The New Games Journalism: The constant clash between those who make videogames and those who write about them

“Brian, this is an email I was really hoping I would never have to write, but it is what it is,” wrote Dave Karraker, senior director of corporate communications for Sony Computer Entertainment America, in an email to Brian Crecente, editor of gaming blog Kotaku. On March 1, 2007, just days before the Games Developer Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, Crecente reported on a rumor about Sony’s upcoming, ambitious, and previously unannounced online service called Home. The rumor turned out to be true, and it also turned out that Sony had planned on an elaborate unveiling of the service at GDC. “I am very disappointed that after trying to work with you as closely as possible and provide you and your team with access and information, you chose to report on this rumor…. I can’t defend outlets that can’t work cooperatively with us,” continued Karraker. He went on to explain that “for this reason…we will be canceling all further interviews for Kotaku staff at GDC and will be dis-inviting (sic) good you to our media event next Tuesday. Until we can find a way to work better together, information provided to your site will only be that found in the public forum.”

This event highlights one of the unspoken truths of videogame journalism: the press are almost entirely dependent on publishers. It is the publishers who provide them with early access to games, media such as screenshots and trailers, invitations to press events, not to mention a great deal of revenue from advertising. While in this instance Kotaku stood their ground despite the negative ramifications, this is not always the case. Many times an outlet will bend to a publisher’s desires to keep a good working relationship with the people who provide the information they desire and the advertising dollars they need. This creates a pressure on those working on the editorial side, who must constantly worry if they, or their publication, will be punished if they write something critical.

But how common is an incident such as the Sony-Kotaku one? Kyle Orland, a freelance journalist and co-host of National Public Radio’s Press Start podcast, believes these types of occurrences aren’t all that rare. “I have heard my fair share of stories,” says Orland, “some that I can’t share with you, that point to advertiser pressure being a pretty common occurrence in this industry. Most outlets have the good sense not to pay any attention, though I imagine there are some who don’t want to risk losing the money.” Because gaming outlets rely heavily on endemic ads (ads that relate directly to what they are writing about), writing a critical review or a negative preview is essentially biting the hand that feeds them. And if rumors are to be believed, this is exactly the case with former Gamespot editorial director Jeff Gerstmann.

At a time when Gamespot, one of the “big three” gaming news websites (the others being 1up and IGN), was covered with ads for Eidos Interactive’s upcoming action game Kane and Lynch, Gerstmann posted a rather unfavorable review of the game. Calling it “an ugly game, and we’re not necessarily talking about the graphics,” Gerstmann’s review had a distinctly negative tone before settling on a score of 6.0/10 (which is a “fair” on the Gamespot rating scale). Soon after, the text review was edited (with the extremely negative first paragraph being scrapped), the video review was pulled, Eidos’ ads were no longer on the site and Jeff Gerstmann no longer had a job.

Due to California state law and corporate policies, neither Gerstmann nor Gamespot’s parent company CNet were able to comment on the specifics of the dismissal. However, in a public statement, CNet did say that “legally, the exact reasons behind his dismissal cannot be revealed. However, they stemmed from issues unrelated to any publisher or advertiser; his departure was due purely for internal reasons.” They went on to explain why the text review was altered (“Jeff’s supervisors and select members of the edit team felt the review’s negativity did not match its “fair” 6.0 rating…the copy was adjusted several days after its publication so that it better meshed with its score, which remained unchanged.”), why the video review was pulled (“the video was taken down due to concerns of quality…specifically, its audio was deemed inferior due to a faulty microphone.”), and why the Kane and Lynch ads were removed (“media buys on Gamespot are made weeks in advance…the timing of said ads was extremely unfortunate but was purely coincidental and determined solely by the game’s release date of November 13, 2007”). They then went on to admit that Eidos did express displeasure with the review, but that this had no connection to Gerstmann’s firing.

