(image courtesy edge user indrema.)
usually on this blog i talk about design, not about “games journalism.” that’s because of the state of the enthusiast press – where would i even begin? fortunately bob fearon pointed me toward this “news” post on edge, written by larry hryb (as told to tom ivan).
there’s a reason they’re called the “enthusiast press.” it’s because they’re so enthusiastic, not about videogames, about the people who play them, or about the amazing experiences or communities they can foster, but about the corporate machinations of a billion dollar industry that they’ve somehow been deluded into believing is the font from which these games and experiences flow. so enthusiastic that not only are they willing to print a quote from a corporate goon as a piece of “news,” to fail to criticize the assertion that adding advertisements to a service i am already paying a subscription fee to enjoy should somehow “enhance” my experience of that service, but they are so eager to portray a sniveling douchebag plotting ways to swindle more and more money from people who are already paying him as a friend of mine that they refer to him by the charming little nickname he’s (or microsoft’s pr department has) come up with for himself.
(of course, i’m sure edge does think of “major nelson” as their pal. i’m sure it’s hard to care much about ads on xbox live when microsoft probably gives you free xbox live subscriptions. and free copies of sixty dollar games. and pre-release care packages that light up when you open them, just to show how much they love you, their pet journalist. i guess it’s not so hard to see why these people think of corporations as the font from which games flow after all.)
larry “major nelson” hryb. tom “larry hryb” ivan. microsoft “santa claus” xbox.
the enthusiast “journalism” press.
(filed under “hack” for “hack writing.”)
18 comments
So what you’ve linked there reminded me of something. I work in a gas station, and every morning I get my knees onto the concrete to sort, count, and display newspapers. People rush in and buy them – if the delivery van is late, you’ll get little pairs of glasses driving around the forecourt, peering into the shop to see if the papers are waiting.
Some of them are the national newspapers, which are essentially hate-rags or privately published $2 political leaflets with lovely paper stock. There’s a couple local newspapers there too, and these are just jumbled kindergarten storytime interpretations of local punch-ups and farmer’s markets, full of and then what happened was.
So nearly every article contains just one item of news. Prince Harry Shags Pope. There are quotes, hyperbole, and then the 50w limit is up.
I reckon this is the same, except there are no word limits here. Edge are just reprinting something without editorialising. If it was your job to write that article, you might have injected some personality, commentary, some editorial into it. I’d probaby quite enjoy your editorialising of current publisher talky-words. As it stands, 75% of those words were written by the marketer dude, and the rest are introducing and paraphrasing him.
So yeah, if you’re saying “This article is Edge being used as a mouthpiece”, then yeah, I agree.
I don’t know. I wrote a review for cash recently, and Square Enix sent me their game, and I’ve still got it and I get to keep it and everything. Was still repetitive tripe, and I said so.
No idea how corrupt the globe of Games Journalism is. My editors have said they stick to their principles, so I believe them. They don’t seem to go easy on big publishers, at least. Also know that there must be corruption somewhere in the industry.
So do ads have a place in games?
why not?
I like how he says the ads will be just as unobtrusive as the existing dashboard content, as if the whole ‘NXE’ dashboard wasn’t already a goddam mess.
If my experiences of trying to launch Photo Party are anything to go by, I probably won’t even find these adverts.
yeah, let’s all make believe a crazy backwards world where the xbox menus are filled with advertising.
That seems like shady practices to me. Payola, anyone?
90% of that link is quotation, and I’m certain that it’s from a press release rather than a direct quotation given to the writer.
As the commentator above points out above, there is no editorial from Edge here, it’s just a bald quotation leaving the reader to draw their own conclusion.
Edge magazine runs plenty of editorial and columns where they call out corporations on this stuff. They are also comfortably the harshest critics of games in terms of scores and editorial, so your claim that this proves they are in the publishers’ pockets is pretty silly.
There’s plenty wrong with the gaming press and you’re right, the close relationship between publishers and press can be damaging. But there’s nothing in this example to back up your ire.
Not sure I should work for Edge, because they don’t give writers a byline. Any thoughts on that?
As with the newspaper example – it needs two to tango – providers of crap, and buyers of crap :) Target-audience matters… and well, come on: Its not as if the “indie” audience doesn’t support questionable platforms, right? And why do they do so? Because there is no alternative honest, fair and trustworthy infrastracture for indie-games, besides of the few well known portals. They could try to slowly create that infrastructure, but well… that would be a lot of work, is not something available right NOW, and it would require that one is willing to say “No, thanks”… in other words: To REJECT certain entities and target-audiences.
