is the symbiotic relationship with the publisher. Again, look at Unity. The sites got their reviews, Ubi released their game, and they deliberately prevented anyone from spilling the beans on how broken it was to make money off the midnight launches, preorders, and day 1 sales. The journalists win, Ubi wins, gamers got fucked.

I don't care if they got screwed because they were foolish enough to preorder. Ubisoft made a bad game, and behaved attrociously, and profited. Meanwhile, someone who just wanted to entertain themselves wasted an exorbitant amount of money on a game that wasn't worth buying.

Of course it's nice to publish reviews a little earlier, but you can't do that if you don't have access to an early copy. The press has to rely on publishers for that, and to be honest, embargoes aren't all bad. For instance, the European one for Xenoblade Chronicles X is 30 nov, half a week before release. Many reviewers have had their digital copy for over a week now. They're okay with us sharing impressions before that. All Nintendo of Europe wants is that the reviews are concentrated around launch to optimise the amount of attention the game gets. This is good for readers, because they should be able to read thorough reviews right on time. It's also nice for the critics, because we have don't have to rush through the game (or only sample a small portion of it!) to get the clicks we need to stay alive. In cases like this everyone wins.

Don't get me wrong. Review embargoes aren't necessarily a bad thing. Review embargoes that extend to post-launch, are a bad thing.

and them once the Publisher has raked in all of the preorder and Day 1 sales money, the gamer, the reader, gets fucked in the ass by both of them.

If you decide to buy a game before it's even out, that's your responsibility. No one is forcing you to take that risk.

I'm not taking that risk.

I don't buy games before they come out, and I don't complain about getting shafted by them. I haven't preordered in years.

That does not change the fact that the job of the journalists who cover these games is meant to be to help gamers make informed decisions and not make poor purchases, based in part on hype and PR promoted on those very sites.

This is just blatantly anti-consumer. Hide behind blaming them if you will, but you're just defending people getting paid for making broken games. That's seriously weak.

The journalists report on the trailers, the announcements, the goodies in the Special Editions, get people hyped up and preordering, reap the traffic of all that, and then the review, and the publisher gets some lovely coverage (Which is what they want). At present, what we get is what hype wants, which is what both publisher wants first, and what we want second. It should be us first, and that annoys the publisher, too bad.

And at the same time that's the kind of thing people like reading about. If the press is there to serve the reader, shouldn't they atleast share the facts?

And I agree. It's hard. Because people want the hype. I did try to make that clear. People want to hear this stuff, they want to know about upcoming games, even when it's just CGI trailers, "Teasers" for larger trailers, "Vertical Slices" and impressions from ridiculous pre-release events.

I don't think we'll ever see the back of it, but it'd be nice if this advertising were at least alongside some critical content that helps the reader.

There's not a massive amount of investigative or boundary pushing stuff that can be done, but we should all be a little disappointed with the state of things at present. At present, they don't take a critical eye to those releases. Look at this site. There's a bunch of cookie cutter reports every day with a link to another site which wrote on it originally, and it's all press material that the publishers want us to see. For one, ideally we shouldn't see every bit of hype being reported on. This drip feed of advertising. Obviously that's not going to happen. Someone wants to read it, and it's going to be there. We're our own worst enemy like that.

Yep, that bolded part, that's a big part of the problem. Even if the press is critical, it's no use if the readers aren't.

Yeah, and that's the thing. At the end of the day, we're looking for information about videogames, because we love videogames. We're the best audience to market videogame advertising too, and sometimes we even enjoy it *cough* E3 *cough*.

I doubt it. There's a whole spectrum of stances you can take towards press releases, and the right one depends of the release and the publication. Some publications prefer to stick to the facts ('The new trailer shows a new playable character. She wields two swords.'), others go for the enthousiastic fan approach ('Her dual-wielding style looks promising and we'd love to test it ourselves'.), or even cautionary ('She wields two swords. Sadly, the series does not have a good track record with this style.'). Unless you're consistently unreasonably critical (as in, focusing only on the negative and stirring baseless controversy), publishers have little reason to put you on their ignore-list, because they need the press, perhaps even more than the press needs them.

