Is the Game Media Being Oblivious? 163
MaryAlan writes "The National Summit on Video Games, Youth, and Public Policy was this weekend, and almost no one from the game media showed up. In fact, the game industry seems to pretty much be ignoring the whole event. There's an article up on GamesFirst, which attended the summit, that criticizes the mainstream game press pretty hard for not attending. Apparently only one game journalist showed up. From the article: 'The video game media owes it to our readers to come to events like this and listen, come here and think, and come here and base our editorials on the reality of what's being said instead of an interpretation of the talking points that are published afterwords. Too many of the people discussing these issues in forums do so based on the works of the game media, and too few in the gaming media are spending the time to make it justified.'"
Guess they didn't learn (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Guess they didn't learn (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Guess they didn't learn (Score:5, Funny)
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http://www.edge-online.co.uk/ [edge-online.co.uk]
Click the subscription link and be enlightened.
Re:Guess they didn't learn (Score:5, Insightful)
This is very similar to what happens whenever an Oil company shows up to an environmental meeting, which believe it or not happens quite often; oil companies hire dozens of environmental scientists to ensure that they're doing as little environmental damage as is possible. (On a side note, most environmental damage is done because of govenmental decisions; oil is shipped from Alaska rather than piped through Canada because the US govenment's regulations, and shipping is prone to accidents). No matter what evidence they demonstrate to show that there is no connection between CO2 and global warming nothing they show will ever be listend to.
Basically, what I'm trying to say is that the Gaming Industry could show up to an event like this and have God as a witness and no one there will listen to them when they say videogames do not cause children to perform violent acts.
Or else... (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone they could learn from. (Score:5, Insightful)
That pretty much sums the whole thing up in one line.
Actually, you could show up in any Congressional subcommittee with God in tow, and unless God happened to be made out of money, I doubt you'd influence any pending piece of legislation.
If the "games lobby" wants to make its voice heard in government, and keep itself from being run over as the Fox News scarecrow-du-jour, then they should take a very good look at what the National Rifle Association does, in terms of communicating with and mobilizing its support base, getting donations, and funneling those donations to where they'll have maximum political impact. I can't think of any organization that is as frankly successful and powerful as they are, and has continuously maintained such a high profile, and has done it while staying within the bounds of the law. (Some corporate lobbies might come close, but I think their cash burn rates are much higher for the effect they achieve.)
You can have logical arguments so beautiful they'd make Plato sit down and weep, enough scientific evidence to unequivocally prove a dozen theories of everything, but the government will still ignore you if you are not either a large force among voters, or have lots of filthy lucre to burn. Preferably, have both.
MOD PARENT UP (Score:2)
Much of the bad technology-related legislation that's getting passed appears to me to mainly intended by politicians to make the point "Ignore us and we will destroy you, because we can."
When consumer technology companies start spending the same percentage of their gross that Hollywood does on politicians, they will Pwn the g
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Although I agree that many things can be learned from the NRA, I don't agree that those lessons are likely to yield similarly favorable results when applied to video game issues.
Politicians have been a wealthy ruling elite. They have always owned some of the most expensive guns or they have secret service agents to carry guns in their stead or they have body-guards to be their hired guns... and they usually have many wealthy family members and lots of property they'd like protected by arms as well.
Of c
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Does the game industry have any research to support the assertion that games have no effect? If not, claiming such a thing will prove nothing but their greed.
It is time for the game industry to get beyond "well I played them and never killed anybody!" Either they should tr
Re:Guess they didn't learn (Score:4, Insightful)
Is there any research that proves games do have a negative effect? Apart from asking people's mothers, I mean.
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Re:Guess they didn't learn (Score:5, Insightful)
As an aside, isn't it strange that for some reason, the people who want to ban video games because they're dangerous and might possibly show a slight statistical increase in violence tend to be the same people who call it a 'socialist nanny state' when you're talking about regulating food safety or the environment or something that could actually save thousands of lives at once, contrary to this video game tripe, which could allegedly cause a few dozen murders here and there over time?
Video games don't kill people (Score:2)
People who spend their whole life playing WoW are less likely to kill me.
