If I make a mistake and reference a misquote that I pulled from someone else who pulled it from someone else, does that make me a tabloid journalist? Well, tabloid blogger?
I've been a "journalist" three times in my life:
1) When I went to Boston Post-Mortem on May 6th
2) When I covered Games Accessibility Day
3) When I attended a Harvard university lecture on Evolutionary Biology and Video Games
Those were instances where my feet hit the ground and I actually, you know, went out and reported on something. I keep my eyes out for other opportunities to be a proper journalist, but most of the time all I have are the "facts" I get from the websites who have the access I don't, which I then turn into editorials; and most of those facts are press releases and other PR hype.
Boston-based games reviewer Mitch Krpata pointed this out when he addressed the games journalism panel at PAX East. To roughly paraphrase (sorry, Mitch, I wasn't carrying my digital audio recorder at the time - here I am being a tabloid journalist again), Mitch asked about the value for the gaming community of publishing news which sounded like the news outlets were unofficial PR wings of the various gaming companies.
Chris Grant's response, again to paraphrase, was that news doesn't really happen in the gaming industry, and he's right. The only gaming "news" I've seen since I started writing about games was the West/Zampella drama and Bungie's Activision deal. The rest of the content on all the major sites is "Game info, trailer, screenshot, editorials." We're left with PR translations and people's opinions to fill the gaps.
Anyone who wants to write about games, but who doesn't have the experience to attract the attention of the editors of those major games publications through a robust portfolio of clips, really only has two choices: blog, or work for the indie gaming press.
Pitching the majors in the hopes of getting that first, paid, published piece is part of the struggle; but I can't imagine, when I've pitched The Escapist, just HOW many people I'm competing with to get that pitch accepted, and I refuse to just pitch them on every topic they proffer through the editorial calendar. If I don't really have something to say, I'm not wasting their time or mine.
I can submit articles to Bitmob, which is a nice validation when work is promoted to the front page, or blog over on Destructoid in the hopes of the audience finding me amusing, but if I really want a chance to be a video game journalist, I need to turn to the indie press. That's the only way I'm getting into E3. It also got me into Games Accessibility Day, and will get me into other Boston games-related events that would otherwise cost me a registration fee that can run into the hundreds of dollars.
Some of the indie reporters seem as good as anyone in the majors. I met Meghan Ventura at the PlayStation Community Meet-up before PAX East. She's a writer at the indie site Mygamer, and publishes over at Bitmob pretty frequently. Here's something she got published on the Bitmob front page today. Read that article and tell me it isn't as good as most of the stuff we read on Kotaku, or Joystiq, or GameSpot. Hell, I think Meghan's piece there would feel right at home on GamePro or The Escapist, sources I usually think about as having more substantive content than the other three sites I just mentioned.
I'm sure that she, like me, would love to be a paid video game journalist, working for an established media entity, bound by the strictest of journalistic ethics, adherence to the AP stylebook, and under the thumb of a harshly critical Editor. Seeking out stories and doing "old fashioned journalism." Traveling to E3 on someone's dime rather than our own (if you're going, Meghan), getting PR companies to seek her out for interviews and previews. It's the same dream that hundreds if not thousands of gamers have, many of whom might actually have legitimate talent...but where do we go if we can't get the majors to look at our pitches for getting lost in the crowd?
When I met Stephen Totilo at PAX East, I was just starting off this journey and asking everyone I could meet for advice. He told me that I should find local media that doesn't cover games and convince them why they should.
I tried, Stephen, but it's either taken already, or they don't care.
The Boston Herald publishes game reviews, but it's only online for 14 days and then hits a pay filter. The Boston Phoenix publishes reviews and has a blogger who talks about games sometimes. The Boston Globe could care less about video games. The Weekly Dig is a small paper who publishes very short reviews that are more snark commentary than the games writing we expect. The daily Metro publishes a game review once a week, I'm told. I rode the subway for years before I moved into the burbs and started driving the commute, and damned if I ever saw a video game review in the free paper I grabbed every day to make the subway ride bearable.