But even if the rumour is not true, the Gerstmann incident is still very indicative of how the games industry works. “The rumors seemed plausible, and that’s what was really shocking,” says Orland. Similarly, Jeff Green, editor-in-chief of Games For Windows: The Official Magazine (GFW), wrote on his blog: “it doesn’t really matter anymore whether Gerstmann lost his job as a direct result of Cnet/GameSpot buckling to pressure because of Eidos’ unhappiness with his Kane & Lynch review. The real problem is just how f@#*ing believable it is.” The reaction from Gerstmann’s peers seems to indicate that this is in no way an isolated incident. Jeremy Parish, features editor for 1up, explained that “the very first thing I did when the first rumors hit the wire was walk into my editor-in-chief’s office and thank him for all the times he’s run interference for me.” In fact, soon after the Gamespot incident, several different sources revealed that Sony had expressed a similar displeasure with the website over their review of the Playstation 3 title Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction. So with all of these pressures on gaming journalists and news outlets, how are they able to prove that what they are writing is indeed fair and unbiased?

One way is through the exclusive. Or, to be specific, by refusing an exclusive. One of print’s biggest weapons against the increasing threat of online news outlets is to have a story that you can’t find anywhere else. According to Parish (who also writes for Electronic Gaming Monthly [EGM] magazine), “ultimately, we rely on what information publishers are willing to give us as “exclusive” content. When a publisher hates you, they don’t give you good content.” In the videogame world this means early and exclusive access to a blockbuster title, which can take the form of a cover story, a preview, or even a review of the game. Given all that we have learned so far about how advertising deals are cooked up, it seems obvious that an exclusive review would most likely be far from impartial. For this reason many outlets, including GFW, have stopped doing exclusive reviews not only to remove any doubts of a lack of impartiality from their readers’ possessive minds, but also to relieve the pressure that writing such a review has on an editor.

Another more recent trend that has come from the medium’s increased influence on popular culture, is that of mainstream news outlets covering videogames extensively. Writers such as N’Gai Croal from Newsweek, Chris Kohler from Wired, Seth Schiesel from The New York Times, Stephen Totilo from MTV News, and Dean Takahashi from The Mercury News, are some of the most respected people in the industry. And one of the main reasons for this is that game publishers would never even attempt to bully these outlets around the way they do with the enthusiast press. “Eidos wouldn’t have the audacity to strong-arm any of us over a review or some other piece of writing whose facts were not in question” wrote Croal on his blog “and if they did, our employers would back us to the hilt.” While Sony and Eidos received a great deal of negative publicity for the way they attempted to control the media, since it was with relatively smaller niche websites like Kotaku and Gamespot, the results weren’t as bad as they could have been. Imagine, for instance, that it was revealed that Bungie Studios had paid large sums of money to get their game Halo 3 on the September 2007 issue of Wired. In this hypothetical situation both parties would be punished. Bungie would be lambasted for attempting to control a major magazine, while Wired would lose a great deal, if not all, of its journalistic credibility. But situations like this don’t happen in the mainstream press, and for this reason readers don’t have the same doubts that they do when reading videogame centric publications.

Speaking of Bungie Studios, they have their own idea of how to control the media: bypass it all together. This may be hard to believe considering that the recent release of Halo 3 was one of the most hyped entertainment events in recent memory, but it’s true. After hiring former 1up news editor Luke Smith as their new content editor, Bungie now has a way of getting their information directly to the public with no middleman to muck it up. Through blogs, forums, and podcasts Bungie now has complete control over the message they send out. And they are not the only ones. Bungie’s former business partner Microsoft has a similar program in place. Larry Hyrb, the director of programming for Xbox Live, also known as Major Nelson, has a blog and a podcast where he both reports, and puts a corporate spin on, Microsoft related gaming news. These practices are ideal for publishers because they can put out the same information they could through the enthusiast press, but without the risk of any negativity. But unfortunately for them, they don’t have the same widespread appeal a magazine such as EGM or a website like IGN has.

In Croal’s essay, he wrote that “publishers generally hold the enthusiast press in utter contempt, and they have for a long time. This disdain began as scorn for the enthusiast media’s roots in videogame fandom, rather than traditional journalism from “respectable” publications.” Even though videogames have grown from a small niche market to a billion dollar a year business, the publishers are still clinging to the practices they used when the industry was in its infancy. But as the industry has grown, so have the expectations of the audience in terms of what they demand from videogame journalism.

