(Opinion) The Downfall of Gaming Journalism.

[TubzGaming]

Journalism in gaming was always the thing we would look up for Unbiased opinions on news and reviews in the gaming industry, but slowly over the years this has changed.
I don't know how or why it changed but more and more we have seen a shift in some Journalists has started posting clear biased stories to gain traction and views.
We have all seen it no matter what platform you maybe using, Someone will share a post or review because it says or proves a point they agree with even if it really does not prove anything, but because the title or some random quote in the article / review line's up with what they want to prove they post it.

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Gone are the day's when people could look at a magazine or article on the internet and know that what you are going to see or read will be there to just provide the latest gaming news and reviews.

Now we get at-least one article a week with some "well known" Journalist about how one company is doing better for you and if you don't agree you are wrong.
Then people will take what they said to prove a point that this is better that.
So many say they are unbiased they love all kinds platforms but for some reason always write pro-this/that for one particular platform.

​

News used to be about just that the news, Yes even back in the day some news journalism was intended to get you to buy the magazine / paper with a big title that will make you think oh that looks interesting! i need to read that.
These days articles will have titles that sometimes have nothing to do with the point of it or even have any real quotes to prove what the title is saying.
Also sometimes twisting what was said to match what they want you to think.

We have always known Journalists and Influencers get free game codes for reviews and that is perfectly fine, but what stands out is when you get free gifts, days out and meals as yes it might be just to increase future business with said company but when you tend to skew to one side over the other it stands out. (Just out with the pals)

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I hope some day in the close future this might change for the better and Journalists will do it because they enjoy it again (Some do already) not because they need the ad revenue, Yes it's a tall order to want or ask but with how things are going its getting hard to even find someone or somewhere we go to read or see an open and real opinion.

Just remember in the future if everything sways to what you agree with with no challenge / middle of the line or apposing opinions that will be when we see small changes that over time will be big changes and it will be to late to change.

 

[daniel5043]

Journalism in general took a downturn when patreon and there social media standings became important

 

[Sircaw]

Journalism in gaming was always the thing we would look up for Unbiased opinions on news and reviews in the gaming industry, but slowly over the years this has changed.
I don't know how or why it changed but more and more we have seen a shift in some Journalists has started posting clear biased stories to gain traction and views.
We have all seen it no matter what platform you maybe using, Someone will share a post or review because it says or proves a point they agree with even if it really does not prove anything, but because the title or some random quote in the article / review line's up with what they want to prove they post it.

View attachment 825​

Gone are the day's when people could look at a magazine or article on the internet and know that what you are going to see or read will be there to just provide the latest gaming news and reviews.

Now we get at-least one article a week with some "well known" Journalist about how one company is doing better for you and if you don't agree you are wrong.
Then people will take what they said to prove a point that this is better that.
So many say they are unbiased they love all kinds platforms but for some reason always write pro-this/that for one particular platform.

View attachment 826​

News used to be about just that the news, Yes even back in the day some news journalism was intended to get you to buy the magazine / paper with a big title that will make you think oh that looks interesting! i need to read that.
These days articles will have titles that sometimes have nothing to do with the point of it or even have any real quotes to prove what the title is saying.
Also sometimes twisting what was said to match what they want you to think.

We have always known Journalists and Influencers get free game codes for reviews and that is perfectly fine, but what stands out is when you get free gifts, days out and meals as yes it might be just to increase future business with said company but when you tend to skew to one side over the other it stands out. (Just out with the pals)

View attachment 827​

I hope some day in the close future this might change for the better and Journalists will do it because they enjoy it again (Some do already) not because they need the ad revenue, Yes it's a tall order to want or ask but with how things are going its getting hard to even find someone or somewhere we go to read or see an open and real opinion.

Just remember in the future if everything sways to what you agree with with no challenge / middle of the line or apposing opinions that will be when we see small changes that over time will be big changes and it will be to late to change.

Good post and sadly very true.

It's extremely hard to trust reviews today, to rock the boat means your not getting this perk or that.

I keep going back to the Didigtal foundry video when I remember seeing that huge piece of silicon on their desk front and center, you know the one, the CPU one.

Its basically a bribe, a reminder to be nice to us, or you won't get those free tickets or be put un in a swanky hotel or have nice meals the next time you visit us.

The whole gaming industry is infected with this kind of shit, there are shills everywhere.

 

[KiryuRealty]

The big downturn in gaming journalism came shortly after the release of the first Xbox.

All the writers were slamming MS for the size of the system, the retardedly huge controller and the fact that controllers were region-locked, the fact that 99% of the exclusive games at launch were utter shit, all of it got the derision it deserved.

Then, a few months later, a lot of writers started acting like Xbox was awesome, even though nothing at all had changed about it.

