Total Biscuit - Why you shouldn't be excited - A look at games media's role in hype. Thanks Ant via HARDOCP.
TotalBiscuit brings you a discussion video on the games media's involvement in hype campaigns for unreleased or in-development titles and the negative impact it has on the industry.Rock, Paper, Shotgun - Videogames Are For Everybody. Thanks nin.
There has been criticism, too, which has resulted in gamers claiming that we hate them. We don’t hate gamers. We are gamers. Numerous (often offensive and widely incoherent) attempts to provoke controversy and scandal about the relationship between game developers and the games press have resulted in some people saying that RPS should be destroyed. Perhaps unsurprisingly, we disagree with that proposition, and we’ll explain why we disagree in this article.
Beamer wrote on Sep 8, 2014, 14:09:garrywong wrote on Sep 8, 2014, 14:04:
Wouldn't it be nice if, from the ashes of this shit, out comes something that is actually, real games journalism? Some people stand up and say "we are going to show them what real journalism is about"? Is there even any room for journalism within the games industry? Does journalism exist within any other entertainment media?
It will never, ever happen. Because there are only two things to write about in games:
1) PR. 99% of news comes directly from the studios themselves. There isn't much reporting to do here
2) Editorials, including reviews. Still, not much room to do anything here, either
I don't get why people are convinced that covering games, a consumer product, is somehow comparable to covering developments in the Middle East. Gaming news is screenshots, release dates, previews, reviews, and editorials. There isn't really much else to be said about something that someone wants you to buy. No one with a journalism degree wants to do this because it doesn't use the same skills. Journalists have to go out there and find information. Game sites are parsing through information coming from studios. And that's the only place the information can come from. It isn't like a reporter can go out there and find information about Half Life 3 on his own - that has to come from Valve.