1761

You guys and the Publisher/Marketing brigade can go do your little dance of who you do or do not love all day long. That’s their job, and that’s your job.

And sometimes you’ll say things they don’t like, and they will not love you.

And sometimes they’ll offer to give you the first announcement that a title has gone gold, and you’ll love them.

And mostly you’ll dance around the edges, trying to get the advantage just enough to serve your own purposes, without burning bridges unnecessarily. On both sides.

But historically, known members of the press have been able to sit down at a table in the preconvene at GDC, surrounded by Game Developers who are talking with their peers, and the conversation continues.

That is rare in other fields.

If you want journalism (rather than just reviews), you need sources. You need to have people willing to talk to you – or at the very least not get up and leave when you try to join in.

Otherwise, the only access you’ll get to developers will boil down to communications through Marketing/PR, communications with Marketing/PR present, or through developers who have been specifically given training on how to deal with the press.

The gaming press has had a remarkable level of access – burning that for a few cheap page hits seems remarkably foolish to me.

But hey, I’m not the one who has to face going to a conference only to be a pariah, at best tolerated by professional marketing folks. And if you get a reputation for burning the developers, that’s what will happen to you.

Edited to add: Likewise, this isn’t aimed at Dave Long, it’s aimed at the press in general.

1762

It just goes to show what I’ve been saying all along…

“When you deal with the press, you’ll deal with a mess.”

1763

What you’ve been saying all along is “HAW HAW HAW.”

What the rest of us are saying is you should slit your wrists and do humanity a favor for once. Make your mother proud finally.

1764

So explain to me what happens when I show up and I was the guy who gave your game a bad review? Developers often act just like publishers when it comes to this. Are you suggesting I should not do my job so I can have the luxury of sitting at a table with you at GDC, overhearing information that would be of interest to readers that you would prefer I don’t say anything about because it might not be construed exactly as you intended?

Sounds to me like going through PR regardless of whether you make it official or not.

1765

Reviews are not journalism.

Hell, most of the time, they aren’t even criticism.

Real reporting is harder. And yes, if you go to conferences and report on table conversations, what happens is that you will become a pariah. You’ll have had your handful of stories, and then no one will talk to you. You won’t be able to report on what people are talking about, because you won’t know.

So, if your job is actual journalism, you are going to end up in the odd position of knowing things you cannot write about. Of course, this leaves you no worse off than if you didn’t know those things in the first place. Moreover, you will have a much more robust set of information to work from when someone tries to blow smoke up your ass, and you will have contacts who might be willing to talk to you.

Instead, you’ll be able to talk to PR, with no real knowledge to tell when they are lying.

1766

Did you really just say that the gaming industry is more successful than the film industry?

1767

I don’t see the movie industry as a pure digital technology industry. But this is me, and probably there’s a lot of digital technology in making movies now, so I am arguably wrong.

Anyway you can create a videogame in a computer, and sell it on the internet, so only digital technology is involved.

1768

I guess plonk is the only viable reply.

1769

So real reporting is like being friends with developers, professionally? Hang out with them, shoot the shit, and then go home? Learn things for personal edification?

So, if your job is actual journalism, you are going to end up in the odd position of knowing things you cannot write about. Of course, this leaves you no worse off than if you didn’t know those things in the first place. Moreover, you will have a much more robust set of information to work from when someone tries to blow smoke up your ass, and you will have contacts who might be willing to talk to you.

Instead, you’ll be able to talk to PR, with no real knowledge to tell when they are lying.

This little tangent of people complaining that journalists sometimes print the things they are told, and various people nodding along like “oh man that journalist was definitely in the wrong there, what with all his disseminating information to the public,” is real weep for America style shit. It’s like some sort of weird Glenn Greenwald/Penny Arcade crossover.

Real journalism is inducing people who know things into telling you those things and then printing them. It’s not stenography. I can read press releases myself. I mean, “no real knowledge to tell when they are lying”? But if you say “GameCo execs say they will have dozens of high quality exclusives at launch. However, sources say that isn’t true” you’ll totally no long be BFFzies with that exec or with the sources who told you he was lying.

1770

Wow, that sounds so draconian!

Table conversations are fun, but they are mostly the source of rumors that can be reported, and rumors ain’t exactly hard-hitting journalism, either. Press people can skip them entirely and still be able to do their jobs.