Though in the end, incidents such as those discussed seem to simply be growing pains for an industry that has to fight for every ounce of respect it receives. But as it continues to venture out into mainstream culture, it will become more and more difficult for game publishers to have complete control over the way their products are portrayed to the public. Not only because major publications like Newsweek and The New York Times are now covering games, but also because the enthusiast press is finally starting to learn from its more established counterparts. As Orland pointed out “an issue of Game Informer earlier this year had ads for the Bowflex home gym, AboveTheInfluence.com, “Got Milk,” and an insert for the Columbia House DVD club…as these types of ads become more popular, the potential influence of game advertisers on editorial will continue to diminish.” And this is welcome news not only for those who want to read about games, but for those who make their living writing about them as well.

From Man Hunt to Witch Hunt – Manhunt 2 in the mainstream press

After a thunderous storm, the power goes out at an asylum for the criminally insane shutting down the security systems in place. After waking up, Danny Lamb is confronted with a series of brief but vivid flashbacks that tell him of a past he no longer remembers. Then, guided by a disembodied voice and his newfound sense of freedom, Lamb begins to search for a way out of the desolate asylum. Slowly stalking through the bleak hallways, he comes upon a hospital worker stuck behind a locked door. The voice tells Lamb “if he sees you, he will kill you, understand?” at which point Lamb sneaks up behind the man and stabs him in the throat with a syringe. Faced with such powerful feelings of shock and disgust at what he has just done, Lamb becomes physically sick. Luckily, this is only a scene from a videogame.

For those of you who don’t know, this scene is part of the opening sequence of Manhunt 2, a stealth horror game from Rockstar Games (creators of the infamous Grand Theft Auto series) that was originally banned by both the British Board of Film Classification and the Entertainment Software Rating Board in North America, due in large part to its disturbingly graphic use of violence. The game has since been revised and this new, edited version was released this past Halloween as the ESRB (but not the BBFC) deemed it suitable for sale. With all of this controversy surrounding the game, Manhunt 2 has become the focus of much attention from the mainstream media.

The majority of this attention seems to focus on how the game is not meant for, and could be potentially damaging to, young children. NBC’s Lisa Kim called Manhunt 2 “the most violent videogame ever for children,” while popular CBS News correspondent Katie Couric called it a way for kids to “simulate murder.” In a special report for CBS’ Toledo affiliate WTOL, Tim Miller asks several parents whether they would purchase the game for their children, to which they all respond no. Many other reports have similar misinformation contained in them. For example, in the NBC report mentioned earlier, they discuss some of the more violent ways of killing in the game by describing a move that allows the player to attack an enemy’s testicles with a pair of pliers. And while this is unarguably gruesome, it also happens to be one of the many scenes taken out of the game during its revision, making it something the general public will never see. Similarly, a CNN.com article refers to the game as a “first-person killer fantasy” despite the fact that a cursory glance at the game reveals that it does indeed take place in the third-person. These seemingly small mistakes show that, in reality, some people reporting this news have failed to do even a basic level of research.

The impression that these reports make on an informed viewer is that they are little more than scare-mongering. The problem with this is that it imposes a double standard on the videogame industry when compared to other media. A game such as Manhunt 2 is treated in a much different way than similarly themed films, books, or music. But, as opposed to the more mainstream media, the majority of information coming from the enthusiast press focuses on this discrepancy.

In an article for Electronic Gaming Monthly, Robert Ashley writes that “it’s a common criticism, that what the film industry accepts as an R rating would never make the cut for the game industry’s M.” Similarly, Jim Sterling, associate editor of independent gaming site Destructoid, wrote this in response to the BBFC ban: “hardcore pornography is legal, movies show shocking and deplorable acts time and time again, but because this is a videogame, we in the United Kingdom have suddenly been told we’re not allowed to experience it…What will it take for this childish and reactionary prejudice against videogames to end?” For both Ashley and Sterling, the real problem is freedom of choice. In this case the ratings boards are playing the role of an authority figure, telling adults that they are incapable of deciding for themselves whether or not they are fit to play this game.