Also, I'll be more afraid of someone who spends a lot of time at the rifle range than someone who spends a lot of time playing some videogame, if they said they were going to kill me.
For perspective what the President of the USA does is more likely to kill you or cause you to be killed. So that's a far more important concern than some silly summit.
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The fact is that shipping oil is far more risky than using a pipeline under similar levels of maintainance; there are tons of examples
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Re:Guess they didn't learn (Score:4, Informative)
Seriously, though, I was with you up to that point. I am not an expert in the field, but I have gone to listen to experts speak about the subject. From what I understand, there is no "evidence". Evidence requires experimentation, and we're living in the only known experiment RIGHT NOW.
What I was saying is less "there is no global warming, listen to the oil companies" and more that "only one side of the issue is really getting listened to". No scientist disputes that we're not at a historical high temperature (the earth was warmer durring the middle age warm period), the earth hasn't been increasing at an unprecidented rate (there have been decades where the world has increased at a more rapid rate), and there is no direct connection between greenhouse gases and the temperature increase that we have seen; it has, however, been demonstrated that the temperatures are closely related to solar activity and that Mars in undergoing a period of global warming.
Basically, I was using Global Warming as an example of how there is usually no real discussion or information exchange on political issues; usually people have made up their mind before they go to a conference and look for validation of their beliefs. If tomorow God said that global temperatures were increasing because of Solar Activity (which humans have no impact on) there would still be Millions of people who were trying to meet the kyoto targets; at the same time if there was conclusive evidence that CO2 was the only thing effecting Global Warming there would still be Millions of people who claimed that lowering greenhouse gasses was pointless.
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Actually its warmer now than the Medieval Warm Period. Historical documents from that time are euro-centric. It may have been warmer in Europe then (although even that is questionable) but it was not warmer globally.
Just take a look at estimates on the temperatures in the MWP. Of the dozens of studies of this, not a single one of them shows the global temperature to be higher than it is today.
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What's more likely? Kids play video games and thus want to kill their friends and acquaintances in real life...OR...kid has very few friends, is picked on a lot in school, is abused o
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Why can't you fanatics fathom that it's possible it could be a combination of both?
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evidence (v'-dns) pronunciation
n.
1. A thing or things helpful in forming a conclusion or judgment: The broken window was evidence that a burglary had taken place. Scientists weigh the evidence for and against a hypothesis.
2. Something indicative; an outward sign: evidence of grief on a mourner's face.
3. Law. The documentary or oral statements and the material objects admissibl
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That's somewhat true. Once we've determined that certain observations are tied to certain events, we can use start using these observations as evidence of these events. But until we understand these correlations, the observations are just that: observations. Not evidence.
All three of these definitions require prior knowledge of correlation between events: burglars break windows, understanding facial expressions, witnesses aren't always lia
Re:Guess they didn't learn (Score:4, Interesting)
In politics, it goes like this: Give money to my campaign, or I'll go after your industry. Although I don't necessarily agree, many political analysts feel the Microsoft Monopoly case occured not out of public concern, but due to the simple fact that MS was not spending enough money on lobbyists or campagins. The tech industry as a whole during the 80s-90s spent orders of magnitude less %-wise of their revenues on impacting political legislation. Mature industries like the automotive, steel, lumber, oil, etc. industries have learned to "pay the piper." The high tech industry has finally come around, and the result has been much more favorable attention from our legislators.
The video game industry finds itself in the same quagmire. Young, fast-growth industries often do. Management is focused more on putting out product than seeing "the big picture." It takes a slap on the wrist to learn. We don't see legislators going after the movie and music industries, after all.
Many would say this is due to the public's fear of "new things for kids." In part, I agree. But, the mechanics of the process of legislation involve two things: money and public opinion. Unfortunately the video game industry is losing on both fronts these days.
Contradiction in terms (Score:4, Insightful)
That would be akin to wishing for serious coverage by Maxim magazine or Teen Beat. What the tap-dancing fetal Jesus did they expect? There hasn't been any serious game-related journalism since Next-Generation went tits up.
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And yet, just because they whined, they are getting coverage on other media outlets which is exactly what they wanted.
They win.
