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Adverjournalism - The Role of Ad Dollars in Media
Posted by
Zonk
on Sun Dec 02, 2007 01:07 AM
from the swimming-in-a-dirty-pool dept.
from the swimming-in-a-dirty-pool dept.
Gamer 2.0 writes "The Gamer 2.0 site has a look into the role of advertising in gaming journalism, with a few reflections especially topical given the Jeff Gerstmann controversy. From the article: 'It should come as no surprise that just about every gaming forum on the internet is ablaze right now following the news of GameSpot's termination of long-time editor, Jeff Gerstmann. This article, however, is not an exposé or look into what really happened at GameSpot this week. Rather, consider this a look at the direction of gaming journalism, advertising, and how this all plays a role in the content you read.'" There have been a few more developments in the situation since Thursday night, with rumours, scuttlebutt, analysis, and cynicism reigning on every message board from here to C|Net. There has even been a spontaneous act of solidarity from elsewhere in the games journalism field.
Related Stories
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Game Journalist May Have Been Fired Over Negative Review 397 comments
It started as a rumour post on Kotaku and a Penny Arcade comic strip: reviewer Jeff Gerstmann was fired from the gaming news site Gamespot for giving the co-op action title Kane and Lynch a low score, and snarking on the game in the review. The catch? The firing was dictated by games publisher Eidos, who didn't appreciate the veteran reviewer's tone in the piece. Their ad campaign (spread across the entirety of the Gamespot site) may have been used as a bargaining tool of some kind. Joystiq has a lengthy, detailed summary of this event and its implications, which is no longer technically a rumour. Gerstmann confirmed to the blog that he has been let go from the C|Net-affiliated site, but as of right now can't talk about the details. "The ramifications of the story, if true, are huge. Readers should fairly expect there to be an inviolable firewall between advertising and editorial in journalism, and game journalism (yes, that includes "just reviews") is no different. While our industry has had its fair share of accusations of impropriety, nothing so far has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. Giving a publisher the power to fire a senior editor is a line no outlet should be willing to cross." Update: 11/30 17:40 GMT by Z : The Joystiq story continues to be updated, and Tycho has put up what the PA guys heard about the tale in text. Joystiq also has an additional post about the story, with a brief (noncommittal) response from Gamespot.
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Gamespot's Editorial Problems in Perspective 79 comments
Sam Kennedy is a guy you can respect. As the Editor of the 1up site, he's overseen some great features and some unbelievable breaking news; he also has a great point of view on the games industry. So his massive blog entry posted today talking about Gamespot's sad state of affairs post-Gerstmann-gate is something you should take seriously. Sam runs down the sordid affair itself, the changes to C|Net and Gamespot management that led to unreal expectations at Eidos, and what this could mean for the future of game reviews. "Shortly after Gerstmann was fired, I got a call from a friend at one of the major nationwide news networks asking me what I knew about what happened, as he was considering trying to pitch a story to his editor. You want to know what it was? 'Game Reviews: can they be trusted?' Basically, 'You're a parent and you're going to buy a videogame for your kids this holiday season, but can you trust those reviews you're reading on the web?' That's why this story matters so much. Gerstmann-gate ... made him want to give the industry a nice kick in the pants. I applaud his motives, but again, it's a shame to have this sort of doubt hanging over us all."
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Mandatory PA link... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Mandatory PA link... (Score:5, Interesting)
He was not the first (and I certainly wasn't either) nor will he be the last. The entire reviewing industry is corrupt. Anyone paying attention knows this. Some groups are more corrupt than others, certainly, but this is not news. Certainly no more so than "the sun rose in the east today".
Parent
I don't get it... (Score:3, Insightful)
I've long known that all the top 'review' sites are just paid shills. Every single game is rated 'game of the year' even when its a total piece of crap that barely runs.
You can't trust any reviews other than SOME user reviews since many of those are astroturfed as well..
The same is true for any sort of review. hardware, software, games, cars, books, movies, music...
Nobody should be suprised that its the product companys who have the real power in the review process.
cap:filthier
Let's stretch that a bit, damnit... (Score:5, Interesting)
While we're at it, how about a solution to the other two big problems on tech and game journalism's part? Even The Register [theregister.co.uk] is starting to show cracks of laziness (and occasionally outright fanboyism) in their articles nowadays.
The dead tree media may not be perfect, but at least they do have one thing they can rightly claim over most tech and gaming journals online: they have and at least halfway adhere to a code of ethics and diligence.
There's a couple places online which still do at least some due diligence and hold onto their ethics (hexus.net comes to mind), but they're getting rare. Question is, how do you fix it (short of hunting down the paid-for/fanboy shitheads like, oh, Rob Enderle, and subjecting them to a public stoning)?
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Re:Let's stretch that a bit, damnit... (Score:4, Interesting)
I think I might have found a partial solution to it, though it wouldn't work for everyone: If you run a games review site, only accept advertising from hardware vendors and the like, but none from games publishers, or businesses which sell games (this means, for instance, no MSFT money, since they sell xboxes and games for it). Hardware review sites could happily take ad money from app and games publishers, but none from Intel, AMD, etc etc. At least this way you can get some related ads still put up and money coming in, but at the same time you don't end up with the dilemma.