Not particularly. The things they get blacklisted for tend to be more than that. For instance, Kotaku still reported on Fallout 4. Trailers, speculation, review. Of course they do, because Fallout 4 is big, and it's worth a lot of traffic. Kotaku needs Fallout 4, and Bethesda does need coverage, but they can get that everywhere. And they did. A lot of that coverage from Kotaku comes from going over someone else's article on the press release. What this blacklisting does is prevents the most important information coming out, and gives us only the advertising and hype. Ironically enough, they got blacklisted for reporting the same stuff, pointless hype.

There's been many noted cases of interference like this. There was the Jeff Gerstmann getting canned because his review of Kane and Lynch wasn't high enough, and the publishers had significant ad money invested in the site. There's Jim Sterling getting blacklisted by Konami for reporting negatively on some of their releases and talking about the conditions at the company (Which by all accounts, seem to be abominable).

What this is, is a publisher trying to exert undue control over a publication, and hurting our ability to get good information. And on the flipside, what Kotaku was doing is stupid, hypey bullshit, not even worth it, not worth them getting blacklisted over, and on Bethesda's part, it shouldn't be enough of a problem for them to blacklist them.

I'll be blunt: Fuck Kotaku. They're shit. But if they go under, it should be because people stop being fucked to read their shit, not because they're edged out by publishers who want someone they can control better.

 

[SecondPrize]

The blacklisting cited in deepfreeze is actual blacklisting. People with the power to hire Allistair Pinsof for work conspired on the Game Journo Pros mailing list to not do so. Bethesda and Ubisoft severing their working relationship with Kotaku is not blacklisting. There is no collusion to freeze them out of the entire industry or even a portion of it. There is simply two companies individually deciding that they are not going to work with Kotaku. Do you understand now?

I understand, but that still seems inconsistent. In both cases, they exercised their own right to not engage with someone, and their power extended no further. In both cases, "collusion" went as far as talking with each other about making the choices they're allowed to make. If one is unethical (which it may well be), the other is.

Bethesda and Ubisoft are exercising their right to not engage with Kotaku. The discussion on GJP was collusion among different press outlets which wielded substantial power in determining whether someone would find work in the field to not publish anything by Pinsof. The latter is what blacklisting is, the former is not.

 

[NPC009]

That's not what I mean. Those games were infamous for being buggy, broken messes. They weren't worth picking up day 1, because, especially with Arkham Knight, you probably couldn't even play it.

Oh, yeah, that PC version...

Look, if it's something like that, sure, share it with the world. However, that was not the kind of info Kotaku possessed and shared.

The way the press works now, we don't know about that until launch.

Not much the press can do about it, though, aside from keep making sure they get review copies in advance. And reminding people that they're under no obligation to pre-order.

Unity had a review embargo in place until the noon of launchday: http://www.wired.com/2014/11/assassins-creed-unity-embargo/

I think it would be good to be more open about embargoes. The date can speak volumes about what's going on. Launchday, noon - that's something that should set off alarms.

Even if the reviews covered the massive technical failings of the game (And not all of them did), nobody got to hear about it until after a bunch of people had bought it.

Well, upset gamers do cover a lot of virtual ground. For better or worse, shitstorms travel fast.

As for the technical failings, are we talking about Arkham or AssCreed? If it's the former, some sites have the tendency to write one review for all platforms and the console versions function a lot better. If it's the later, my guess is that we're getting to the point where we are expecting big, complex games like AssCreed to be fairly buggy. As in: some find it only worth mentioning if the game actually runs really well.

There was minor controversy about how late review code went out for some reviewers on Arkham Knight as well. http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2015/06/11/batman-arkham-knight-review-copies-wont-go-out-until-launch/

I think that is something the press should be more open about as well (both the good and the bad), and take a stance and delay the review if they have to. However, I don't think they're responsible for people buying the game early and being disappointed. Both gamers and press need to be critical.

Yeah, and that makes sense. But there's two important things here: The press must be free to be negative. If we've got people refusing to be negative for fear of losing the ability to have a review ready for launch, or get any response to their queries, then we all suffer for it.

That was not the case with Kotaku, though. They were put on ignore-lists for being negative, they were put on there for dickishly sharing something the developer wasn't ready to share and the public didn't need to know.

As for the fear of losing review copies: do remember these would be less important if readers were more patient. Publications should be able to afford to be able to buy atleast some of the big releases themselves. Smaller publishers will keep sending games anyway, because they just want a shot at being featured.