Heh. (Score:5, Insightful)
I always responded with the same form reply: "If you feel that your views are under-represented, I'll be happy to print an article in which you can explain them in detail. We support reader supplied stories, yadda yadda yadda."
You know how many people actually bothered to write in, even given an open forum and a paper circulation of ~30,000 ad-supported papers, left in prominent places all over town? Maybe one in a hundred.
People love to complain. You see it here every day, people expressing their outrage all over the place. But do they actually bother to try and take the message to people who don't already agree with them? Seldom.
So I'm hardly surprised that the Game media doesn't bother to actually cover events like this. They mainly work from press releases and secondary sources...Very sloppy stuff.
Maybe this is a sign that the gamer community is starting to get proactive, rather than reactive...The best time to stop a crappy game bill from passing in Congress, is before it actually passes.
To paraphrase Atlas Shrugged (Score:5, Insightful)
Ayn Rand: Philosophy for the Self Centered (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Ayn Rand: Philosophy for the Self Centered (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ayn Rand: Philosophy for the Self Centered (Score:4, Interesting)
We live in a capitalist society, which means it is run by capitalists. Federal reserve surveys show that over 40% of the corporate stock in the country is owned by 1% of the population, while the bottom 90% of the population has to split up the less than 20% of the pie left for them. The numbers are similar for private business as well (and bonds etc.) If you look at these types, say on the Forbes 400, you see that half of them inherited all of their money. And the cutoff between the inheritance half and "self-made" billionaires is at the $300 million line, meaning someone inheriting $280 million and parlaying it into a few billion is "self-made". In fact the top people on the list all came from wealth - Bill Gates's father and grandfather were well-to-do lawyers (Preston Gates was huge before Microsoft), Warren Buffett's father was a congressman whose family owned many stores etc. I won't even go into how much of capitalism is based on imperialist theft - say the English robbery of Ireland, India or English settlers robbery of American Indians (in the US and Canada). Or US theft of oil in Iraq.
Ayn Rand takes the reality of capitalism, hides it, and creates a fantasy land. The workers movements, the left, has always been about giving control of the workers work to the worker. This is what the capitalists don't want, or people nominally on the left who try to betray this tradition - US trade union bureaucrats who don't care about workers, or USSR communist bureaucrats who ultimately became straight-out capitalists, showing what they really were all along. Of course, people who have had workers movements and the like know this, which is why Ayn Rand is a joke anywhere outside of the US. Ayn Rand is the equivalent of the fundamentalist Jesus bullshit in the US, except for professionals and managers too smart to buy into those myths. But not smart enough to know about the world outside the US, or even inside the US going back a century or two.
Re:Ayn Rand: Philosophy for the Self Centered (Score:4, Insightful)
I've noticed that people who say they should have the right to do whatever they want with their lives without hurting others always seem to reserve the right to define for themselves what "hurting others" means. That kind of selfishness needn't be tolerated by any civilized society.
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Re:Ayn Rand: Philosophy for the Self Centered (Score:5, Insightful)
Communities have no rights in reality. Neither do individuals. People in the community have power to act, and so do individuals. If your community decides to bad nakedness, and I go around naked, you cannot just remove me by force. Why not? Because even though I may be in the minority, I may have enough determination and power to make life for that prudish community living hell. Why? Because although I may be alone, my determination to go around naked is probably very high, or else, I wouldn't do something that obviously endangers my standing in community for no good reason. That means if you use force, you will not create a situation of peace, which is what you ultimately desire. You will simply polarize yourself further and create divisions. This is how gangs form. Although gangs are minorities, they are going nowhere and wield considerable power, just for that very reason. So, just because you are in majority, you can't just willy nilly control the minority, because minorities also have significant power, commensurate with their determination to apply it.
In no case does anyone have any inherent rights. I don't have a right to be dressed or to be naked. The community has no rights either.
This is why communities change and evolve. If what you say was true, then community standards would stay locked in and never change. But they change quite a bit over time. And guess how it happens, and will continue to happen, forever and ever more? It happens due to individual influence. It happens because someone ran naked across the street. And you can't stop it. You can participate in this process and throw your 2 cents into the pile. But you can't stop the changes and you can't really claim that any sides have any rights.
