The Video Game Industry

I think the only video game journalist I know of who's actually fairly good at his job is Jason Schreier. He did groundbreaking exposes on things like Anthem and Redfall. He's not perfect, naturally, but he seems to want to do actual journalism instead of shilling for companies.

"That we continue to persist at all is a testament to our faith in one another."

By "journalist", are we limiting our discussion to print? There are lots of independent video essayists covering all sorts of issues with the industry.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 27th 2024 at 2:22:53 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Do they actually go out and gather the news from primary sources, or do they just respond to articles written by those that have?

If the former, then they're journalists.

As far as France goes, if you want good video game journalism, you need to look either at...

• A handful of printed magazines, whose numbers have been dwindling over the last decade (There's 2-3 decent ones remaining, and a crapload of others that are basically hidden ads from publishers themselves)
• Traditional newspapers, although obviously the amount of content is usually severely lacking due to them only having one or two specialists (who sometimes have to cover other stuff)
• Crowdfunded journalists who left bigger websites that got bought by corporations planning to turn them into marketing devices

Interestingly, one such traditional newspaper (Libération) uses a special subscription that's designed to support their weekly videogame podcast and the journalist who has been doing it for more than 15 years, and it has allowed him to focus full-time on it now (and to expand his work to two more monthly podcasts).

(Said journalist was among those who broke out the allegations of sexist behavior and harassment among Ubisoft higher-ups, so he also does investigation)

I think the era of "free news" is coming to an end (if it ever existed). Nowadays, you kinda need to pay if you want to ensure it's not a big company that's paying for you to hear/read what they want.

I suppose that if we're making a distinction between investigative journalists and those who merely report on what other people are saying, then the entire industry has been in decline for over a decade. It's not just gaming.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Well, no argument there.

The You Tube gaming crowd did try and fill the space, but that was always an amateur outfit though I remember some having industry sources back in the day.

I believe Total Biscuit (along with the Jimquisition) uncovered some secret sponsorship program a major developer was running, he also amusingly was one of the few people in the room actually interested in ethics in games journalism back when all that happened, I remember him doing a long interview where he chewed out the boss of the (male) games journalist accused of not following ethical rules when reviewing a game made by a (female) dev the journalist was close to. The internet at large however just wanted to harass the female dev, because internet.

Edited by Silasw on Mar 27th 2024 at 7:12:08 PM

"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran

Meanwhile Yahtzee Croshaw's reaction to the whole thing was basically "well duh, of course there's corruption; everyone's known that for years already".

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Mar 27th 2024 at 8:15:36 PM

Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.

I made the distinction in his case because his weekly podcast, Silence, on joue (Silence, we play), is first and foremost about doing video game reviews/critics. But since the podcast has become longer and longer, so have the discussions about the industry, which includes reporting on the investigations made by other journalists (including Schreier).

Thing is, it is extremely difficult and time consuming to both do in-depth investigations, and to promote them. If you immerse yourself in one specific issue (or company) for a long time, then you kinda need the backing of some kind of organization if you want your work to eventually be published and read...and if you manage to keep an audience week in week out, then chances are, you need to engage with that audience, which reduces the time you can spend on investigation.

That is why newspapers/websites are important: sure, Random Joe can do great things and publish/promote himself on Twitch, but he would need a huge stroke of luck to become famous. There's maybe a handful of independent people (journalists or not) who can afford to publish one video every year or so and still make a living out of it - people like HBomberguy - but the huge majority of people just cannot afford it.

Hence the rise in crowdfunding.

Edited by Bexlerfu on Mar 27th 2024 at 8:21:53 PM

Nintendo of America is restructuring their testing center, while they are adding new full time positions, at least 100 contractors are likely to be impacted by layoffs.

"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."

If the shouting was because of the inciting incident of the gator deluge, I'd like to point out that there was no review. The only time the writer even mentioned the game in question was in the monthly list of "games coming out this month". It wasn't even anywhere near the top, or otherwise eye-catching. It was a purely clinical statement of a fact.

You'd think caring about ethics would include actually checking whether something unethical happened.

Edited by Kayeka on Mar 27th 2024 at 8:24:58 PM

We are thinking of a different incident then, because it would be very strange for the boss of a games journalist to sit down for an extended interview around the morals of their staff member reviewing a game when they had a connection to the dev if no such review ever happened.

"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran

Not in those days, it weren't. People were setting fire to the internet and his site in particular over the imagined review.

Edited by Kayeka on Mar 27th 2024 at 8:35:09 PM

In regards to "What's ruining video games?" isn't overbloated budget of AAA titles is cited as one of the reasons on why AAA industry is failing?

Also, it was cited by Yahtzee that the companies' rush for "better graphics" is more motivated to help sell more pricy and newest hardware, which results in video game sizes being enormous (especially compared to what smaller space games usually took on PC) and why less and less people being willing to buy AAA titles.

Even then I’d expect the interview to just consist of “there was no review done and if one had been done we’d have followed journalistic practise” rather than saying that the connection between the two individuals didn’t amount to anything worthy of disclosing.

My main point was actually that the simple bar of “If angry about ethical failures in gaming journalism direct anger at games journalist not tangentially connected women” is one the internet rather spectacularly failed to clear on that issue.

Edited by Silasw on Mar 27th 2024 at 7:43:02 PM

"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran

Which is dandy, but you still don't get to spread harmful misinformation unchallenged. Now, it's possible we are indeed thinking of different events, but with the description you gave, I think most minds would go to the Quinn stuff.

Edited by Kayeka on Mar 27th 2024 at 8:48:17 PM

If the game involved was Depression Quest, yeah, the review never happened, never existed, and the journalist targeted actually had refused to report in any substantive way on it because conflict of interest. The site just never reviewed it at all and only mentioned it existed once.

And yeah, uh, that description sounds exactly like the Quinn thing. It is not helped that the third of the targets didn't even do anything, they just wanted three targets.

Edited by Zendervai on Mar 27th 2024 at 3:50:16 PM

Not Three Laws compliant.

Some good news. Sega of America’s Union managed to get raises and layoff protection. Source is Game Developer.

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/production/sega-of-america-union-workers-secure-raises-layoff-protections-with-first-collectively-bargained-contract

The Owl House and Coyote Vs Acme are my Roman Empire.

Considering the news about layoffs tclittle posted above, is it tasteless to make a "SEGA does what Nintendon't" joke?

IIRC, Nintendo has implied that they don't really care if their employees unionize or not. They haven't had a cause to show that their money's where their mouth is, but even implying that is kind of unusual. So take that what you will.

"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"

The article said the people being impacted by Nintendo's restructuring are contractors, with full-time employee positions even increasing, and employees and contractors aren't legally the same thing.

Maybe, but some companies (not saying Nintendo is one of them) abuse that legal distinction to treat employees as "contractors" as loopholes.

Not untrue, but the wording on the articles title is very deceptive.

Embracer is selling Gearbox to Take Two for US$460 million.

Take two gets Borderlands, Homeworld, Risk of Rain, Brothers in Arms, and Duke Nuremberg.

Embracer keeps Cryptic Studios, Lost Brothers Interactive, Captured Dimensions, Gearbox Publishing San Francisco (renamed after closing), and the publishing rights to the Remnant franchise, Hyper Light Drifter, and other game releases.

Also confirms Borderlands 4 is in active development.

"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."

Not really surprising, but several Gearbox developers on Twitter have mentioned they're getting laid off as the a result of the beginning restructuring.