And they don't necessarily need to cover everything the publishers want. I know this one is less likely, but reproducing every bit of advertising just makes you an advertiser.

To be fair, it news on future triple A titles that get a lot of clicks. Sharing those newest screenshots or that hot new trailer is a simple and easy way to keep readers interested in your website. It's not something that will change unless the readers change.

You know, it's really rude to snip that out of it's context, to misrepresent it.

It would be rude to interupt someone during a real conversation, but that wasn't the case here. I also did not take that comment out of context or misrepresent it. What I did, or wanted, atleast, was reminded you that there are reasons for why things happen like they do. If there was no demand for reviews on launchday, publications and their writers would be under less pressure. I know there are plenty of games I would have liked to spend a little more time with. I mean, sure, most of the time it just meant rushing through the last third and skipping a good chunk of the sidequests (and I love sidequests), but still... It's just more enjoyable to play at a pace you're comfortable with.

I've already made clear why blocking outlets from review copies is poor. It prevents them from releasing a timely review. They can buy it on their own (Kotaku certainly can), and race through it on launch day and put out a poorly edited review, without footage, that skims over the game (Like used to happen very often), or they can wait, and release a complete, useless review, after the majority of sales have occurred.

I'm not a fan of it either, but look at it this way:
1. There are many small publications that don't get review copies either (and some may provide much better reviews than Kotaku). There have always been have-nots.
2. Actions have consequences, and that also goes for journalists. Kotaku would not have been in this situation if they had shown a little more respect to their subject/source.

Besides, as easy as it is to pretend big game publishers are all on the level of cartoon villains, they're still companies that employ a lot of people. If there are innocent people and their livelyhoods involved, you need to think twice before acting.

What you've cut this out from is the symbiotic relationship with the publisher. Again, look at Unity. The sites got their reviews, Ubi released their game, and they deliberately prevented anyone from spilling the beans on how broken it was to make money off the midnight launches, preorders, and day 1 sales. The journalists win, Ubi wins, gamers got fucked.

Everything in this damn industry is connected and I doubt there are good ways to sever those connections. Many readers want that symbiotic relationship, because that's what nets them timely reviews, the lastest news, free goodies and chances to win neat prizes in competitions.

Well, education and communication could be one. Like I said, be more open about embargoes, availability of review copies, whether games were playing in a controlled setting or not...

Then again, none of that is going to work as long as the readers don't give a fuck. Many don't. That's why the current system won't change anytime soon.

I don't care if they got screwed because they were foolish enough to preorder. Ubisoft made a bad game, and behaved attrociously, and profited. Meanwhile, someone who just wanted to entertain themselves wasted an exorbitant amount of money on a game that wasn't worth buying.

Consumers have responsibilities as well. Blindly following the press or a company is not one of them. By the time the're able to play games like AssCreed or Arkham Knight, they should be old enough to be critical of what they read and know some sources are more reliable than others. If they get their news from the Sun or Daily Mail, that's their choice.

Don't get me wrong. Review embargoes aren't necessarily a bad thing. Review embargoes that extend to post-launch, are a bad thing.

No disagreement there. Though they can be kind of convenient when gauging the quality of the game, haha.

I'm not taking that risk.

I don't buy games before they come out, and I don't complain about getting shafted by them. I haven't preordered in years.

And that's the smart thing to do. Sadly, most consumers aren't smart or atleast they refuse to be when it comes to buying games.

That does not change the fact that the job of the journalists who cover these games is meant to be to help gamers make informed decisions and not make poor purchases, based in part on hype and PR promoted on those very sites.

And it's the responsibility of consumers to figure out what journalists/publications to trust. There are always going to be shitty ones.

This is just blatantly anti-consumer. Hide behind blaming them if you will, but you're just defending people getting paid for making broken games. That's seriously weak.

I disagree. All parties involved need to critical. There's a difference between being a consumer and being a mindless drone with a wallet.

I some cases, games end up being wildly different from what was promised (Daikatana was my first experience with that, fortunately I read some reviews first) to both press and gamers, and with those cases I will side with the gamers who bought the game in good faith. However, more often than not, their financial booboo could have been avoided with some patience.

