1701

Actually, it’s the media in need of training in this instance. Page hits generated through sensationalist posts may be profitable in the short term, but once your journalistic credibility has been expended, those page hitters won’t be coming back.

Also: Teiman, please Google “pedantic”. And then do what you can to stay off the first page of results.

1702

Your suggestion that video games journalism has a finite bucket of credibility to play with is demonstrably false. Or at least, the bucket has enough credibility for many websites working without regard to “credibility” to flourish for years.

1703

On Blow’s post, he seems to be claiming that CVG did wrong by only talking about part of the interview. What, so unless unedited transcripts of interviews are published, this editorial selection of detail is unacceptable bias?

I accept that taking selective quotes from an interview can result in “somewhat-out-of-context quotes”. I do not accept having an interview you’ve done pilfered for a few “somewhat-out-of-context quotes” at another site is a major problem worthy of a blog post calling the site deceptive and manipulative.

1704

This would be great in all areas of journalism, not just fakeo games journalism.

1705

Well, there are two parts. The first part is that, what I am saying is that they cherry-picked quotes in order to construct a nerd-rage-inducing message that had little to do with the meaning of what I was actually saying with those quotes.

This can be seen very clearly. Here’s the headline they picked for their article:

“Braid creator: Sony takes more risks than MS with indie game choices”

If they had picked slightly different quotes, just a couple of sentences later, the headline could just as easily have been:

“Braid creator: Microsoft’s online service more successful than Sony’s”

That is the fundamental core of why this is bullshit.

The second layer of badness comes when they fail to mention the other context of the article – so that the depiction to the readers is that I called a press conference in order to shout to the world about how Sony is better than Microsoft. That is not at all something I would do, but clearly the readers get the impression that I am doing that – just look at the comments.

I have no problem with the idea of shortening an interview for public consumption or whatever. But those statements about Sony were part of a set of counterbalancing statements that were very deliberately said the way they were. When a statement is yanked out of the context of its counterbalancing statements, its meaning changes.

Outlets like CVG are in the business of changing the meaning of things on purpose, routinely, in order to get hits. But I think they are so steeped in the tradition of lousy game journalism (and so bad at journalism themselves) that they don’t even see what’s wrong with this.

I think a fair headline summarizing this part of the interview would have been:

“Braid creator discusses pros and cons of XBLA and PSN for indies”

Not as exciting, is it? Not as nerd-rage-inducing, is it? That’s the point – what we were saying in the interview was an actual reasonable discussion not meant to induce nerd rage.

1706

Well… that suck.

1707

I’ve made no such suggestion, though I can’t think of how you would actually demonstrate that it were false if I had.

To clarify: if a site (say, Destructoid) starts using lots of sensationalist bait to drive up page hits, the site’s credibility is compromised, and eventually readers will take their page views elsewhere (say, EDGE or somesuch). Games journalism in general has no finite credibility reserve, but individual sites certainly must maintain some semblance of credibility if they wish to thrive in a competitive venue.

1708

That’s highly unlikely. Gamers love sensationalism. We engage in it on our own on this forum every single day. Look at every single thread; there’s at least one person who takes the 100% opposite view in order to drive conversation or troll, or whatever. And when someone does this, everyone responds in kind and takes it up a notch.

Games journalism in general has no finite credibility reserve, but individual sites certainly must maintain some semblance of credibility if they wish to thrive in a competitive venue.

Is there an example of a website driven out of business because of a lack of credibility? Isn’t the rise of Gawker proof that hit mongering works?

1709

Jonathan, sorry but I have to disagree with your outrage.

CVG took the interesting part of the interview and used it. They’re allowed to do that. It isn’t interesting that you think MS is successful, most people do. But what you bring that is interesting is another point of view – something pretty unique to your position, artistic, risky, indie games. So they posted it.

I would have a much bigger problem with the press if they were nothing more than mouthpieces for what developers dictate to them. They are the independent press. They are allowed to make that choice. Good for them for knowing your position in the industry and the weight of what you say in such matters.

I love reading interviews by you two guys. I am going to read the whole thing, but that doesn’t mean everyone is going to want to read the whole thing. That is where each site helps their community, by cutting it down to what they think their community will find interesting. Obviously some people here want to read the whole thing, good for them – but there are more gamers in the world than the few guys here demanding that. I personally don’t want to have to read every single interview in its entirety, shit I don’t even have the patience sometimes if the interview is with me.