That's it. There are no other Boston media outlets to hit. Three of them cover reviews, but they don't discuss the gaming industry, not really. Not in the way one might expect video game "journalists" to do. The mainstream press just doesn't give a shit. They cover television and film, but they don't cover a form of entertainment which we realize is not only competitive with those forms of entertainment, but which by some measures is actually winning. Gaming is as or more relevant than t.v. and movies to my generation and those that followed...and now that writing about games actually seems legitimate to so many of us, we want the job.
Can't have it in the gaming press. Can't have in the mainstream press. No choice but to go indie.
The major gaming sites have access: previews, first looks, relationships with the developers and the right phone numbers to call for interviews. I'm not complaining. I wouldn't expect indie gaming sites to have access to all of this any more than I'd expect the indie press to have access to the White House. The pros get the access because they've worked hard for it - but at least the indie press, magazines like the Boston Phoenix here at home, they have communities to cover. What the hell is the indie GAMING press supposed to do?
Many of us have no choice but to be tertiary sources much of the time. Either that, or I suppose we could all let the pages go blank for a while...but clearly there's a hunger out there to not only report the gaming news, but also to see different kinds of gaming news than the majors provide us. I think it's fair to say that if all these indie sites didn't get readers they wouldn't bother wasting their time, and if PR companies didn't think that these sites had value, E3 wouldn't be letting us into the party.
The majors have all that access to fill space, and then editorials do the rest. The indie sites have a lot more space to fill, so of course when one of the only bona fide celebrities in gaming, the self-styled Tony Stark of game development, is quoted as saying something juicy, we're going to jump all over it. For better or worse, that's news in the gaming world.
I was tweeting with Jim Sterling today about all of this, because he had some pretty strong opinions about CliffyB's "tabloid journalism" comment. I suggested to Jim that maybe the gaming press needs to sneak some mature coverage into their content to try and lift up gaming journalism as a whole, covering things like Games Accessibility Day or that lecture over at Harvard.
Jim responded "It's a fair point, but the budget to go cover those events versus the lack of reader interest doesn't always work out well." I think it might be a chicken or the egg scenario, personally. At Game Kudos the Director and I are determined to sneak substantive discussion and news stories in with the more typically-expected coverage, because we both get bored with the majors sometimes. I don't blame the majors for being who they are, they need to protect their access the same way that the mainstream press needs to protect theirs and thus isn't harshly critical of political administrations...but we saw what happened in the the U.S. during the run-up to the Iraq War. They may as well have been fucking cheerleaders. Fourth estate FTW.
If we can't expect "real" journalism from the mainstream press, what the hell makes us think that we're going to get it from indie gaming press sites?
I don't know what this "change" is in gaming journalism that I read is supposed to be coming. I do feel that we're in a horrible in-between place regarding video games and journalism. All the owners of the mainstream press must not understand the cultural importance of our medium. All these producers and Editors in Chief are just old, and behind the times, and we have to wait for them to retire or die and make room for the Gen-X'ers and following generations to take the driver's seats.
Maybe when that happens and society at large has accepted us, and the breadth of our discourse is wide enough to create the critical language we're waiting for, the sort of quality we read on Edge will be the norm and not the exception, and the results will trickle down to the level of the indie sites.
Until then...I'm not making excuses for misquotes due to "technical errors." That kind of shit is certainly preventable, but XBox 360 World Magazine apologized. They copped to their error, so I don't see why they deserve to get lashed out at as "tabloid journalists" when they didn't even get the chance at that point to admit making the mistake.
Yes, apparently being a celebrity sucks sometimes, and I don't think that's why CliffyB got into the industry; and I've read way too much about how awesome he is to the fans, helping people get jobs in the industry, for example. I personally have a soft spot for him because he's from Massachusetts and is an inspirational example, but I honestly don't think he was trying to be a dick. He was just frustrated. I understand...
...but cut the indie press a break, Cliffy. You've made it. We're still fighting to get there.
You know something I'd love to do? Criticize video games. Not just review them. Criticize them. Analyze them. Produce 100 page papers on a particular gameplay mechanic and why it's important to the game's narrative. There's absolutely no readership for such a thing, however.
Sadly, I think it's the same for the games industry. There's so little important things that happen that when there is something important that happens, nobody's there to cover it other than enthusiasts, for enthusiasts.