Besides, I don't think people selling shitty products is all that anti-consumerist. What is anti-consumerist, is having little to no means of returning the faulty product and getting your money back. I'm glad that Steam, for instance, has much better return policies than they used to have.

And I agree. It's hard. Because people want the hype. I did try to make that clear. People want to hear this stuff, they want to know about upcoming games, even when it's just CGI trailers, "Teasers" for larger trailers, "Vertical Slices" and impressions from ridiculous pre-release events.

I don't think we'll ever see the back of it, but it'd be nice if this advertising were at least alongside some critical content that helps the reader.

I think this sort of thing is frustrating to both critical writers and readers. Sadly, this is one of those things where the majority determines what happens. If noteworthy sites suddenly stopped reporting on the newest trailers, the majority would just find some clickbait sites that do. The noteworthy site will lose income, meaning they'll have less to spend on good, interesting articles (that aren't as widely read as the latest AssCreed news).

Yeah, and that's the thing. At the end of the day, we're looking for information about videogames, because we love videogames. We're the best audience to market videogame advertising too, and sometimes we even enjoy it *cough* E3 *cough*.

The saddest thing is, we aren't even that important to the big companies. Those random neighbours, classmates and coworkers who own a PS4 (which they sorta bought on impulse with an unexpectedly big tax refund) and occasionaly buy a big releasy (and the newest Madden/FIFA) are. They may not be avid gamers, but there are so many of them, so... yeah.

I think the smart thing to do is to just let it go and find some (smaller) sites to get your news and reviews from.

Not particularly. The things they get blacklisted for tend to be more than that. For instance, Kotaku still reported on Fallout 4. Trailers, speculation, review. Of course they do, because Fallout 4 is big, and it's worth a lot of traffic. Kotaku needs Fallout 4, and Bethesda does need coverage, but they can get that everywhere. And they did. A lot of that coverage from Kotaku comes from going over someone else's article on the press release. What this blacklisting does is prevents the most important information coming out, and gives us only the advertising and hype. Ironically enough, they got blacklisted for reporting the same stuff, pointless hype.

Kotaku got into trouble for sharing info companies were not ready to share, because, for instance, the game was still in early development and was likely to change before gamers got their hands on it. The only ones who profited from reporting on it, was Kotaku themselves.

The problem Kotaku is facing now is not so much not getting info, but getting it late. Like you said, they have to wait until someone else posts the news. That's what hurts most: not being first.

As for press releases, those are actually a lot worse than what even the optimistic websites write (most of the time anyway). It's as if the PR department locked up the words 'amazing', 'detailed' and 'innovative' in some stables and are milking them for all they're worth.

There's been many noted cases of interference like this. There was the Jeff Gerstmann getting canned because his review of Kane and Lynch wasn't high enough, and the publishers had significant ad money invested in the site. There's Jim Sterling getting blacklisted by Konami for reporting negatively on some of their releases and talking about the conditions at the company (Which by all accounts, seem to be abominable).

If I understood correctly, Gerstmann has someone who had little to no knowledge to thank for that. Advertisers may complain (and they do, I've seen it myself), but a publication is not supposed to give in. The publications I worked for always sided with the writers in cases like that. Give them an inch, they take the whole 4 page review and put a big fat 10/10 underneath it, you know?

As for Konami: Japanese publishers tend to be control freaks (and on their hometurf, they do have a lot of control over magazines and websites). Usually, you just have to pretend they are in power and then respectfully do your own thing, as it's all about appearances. Konami is just plain insane, though.

What this is, is a publisher trying to exert undue control over a publication, and hurting our ability to get good information.

I wouldn't go as far as calling it 'exerting undue control'. Putting a website on the ignore-list is a little childish, but they have every right to do so, as they're not forcing Kotaku to do anything.

And on the flipside, what Kotaku was doing is stupid, hypey bullshit, not even worth it, not worth them getting blacklisted over, and on Bethesda's part, it shouldn't be enough of a problem for them to blacklist them.

I think it's probably more like certain actions being the final drops in an already full bucket rather than an isolated incident so bad it demanded retailiation.

I'll be blunt: Fuck Kotaku. They're shit. But if they go under, it should be because people stop being fucked to read their shit, not because they're edged out by publishers who want someone they can control better.

Yep. I'm not feeling sorry for them either.