No one is going to keep reposting the entire interview if they want to talk about a slice of the interview. And if you are reacting to a post in a forum… come on. You are reaching a bigger audience now, get used to it. Who knows, one day even you may even be able to piss off Hitler (isn’t pissing off hitler a good thing?).

It sounds like you are more worried about MS’s reaction to the headline – I have found they are pretty smart and actually read everything - the edge interview still exists, anyone who wants to read it can. And I would hope your relationship with a partner would not be high on the list of any press outlet’s worries.

Since I am going long on this – can someone summarize all this for everyone else but… at the end of the day, none of this matters. People will buy your games if they are good, they won’t if they aren’t. Roll with it, as someone who likes your games, your talks, etc – I found your outburst against CVG a little umm… well… well don’t be a fragile flower with the press. CVG didn’t misrepresent you, they covered the topic they wanted, you just wanted them to cover another topic.

1710

Jonathan answered this above in the same way I would, which is that a) they picked quotes and a headline that seem designed to be controversial instead of informative and descriptive, and b) they didn’t even contextualize those quotes very well from the larger interview.

It’s a bummer we can’t run parallel universe experiments, but anecdotally the reaction to the full interview (which was eventually posted, link above) has been much more of a “interesting interview” type of thing, even by people initially insulted by things like the XBLIG comment, etc. No way of knowing for sure, but I’m an optimist about this stuff, I guess.

Yeah, that was a joke. I mean, I’m me, so sure, you can always say I’m fond of hearing me talk and say I’m not objective about this, but trying to be objective, I talked to the Wired guy for an hour or so about all kinds of subtle stuff about acheivements, psychology, motivation, depth, etc. If you’ve heard my GDC lecture on this topic, I did do a fair amount of research and discussed that stuff with him. He cherry-picked a single quote about how Zynga is kind of scary, or something like that. Hell, I even said pro-Zynga stuff on the phone. I mean, even if I’m an egomaniacal freak, it was still just objectively shitty journalism. Contrast this with the Gamespot piece that ran on the same topic a month later, and my comments were edited well, and contextualized correctly. It was miles ahead of the Wired piece in terms of subtlety and depth. I can find links if people care to compare them.

I would be more than happy to trade fewer positive SpyParty previews for better game journalism all around; I’d make that trade in a millisecond. I’m constantly complaining about how hype oriented the previews are for games, and I usually try to correct statements about SpyParty if something is misrepresented (positively or negatively). I think a lot of developers would rather live in a world of real game journalism and would gladly pay for that even on their own games. See, I’m an optimist.

This seems sadly true. Reading the dtoid comment threads of both the initial article and Jim’s reply to Jonathan’s post, it’s interesting to watch the commentors close ranks.

It’s also not just gamers, the misrepresentation increases with each repost, so in this case, you can look at EDGE -> CVG -> Dtoid -> Escapist, and at each step there is more extreme and polarizing editorializing surrounding the quotes, and the comments get more shrill. (The Escapist edited their article after Jonathan posted, but the original was pretty nerdrage trolling.) This is the other reason why being taken out of context is so bad, because the echo chamber tends to amplify the problem, so a large percentage of people who see the “story” only see the end of the game of telephone where “Jonathan Blow tells Microsoft to fuck off, and The Witness will be PSN exclusive”. This is also why getting people to print corrections is almost useless, since by the time it’s out and echoing, it’s too late.

Chris

1711

How do they know the right question to ask you unless they talk with you for 45 minutes? Isn’t this what journalists are supposed to do? Dig deeper to find the nugget? The nugget being what helps them write their article or discuss a point? He gave you 45 minutes to say your two lines, why didn’t you say the better two lines then?

I am seeing a disconnect here of what people see as the role of the press. I wish I could tell them what to say, what I think is interesting - those boycotters aren’t interesting, let’s stop talking about them - but thankfully, even when it is painful to me, they don’t behave like that.

Are there some people on the press side bad at this? Sure. It happens, maybe that was the wired guy - but then you just have to roll with it.

1712

Well chet, obviously we just have different opinions on what journalism is all about. I’m unlikely to convince you by talking more (though I’d be interested in hearing what you think after you read the interview)… but let me just make a super-oversimplified example to clarify why I was mad.