When asked about the way the subject has been handled by the mainstream press Sterling said that “I wasn’t shocked, nothing the mainstream press does shocks me anymore. It’s not that I blame the media so much–it just gives the public what it wants, and the public wants sensationalism and scare-mongering.” One of the main problems, he says, is that “what gaming doesn’t have is a voice in the mainstream press…as many readers as I have, I’m preaching to the choir. People who know the reality of videogame issues are listened to only be people who also know it. Nothing gets changed, nobody learns anything.” So each side is really doing nothing more than enforcing people’s previously held beliefs, which in the end accomplishes nothing.

This is not to say that the mainstream press never gives a counterpoint. In a CBS special, everyone’s favourite psychologist Dr. Phil said that “the truth is, if somebody plays this game and then goes in and does this in their life, there was something seriously wrong with them before they got the game,” echoing the thoughts of gamers around the world. But he then goes on to say that the interactivity involved in playing a videogame, as opposed to watching a horror movie, brings the player “one step closer to the violence,” somewhat dismissing his previous point.

The irony is that this is a game that would not have received anywhere near the attention it did had it not been subject to censorship. It is a sequel to a game that sold modestly at best. And in addition to containing a view towards violence that would turn off most people due to its callous tone, it also happens to be a rather mediocre game. In his review, 1UP editor Scott Sharkey described the game as “largely forgettable.” This especially true in the revised version. Since the game was originally based around spectacular violence, and then that violence was edited out by showing it through a shaky blurry camera, there really isn’t much left to the game. Sharkey describes the censored scenes as “a forced seizure and some crunching noises.”

In the end, is seems as if time is the only solution. Since videogames are a relatively new form of media, ignorance towards them should be expected. When asked, Sterling seemed to echo these thoughts: “I don’t know if there’s a solution, perse, other than applying patience. Speaking as someone who has tried to break it, I can say that the apathy of the common gamer is a tough nut to crack. I don’t think we’ll get the unity that we need to maintain a voice. The games industry will conquer the critics, however, I can be certain of that.”

A Day on a Desert Planet

A group of very dedicated fans have come to the desert out in Plaster City, California to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Star Wars films.  But instead of the traditional Sci-Fi convention, these fans have decided to do something much more original and fun.  In amongst a crowd of tanned, smiling faces, and surrounded by a circle of pick-up trucks and RV’s, a 1/2 scale X-Wing fighter (the classic ship which Luke piloted in the first film) sits perched on the ground, waiting to taste the sky for the first time.

The crowd backs away as the ship, constructed from lumber and steel and fiberglass and propelled by rockets, is being readied for take-off.  And then it happens.  The tail of the ship spews a stream of sparks and just like that the X-Wing is in the air, ready to defend us from the forces of evil.  But things end just as quickly as they start.  After only a few seconds of soaring majestically, the space ship comes apart at the seams, and discarded pieces shower the ground below.

“We knew it was going to happen. The framed hollow body was too hard to make stable. Success ratio was slim to none” claimed Andy Woerner, one of the X-Wing’s chief designers.  Tens of feet away, in front of a much smaller crowd, a 1/4 scale Y-Wing suffers a similar, if less disastrous fate.  The body of the less popular space craft remained nearly in tact as it collided with the ground, having only the cockpit separate during a mid-air turn.

Despite these two seeming failures, the crowd cheers triumphantly after each vessel takes its turn falling to pieces.  “That was awesome!” proclaimed one spectator “that looked just like Luke Skywalker was taking off!”  Fans scavenge the ground, collecting scraps of the fallen star ships for souvenirs.  Except there isn’t much worth taking.  Giant cardboard tubes, metal bars, and two by fours seem to litter the entire landscape.  But then I see it looking up at me: the severed head of R2-D2.  His face is expressionless but I can still see the sadness in his eyes.  His trademark beeps and bloops are muted, but I can still hear the disappointment in his tone.  “I wish I was on Tatooine” he says, although only I can hear him.  Me too buddy, me too.