The rights are declared as a statement of faith or belief. And that's fine. But as you declare such things, it would be wise for you to understand the relative nature of any such declarations. Any person can declare anything they like. If enough of them agree, there you go -- a community. But this tells you nothing about the community or about how it will change.
You might have a community of naked people where running through the street dressed is an act of rebellion.
Things change. Individuals do matter. Individual still stands at the center of change, and your reasoning doesn't take anything away, but rather, it just explains the stage upon which the individual dances. This is neither selfish nor selfless. It's just how it is. I have no inherent right do slap you, but if I want to, I can, and there is nothing you can do to stop me, except post-factum, which is useless, except if you crave revenge. It's useless for the purpose of totally controlling the situation or for giving someone protection from some event happening.
As I see it, communities owe to individuals and individuals owe to the communities. It goes both ways.
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*En
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They can discuss censorship, they just shouldn't be allowed to enact it. And the best way to keep them from doing that is to pay attention to what they are talking about and make them feel like
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That sounds like an Old Testament quote - and if you're a Bible fan you might be interested to know that I as your keeper will soon be banning the Old Testament, to prevent youth from being corrupted by the divinely-sanctioned rape and genocide depicted therein.
What's that, you don't want to have such objectionable material banned? You didn't want me to be your keeper, you just wanted to be mine?
I thought so. Nobody ever says "Please tell me what I
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NO.
There is a lot of research on twin studies that show that identical twins reared apart in different environments tend to become similar people with similar IQ, personality etc.
There is some influence of parents on rearing kids but it pretty much all goes away when they're around 30-40 years old (statistically speaking in terms on influence on measured metrics). Their genetic pre-disposition takes over.
So, the arg
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What is inside you is everything you have made of the world, and it has made of you, before this momen
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"Free will is a red herring. It just puts the real issue of control and determination at one further level removed. What made this happen? I willed it to happen, and enacted my will. But what made me will what I did? What caused the particuler set of choices I comprehended to appear in my consciousness?"
Invalid line of inquiry, because it assumes that cause is necessary.
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Of course, not everything must have a cause, or an effect, but those things that don't can't be known, as knowing itself is an effect. Interesting point, the greeks had four words for cause:
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That's an extremist view. Your conclusion doesn't follow. For example, space doesn't cause anything and is not an effect of anything, and yet we consider it to be existent.
"But this is all missing my point, and I'm afraid you did too in trying to sound wise by putting what you've seen into words.
Not really. I'm far better than you can understand at this point.
"Materialistic Monis
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I have no patience for monkeying around. Seriously. I like you but I can't debate with you any more. So, I'm going to post some replies and that's it. I invite *YOU* to look at this on your own. In other words, instead of me proving it to you, you should try to arouse your own interest in proving it to yourself. You make a lot of silly assumptions. I understand they are acceptable assumptions within this convention, but as someone who at least pretends to
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Why is that a problem? Do you think my goal is to impress you or to win you over? I don't depend on other people's egos. Other people's egos are like ornaments on my robe. Nice if you have a few pins here and there. Perfectly nice if you don't. Either way, pins are ornaments and not something I need to live or something I need in life.
And I guess you proba
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You don't know my intent, right? Or do you? Do I know your intent?
I'm just playing with you, don't you see?
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People need labelling in products. I am not presonally offended by anything that is
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Suicide (Score:2)
However, ignoring someone who has a gun to your head, and is asking you for a good reason why they shouldn't pull the trigger, seems rather shortsighted.
The videogames industry is, right now, in the second position. Maybe Congress doesn't have the gun to their head yet, but they're fiddling around trying to take the safety off and figure out which end to hold.
Now is not a good time to just ignor
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"Gaming journalism"? hahahaha (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry for sounding so cynical, but I've been reading gaming mags and websites for years and the quality is steadily decreasing. Gaming journalism is about not pissing off the big guys (like EA) so you keep your ad revenue coming, effectively destroying any integrity in the game review process. Not every website is this bad, I know, but the big ones are pretty shameless. Go to Metacritic.com and click every review for Battlefield 2142. Funny how only one or two mention how the game has in-game advertisements...
