Video Game Journalism

I'm familiar enough with the machinations of modern-day "journalism" and its audience to call bollocks on whatever is this "big" thing folks now call "Quinngate". It's all about the bandwagon; in a few months worth, no one will give a fuck anymore, and it'll just be her name that keeps reeling in morons like flies attracted to shit. Last year it was my friend Chloe Sagal, as well as Phil Fish. Fish keeps getting himself in hot water, pardon the pun, but Chloe has been off the radar for a year now, and the world has all but forgotten about her - and yet folks keep harassing her to this day, not even related to last year's events anymore, but simply for who she is - or rather, what people see her as.

So for fun and profit, I'll just throw this little bastard here in once again.

I fail to see how people who want to stop the rampant corruption that occur within the gaming press, and bring to light an issue that has plagued the gaming industry for a very long time is comparable to a terrorist organization that even Al-Qaeda won't work with and say are complete savages. No justification can excuse that comparison, and it really speaks volumes to how much the gaming press does not want this to come out. Exploiting real life issues, real life news stories that has nothing to do with gaming in order to cover their asses and dodge a conversation is fucking gross, disgusting, foul and grotesque. All people are asking is for them to admit their errors, talk to people about their relationships with game devs, and be as objective and transparent as they can. Is that so much to ask?

I don't know. This really seem to have hit a raw nerve with a lot of people. This talk is gonna continue, whether the gaming press likes it to or not.

edited 26th Aug '14 10:52:27 AM by nigelstack345

Well, Chloe's case had hit a raw nerve, too. At the end of the day, though, the course of reactions spoke volumes; folks were reasonably forgiving overall, until they learned she was transgender - only then all hell broke loose upon her, and the web ended up breeding a smörgasbord of factoids that bear only superficial connection to the precursory events.

Quinn's story will most likely end two ways - "Doritosgate" for the press, continuous shit for her. And this isn't in any way new. Stevie Case, John Romero's ex-wife, receded from gaming for a reason.

edited 26th Aug '14 11:10:23 AM by TAPETRVE

Never heard of Chloe. Mostly because I've learned to stay away from the general "cult of personality" that's built itself up in video games, especially in the indie crowd. I care about my video games, not who makes them.

edited 26th Aug '14 11:12:06 AM by Raidouthe21st

Thing is, Zoe Quinn wasn't really much of an "indie celebrity" before, either. Now she is.

That would be a significant understatement.

I think you underestimate how difficult it is for some people to admit they were wrong.

I think you're vastly overestimating Zoe Quinn's status as a "celebrity", which is kind of what makes it so exasperating to me why people keep making news articles about people like her. If it weren't for the whole Wizardchan raid, which wasn't even proven true beyond a shadow of a doubt, nobody would care about her one way or the other. She'd have just been that one girl dev who made a game about depression that wasn't all that great shakes.

And to me she's still that same one girl dev who made about depression that wasn't all that great shakes, only she happens to have a lot of friends in the media who decided it's more important to bottle everything up than actually admit they were acting unprofessional.

edited 26th Aug '14 11:17:03 AM by Raidouthe21st

As I said, now she is a "celebrity", and certainly not for any reasons worth. That's the point. This is not a status she worked for, it's happenstance.

edited 26th Aug '14 11:18:20 AM by TAPETRVE

edited 26th Aug '14 11:17:47 AM by VeryMelon

We should all know by now that as far as the media and Journalism are concerned, it's not what you know, or what you accomplish that matters. It's who you know, or who you can be associated with. That's all that really ever mattered. There's a reason the saying "It's not what you know, it's who you know" hasn't been thoroughly thrown in the trash.

Well, fair enough. Although we must have different definitions of celebrity, since Zoe is far more of a gossip point than a real "celebrity", considering most of the focus has already moved onto crucifying the game journos she was cozying up with in the places I lurk.

It doesn't mean Quinngate is the topic at hand. The last topic got closed for it.

Unless these journalists are making the ISIS comparison themselves all you're doing is pouncing on some random e-drama and stroking your own ego by saying "oh look at those peons! We are clearly a much more educated lot!"

But yeah I'm sure the people telling her to kill herself and calling her a whore on her twitter now don't exist either like this idea of 'misogynists' or else you would clearly have noticed them and called them out too?

But on topic, what sets vidya from anything else is the high barrier of entry. You see a movie, the ticket sets you back 10 bucks. Maybe 13 if you want 3D. Books can cost 15 bucks on Kindle. Videogames cost 60 bucks on release, and you also have to invest in a console or a good gaming computer which can go from 400 to 800 bucks.

Moreover, you have to invest a lot of time in games to get the full experience. And no, playing 5 hours of Dragon Age isn't a 'better' deal than watching 2 hours of Godzilla when DA will run maybe 30+ hours for a full playthrough.

Combine the money and time costs, you can see why VG journalism seems to be proportionally more relevant to its field than books or movie reviews. I mean, who wants to spend 20+ hours and 60 bucks only to be disappointed?

It's a pretty entrenched 'industry' at this point. It probably started with reviewers getting reimbursed with consoles and games and shit because they do need that stuff to do their jobs... except at somewhere along the line it became more of a benefit than a necessity.