But they want to get their game out there now, they want to be known now and they want to “convert” and be accepted by people who do not fit their own mindset. And so, they corrupt by taking part in what they complain about – some may call that hypocrisy.
So while a significant part of the indie-movement tries to become mainstream, i am just happy about every unique game released which doesn’t depend on some bloated framework, every portal which keeps some kind of autonomy and individual thought, every gamedev who creates for what he/she creates – instead for something else, every player which plays for that child-like sense of fascination and exploration – instead of for some arbitrary personal identity, social acceptance or magazine propaganda.
my ire was irritated by the writer’s referring to microsoft’s larry hryb by a cute nickname, which i see fairly frequently in this kind of games writing. i think the trend is indicative of a relationship between publishers and the enthusiast press that makes it impossible for real criticism to exist there.
Maybe it’s the console-exclusive people that create this problem, you know? If you’re editing a Playstation mag, you’ve got this one company present on the horizon at all times, and they’re always delivering the PR and showing up in the magazine, your readers are going to start identifying with them, and some will love them. Look at Miyamoto. That’s why I love PC Gaming, really. It’s not really owned by anyone. If I just want to play snes roms and run music editing software, I can probably make a PC that’ll do that for about £100. If I want to outpace the latest consoles for hardware, I can spend thousands. It’s up to me what goes in there, I’m responsible for taking care of it, and I decide what kinds of games are on it.
This relationship exists for PC games as well. Its just that when it comes to PC games, there are a few portals and mags which do stuff differently, so you can choose.
P.S.: What “creates” this problem is supply and demand. You have a chain like this: vendor press gamer.
Now, what the press will do, depends on the vendor and the gamer. The vendor wishes – to put it bluntly – to send adverts to the gamer. If it were only about him, then he’d just prewrite the “news” and the press would just “publish” it to the gamer.
If the gamer wants honest and investigativ info from the press, a balance is established: The press cannot just do what the vendor wants, because then gamers will reject them.
But when you deal with an audience, which just wants to be told what to believe, what to do, what to buy, then for the press there is – besides of perhaps personal interests – no incentive anymore to do its job. If you just publish what the vendor comfortably provides to you, then thats less effort – you get stuff out faster… you can publish info even if it cannot be checked yet… your “news” will be newer and cheaper. Plus, you get good relations with the vendor so that he may benefit you in the future.
Why I want to write about games for a living: I firmly believe games can tell us wondrous, terrifying truths about ourselves and our species, and that they can expand beyond linear narratives (and beyond narratives) as a mode of expression and education, communication, and entertainment.
I’m also tired of cleaning up puke while wearing a clown suit that smells of gasoline, and I quite fancy having complete control over my life.
Why I write reviews: getting free games is nice, and it’s a good way to build up a hefty portfolio so you get the more interesting commissions (like “write a nice big feature on different styles of gaming narratives, there’s a good lad”), and, goddamnit, somebody needs to tell these people what it’s like to play a game they’re not sure they want to spend money on. What if nobody had reviewed World of Goo? Ideally, this part of the process wouldn’t be necessary – I’m savvy enough to find out about new games just by looking for them in the right places. But I can’t say the same about, say, food – new vegetarian food, for example, reaches me via various publications and websites. I don’t have the time or expertise to run around factories and compare mashed beans with delicately textured mycoprotein, each formed into identical patty-with-breadcrumbs-on shape. That’s what food journos are for.
It’s like garbage disposal. People say that “somebody needs to do it”, but the only reason that role needs to be filled is that people aren’t willing to do the work theirselves. If we all created as little waste as possible, took it all to the recycling plant, and put in an hours work, we’d eliminate the need for people to smell like rotting fruit for a living. Until then, though, these people (whose propensity for garbage disposal is probably the tip of some other skill-iceberg, like painting or yachting) have a way of doing a simple job that puts pasta on the table.
Although there are hacks who know how to string a sentence together, and can use that to milk the publishing industry for cash, intergrity be damned – I have to believe that every person who loves to write would very much like to do it A) about something they care for, and B) exclusively.
That’s why I propose a more complex model for this dev-PR-press-gamer chain. Some press are darting around the marketing VPs and taking lonely developers out for a few drinks, both getting very excited about Elite and becoming actual friends. Sure, the dev is promoting the game, and the journo is fishing for juicy info, but they’re people. It’s a relationship, seems to me, as complex as any other.