 

[Something Amyss]

If you wasted less time on talking about GG and more time about finding the "journalism" and the ethical problems that you talk about, maybe people would actually help Kotaku.

Weird, for a movement that seems to do little more than talk about itself, that the burden is on me to deal with ethics and journalism.

Except I actually tried that, offering my experience and understanding of ethics in terms of practical applications, and I got shouted down and threatened. Why would I continue?

 

[vallorn]

If you wasted less time on talking about GG and more time about finding the "journalism" and the ethical problems that you talk about, maybe people would actually help Kotaku.

Weird, for a movement that seems to do little more than talk about itself, that the burden is on me to deal with ethics and journalism.

Except I actually tried that, offering my experience and understanding of ethics in terms of practical applications, and I got shouted down and threatened. Why would I continue?

Ignoring your first paragraph, I just went through the last two pages and I don't see any threats, either direct or implied, could you point them out?

 

[Josh123914]

If you wasted less time on talking about GG and more time about finding the "journalism" and the ethical problems that you talk about, maybe people would actually help Kotaku.

Weird, for a movement that seems to do little more than talk about itself, that the burden is on me to deal with ethics and journalism.

Except I actually tried that, offering my experience and understanding of ethics in terms of practical applications, and I got shouted down and threatened. Why would I continue?

We talk about more than just ourselves. The problem is that on this site, the conversation is always brought back to gamergate, and how its bad or something. Rarely is it a GGer on the site that actually initiates such a discussion about gamergate, because we care about the issues. It's almost exclusively the resident banjumper being antagonistic, or someone on the site putting GG on the defensive by calling into question our true intentions, or implying our "obsession" with e-celebs, and then interpreting us defending ourselves as evidence of our own guilt.

So how about you actually address why Kotaku's behaviour means we should rally to their defence on their alleged blacklisting?

 

[Something Amyss]

Ignoring your first paragraph, I just went through the last two pages and I don't see any threats, either direct or implied, could you point them out?

Right after you point out where I said "in this thread."

 

[ScaredIndie]

Ignoring your first paragraph, I just went through the last two pages and I don't see any threats, either direct or implied, could you point them out?

Right after you point out where I said "in this thread."

Wow that is a shame, probably had people thinking you were a gamergater since it was talking about ethics and thus they were threatening you. Could you provide a link to that? No one deserves to be getting death threats over the state of the gaming industry.

 

[Something Amyss]

Wow that is a shame, probably had people thinking you were a gamergater since it was talking about ethics

Weirdly enough, I suspect talking about ethics is generally what tips people off that I'm not part of GamerGate. God knows it had enough Gaters using snarl words like "SJW" or "cultural marxism."

 

[ScaredIndie]

Wow that is a shame, probably had people thinking you were a gamergater since it was talking about ethics

Weirdly enough, I suspect talking about ethics is generally what tips people off that I'm not part of GamerGate. God knows it had enough Gaters using snarl words like "SJW" or "cultural marxism."

I find that unlikely but as with my other post I will ask for the link since you clearly missed that part of my prior response.

 

[Silvanus]

Bethesda and Ubisoft are exercising their right to not engage with Kotaku. The discussion on GJP was collusion among different press outlets which wielded substantial power in determining whether someone would find work in the field to not publish anything by Pinsof. The latter is what blacklisting is, the former is not.

The latter were exercising their personal power to not engage with somebody, no?

Now, the only differences of substance here are in how they are described. Bethesda and Ubisoft could be described as "wielding substantial power in determining whether someone would work in the field", too; Bethesda and Ubisoft talking to one another (as they may well do) could be termed "collusion" to do so.

Obviously I do not believe this to be the case. I just do not believe that it is always universally the same group that consistently benefits to the point where one group has privilege and no others do in all situations [...]

This is something nobody has claimed. It's a simple misrepresentation.

It would be one thing if you were aware of the personal background of the individual. But it makes no sense to apply life experiences to skin color. It's an unnecessary guessing game that isn't productive and only serves to further divide people.

It makes sense to identify trends which are associated with certain traits. People with certain traits disproportionately experience one kind of treatment; therefore, people with that trait may have a higher likelihood of experiencing that treatment. If we did not identify trends in this way, we could not identify racism, homophobia, bigotry.

 

[Nailzzz]

It would be one thing if you were aware of the personal background of the individual. But it makes no sense to apply life experiences to skin color. It's an unnecessary guessing game that isn't productive and only serves to further divide people.

