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Games Entertainment

Mass Media Coverage Of Gaming Discussed 35

Posted by simoniker from the steinski-and dept.
Thanks to Adrenaline Vault for their editorial discussing the increased coverage of computer gaming in the mainstream press, and the "major distortions" that have subsequently evolved. Among the charges leveled are that "...the mass media generally assumes all good players are teenagers and oldsters are klutzes... In reality, those who play computer games - and are adept at them - are getting on in years." The writer also suggests that "...critics in the mass media... almost always equate visual excellence with photorealism", before ending on the hypothesis that: "If you can't spot any difference between pieces by dedicated game reviewers and mass media entertainment writers, then those of us who fall in the first category are doing something very wrong."
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Mass Media Coverage Of Gaming Discussed More

Mass Media Coverage Of Gaming Discussed

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  • This makes me wonder if those who write movie reviews really know what they're talking about.

    I know I couldn't really critique a movie. All acting looks pretty much the same to me, and if I go to a movie expecting non-stop action, then I wouldn't consider that a downside of the movie.

    Do movie reviewers use common (and incorrect) ideas about movies: movies in the countryside in another time about love are good, and movies with say, a terminator from the future are bad? Maybe when it's about something s
    • Hey it is about time the Gaming Industry out grosses the Movie business.
    • Some movie reviewers seem to use the following, much simpler formula: "if everybody likes it, it is crap. If it is some obscure shitty art film, it is great."

      As long as reviewers take this attitude to reviewing I won't care about their reviews...

      • Sometimes the film everyone loves (Th car that could not slow down 2 for instance) is crap and the reviewers go with the public not warning me of crap.
        Most "art films" never get seen so the good ones, unless a reviewer sees it and makes some noise about it, wont stand a chance.

  • would you.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Monday October 13, 2003 @04:30PM (#7202343) Homepage Journal
    listen to a music review on techno mix tape from a professional painting critic?

    of course not.

    why would you listen to a gaming review from some guy who just happens to be a resident at some newspaper? would you listen to the guys pron review either? of course not because the guy probably hasn't even played the game for more than few hours(time and intrest limits).

    that being said, would you listen to a review that is almost completely based on rumours and screenshots and pre-hype like most first 'hands on' reviews are? i don't give them much weight anymore at all(in fact, i stopped giving them weight when the expansion for wing commander game out and got 99% on a local game mag, with not too much explanation why, i mean, if i did give them any merit why would i need any more reviews than that since it is obviously nearingly best thing there will be and everything is just about perfect in it).

    -
  • "It seems as if the mass media assume all computer games incorporate extreme levels of gratuitous violence."

    I wish they had delved a little deeper into the violence issue here. They don't just assume all games incorporate adult themes, they also intentionally portray the game in a distorted fashion to make it look like the game company is trying to warp children's values. My favorite is the "see? You can beat up a granny!" example. Every single time they'll show the granny get beat up and killed. Or
  • Quoted from the article "the mass media generally assumes all good players are teenagers and oldsters are klutzes... In reality, those who play computer games - and are adept at them - are getting on in years"

    I call bullshit. Yes, the folks in my generation (mid 30's) are better at computer games than the same age group was 10 years ago, but as an older gamer myself I can attest to the fact that most of the teenagers are better at the current crop of games than I am. The reason why is very simple: They h

    • " The reason why is very simple: They have more time to play. Once you have a spouse/family/career/mortgage the amount of time you can spend honing your skills at various games is drastically reduced."

      I thought the same thing when I read that. Us busy types like the simple 'hop in and hop out' arcade style games. It's hard to play a game when your two yead old nephew is running around the house wanting you to play with him.
    • I'm in my mid-20s and I'd have to say that free time has little to do with it. Sure, over time you can gain an advantage in a particular game through practice, but overall someone that's played games most of their lives will have an advantage in any given game. I've played many different games against people younger than myself (anywhere from 10 to early-20s), and even with games I had never played before I tended to have an advantage over the other players, because games were a much bigger part of my life,
  • To begin with, perhaps the most basic error common in mass media coverage is to call recreational offerings for the PC "video games." This term technically refers to console titles viewed on a television, not to entertainment played on a computer.

    No it doesn't. It may be more commonly used of console games, but using it for computer games is correct.

    Fortunately, Adrenaline Vault itself hasn't followed this rule. (See, for example, The History of Video Game Prices [avault.com], which discusses both console and compu

  • Awesome (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Mike Hawk ( 687615 ) on Monday October 13, 2003 @05:09PM (#7202713) Journal
    That article was some seriously glorious self-love right there. As it turns out, the mainstream press has been reviewing stuff as long as their has been stuff to review. So why would games be any different?