And it doesn’t really matter how you label reviews and previews. These are the things that the readers want, so the job of the gaming press is to deliver these to them – unless you’re writing about the business side of gaming, in which case your readers are probably people in the investment community. Do you think most gamers care about EA’s stock price?

I will give you an example of how local journalism works. Go to a school board meeting and take notes. The school district votes on an early retirement plan to entice senior teachers to retire as a way of saving the district money. To write your story you make a few phone calls and interview an assistant superintendent, maybe someone in the teacher’s union, and perhaps a parent or two. At no time do you need go have coffee with anyone and hear table talk.

I don’t think you get how the press side of things works.

1771

Yeah, probably!

Anyway you can create a movie in a computer, and sell it on the internet, so only digital technology is involved.

1772

Arguably, the bigger problem is the idea that it should be a relationship, at least in the context of being too chummy. To many press critics, the Washington press corps has had this problem, as do sports reporters. The politicians and athletes cultivate personal relationships with those covering them, and I’m sure they discuss “how things should be” and the finer points of their respective fields to make each other feel smarter and more connected. But there’s a point where you you wonder if those relationships lead to a story being buried or a criticism pulled back or a side being taken somewhere down the road.

There’s already a double standard with some members of the press when covering the games of and discussing theory with the big thinkers/talkers" versus the rest of us mouthbreathers. The press treats even the simplest concepts in their games as statements or serious weighty themes, and then quickly piss on everyone else’s content which may or may not have similar concepts or themes. The reporting at the Gamesutras and Edge’s of the world have a saminess to them because they always go to the same developers for quotes.

Anyway, I have no idea where I’m going with this. Should the press do a better job? Sure. Is it your job to make sure they do a better job? No more than it’s the press’ job to make you do a better job.

Should you write about the press’ mistakes? Sure, knock yourself out, though don’t be too surprised when it blows up in your face because the press can be a whiny little bitch when it’s the one being criticized.

Should you stop having serious discussions? If your primary concern is the public’s perception of you, stop talking to the press at all or stop saying anything remotely controversial. But if your goal is really to push the industry or art form forward, it’s not about you. Keep in mind that the people who are in an actual position to act on the issues you’re discussing might also be willing or able to understand the context of your comments or read an interview. You may have to absorb a few blows on the way—er, no pun intended there—but what artists have ever had it easy?

1773

Sure. It means you have fewer sources who are willing to talk to you, and it means you are working from a less robust base of knowledge about how things actually work, but you can skip all you like. Or, you know, have it skipped for you if you burn people.

Reviews don’t require anything from developers or publishers. Buy the game, write about it.

Previews? You need a relationship with the publisher (not the developer) that has them willing to give you access. That’s between you, and them. And hey, those exclusive first looks and magazine covers (back when anyone read magazines), all part of the game.

You mean public information is public? I bet you could write an article about the announcement of the impending release of a game, and talk to someone at the Publisher and to someone at the Developer as well.

And when you get to layoffs, I’m sure you can get a statement from the company. And you might even get some seriously disgruntled people with an axe to grind who are more than happy to vent to you. But if you want information from someone who isn’t trying to control the coverage, it seems to me that you need good contacts inside the industry. (**)

Oh, sorry. Lost those. Had to report about someone complaining about some middleware at a table full of colleagues. (*)

(*) Just a theoretical example. As I said, at least historically, the press at conferences weren’t burning those bridges.

(**) I could be overly optimistic about press coverage – it does seem these days that the news media mostly reports what side A claims, and what side B claims, and doesn’t actually try to validate either set of claims. Photocopier objectivity?

1774

I think that–unfairly–there is the impression that if you write up a story and it isn’t criticizing someone in the games industry, you’re doing a bad job as a game journalist. If I talk to someone in the games industry and they tell me what I and my readers want to know and I report on it and don’t talk about what a douche the guy I just talked with was, well… that’s because he wasn’t. Sometimes game developers are just people who are trying hard to make successful entertainment products. Sometimes, through no fault of the developers or the game journalists reporting on a game ahead of release, someone buys the eventual game and doesn’t like it. Does that mean that the game journalists reporting along the way did a bad job and are on the take? No. It means that the game journalists liked the game and the player didn’t.