I'm guessing they didn't understand the invitation (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess theyre (Score:3, Funny)
Well..... (Score:2, Insightful)
Follow the money (Score:2, Insightful)
What game media? (Score:2)
Good for them (Score:5, Insightful)
The National Summit on Video Games, Youth, and Public Policy was this weekend...
I am sorry, but anyone from game media should not be attending any conference called "The National Summit on Video Games, Youth, and Public Policy". Why? Because it will only give more credit to the conference.
The fact of the matter is there should not be an public policy relating to games and youth at all. They're games for Christ sake. don't you think the government has more important things to set policy on? Like oh say, warrantless searches at airports [slashdot.org]?
Games and game content can not and should not be regulated any more than art or films.
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Do you think that if game media, or game developers, or gamers in general ignore this conference, then legislators will just decide not to regulate games? Of course not! They'll regulate it without any input from gamers. The fact is, whether or not games should be regulated, they will be regulated unless we put up a fight - and the way to do that is not to stick our fingers in our ears and pretend it'll all go away if we ign
Actually.. (Score:5, Funny)
Oh but I did. And those nipples... dear lord those nipples!
invitations? (Score:5, Insightful)
Gaming Media Aren't Journalists. (Score:5, Informative)
There seems to be two different standards at play here. American gaming mags in particular, for instance, are paid mostly by game publishers via advertisements. European mags, for the most part, do not rely on these publishers for income. That's why European mags are so frickin' expensive.
However, you can see that the focus is quite different for the two. American gaming "journalists" hype the latest games from big publishers, ignore all the indie titles, and never question disturbing practices in the industry. There are two reasons for this. For one, because they don't want to endanger their money stream. For another, because sensationalist and shallow "reporting" is what sells. It's all about money. Integrity has no place in such a world.
I must say, however, that European gaming mags do cover social aspects, cons, indie titles, in addition to your stereotypical big publisher stuff. Why? Because they're less dependant on sucking up to those same publishers.
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However, you'll be hard pressed to find those same mags cover issues that might be of equal importance to the gaming world, but more obscure in nature. Matters which might escape the attentio
Sponsoring Organization are Nutjobs (Score:5, Informative)
In case you didn't know, NIMF is a right-of-center conservative, sensationalist group that finds things -- anything -- to complain about in the media. These are the same guys who gave a grade of 'F' to the ESRB's rating system. They also advocate -- with soon-to-be-ex-Senator Joe Lieberman as their mouthpiece -- a uniform media rating system monitored by an "independent" oversight group.
They're not nearly as bad as James Dobson's "Focus on the Family" group. In fact, they've actually told Jack Thompson to take a hike. But they are in no way the friends of the games industry. Given NIMF's record, the "summit" likely had nothing to do with a frank exchange of views or exploring the true nature of mass media and its impact on the human psyche, and was just a schmooze-fest for people bent on circumventing the First Amendment.
Attending would have only legitimized the event. The games industry was correct to stay away.
Schwab
Re:Sponsoring Organization are Nutjobs (Score:5, Interesting)
Secondly, this organization is not all bad. Look at this quote. Taken from this [mediafamily.org] article. Emphasis mine. They don't want to censor, they just want oversight of the ratings process. I for one think that the whole GTA San Andreas thing is stupid. I can't sell my copy back to the store now because of the re-rating. I still think video games need to be rated though and if the ESRB would have gotten off of their lazy asses and taken a real look at GTA San Andreas it probably would have been rated Adults Only in the first place. AO does not need to equal Porn.
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Is there really that big a difference between an Mature (17+) rating and an AO (18+) rating? The majority of 17 year olds I know or have ever known would be mature enough to play San Andreas. And the ones that aren't probably wouldn't be mature enough at 18 either
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If that's the case the other GTA games should've received an AO rating as well. The way previous games were rated kind of sets precedent (Manhunt was an M-rated game, and I think it's probably the most violent and gruesome game I've ever played - if ever a title deserved an AO rating, Manhunt ha
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I don't know, I don't shop at Wal-Mart. But, how many games are actually rated AO, anyway? I'd never seen one, until San Andreas was re-rated.