Oh dear – how do i say this without killing of exactly that, which i want more of (which is the same as what you want more of).
By all means, yes, make exactly that happen! As long as the reviews are primarily done because of the games… who cares if you get free stuff, or if you form relationships… as long as it doesn’t influence the honesty and fairness of your reviews?
What i – and i suppose auntie as well (correct me if i’m wrong) – dislike isn’t that reviewers form relationships with the industry, or that they get free stuff… or that they sell those reviews. No, that alone by itself wouldn’t be an issue. The issue arises when all the other things EXCEPT of the game tend to take overhand about WHAT is reviewed and HOW its reviewed… when the game is no more than an excuse, a justification, for writing a review.
Now, you may think: Okay, if i choose to not go that route, then what? Well, there still is this thing about the target audience. If you review for the masses, then they have certain expectations about you – and it ain’t pretty. You may then choose “Well, okay, if they dont like it – i wont lie just to appeal to them. There will be some people who value what i do”. True – but then you’re no longer reviewing for the unconscious masses – you’re reviewing for people like you :)
My point: Some things are mutually exclusive. Having preferences means that one accepts something and rejects something else. There are many people who WANT shallow and hyper reviews like those in mainstream mags… if you choose not to review that way, then those consumers will not be interested in you. There is no Joker in this “game”.
So you’re saying that my choice is between writing reviews for “people like me” and “the masses”. I just write reviews for people who wonder what the game is like :/
I don’t know where this “shallow and hyper” thing comes in, either. Different mags have different voices, and a good freelancer can write in the voice of the mag. NGamer magazine always has a bit of a laugh and takes quite a shine to Nintendo in-house games, but they’ll never praise a turd, nomatter the arsehole deigning to emit it. My concession that such mags – the turd praisers – exist isn’t one that comes from experience (i couldn’t name one, for example), but common sense. I know there are people who flush the toilet roll, there are people who paint over grafitti, there are people who steal your wine while they’re visiting, so there are definitely people who don’t care what they write as long as they get paid.
I’m a bit lost. Can we go back to having a set of examples, please? All this “mainstream mags” and “many people” lark is very difficult to conceptualise. You’re claiming that there is a type of person who will read nothing but hyperbole. I think some readers prefer a lighter tone (when i reviewed The Last Remnant [ugh], i made sure to poke fun as his four concentric shirts while underlining the core problems), but I don’t think that tone excludes readers – unless you think games are solemn affairs. The currency of a game is still fun, after all.
I think games writing serves two functions, and you’re right, it’s probable that ‘many people’ want one or the other from their gaming press. The first is to convey information about new games, descriptions of the experience of playing, and ultimately a recommendation. A buyer’s guide. For indie games, this is often just a “should-i-invest-five-minutes-playing-this guide”.
This is of no use to me as a consumer (i can, of course, appreciate some of the lovely writing in these articles). I plan to play every single game I can get my hands on, and deciding the order in which I do that is rarely important. It’s just a matter of time and money. What I want to read about is the future of games, the past of games, and the present of games. The industry. The rennaissance we seem to be in the middle of, where very lovely games are being made both by enormous sweatshops and solitary craftsdwarfs alike. I want to read, essentially, a sort of scientific journal of the developments, the fashions, the posturings and the posings of the industry. I find myself gradually immersed in a world that works all by itself, and I want to read the news from that world.
So if there is a dichotomy among the readers of games writing, that might be it. I’m still very interested to read what these people think, though, especially if I’ve already committed my thoughts to paper (or to internet paper). I don’t see any reason why the great unwashed wouldn’t skim through an article about great level design, especially if they played Super Mario Land as a kid and an errant screen shot caught their eye. it’s easy to assume that we live on a planet full of idiots. i usually take that on a case-by-case basis, but essentially, someone playing a game is someone that has the time and inclination to exit their own head. that makes them a viable target for all kinds of mind-expanding media, don’t you think?
I can’t really have an opinion on this, speaking as a pay-to-unlock character myself, but I will say that Edge is a VERY overrated magazine
I like “No one on the team wants to turn the dashboard into something that looks like like Shibuya Crossing. That’s just not good for anyone.”
Shibuya Crossing is a famous tourist hotspot due in part to its huge and impressive advertising hoardings. A better comparison would have been ‘a strip mall’ or ‘the inside of a Wal-mart’
It was when I noticed that I didn’t even -know- what Major Nelson’s real name was before reading this that I realized what a good point you have.
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