Fast forward a year, and suddenly a lot of longtime games writers are being hired by MS and the studios they own in community manager and PR positions, and what little honesty there was about XBox suddenly disappears in the US gaming magazines. Writers keep moving into roles with MS and Xbox-friendly publishers.

Then the RROD hits and almost nobody calls out MS for how it is handled. They regurgitate the bullshit PR about a 30% (at the time, it eventually hit 80%) failure rate was within industry norms, which it definitely wasn’t. Live Gold being a total ripoff never gets called out, using Points instead of dollar values on the online store is handwaved with sales pitches from the lips of “journalists”, and it has only gotten worse over the years.

Even the Xbox One DRM announcement was met with cries of “Sony too!”, even though there was no basis for it.


Microsoft had long been known to influence, pressure and straight-up bribe tech writers since the 1980s, and it was clear they do the same in the realm of games.

MS infected games writing with their cancerous influence, just as they infected console gaming.

 

[Bryank75]

@KiryuRealty summed it up really nicely...

Notice even since Xbox started that the old way of rating games disappeared.... it used to be broken down into categories: Graphics, Sound, Story, Gameplay, Value.... usually and each would get a mark out of 5 or 10.

Then you would get an overall score at the end of the review.

Ever since MSFT took an interest in gaming, there has been a shift away from objectivity in reviews, which used to emphasize quality in every aspect of a game and towards subjectivity.... where a game could be amazing, groundbreaking or just superbly executed but the reviewer was constipated that day and gave it a 4/10 and wrote all about how constipated they were..... then they publish that shit and get a backlash and their media friends all gather around them and call everyone that had a criticism of the review some form of '-ist' or toxic etc.

It was all done with an aim in mind....and still they are trying to destroy quality in gaming, saying things like 'it's not sustainable' , 'games cost too much', 'they are not original enough' or use derogatory terms like 'walking sim'.....

They are all ploys to undermine things MSFT cannot achieve and emphasize quantity over quality and low prices over fair economics, which allow all companies to compete on even footing.

 

[Zeroing]

I don't know how or why it changed

- All major gaming publication were and still are in great pressure to have income/traffic.
- Major corporations changed how to do marketing - dubious actions, having fans defending their brands etc.
- Everything is now about gathering fans of A console while making fans of B console angry
- Having personal opinions are easier and results in more traffic
- Boom of social media, everything became chaotic and confusing
- Gifts , partnerships and major studios blacklisting gaming publications have become normalized.

Jourmalism is informing people by using unbiased and clear information therefore, gaming journalism it is dead.

 

[AshHunter216]

During the lead-up to and beginning of this generation, I remember a few gaming websites being quite irritated that Sony went to Wired with details about the upcoming PS5 instead of them. A few gaming journalists have also expressed irritation over not receiving review codes and free console hardware/merchandise as well. There's a level of entitlement at play with some of these outlets that I think leads to irritation with Sony for not being as deferential to them as they would like them to be vs how Microsoft have approached them. There's also the issue of certain prominent journalists having a well-documented bias towards Microsoft, though I think the former issue is the more widespread one. This has an effect on the way they cover these platforms.

 

[KiryuRealty]

During the lead-up to and beginning of this generation, I remember a few gaming websites being quite irritated that Sony went to Wired with details about the upcoming PS5 instead of them. A few gaming journalists have also expressed irritation over not receiving review codes and free console hardware/merchandise as well. There's a level of entitlement at play with some of these outlets that I think leads to irritation with Sony for not being as deferential to them as they would like them to be vs how Microsoft have approached them. There's also the issue of certain prominent journalists have a well-documented bias towards Microsoft, though I think the former issue is the more widespread one. This has an effect on the way they cover these platforms.

Just look at how so many journalists flipped out about how you’d have to add $50 a year to the cost of a PS4 because you’d need PS Plus to play online, conveniently forgetting that MS gives the press FREE Live Gold subs, and not saying anything about that cost on top of buying a Bone.

 

[anonpuffs]

Journalism has never been good. We only had a fairly short window where actual investigative journalism was done because that kind of thing was profitable. Also journalists became much lazier due to being able to generate hot scoops by sitting on twitter all day, it takes 20 minutes to regurgitate a press release and then you can shitpost all day.

 

[Zzero]

Journalism in gaming was always the thing we would look up for Unbiased opinions on news and reviews in the gaming industry, but slowly over the years this has changed.

My response:

Your fundamental statement, listed at the top of your post, is flawed. Games Journalism was bad, it was bad in the 80s with platform-centric publications shitting on "the opposition" in the UK and Nintendo-owned Nintendo Power pushing a corporate line in the US. It was bad in the 90s when game magazines hid developer names behind shared personas like "Sushi X" and took free flights to other countries in order to see products that would then get glowing reviews (mainly Euros flying to America, but I'm sure it happened everywhere.) It was bad in the 2000s when OXM was posting obnoxious cult shit (and the former head still tries to "keep the faith" on his IGN podcast.) It was bad in the 2010s when Famitsu started giving out 40s to anyone who would pay and left-wing politics+private industry social networking became mandatory. Its bad now when all of the above shit still continues.