    The author supposes that the mainstream press portrays games negatively because of a few eggs, that while not bad per se, are controversial at least. Well, thats not really true. The mainstream press tells the story of those games because they are controversial. This is called "a story", and this sells issues. If we don't want people covering games such as GTA and Postal, don't buy (hence ceasing production of) these games. Those games are part of the large picture and the media tends to report the extreme of all things, note here that games are not special in this way, so why would games be any different. Sounds to me like this issue is as matured as any in the mainstream. As for the Touched by an Angel point (which seems to be the only specific account provided), the writer of that show is allowed any view of the issue he wants. As soon as real people stop dying over Counter-Strike and Everquest, I'll rid myself of the notion that just maybe games can have an effect on people.

    The writer of the article questions the ability of the press to be able to comprehend games due to limited exposure. Oh please, touch yourself some more. Yes, a non-games specific writer would not be expected to play games as much as a full-time games writer, but is this bad? In the MAINSTREAM press one would hope the writer most closely matches the audience, ie mainstream. The author then plays terminology nazi, which is always convincing and never sour-grapes sounding. Noone cares if one uses video games or computer games except term nazis and noone cares what they think anyway. If I am reading Maxim for my video game reviews, I would want the writer to think like someone who gets their game reviews from Maxim thinks. Think is a good thing.

    As for the young vs old gamer thing. Yes, kids play games more (always will) and they have more time to practice the current game and are better at it because of this. A stupid, grasping point to make in the first place.

    I really like this one:
    In other words, we need to reflect a higher standard than the mainstream press.
    HA! No article published on the internet will ever be of the same quality as real press. If it was, the writer would be employed by the legitimate press and not some fan(boy)-site.

    As for the point of necessary skill as a gamer? Nonsense. Despite some opinion [gamespot.com] to the contrary, if a game isn't fun within the first hour, on the first level, when will it be fun? Someone reading the mainstream press will want that first level to be fun and will want to know if it is or isnt.

    This is just another self-important article by the needy gaming press. It is needy and attention hungry by nature and this article is just one exhibition of that fact.
    • No article published on the internet will ever be of the same quality as real press. If it was, the writer would be employed by the legitimate press and not some fan(boy)-site.

      You should prolly stop coming by /. then. I would like to think that some writers would rather not be employed by the mainstream. Using the film review example that was mentioned above, I would assume that the film reviews in a film magazine are much more accurate, or at least a bit more in-depth than what you might find in local
    • mod parent down,

      No article published on the internet will ever be of the same quality as real press. If it was, the writer would be employed by the legitimate press and not some fan(boy)-site.

      utter horseshit
    • If we don't want people covering games such as GTA and Postal, don't buy (hence ceasing production of) these games.

      There's one big problem with this theory: neither of the Postal games sold all that well (though obviously the first game sold well enough to justify a sequel, at least to their publisher). Some games just seem to keep getting made regardless of whether or not people want to play them, and the press doesn't care if people are actually playing the games or not.

      The press was always all over
      • When people start locking up their Sims in Sims 2 just to see them waste away and die, will the press be all over it? No, because the Sims are the media's darling. The mainstream press are the ones that hyped the Sims Online like mad, yet they conveniently forgot to cover the post-launch, when no one was playing.

        Really? The LA Times ran a story about this LAST WEEK. It covered the on-going fortune of the MMORPG and drawing in more mainstream gamers. It hit on the horrible failure of the Sims Online.
        • I wasn't aware of that, probably because I don't read the LA Times. I am aware that I saw many mentions of The Sims Online before the launch on national news channels (CNN, MSNBC, etc), but nothing about it since the launch went downhill.
  • Nick Catucci's Joysticks [villagevoice.com] columns are frequently typical of the artsy writing of the Village Voice, but at the same time he appreciates the aesthetics and mechanics of gaming better than any joe at a regular newspaper... in other words, he's a gamer. If only more reporters followed his lead... or if only more gamers became mainstream reporters...
  • General entertainment writers working for television, radio and newspapers now have to cover the interactive entertainment sector, even if they have no familiarity with it at all.
    Writes who remain ignorant of any field they report on are not doing their job. If you do not gain some familiarity with your subject, you are being professionally negligent.

    The argument is that just as any discerning person can make intelligent comments about books, television shows, movies and music, so an intelligent novic
  • | insert credit | [insertcredit.com]

    They make an excellent comparision not only to mass-media coverage of games, but also to most writing from within the industry. Pretty much all of the reviews are long, over a page, but they also get to go much deeper on the reviewer's thoughts about the game, which really gets back to the core of what "reviewing" and "criticism" in the artistic sense is all about - personal opinions and insightful commentary.

    Many reviews treat art(in a variety of forms - music and movies get similar tr

  • Last Friday I spent some time in the university library and found an audio cassette from 1982 about videogames. So I checked it out and listened to it. It turns out to be some sort of radio report about videogames. It was funny to hear even back then the reporters talking about games with storylines and then mentioning games like Donkey Kong and Ms. Pac-Man as examples.

    The reporter was trying desperately to hype of some addiction or violence angle. It was interesting that every adult he talked to was a

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