It makes sense to identify trends which are associated with certain traits. People with certain traits disproportionately experience one kind of treatment; therefore, people with that trait may have a higher likelihood of experiencing that treatment. If we did not identify trends in this way, we could not identify racism, homophobia, bigotry.

If you defend the individual based on their individual rights, you solve the problem for the collective. The trend need not even be a factor. It isn't important to identify racism or homophobia. The only thing that is important is to safeguard the rights of the individual from bigots of any kind. To do otherwise, is to reinforce tribalism and keep us on an us vs. them mindset.

 

[Silvanus]

If you defend the individual based on their individual rights, you solve the problem for the collective.

If you defend every individual equally, then you've solved the problems "for the collective", yes. That's just tautology. It tells us nothing.

The trend need not even be a factor. It isn't important to identify racism or homophobia. The only thing that is important is to safeguard the rights of the individual from bigots of any kind. To do otherwise, is to reinforce tribalism and keep us on an us vs. them mindset.

Absolute bollocks. If we ignore the existence of racism and homophobia, and refuse to acknowledge them for what they are, then we simply allow them to persist.

They would not magically go away if we did not do anything about them, and pretended that everybody is receiving equal treatment. That would be simply lying, and disregarding vital evidence for no good reason whatsoever. Nothing but lying.

 

[OldNewNewOld]

If you wasted less time on talking about GG and more time about finding the "journalism" and the ethical problems that you talk about, maybe people would actually help Kotaku.

Weird, for a movement that seems to do little more than talk about itself, that the burden is on me to deal with ethics and journalism.

Except I actually tried that, offering my experience and understanding of ethics in terms of practical applications, and I got shouted down and threatened. Why would I continue?

I'm not sure we understand each other.
You were talking down on GG because they weren't defending Kotaku because supposedly this current situation is a breach of ethics in journalism. The point is, it isn't. Whether this is a breach of ethics or not is even completely irrelevant because it's not about journalism but business. Should this be talked about? Yeah, it should. Even if Kotaku is beyond shit, the thing that affected them affects everyone else to some extend, and ultimately us as the consumer. But that's not GG related and I don't get some of your stabs against GG for this situation.

 

[CaitSeith]

If you wasted less time on talking about GG and more time about finding the "journalism" and the ethical problems that you talk about, maybe people would actually help Kotaku.

Weird, for a movement that seems to do little more than talk about itself, that the burden is on me to deal with ethics and journalism.

Except I actually tried that, offering my experience and understanding of ethics in terms of practical applications, and I got shouted down and threatened. Why would I continue?

I'm not sure we understand each other.
You were talking down on GG because they weren't defending Kotaku because supposedly this current situation is a breach of ethics in journalism. The point is, it isn't. Whether this is a breach of ethics or not is even completely irrelevant because it's not about journalism but business. Should this be talked about? Yeah, it should. Even if Kotaku is beyond shit, the thing that affected them affects everyone else to some extend, and ultimately us as the consumer. But that's not GG related and I don't get some of your stabs against GG for this situation.

Leaving GG aside for a moment; how is gathering, processing, and publishing information related to news to an audience not Journalism?

 

[SecondPrize]

Bethesda and Ubisoft are exercising their right to not engage with Kotaku. The discussion on GJP was collusion among different press outlets which wielded substantial power in determining whether someone would find work in the field to not publish anything by Pinsof. The latter is what blacklisting is, the former is not.

The latter were exercising their personal power to not engage with somebody, no?

Now, the only differences of substance here are in how they are described. Bethesda and Ubisoft could be described as "wielding substantial power in determining whether someone would work in the field", too; Bethesda and Ubisoft talking to one another (as they may well do) could be termed "collusion" to do so.

Obviously I do not believe this to be the case. I just do not believe that it is always universally the same group that consistently benefits to the point where one group has privilege and no others do in all situations [...]

This is something nobody has claimed. It's a simple misrepresentation.

It would be one thing if you were aware of the personal background of the individual. But it makes no sense to apply life experiences to skin color. It's an unnecessary guessing game that isn't productive and only serves to further divide people.