But its getting better. And its getting better because of the rise of Youtube and Twitch, which have led to a new class of influencers who are self-employed and make a living based on audience response rather than editorial/corporate response. And yeah, there's a lot of filth there, a lot of corruption, a lot of "nerd crew" styled fake hype, forced diversity and literal retard takes on issues they don't care about or read up on properly. But most of the biggest content is also of high quality and comes from people who can and do say no if they hate something. And there's plenty of micro-influencers with smaller, dedicated, niche audiences too. So in that regard, if you think games journalism sucks, you should stop reading it and find new sources.

As an ending though, there's a few issues that I personally think are really bad for the industry now, though, and would like to see drug out into the limelight and addressed.
1) Private, journalist-specific, gaming groups that are necessary for reviewing mulitplayer games before release but have became places for call-out culture to exist for "journalists" who don't tow the community's editorial lines ("Game Journo Pros" and its successors.)
2) Shared editorial stances between different games media companies which result in Kotaku, Destructoid, Giant Bomb, etc. all reading like the same shit with a different colored header.
3) A feeling at bigger publications like IGN that they are "the enthusiast press" and thus must put a positive spin on anything they are focusing on, unless its a current community bete noire.
4) The amount of real journalism that goes on, as in digging in on and publishing stories that game companies do not want to be told, whether thats development leaks, corporate actions, industrial rumors, etc. is shockingly few. I can probably count on one hand the number of people who actually do it (Eurogamer, Jason Shrier, Forbes if its still even in gaming news, etc.)
5) Game reviewer burnout resulting in them liking, and more importantly hating, titles not based on whether an audience would like it, but on whether its easy to review. 5 hour long indie game? Yay. 100 hours of open world content? Boo.

 

[Killer_Sakoman]

Journalism as a whole is fucked up. Journalism was always influenced by governments and big corporates. We just discovered that recently because of connectivity and social media. When a journalist lies, it is easy now to catch his bullshit. 30 years ago, a journalist was able to shit his shit and run away with it.

 

[Remember_Spinal]

Paul tassi made an entire career out of clickbait titles, with rehashed information in the actual article.

 

[Alabtrosmyster]

Ever since MSFT took an interest in gaming, there has been a shift away from objectivity in reviews, which used to emphasize quality in every aspect of a game and towards subjectivity.... where a game could be amazing, groundbreaking or just superbly executed but the reviewer was constipated that day and gave it a 4/10 and wrote all about how constipated they were..... then they publish that shit and get a backlash and their media friends all gather around them and call everyone that had a criticism of the review some form of '-ist' or toxic etc.

I think this is happening because reviews are written by people who took these gaming journalists jobs after studying in communications, not out of passion for the medium/hobby.

Same with how YouTube has become overly formulaic these days and all creators seem numb and all they want is you to get that VPN (there are a few exceptions).

 

[Darkknight2149]

After seeing some of the sensationalist clickbait from Kotaku, I believe you.

 

[EN250]

"gaming journalism" began to fall in the 7th gen when media sites took stances for console warring because it was profitable for them, fanboy wars used to bring the heat, more heat more clicks, more ad revenue, but instead of being smart about it and play it "neutral" they used to side with the biggest and lowdest croud for the moment, that was X360 players trash talking PS3 users like crazy

Everything went crashing for them when the PS4 came out not amount of damage control could save the disastrous PR from MS, flame wars were a thing of the past so they evolved their former strategy

And that's when they pivot to "woke" as way to clickbait every damn article to trigger any user to maximum rage, culminating with gamer-gate, when they went full mob while trying to play the victim

Social media its eating their lunch now, youtube people are doing their research and promotion and what's best, everyone have their carved niche for themselves, so if for example I want PlayStation news only I can have that without caring about anything else and without lecturing or clickbaits, so win-win

 

[Nym]

The magazines existed to show kids images of things they could buy in the near future and also provided some consumer reporting in the form of reviews, but there is no longer a need for a separate industry to provide media materials or biased consumer reports to potential buyers. They aren't needed for anything anymore so a lot of the field is retarded think pieces and finger wagging and yelling on twitter all day.

 

[daniel5043]

That reminds me of when schreier said he knew about the Activision allegations before it all came out and he did nothing with the information

 

[KiryuRealty]

Elder Legend is a games journalist. Think about that.

 

[anonpuffs]

Elder Legend is a games journalist. Think about that.

Game reviewer != journalist

 

[KiryuRealty]

Game reviewer != journalist

Media reviews are considered soft journalism.

Although, in ER’s case it’s more like limp journalism.