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The Games Media Awards held in London last month caused quite a stir when the public found out journalists were tweeting PR-prompted hashtags in return for a chance to win free gear.

The news got out of hand quickly, and video-game journalists and fans are still talking about it. The image above, of journalist Geoff Keighley forcibly surrounded by junk food as part of an interview, became emblematic of the issue (though not Keighley's fault).

Well, Bitmob is all about games writing. It's in our blood, and it's the purpose of our site. So when an issue like this grabs the attention of our community, we want to hear what you have to say.

We've already front-paged a couple of your articles on this topic, and our own Jason Lomberg has shared his opinion as well. But we thought it made sense to round all your thoughts up into one hub. So check out the article summaries below, and see what you think.

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Filmmaker Devin Graham -- whose YouTube channel is worth a browse even if you're not a giant nerd -- has struck again.

You might remember his first real-life Assassin's Creed video from September, and this morning, he released another installment. This one takes place in the woodsy, cliffsy setting of developer Ubisoft's just-released Assassin's Creed III, and it features a flip-happy Assassin taking out a couple of hapless Redcoats.

The video, which you can see after the break, has a little bit of Tag and a lot of Hide and Seek, but its main draw is obviously watching a real dude dressed up as a member of the fictional Assassins flipping over things. Seriously, the number of flips in this video is almost gratuitous, but the thing is so awesome that you probably won't care.

Just try to resist the urge to yell "Parkour!" after every stunt.

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You stand in a pure white landscape with no indication of how you got there. A singular point in the distance tells you where where to go. This is Kairo, the latest game from indie developer Richard Perrin. It starts from nothing with a far-away goal in mind, and that's how Perrin starting working on it, too.

“I didn't think about it as a puzzle game," says Perrin. "It was barely even a game. I just knew I wanted to make something that took advantage of the monolithic scale that games can do easily but rarely approach."

Perrin started with a few images in mind and dove right in, modeling the first building quickly then creating one room at a time.

“I work like this a lot,” says Perrin. “I don't spend a lot of time planning. I just tend to jump in and see where it takes me. I find the feel I want with a game, and getting something running quickly helps me decide how best to explore that feeling. In my mind, it's like when sculptors talk about revealing what's hidden inside the rock. I feel like I'm trying to reveal what the game wants to be."

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Do you want to know what my nightmares sound like?

Something like this.

I guess you could say that I’ve always been somewhat biased against underwater levels in my gaming experiences given that Sonic the Hedgehog was the first title I ever owned. Those nightmarish “outswim the timer” stages led to about 1,000 of my little beloved hedgehog’s deaths.

But let’s be serious. Something is inherently wrong with these submerged sequences. Think about it. Ask gamers who grew up with a Nintendo 64 what the most difficult levels they ever had to play through were. I can guarantee you that the a number of them will burst into fits of sobbing as repressed memories of the water temple from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time bubble to the surface.

Or maybe that's just me. 

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Now that we finally have an official release date -- April 26, 2013 -- for Dead Island: Riptide, I can finally begin to worry less about if, or when for that matter, my favorite zombie slasher will return.

According to publisher Deep Silver, Dead Island Riptide adds “additional gameplay mechanics, all-new gorgeous locales to explore, more types of zombies to provide constant threats, an additional character class and the best co-operative zombie action experience in gaming.”

But this is what I want from the upcoming sequel.

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The Matrix has been irrelevant since those horrible sequels ruined the original's goodwill, but I think the cartoonists at HBruna have found a way to bring some excitement back to the series by adding a healthy dose of Minecraft into the mix.

Seriously, this is a very well-made video for such a silly concept. Although it's not too much of a stretch to imagine all of those addicted Minecraft players losing their grip on reality. You can watch it all after the jump.

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Developer Giant Sparrow's PlayStation 3-exclusive downloadable game, The Unfinished Swan, is one of those titles that hits all the "games as art" buttons: It's colorful, it promotes exploration, and at no point in the entire story does your character blow an enemy to bloody chunks.

Swan also pounds (literally) on the "quirky/innovative gameplay mechanic" button. Like Flower's "You are the wind" and Canabalt's "Just jump, man" dynamics, the first level of Giant Sparrow's game has you throwing blobs of paint around to reveal the contents of a uniformly white world. Later on, you throw balls of water around to make vines grow, lob nondescript spheres at lanterns to create light, and toss some round things to determine the dimensions of a 3D object.

Basically, The Unfinished Swan has a lot of balls. And that's pretty much where the problem is.

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Let me guess. You like video games, and you hate your day job?

You’re not alone. I think everyone would rather get paid to play big-time titles all day than do anything else.

A dangerous misconception exists regarding these dream jobs, however. They're not an excuse to play all day. They're work.

And life is about doing something meaningful.

Does that make sense?

Work makes life worthwhile. To throw your body, mind, and soul at a meaningful task is a human being's source of satisfaction.

To be utterly spent, exhausted, and bloodied while knowing that you’ve accomplished something great is the sweetest feeling.

Now let’s examine the dream of being a games journalist.

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Once again, games journalism has been having an internal spat over the integrity of some of its fraternity. The issue circles around a handful of opportunistic souls who took the opportunity to earn themselves a free PlayStation 3 for using a particular hashtag on Twitter while at the Games Media Awards a couple of weeks ago.

Most of the journalists who received PS3s did something constructive with them (either donating them to charity or using them as competition prizes), but they were still criticized for taking the opportunity that was presented to them.

Now, winning a PS3 was not particularly wrong. The irony comes in the fact that those doing the criticizing were doing so on the grounds that these people were making material gain for providing advertising.

The actual argument was pretty trivial, but it does bring up some interesting questions about the relationship between games journalists and the industry they report on.

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The GMAs fiasco is an abomination -- not just for the act itself, and what it says about games journalism, but for how the guilty have actually doubled down. This cavalier embrace of quid pro quo is entirely foreign to me, being of a traditional journalism background. As the editor for an electrical engineering trade magazine, I wouldn't last a day with such lax journalistic integrity.

The journos at the Games Media Awards (GMAs) who tweeted a hashtag in exchange for a PS3 have cast a renewed -- and unflattering -- look at games journalism. They’ve exposed a culture that tolerates -- and even encourages -- quid pro quo, that increasingly blurs the lines between advertorial and editorial, and that which has flimsy standards, if any.

Accepting freebies in exchange for tweeting a hashtag is not a form of advertising, as some have suggested. It’s graft, pure and simple. It’s selling one’s integrity -- and any pretense of unbiased objectivity -- for personal gain. I could never do this.

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I consider myself a pretty knowledgeable Sonic the Hedgehog fan (at least of everything before the horrible 2006 game), but I have to shamefully admit to not knowing a single one of the interesting facts in Did You Know Gaming's newest video.

For instance, apparently Sega originally designed Dr. Robotnik (I refuse to call him Dr. Eggman) as a hero for another game. Also, Sonic originally had a human love interest called Madonna. That idea was thankfully scrapped by Sega of America for being too "Japanese."

You can learn more bizarre Sonic trivia by watching the video after the break.

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This article contains minor spoilers for BioShock and Fallout 3.

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I finally completed three of the most popular releases in my Xbox 360 collection: Mass Effect, BioShock, and Fallout 3. Although I enjoyed every one of them, I think many reviewers overlooked their many flaws.

Perfect video games don't exisit, even among the biggest blockbuster productions.

As I played through each revered modern classic, I discovered how each game uncovered new capabilities of the current-generation consoles.

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