It makes sense to identify trends which are associated with certain traits. People with certain traits disproportionately experience one kind of treatment; therefore, people with that trait may have a higher likelihood of experiencing that treatment. If we did not identify trends in this way, we could not identify racism, homophobia, bigotry.

No, they don't wield substantial power in the field. They wield power over themselves. Blacklisting is total. If you are blacklisted, you don't get to work in that profession unless you find the equivalent of an punishment army posting in the back end of Antarctica. Movie folk weren't able to find work in a few studios when they were labeled as communist by the HUAC, they were unable to work in Hollywood entirely. Refusing to hire or work with somebody is simply not hiring or working with them. Refusing to hire somebody because the industry has them on a list of undesirables to freeze out of the industry is blacklisting. The GJP weren't individually deciding not to hire Allistair Pinsof, they were collectively discussing how they were not going to give him any freelance gigs and encouraging editors not on board to get with it. That's blacklisting.

 

[Therumancer]

I'm not a big fan of Kotaku as most people here can probably guess. That said I haven't been sounding off about this not because of my dislike but because it seems part of the information is missing. The way it seems to me is that Kotaku got information it wasn't supposed to have, it published this knowingly, and the companies that lost the information (it wasn't a staged leak) were understandably upset, and are making an example. One can say that companies shouldn't "punish" the media for doing it's job, but in reality that's what happens. One of the big problems with the current state of the media is that all of these small media outlets that have replaced the big ones don't have the power, influence, or resources, to be properly intimidating to those they report on. At the end of the day something like Kotaku is only big in a very specific sphere and has plenty of competition that is willing to play ball, that means a blacklist for doing it's job (so to speak). Basically in this kind of arena nobody is big enough to intimidate the companies and the gaming media is dependent on the same groups they report on. I suppose if Kotaku had the resources and the guts to do real investigative journalism and obtained all the same information anyway they might be intimidating, especially if they had a powerful legal department capable of protecting them, but right now they decided to literally bite the hand that feeds them, and now they aren't getting fed, and we're seeing how dependent they are on the groups they cover.

I see this as less an issue with corruption, as much as a demonstration of why the whole system is broken and how despite all claims "games journalism" doesn't exist, nor can one expect the gaming media to watch dog gaming companies, especially big ones, if you do something they don't like they can hurt you, the most even a big site like Kotaku can do is whine about it... and that represents a problem.

It's also why I had some hope at one time we'd see some changes on how things worked when companies like Forbes started paying more attention to video games (or pretending to). If big "named" news services that cover more than one thing started caring about gaming and geekdom they would be far more intimidating, especially seeing as if say Bethesda blacklists a big news organization over a leak, that same organization might then decide to pay special attention to all of their dealings and the next thing you know every bit of dirty laundry they have on any subject will get aired out, financially, socially, etc... Right now though the games media is not in a position where it can play hardball. Sadly with the slow collapse of our favorite estate and it's increasing banality we're starting to see a big problem with the "new media" and "social media" which is simply that it's too weak and each bit tends to be too focused on one particular effort. Not even the biggest games journalist is holding a candle to say the power of the "New York Times" or a major news network (CNN, etc...) nor do any games journalists seem interested in (or I guess more accurately what's left of big media isn't interested in) high level sponsorship or affiliation.

Now I could be wrong if Kotaku has some kind of patron of note and power I'm not aware of it. I don't care for them so I generally haven't looked into things.

That's my opinion, the issue is more about the situation that caused this to happen rather than the event itself.

 

[Silvanus]

No, they don't wield substantial power in the field. They wield power over themselves. Blacklisting is total. If you are blacklisted, you don't get to work in that profession unless you find the equivalent of an punishment army posting in the back end of Antarctica. Movie folk weren't able to find work in a few studios when they were labeled as communist by the HUAC, they were unable to work in Hollywood entirely. Refusing to hire or work with somebody is simply not hiring or working with them. Refusing to hire somebody because the industry has them on a list of undesirables to freeze out of the industry is blacklisting. The GJP weren't individually deciding not to hire Allistair Pinsof, they were collectively discussing how they were not going to give him any freelance gigs and encouraging editors not on board to get with it. That's blacklisting.

The GJP also wield power "over themselves", rather than the entire industry, and their power went no further than their own choices. That's my point.

It's still shady. I agree, I know. But it is, in principle, much the same as has been done towards Kotaku.

