Analyzing Game Journalism

SSDNINJA writes "Joseph Jackmovich of gamrFeed analyzes 161 articles from Kotaku, Joystiq, and Destructoid to discover how well they report gaming news. He looks to find out if the stereotypes of game journalism being poorly sourced and sexist are anecdotal or based in fact."

And this is news?

[Moraelin]

And this is news? No, really. When you even have guys from those review sites occasionally joking things like "we wanted to move to a zero to five star rating system, but EA demanded 95% or more rating for their latest game, so we moved to a 95% to 100% system and gave them 95%", or when you occasionally see a review totally hating everything about a game (e.g., see the old Black And White review on Firing Squad which even went the extra mile to say that you might like it if it's your first game and can't compare it to a good game, but otherwise stay off) and then give it a 87% score... tell me anyone actually is gullible to base their buying decisions on that.

Even the relatively 2000's trend of some site to pick on some 20 year old freeware game to trash and valiantly give a 5% rating, or make a list of "top 10 worst games ever" that nobody ever heard of, isn't really enough to make anyone with half a brain notice that you still don't see them giving less than 90% to anything new from a major publisher, or that they fail to mention major problems for major publishers.

Well, I suppose it's good to have it officially. Maybe it'll sink in this time. Nah, who am I kidding.

Nothing new

[clickclickdrone]

As someone who writes reviews (of games, hardware, apps etc) I have certainly come across the issues cited here although it does seem to be more of a problem with American writers/publishers Even back in the 80s/early 90's fellow writers moaned about US publications where the editors and writers were pressured by the advertising department to up ratings as said product's developer wanted to place ads. Other countries were less prone to this and in the UK where I have most experience, the editors used to delight in telling the ad department to 'go away' if they tried that stunt. Sure, some magazines did fall for that sort of pressure and most writers knew who they were and stayed well clear for reputational reasons.
The bottom line is that 80-90% of anything you get sent to review is a 6 or 8 out of 10. Really crap stuff just doesn't get to market unless something's gone horribly wrong. In the main, stuff works well enough to fullfill its requirement in a reasonably well implemented way. Every now and then something truly bad would come along and that was wonderful, a chance to give a lower rating and hopefully some inciteful reasons as to why the product sucked. I've got a book here on the 'to be reviewed' pile right now that's going to get marked down because frankly, the title is a total lie. The content is OK but it's not what the title says it is. There is also the occassional item that is truly exception and will earn a 9 or very rarely a 10 but these are once or twice a year things.
The web doesn't seem to have changed the overall dynamic much with writers producing copy that will attract clicks rather than do the job. Many publishers have dropped the per-word basis for paying writers and moved to a per-click basis. If your article gets lots of clicks, you earn more.

Re:And this is news?

[Skrapion]

Probably because the article refers to "blasting some red eyed space Nazis".

Is it offensive? Well, I think we as a society have long since stopped caring about offending Nazis, especially when it comes to the space-faring variety. But maybe some people are offended by the mere use of the word.

Is it aggressive? Well, yeah. But it's an aggressive game. That just raises more questions: is it impossible to discuss the gameplay of an aggressive game without failing Jackmovich's litmus test?

Oh, I also just noticed that this article was actually submitted by Jackmovich himself, although he submitted it under his Twitter alias and referred to himself in the third person. Normally I wouldn't care, but when you're making such a huge deal about journalistic integrity, it's a little sketchy.

Re:And this is news?

[Worldcrafter]

A couple things about this bug me:

As you pointed out, the /. story was submitted by the article's author, but that was obfuscated in the summary. Alarm bells are ringing Willie.

He goes out of his way to conduct this article like a scientific review, but at the heart of it, it's just an opinion piece.

Take this article he deemed sexist: http://www.joystiq.com/2010/10/05/heres-where-cammie-dunaway-literally-went/ [joystiq.com] It's a short post with nothing but facts and a Lord of the Flies reference. It's not sexist in any way, but when confronted by the post's author, Jackmovich/SSDNINJA said it had "Implied or condescending remarks about women". If Cammie Dunaway had been a man, I highly doubt Jackmovich would have deemed that article sexist, which, in itself, is sexist. If that's the way he's collecting his data, this whole thing is just a farce designed to pull page views. Looks like it worked.

I'm not saying gaming journalism isn't without faults, but this feels like a case of the pot calling the kettle black.