MS267 said:
This is a viewpoint I completely disagree with.
If you tell someone they are "completely" in the wrong, then you are telling them that you have not understood their position and you have no sympathy for them, no appreciation of their thought process and no interest in establishing a shared view of the subject, a common language for expressing mutually held ideas and a fundamental sense of the necessity to achieve those things. In short, you are telling them that they, and their ideas, are disposable to you and you would be perfectly content to see them, and their ideas, vanish from the discourse and the world in general.
Context is everything. Context separates "the news" from "editorials" from "humor" from "art". All of these can say the same things, but they are all based in human attempts to express what is being said using different modes. Game reviews fall all across these modes, and the modes can have blurry lines, especially when they address topics that exist primarily in other modes. Video games are, in and of themselves, in general, humor and art. The games put forth ideas or stories or settings that have emotional resonance and invite the player to connect with them, much like a novel, painting, piece of music, dance, play or so forth.
On the other hand, game journalism is generally expected to align itself with news and editorials -- to, in effect, make a sincere and thoughtful attempt to avoid distorting the subject to make its points. When people ask for something like "objectivity" or "impartiality", they are trying to say they want the presenter to be aware of their own biases and to avoid them with roughly the same level of ethical rigor that is considered appropriate for the news.
However, this is an inherently flawed and impossible goal, because games are not, in general, a topic suitable to reporting in a news mode. Many aspects of games are suitable, such as "release dates" and "price" and "frame rate", but these are trivial and below the level of what qualifies as "news" -- it would be like expecting an evening news broadcast to read the local bus schedule.
News and games do overlap significantly in the case of game tournaments. The event itself is appropriate for news, and the reporting can cover, as relevant to the event, the concepts of the game, its strategy, character options, play styles, historical evolution of technique and a variety of topics that work to convey to the audience the significance of what is happening. (This is not new. World chess competitions used to be considered major news.)
But looking for game reviews to cover games themselves as if they were "news" is basically asking for "art" to be treated as a subject of "news". The news can tell you where a painting is exhibited or when a ballet will be performed. The news can tell you if there is a long line to see a play or if the prior works of a writer sold well. The news can convey a lot of material, including reporting on ways in which a work of art has caused controversy. But the news cannot tell you what you will think about it. The news can't tell you what "feminists" or "athletes" or "republicans" or "gamers" or "terrorists" will think about a work of art or a game. Not as groups or individuals, because the modality of news precludes that kind of speculation and projection. Moreover, in the realm of honest news it is recognized that groups like those do not have monolithic viewpoints. The news can report that, "a spokesman for the ... said ...", but that is considered distinct from expressing that every member of that group would have also said the same thing.
Game journalism as game reviews are, functionally, editorials. That's virtually all they can be, without slipping into "humor" or "art" themselves. While the news makes (when done properly) an extreme effort to avoid presenting "distorted" content by excluding the presentation of inherently distorted content, editorials are considered free to enter that realm. That is, an editorial can say, "This is good" and "I liked this" and "This is crap" and "I hated this". And that is what people want from game reviews -- just like what they want from movie reviews, fashion reviews and numerous other forms of commentary on what people think about a piece of art.
So, what are the social rules? In a "news" context, editorials must be labeled as such. This is often considered to have occurred when the word "editorial" is placed near the content. But also when anything that is considered equivalent and historically valid is used to delineate the content as well, such as "movie review" or "morning news" or "cable news after a certain hour of the day". The very detail that a "game review" is called a "game review" should convey that it is an editorial, an opinion, and not "news".
But it's not that simple. Because "game reviewers" are now artists and humorists who are often tasked with presenting factual news as well. Jim is an excellent example of this. His presentation is in the form of a persona -- a "character" who one is led to imagine is at least somewhat distinct from himself. He will often perform in ways that use distortion for humor, such as with this video. Jim is attempting not just to convey a review of a game, but also to make an artistic expression about who Jim is (both as a character and as the person creating and presenting that character). Jim is also attempting to be funny. And, perhaps most awkwardly, Jim is often conveying actual game industry news. This fails as "news" and "editorial", may work as "humor" (which is a matter of taste), and certainly succeeds in being performance art. The same can be said of many other "reviewers" who perform their reviews in an artistic format.
What makes the "news" news is the sincere attempt to exclude performance, humor and opinion. An editorial allows opinions, but requires them to be sincerely held and to avoid distortions purely intended to humorous effect or for other performance value. Humor and art (as modes) permit any distortions and make no promises to the audience about the content.
I don't completely disagree with anyone in this "argument". Because all I see are people trying to be understood and looking to the general community for validation, but refusing to understand each other. People are expressing themselves with emotionally-charged language, confused short-hand and misappropriated argot. Sincerity is met with scorn, and there is always one knight on the line who draws his sword to kill a snake, sending whole armies into unwanted battle.