 

[MiskWisk]

If you wasted less time on talking about GG and more time about finding the "journalism" and the ethical problems that you talk about, maybe people would actually help Kotaku.

Weird, for a movement that seems to do little more than talk about itself, that the burden is on me to deal with ethics and journalism.

Except I actually tried that, offering my experience and understanding of ethics in terms of practical applications, and I got shouted down and threatened. Why would I continue?

I'm not sure we understand each other.
You were talking down on GG because they weren't defending Kotaku because supposedly this current situation is a breach of ethics in journalism. The point is, it isn't. Whether this is a breach of ethics or not is even completely irrelevant because it's not about journalism but business. Should this be talked about? Yeah, it should. Even if Kotaku is beyond shit, the thing that affected them affects everyone else to some extend, and ultimately us as the consumer. But that's not GG related and I don't get some of your stabs against GG for this situation.

Leaving GG aside for a moment; how is gathering, processing, and publishing information related to news to an audience not Journalism?

I might be wrong but I think BiH-Kira misspoke. Rather, this isn't a case of ethics in journalism; both sides have a right to do what they have done. The question here is however to do with business in journalism, was the decision to publish the information Kotaku had a good business decision and is it a good decision to do what Ubi and Bethesda have done in response?

 

[Ash_Effect]

I should state at this point that before last year, game journalists, their audience, and game developers/publishers were in a delicate state of balanced symbiosis. Journalists were not supposed to overstep their boundaries, the audience would read between the lines or waited to see who was relatively trustworthy and who wasn't, and devs/publishers fed the journalists info for them to write articles for their audience. Objectively, it was the best solution to a situation that would, outside of enthusiast press, been seen as deeply corrupt. There were problems, sure, but they were minimal.

The problem came when journalists overstepped their boundaries both ways. They started stringing up figures in the dev/pub world with little more than hearsay, or with full knowledge that their subjects could not defend themselves without compromising an ongoing case. They started speaking down to their audience while publishing recommendations for games that weren't very good but made by their associates/friends. They started pushing their ideology both ways rather than realizing this symbiosis was what kept the money rolling in, NOT their individual skills as writers. It should be noted that unlike devs/pubs and gamers, journalists have a vested interest in pleasing both sides. Gamers only want to play good games and want their hobby to be free of proselytizing. Devs/pubs want to make money and want their profession to be free of proselytizing. Those two sides are, and always will be, in it for themselves, but they recognize the relative give-and-take economic relationship that they possess. Journalists, on the other hand, are reliant on good will from both devs/pubs (to give them info) and readers (to give them clicks); they had largely forgotten the simple philosophy of give-and-take between them and both devs/pubs and their audience, and believed themselves to be the most important part of an industry that has many parts far more important than them.

Their audience, who has nothing to lose, and everything to gain, revolted. This led to the GamerGate hashtag. Regardless of where you fall on the controversy (I was a supporter, but I slowly bowed out as an observer now, though I still tweet about relevant things, without the hashtag), it can't be denied that the hashtag was started at least in part by the journalists' inability to refrain from overstepping their boundaries. The balance ended up tipping over; the only reason devs/pubs largely have not chosen a side yet in the controversy is that they're caught between a rock and a hard place - do they support the journalists, who could ruin a game with a few articles, or the audience who largely fills their pockets? I have no opinion on which is the right choice, but the current situation and climate is very volatile. Everyone (both on the journalist side and the GG side) are on a hair trigger for any moment of weakness.

So let's take this event not as a isolated incident but as the latest in a series of things journalists have done. It is a fact that journalists have lost a lot of public trust due to the scandal and controversy. It is also a fact that they are still publishing stories that do damage to others so they can gain clicks. If we see this as a chain of events it makes perfect sense that Bethesda and Ubisoft would retract their business relationship with Kotaku; not only has Kotaku lost public faith, it continues to push out damaging articles that don't really help either its existing audience (because let's face it, nobody fucking cares about Prey 2, and as I said before this was an act of ego for Kotaku) or the companies it professes to help. It plain doesn't make any sense to work with them anymore, because they are (excuse the metaphor) a pack of rabid dogs now - public perception is that they are unprofessional, condescending, and lazy. When you add that to the fact that they may actually do damage to your properties instead of promote them, then the only logical choice is to cease relations with them.