If an interviewer asks, “Where should indies publish their games, XBLA or PSN?” And I say, “That depends on what the developer is looking for… on XBLA you have the potential to sell many more copies, but on PSN you have more freedom to do creative things,” and a reporter decides to just cherry-pick the second part of the sentence: “BRAID DEVELOPER SAYS: PSN IS BETTER THAN XBLA BECAUSE INDIES HAVE MORE FREEDOM,” that is a clearly misleading headline, and the reporter is just being manipulative / trashy / what-have-you.

That is what happened here; it was just in longer form.

1713

But surely you agree that things can be taken out of context in a way that is bad, even if you disagree in this case? I assume you agree that the Eurogamer Wii thing recently was not a reasonable excerpt, for example?

This isn’t about being a delicate flower, this is about both wanting a reasonably accurate picture of your views represented, and the worry that this kind of journalism is bad for our industry and form. Most larger companies understand that the only way to guarantee a reasonably accurate picture will be portrayed is to stay on message and say nothing that can be pulled out of context.

I understand your point about wanting to talk about a slice of the topic, but it needs to be contextualized as a slice, and anybody writing that kind of piece needs to be extra careful to not make news where it didn’t exist.

Chris

1714

Wait, that’s a very different thing. You wishing you could convince the press that some story is not very interesting is not the same as having stuff you said pulled out of context and misrepresented. I agree with you 100% that you shouldn’t be able to wave your hand and say “this is not the story you’re looking for”. That’s really completely different than what we’re talking about, though.

Chris

1715

What is journalism all about?

If you think any of these sites are practicing journalism, you’re wrong. This is entertainment reporting, the read-headed stepchild of traditional reporting and journalism that focuses on personalities and fluff because what’s being covered isn’t exactly serious or important. Your opinions on Xbox Live and Microsoft relative to Sony/PSN aren’t exactly Wikileaks-level bomb-droppings. They’re the equivalent of news about Lindsey Lohan going into rehab.

Should sites strive for accuracy? Of course. This isn’t about accuracy, though. It’s about spin, about headline writing, about generating hits. You don’t believe that their spin on what you said is fair and maybe it isn’t, but you’ve made any number of provocative comments over the years. Maybe you’re not saying things specifically for the press or to draw attention to yourself, but the fact is that more people know who you are because of those comments than they would otherwise. As a result, Braid got way more attention from the press than it might have otherwise received. You’re effectively using and exploiting the press–intentionally or not–at the same time they’re using and exploiting you.

In the end, there’s an easy solution to being misquoted or having things taken out of context: Don’t talk to the press. It’s pretty easy to turn down media requests, especially when you’re not shipping a game. There will never be a case where people won’t take things you say out of context; hell, you don’t even need the media to do that for you. Readers are happy to do that on their own.

1716

Jonathan, I read both articles I don’t think it is as bad as you think it is in your head. It is not near as bad as your posture on that couch! Sit up straight, what would your mom say?!

Same with you Chris (except the posture, excellent), I guess in this case I just don’t see it as being as bad you guys think it is. There is nothing that needs correction and surely nothing that needs a rant on a blog. You guys are better than worrying about this stuff (steve makes some excellent points here).

The reaction from where a news article is posted is just something you need to live with. I don’t think the readers at edge are going to discuss it the same way they are going to at CVG, Destructoid or the escapist. Even if you reprint the entire article.

If I go to Destructiod, I go in expecting a more raucous discussion, more flaming and extreme sides. If the escapist always inflates headlines (did in both your examples) their readers are used to it, they do it for all articles - in comparative terms it isn’t the end of the world for those readers. You can’t control that, those communities are going to be different.

I have been misquoted, mischaracterized, misportrayed, you name it. It doesn’t matter. For better or for worse, I just keep talking and hope if the haters are going to hate, at least they put the hate into a danceable beat.

1717

Which zambie is the hunner?

1718

I can understand your position on this, but I disagree that it doesn’t matter. I definitely don’t think lives are at stake here, or that grievous crimes are being committed, but I think it does retard the evolution of our industry and art form because it means the flow of information is warped and distorted, so people can’t make as good decisions as they might if there was better information available.

I’m making an obviously pretty hand-wavy and indefensible statement, so I’ll leave it at that and not even try, and admit guilt at being a hopeless utopian optimist. :)

Chris

1719

Game developers do not have the right whatsoever to keep any information about what they are working on from the consumer public.

Game journalists have the moral responsibility to encourage, obtain, and report on as many leaks and details as possible about what game developers are working on.

1720

I really hope that’s an attempt at a joke.