But Xbox 360 World Magazine isn't an indie outlet; it's owned by Future, a huge publisher with magazines and website all around the world.
And the other websites that run a news story based off of a quote like that, misquote or not -- it's sensationalism...in other words, tabloid journalism. And it gets the clicks. Not that I'm trying to excuse it -- we started Bitmob to try and get away from that in the first place.
When CliffyB lashed out at "the enthusiast press," I took it to mean "XBox 360 World Magazine," as they started the whole mess by publishing part of their question as part of his answer.
I was never talking about XBox 360 World Magazine when I referred to "the indie press" in my article, however. I was referring to all the indie sites who went off their misquote and published CliffyB's comments.
I felt that CliffyB was referring to indie media when he went on with his comments about sites that "intentionally publish misquotes to generate traffic," to paraphrase, and that's the comment I took issue with. I think that indie sites publish what news they can find online, of which there is very little to begin with - so when one of our only celebrities is quoted as saying something juicy - and whether it was mainsteam or indie press publishing the misquote is moot - the indie press is going to grab at it.
"Tabloids" publish misinformation deliberately, and they don't care about the consequences. Show me some indie sites that published CliffyB's misquote and then didn't *immediately* correct themselves when the truth was known. Tabloid journalism states half-truths or lies to start controversy. Indie sites do the best they can with the limited access they have, and if they make mistakes so be it - but don't call them "sensationalist." The moment they give a shit about making sure the truth is known, even at the risk of having to save face themselves, strike them off that list, please.
I also don't think if someone of CliffyB's stature DID say something about Japan not keeping up with the US, that reporting on it would constitute "sensationalism." Is this sensationalist?
http://www.joystiq.com/2009/09/27/keiji-inafune-says-japanese-game-industry-is-over-man/
Speaking as a "mere" gamer for a moment, I don't think the idea that the Japanese developers are losing relevance compared to Western developers is outrageous or sensationalist at all. I think CliffyB's misquote had such play not only because *he* said it, but because it reflects the feelings of a lot of Western gamers out there. I got tired of the anime character tropes and silly storylines that are far too common in Japanese-developed games a few years ago, and I've seen nothing coming out of Japan to make me change my mind. I don't think it's about cultural bias, either. I had no issue with Japanese-developed games from the NES through the PS1, but gaming has changed. It's grown up a little bit, and the West seems to be keeping up with that maturity better than Japan is.
But that's another conversation altogether. :)
The problem here is that few outlets actually fact-check their stories, and thus, such misquotes ripple through the press.
I agree with Demian that this is sensationalism regardless of whether the quote attributed to Bleszinski was wrong -- the content itself serves no other purpose but to rile up readers.
Regarding mature journalism in games -- I think you once referenced an editorial by Scott Jones about the fall of Crispy Gamer. His point was that Crispy Gamer tried just that -- thoughtful, interesting stories beyond preview/review coverage -- and no one cared.
I don't think that this is about readers being ready or not for such content -- I just think that it's inherently difficult to interest readers in this kind of journalism. Mainstream news journalists, as you point out, fall victim to the same problem. And this is why a number of media scholars call for significant media reform in a number of different ways, but you don't see that about the gaming press.
Why? Likely because the public-at-large already understands (to some degree) the importance of the fourth estate for a functioning democracy, and that value isn't readily apparent for entertainment press.
What's the best way to get published? It's the same for all fields of journalism (trust me): Have an original idea. Come up with something interesting and compelling, and you'll find someone who will pay you to publish it. This means avoiding the "product coverage/preview/review" grind. You need to look to features. This is where the freelancer has his best opportunity.
Check these out: Andrew Hiscock's The Tutorial: Freelancing http://www.bitmob.com/articles/the-tutorial-freelancing and The Freelancers from GamePro: http://www.gamepro.com/article/features/215085/the-freelancers/ (Be sure to read the comments on this one!)
When it comes to news in the enthusiast press, you may find little "traditional" news, but remember: We're covering products, and covering the development, announcement, and such of those products is legitimate news for the enthusiast press. It's like the wine mags covering a new vineyard or varietal or the car mags covering Chevy's latest crossover. Sometimes this coverage does get into the PR zone, but that has to do more with the severe lack of proper editing and trained editors.