There are surely cases where game journalists are too chummy with developers or whatever, but frankly I’m sick of the Internet trend where a story has to be negative before it can be deemed credible. I’m ready to report on the bad side of things if it’s there, but if it’s not there (or I don’t see it, or I think there are more important things to stress in my article) I’m not going to try to make a mountain out of a mole hill. I refuse to write that sort of crap just to appease some nerd who–whether he likes my story or not–will forget that I exist tomorrow because he has found someone else or some other game to hate. I want to write what I thought about what I just saw or the conversation I just had. I want to relay important information, not work so hard finding something to complain about that I miss the big picture.

It’s not like what I want matters, though. I’ve rarely had the opportunity to write content for an outlet that anyone actually cared about or read religiously. There’s a good chance I never will. I guess I just don’t hate enough things yet.

1775

Do you really think that game development people clam up over layoffs and other internal problems because something they’ve said in the past has been taken out of context? That isn’t why. They don’t talk because it puts the company they work for in a bad light.

Check your local newspaper. When companies in other industries have layoffs, are they printing quotes from insiders about how the business was mismanaged? It’s rare. More than likely what you get are comments from analysts who watch the industry.

People don’t air their dirty laundry because it’s dirty laundry, not because they feel they’ve burned by the press. You work for a company and people get laid off, you’re going to the press to complain? I doubt it. And most of the time, even the people laid off don’t really comment to the press much. They’d prefer to be professional about it.

The gaming press doesn’t need to participate in table talk to do their job and if people stop talking if someone from the press sits down, no great loss. And take it for what you will, but the biggest chunk of their job is reviews and previews. That’s what most of the gaming fans want.

1776

No.

But I do think that the only way you get details from people is to have sources who have a reason to talk to you.

Again, you are missing my point. It is that if you want to actually do journalism (as opposed to reprinting paraphrased talking points fed from all the interested parties), you need to have sources. That’s where those exceptions come from.

So for 2011, should the thread title be “Games Reviews and Previews 2010: This Time It Sinks Lower”.

Reviews aren’t journalism. Previews are by their very nature puff-pieces (they have to be – if you take a work in progress and condemn all the bits that don’t work, no one will let you see a work in progress again).

1777

You want reporting on the game industry, fine. Most publications have done some of this. It’s never been the main thrust of any publication aimed at the enthusiast that I’ve seen, however. Most have been able to do the requisite reviewing and previewing, which tends to dominate. They still work in some news.

I am curious about what kind of news you’d like to see that requires inside sources beyond those that are vetted through the PR department? You want to see dirt? That’s always interesting, but does insider gossipy stuff really matter? Does it really matter why Ion Storm imploded, even if Christine Biederman’s piece was fascinating?

From a real news standpoint what interests me is why some games get approved and others don’t, or why games in development get cancelled. My experience is it’s very hard to get straight answers on these games. And most of the time it’s simple – the game isn’t projected to make the kind of money the publisher wants to see, or a game in development is struggling and the projections that once looked profitable no longer look that way.

I guess what I’m saying overall is that this idea that developers will stop talking to the press for fear of being misquoted is way overblown. Developers have always been careful when talking to the press, and in a table talk situation most of the time I’ve been there I’ve been told I can’t use something if it’s sensitive. And what good does that do me if I can’t use it?

This is games. It’s not Hollywood. It’s not a personality-driven industry. It’s an industry of nerdy people working in their cubes full of action figures doing mundane activities – writing code, moving polygons around to create landscape, writing quest text that most people skim. What’s the inside story on why Starcraft Ghost was cancelled? There might be some interesting gossip there, but mostly it’s just that Blizzard wasn’t happy with it. Good luck prying out the gossip from insiders, and if you do what you have isn’t news as much as gossip.

1778

I suggest: “Games Journalism 2011: It can probably sink lower, yes.”

1779

It’s usually pretty easy to tell when PR is lying to you. The first step: is their mouth moving? If so, they’re probably lying to you, have just lied to you, or are about to lie to you.

1780

I always enjoy the “I’m going to talk about something that isn’t really the question you asked me” approach, aka, the “Tell me what’s going to make this Sonic game NOT suck” challenge.