If there were more AO games, would stores like Wal-Mart start to carry them? Does Wal-Mart still carry San Andreas (I assume they did when it was rated M)? I think if there were more AO games, and they were actually good, that stores would start carrying them. If not Wal-Mart, at least EB and Best Buy.
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For all the conciliatory tone of that article, in substance it's not so much. It is viciously hostile towards developers of violent videogames, if nothing else.
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And yet, the article author, who was actually THERE, didn't seem to get this impression. You're just making his point for him - that "we" (pro-gaming people) need to actually find out what the other side are saying rather than throw around arguments like "Oh,
No one cares. (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Well, let's see... (Score:4, Informative)
First session was an overview presented by Douglas Gentile. You can buy his book here [booksforchristians.com]. Next, they had a session on "Violent Video Games: Effects and Public Policy" from Craig Anderson [iastate.edu]. Then they had a panel discussion with Joanne Cantor [joannecantor.com], Kim Thompson [harvard.edu], Douglas Gentile [oup.com], and one person from the ESRB.
I can go on, but it looked like a mutual masterbation get-together from the names I saw in attendance. So I can see why the games press didn't want to go.
What gaming media? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why would such "gaming media" bother showing up at a political event? None of those web sites or their related magazines have anything to do with legitimate journalism. They're a bunch of hacks who sit around giving absurdly friendly reviews to game companies which return the favor by advertising with them, or in the case of Gamespy, licensing their code. They're a bunch of parasites, not responsible journalists, and they don't go to events that don't involve free stuff and half-naked girls because they don't care about the game industry in the first place. If they lose their jobs they can all just go work in some other BS wing of the American media.
Why should the media go? (Score:3)
I'll live with that, because there's other problems in Gamesfirst's criticism.
Now explain to me why every journalist should rush to this event... explain to me why I should be climbing the walls to get in. Explain how anyone gives a shit about it?
The simple answer is they don't. Has anyone heard of it? I sure as hell haven't, and I work in the industry. There's three problems with this criticism.
A. Who cares? The fans don't care for these types of "let's hold hands events", developers should either already have been included or don't care.
B. Why go? It sounds from the website about the confrence that there's a considerable expense to go to this. This is the first annual event? Did they actually invite people or did they say they were holding this event and told everyone? Did they try to work out a deal or just expected everyone to rush to their confrence? And if all this is not enough. It's in IOWA. That's not local to
C. Why them? This is the heart of the matter and the biggest problem. Again this sounds like a group who either isn't worth listening to or doesn't change opinions. Either way that's fine, those are the two areas most groups excel at, but knowing their stance enough. Does anyone know how many confrences exist in a single year? The answer is too many already. Does the mainstream media have to go to everyone one? Nope. Now, if they really were invited to this event that's fine, but we don't know that. We don't know if anyone knew it was happening. Do a search on the name of the confrence, you see the home site, then gamesfirst. It sounds like no one really knew about the confrence.
So let's sum up. Gamesfirst went to something that not many people probably heard of, anyone who cares about probably went to, that no one knew if it was worth spending money to go to, and that was out of the place. Good for them, now we know why some of us haven't heard of them before.
A cursory examination of Gamesfirst's site, makes me wonder if we should even shill for them with an article about it. They have an "interesting" site to say the least.
Why would they bother (Score:2, Interesting)
What did they expect? (Score:2)
damned if they do damned if they dont (Score:4, Insightful)
In my experience... (Score:3, Funny)
Clearly, this event had little chance.
No one's reading this anymore anyway, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
I mean, who ever really got upset at someone for having an opinion that was actually well-informed, even if you disagreed with it? IMHO, this is the kind of thing that separates gaming journalism from other forms of the genre, in some arenas. The reporting of the industry is better, but not necessarily the "perhiphery" of the industry is getting glanced at, and nothing more. Digging deeper in these areas are what take journalism from being a niche and making it accessible to everyone, even outside of games.
Again, this is only my opinion, but seriously, the author has a right to call out those who consider major "non-press-conference" events, not worth attending.
http://www.videogamevoters.org/ (Score:2, Interesting)
Don't just talk about it here. Join the organization and write your congressman when they ask you to. Participate. It has a higher ROI than bitching.
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Re:Game Media aren't even reliable sources of info (Score:2)