I think GamePro has a solid mix of content, ranging from reviews/previews, to features detailing aspects of the biz I never thought to look into myself. Every time I pick up an issue, I mentally whip myself for not thinking of those topics first. Getting other writers to hate themselves is a clue you're on the right path in regards to content and coverage, I think.
@Rob - How would the indie press check "the facts" of an interview with CliffyB unless they had someone who was sitting right there also recording the interview? It's XBox 360 World Magazine's job to make sure they don't publish the misprint. I would have loved to have had my particular writer check his facts first, but the "facts" were the published comments. :)
The ultimate responsibility lies with he or she who publishes the story first - and all that should matter past that point is whether anyone who draws from that source corrects any mistakes attributable to the source being wrong. Believe me, I'd much rather my writers be producing original content based on interviews with developers, but we're not quite there yet.
And again, I think a conversation about the Japanese gaming industry is ultimately a conversation about gamer culture which has value to our audiences - so we have to agree to disagree.
Yeah, I did reference the Scott Jones Crispy Gamer article once, and I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment as to what the episode means - which is why I'd like to see the gaming media taking the tack of trying to sneak some substance into their coverage. Run 9 pieces of PR - "New release trailer screenshots previews," and then sneak something in there to inspire the gray matter.
Even if it's only 10% of the content, there are enough Gen-X gamers out there like me who are thirsty for something to challenge us such that we're in the audience of every major gaming site that exists. Changing games journalism is a matter of baby steps, isn't it? Can't we slowly educate the audience and raise the level of discourse ourselves? I think it comes down to will as much as anything else. Dedicating the space on a website vs. a print magazine to a little substance doesn't break the bank for any of the major sites, does it?
@ Jason - Thanks for the links. Be assured that I'll be reading them. I'm not sure how long it's been since you started writing about games, but I wrote something on here and my blog about whether we're gamers or critics, and I think those are two entirely different mental muscles. I've been writing about games since February, and thinking about them on this level is a totally different ballgame. Finding something "original" can be a challenge when you're new and haven't absorbed all the discourse which came before you, especially if you're a white male in his mid-30's and who therefore, in his perspectives, represents such a huge proportion of the other writers who also want the games journalism jobs.
And it's worth noting that I've pitched stories about Games Accessibility Day to some of the majors, and either they never read the email (probably, as who the hell am I), or they just weren't interested (also probable, per Rob's comments.)
Leigh Alexander says that becoming a professional games journalist is luck as much as anything else. I think hard work puts you in a position for luck to find you, but I think she's very right. Why should games journalism be any different than any other career? Who you know is as important as what you know. Maybe an off-the beaten-path article, like one about a bunch of gamers who want to develop games for the disabled, might get published in one of the majors, but only if you happen to catch the ear of the right editor at the right time, and you make a personal impression upon them such that they listen to you out of the crowd of other people trying to get their attention. Let's not discount that factor, either. *grin*
I'm also really not complaining about the lack of traditional news in games journalism, Jason. Like I said, I agree with Chris Grant. I don't think there IS a lot of "news" to be reporting on. Over on my site, we offer news and reviews because they are necessary evils that our audience will expect us to carry - but we're recruiting writers who can handle features and editorials, i.e. substantive content, because that's what interests the Director and I.
@ Michael - Agreed. I referenced GamePro as a website where Meghan could fit right in for a reason. :)
Wow. I think that 9th graf has to be the nicest thing that anyone has said about my writing. Thank you.
Yikes, what an unfortunate situation for Xbox 360 World Magazine. : / CliffyB's quote about, "Websites intentionally publish misquotes and out of context pullquotes to create forum flamewars which generates traffic and profit,"(via the Destructoid recap of the incident) really pisses me off because many other writers that I know and myself try to do the best job we can. Hell, I triple-check my quotes before publishing. Ugh.
But I think the indie press almost has an advantage over the mainstream press. The "indie press" and small games bloggers usually don't have to shuffle through stacks of press releases and assets, and this frees up time to do much more interesting (but probably less-read :P) stories. Feature stories are where it's at for freelance writers trying to break into the industry. So go get 'em, guys. ^^