Parent
Re:Let's stretch that a bit, damnit... (Score:4, Interesting)
"Commenter"? Honestly, MSFT employees would be lost in the noise. Teams at Microsoft tend to be incredibly small compared to the number of people using the product or its competitors. Take Windows, for example. The number of people that are fans of Windows (yes, they exist!) and the number of people that hate Windows both far out number the number of people that actually work on Windows at MSFT. So if you're suspecting astroturfing, chances are you're just seeing a legitimate fan/supporter of the product. That said, many of us consider it part of our jobs to post online where appropriate. If I see somebody with a question on a product I work on or am familiar with, I'll answer it or point them toward somebody who can.
Parent
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From TFA:
This is patently false. These th
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Also, note that there are still good sources of tech journalism out
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I've provided a very simple means to check against this (and actively encourage anyone in the IT or games biz --respectively-- to use it). You've provided little more than "tin foil hat" and "you have no idea what you're
Re:Let's stretch that a bit, damnit... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Let's stretch that a bit, damnit...Goatse.cx. (Score:4, Insightful)
No, not "anything" positive, just a nice, healthy chunk of it. Take the recent Zune story [yahoo.com] we played with on /. this morning for instance... it was quickly disassembled and found to be pure marketing bullshit - with not even five minutes' checking. Any decent reporter could've done the same thing, and should have.
A real tech reporter would've done this checking and would have tempered the story with at least those caveats (that is, no, the Zune isn't the hottest selling portable music player overall, just the hottest selling 'year-old-model-in-this-narrow-category' item). Yet our intrepid "Tech Diva" was too enraptured by the Zune to do even the most cursory checks.
But MSFT aside, my big complaint is that basic cynicism in tech journalism ("rule #1 - if a vendor posts a press release, it's liable to be bullshit") is about as rare as virginity in a porn flick these days.
Parent
Shocking (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, why are people acting like the gaming press is any different from the "real" press? From the New York Times [nypress.com] to my local "free" weekly, this kind of stuff happens all the time. Gaming journalism is no different than regular journalism. It's just that it's more blatant in gaming media because their stock in trade is reviews.
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The problem is that this isn't the case. Their stock in trade is game advertisement space. Reviews are what bring in the eyeballs that allow them to justify the going rate for said space. That's the problem that has existed all along, but people are just starting to notice. The organizations serve the gaming industry, not the gamers themselves. The two are very different bodies. And one has very deep pockets.
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I see your point, but by the same reasoning we can say that the traditional press traffics in advertisement space (not necessarily for games) and that such outlets serve the advertisers and not the news-consuming demographic.
I know this criticism has been leveled against the MSM for a long time, and perhaps it gets at the truth. But the crucial point, hinted at by both the fine article and my reply, is that there is a
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I feel that way about all advertising supported media. But gaming magazines and online media are so bad that I wouldn't even think of going to them for an honest review. I go to them to find user posted information about a game, like a walkthrough for some particularly difficult area or something along those lines.
Computer gaming related media is, IMHO, a laughingstock. I don't know why they even bother to have reviews. About the only site I might trust is Penny Arcade.
I've stopped watching TV and rar
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Here's an example of a story that was pretty important, but reported on precisely 2 sites, and not accurately at either. IGN's direct2drive offered and advertised pre-orders for the game BioShock,
I am disgusted (Score:5, Informative)
I wonder if all these sites are bringing this issue to light to rake in more revenue through advertising a "hot topic"(TM). But let's game something straight:
Corruption in game journalism (if you can even call it that) is nothing new. I am disgusted because I cannot believe it's being brought up now, at this very moment, AFTER someone has been fired. That is to say, after something has happened which, *gasp*, shatters a gamers wild imagination that in a world controlled by money, game reviews are as well.
I've had a run-in with GameSpot a few years ago as well. I should have posted as AC but fuck it; bottom line is: GameSpot threatened to lower reviews because of an incident regarding a game who's demo was launched before their official premier. Yeah, it's a rather sad state of affairs. I've hated GameSpot ever since, but it seems like people were locked in to GS because it seemed like the only good place to get reviews -- that is to say, they didn't give a shit about my little story.
Well, I hope they realize it now, because it seems - a lot - of people dislike companies doing what companies do: try to stay alive.
It's rather obvious, but I do find it laughable. Honestly, GameSpot's website was covered in ads for a few years now -- and you are only bringing it's "corruption" to light NOW? What kind of a sick joke is this? Of course they are going to be paid off by game companies, they have ads all over their websites for christs sake. It's their source of income and they will do anything to defend it.
Including firing an employee, which I'm sure you're all familiar to companies doing, all the time. I wonder why this is any different.
Anyway, I didn't even bother reading the article (who would?) because it's clear it doesn't tell us anything new. It's the same old mindless rambling meant to rake in the dollars.