That would be another big piece of the puzzle - as it's understood, journalists covered the Wizardchan story in a way that took Zoe's word for it at face value without actually looking into the matter - a thing that some members of the game media have admitted to. It was a particular point of contention over at The Escapist before I decided to abandon that site over this.

Except now they refuse to cover the Quinn story or look into it or give an apology for the Wizardchan story on the grounds that they claim they have nothing more than peoples words to go on - in spite of the mounting evidence suggesting otherwise.

People are seeing a serious double standard in covering the supposed attacks on Zoe where they only took her word on it - something that was used to give Zoe good coverage - vs now ignoring what they view as an attack on Zoe because...they supposedly have nothing more to go on other than peoples words - which would give Zoe a lot of bad coverage.

edited 26th Aug '14 11:24:51 AM by TheSpaceJawa

The only thing I have to wonder about that is...who would benefit from covering up for Zoey Quinn?

All the game journalists with connections who know that a flame war directed at you and your friends is not a war you want to engage in. After all,

edited 26th Aug '14 11:30:47 AM by Raidouthe21st

I'll admit, for the later wave gamers like me, we need the front-line gamers who shell out the 60 bucks a pop, play the games, and give their two cents. Otherwise, gaming as an industry would be over. Soooo, for you frontline gamers who shell out that money, some form of journalism is important. I don't think the current model works, but I can't see moving to a fully dev-supported model without corruption running rampant.

Kotaku just posted a note from the Editor In Chief regarding recent events and concerns about their approach to reporting. Seems interesting to read, and at least they're acknowledging that something needs to be done and they're doing things as a result, but time will tell if they keep their word.

On a topic aside from the "Zoe Quinn" issue (but perhaps not entirely unrelated):

Total Biscuit has posted a video titled "Why you shouldn't be excited - A look at games media's role in hype":

The basic thesis is, I believe, that gaming media does its audience a disservice when it hypes games that have not yet been released; he includes mention of cases in which media sources have praised virtues in games that were found wanting in the final product.

edited 26th Aug '14 8:05:43 PM by ArsThaumaturgis

Over the last few days, frustrations over game journalism have built up to the point that a hashtag named #Gamergate (not to be confused with Gamersgate, the digital distribution games service based in the UK) has started to circulate on Twitter. This article provides a balanced look at the situation, detailing why we aren't moving forward from this debacle and what we can do about it.

Sarah just summed up the main conflict of this debacle very eloquently.

Unfortunately, considering a fair number of news sites have gone on to directly attacking the video game community by declaring the term "gamers" is "dead" (example), I doubt we're going to get them to lay down their metaphorical arms for a reasonable discussion.

Also, I heard a couple of rumors that at PAX or sometime close to it they're going to try and support making a "new" term for the gaming community, either "Gamer+" or "Player" or sometihng else. Just to keep themselves separated from the icky neckbeards. I really hope that isn't true, because that's literally a step back from the whole point of people using a term like "gamers" to define themselves as more-or-less-equals who like playing video games.

edited 30th Aug '14 7:34:46 PM by Raidouthe21st

Game journalists like John Walker see rumors like that as "conspiracy madness," which TBH is pretty much what it seems like, legit concerns notwithstanding.

As for journalists declaring the term "gamer" as dead: IMO, it probably shouldn't have been invented to begin with. Why did we come up with a commonly used term to describe people that play video games a lot and not a term for people who watch movies/TV a lot? Or read books/comics a lot? What makes us so damned special?

Even though I agree with you that "gamers" is a poor term in general since it's broad as hell and overused by now, just a few things I wanna say.

All "gamer" means is someone who likes games a lot, particularly computer games. That's it. The only connotation or specialness granted to it is one given by the people who use it. So yeah, even people who sparsely play "Angry Bird" are technically gamers, even if some people don't like it.

And there are terms like the ones you asked for. A "Bibilophile" is someone who collects and reads a shitton of books. Same with "film buff" for films. All hobbies have that kind of thing, since some people just like identifying themselves with their favorite hobbies for whatever reason. So why not the people who like to boot up Call Of Duty or Dragon Quest every once in a while?

edited 30th Aug '14 7:52:03 PM by Raidouthe21st

I don't see "Bibliophile" being used quite as often to describe people that love reading as I do see "gamer" being used to describe people that love games. In fact, this is the first time I've ever come across the term. Admittedly, I do see "Film buff" somewhat often.

edited 30th Aug '14 8:47:03 PM by Nettacki

Anyone remember Aris Bakhtanians, that fighting progamer that looks like Hagrid's son? Back in 2012 he got sacked for sexually harassing a female team member and subsequently bullying her into quitting the tournament. Upon being called out, he insisted in his defence that this is how things are supposed to be and have always been in the community. As long as oversized apes such as him get to claim the term gamer for themselves, I'm not surprised developers are calling for their collective euthanasia.

I'm so very glad that just because I happen to be passionate about a particular form of media (I'm passionate about most media, but games are far and away the one I spend the most time on) and don't mind identifying myself as such with an easy label that the blogosphere has decided I fit in a neat little box. Yep. That's definitely a thing I'm happy about.