Speaking of which, today IGN posted their 100 Top Games List (or so I am led to believe it was today). I love their strategy: 1 game per page, 100 pages, and each one is full of ads. Have fun clicking the "next page" link guys!
Water is wet and so on... (Score:5, Insightful)
Another problem with being a game reviewer (Score:5, Insightful)
Article is lame apologism. (Score:5, Interesting)
"And let me be the first to come out and say that what happened to Jeff Gerstmann happens all the time." (Hmm, let's see. You're not "the first" by a long shot; Penny Arcade said the same thing days ago, and even then it was just reiterating a point they'd been making for YEARS, which was in fact so self-evident that ANYBODY paying attention to the industry was aware of it.)
"And if you look outside of the world of gaming, you will see this is not an isolated event; it happens in more mainstream forms of journalism, and I might add that this could be even seen as a sign of growth for our industry."
"As the industry grows, more money is circulated, and money begets corruption. It's a fact of life and it's a fact of capitalism; this is America after all."
Such ridiculous BS. Your "industry" is "burgeoning" at the exact time when it's becoming redundant and useless. If I want fluff-laden previews, game trailers, interviews with developers, and press releases, I have the friggin' Internet at my fingertips here; I don't need Gamespot to aggregate that stuff for me. In fact, the ONLY thing sites like Gamespot have to offer that I can't get somewhere else with far fewer annoying ads (and at least one less layer of crappy-journalistic obfuscation) is their professional reviews. That's the ONLY content worth having, and Gamespot just screwed it up.
I like the complaints about how things getting "big business" is inevitable. Why? A review is a few pages of plain text with a couple JPEG screenshots; hardly a bandwidth hog. To create that review, you need ONE guy who can string together legible prose and is willing to play a wide range of video games for hours on end. Is that really a hard niche to fill on the goddamned INTERNET? All this could easily be paid for with AdSense ads, which (by their very randomness) would pretty much prevent any kind of coercion, unless Google started making games.
I'm just waiting for the Penny Arcade guys or someone else with enough "e-credibility" among gamers to start pimping a site like that. A huge influx of gamers would at least check it out, along with plenty of linking from reputable sites, which would lead to a high Google rating, and before you know it, LegitGameReviews.com is the top hit every time you type "$gamename review" into Google. Hell, there are probably a dozen sites like that around already that I just don't know about - anyone wanna help me out here?
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I recommend Quarter To Three, and I would recommend Old Man Murray and fatbabies.com but those two no longer post new material. It's worth reading Old Man Murray anyway, especially their interview with Croteam [oldmanmurray.com], developers of Serious Sam.
These days I tend to pirate everything to decide who deserves my money. Then I try and skip as many layers of retailing as I can to buy it. Somehow I think the developers get a bigger cut that way. I'm probably wrong.
I knew the jig was up (Score:5, Interesting)
Guess what! When I went into the store looking for the game, I learned it wasn't due out yet for another couple of days! With a slow sinking feeling I realized that there was no way a magazine that is planned months in advance would be able to review a retail copy of a game when the game's ship date is later than the magazine's. Had I known the ship date I probably would have spotted the disparity right away, but alas-- I knew it was some time in October and that was all. Hmmph. Anyway, in my mind, review = available for purchase while preview = early build not available to public. Since the game shipped on the 10th of October and I got my magazine on the 6th, the mag was probably finalized at least ten days earlier, say September 26. That "review" was written at least two whole weeks before the game was available for purchase, and I'm a damned sight sure that Best Buy hadn't been sitting on it since the end of September.
Sure, maybe PCG did get a pre-shipped retail copy reserved exclusively for the print media, and maybe it was all above-board in that respect, and thirdly yes I understand that "the big scoop" is what makes or breaks any periodical, especially those trying stupidly enough to compete with electronic media. But. This was just blatant, and I'm sure it wasn't the first time and won't be the last time something like this goes down...
Luckily for everyone involved, the game (or games I guess) turned out to be a smash success (and I have really grown attached to my weighted companion cube), otherwise we probably would have heard some negative press about this a while ago. Valve was lucky in that they knew that they were sitting on solid gold, and PC Gamer was lucky that they also knew this when they accepted Valve's big pile of cash for the review and magazine cover. This may all be obvious in retrospect, but I guess my cynicism towards "the man" is still in the growing stages (dangit. I've cultivated it for a number of years now, how didn't I spot this?) I'm walking away from this whole experience feeling kind of duped and disheartened and I don't think I'll be renewing my PC Gamer subscription again. Or GFW. Or MaxPC. Or, now, buying anything produced by Ziff Davis.
Growing up sucks. Disillusionment sucks. Rampant and obvious greed sucks. I guess I'm starting to fall in the demographic that has learned that all advertizing is crap so maybe, hopefully I'll be able to spot it more easily in the future when it masquerades as legitimate journalism. Time to tune my filters I guess; all the while it will be interesting to watch how this unfolds--I'm just sad to finally realize that I've been not only blind to it but also a part of it for so long.
Cheers~
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