Down with sensational video game journalism

Though many gamers are eager to shove their way into the aggressive, competitive arena of online forums, many enterprising video game journalists have their reservations about becoming household names. There are clear obstacles involved with trying to achieve a widespread status in what is ultimately a widely-supported cult entertainment medium - media portrayal of the medium and recent legislation to tax violent video games doesn't make any argument for taking a step forward in how the public perceives gaming. It is still very much considered a child's toy, with adults interested in it being told to grow up.

Given these circumstances, what's a game journalist to do? When was the last time people heard about a Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein equivalent in the video game industry? Press leaks and rumor mongering is the closest we have ever gotten to a deep throat and Gerstmann-Gate barely counts as a relative breakthrough - how much press did that receive outside of the gaming journalism media?

Video game journalists are resigned to the fact that they might never have the career opportunity afforded to former Newsweek columnist/blogger N'Gai Croal, who, with the backing and resources to focus on what he wanted to, was able to carve out a dedicated following and expose a niche experience to a more widespread audience - that audience being Newsweek. Video game journalists can take the slow and steady route to relevance and insight, but this depends on how the publication they write for is funded. Independent publishers, especially those online, are merely another voice in a throng.

Does this route seem realistic to many writers? No. The only possibility of a breakthrough comes through another method - one grittier and more controversial, though it is often successful in making the writer rise to become more widely discussed than their peers. This doesn't mean that they are well-respected either - one lesson to be learned, and probably a further application of how forum flame-wars develop and fester, is that the most divisive of commentaries elicits the most response. If going for intellectually-stimulating insights, features, and commentaries isn't working, sometimes even the best authors resort to anything that will get them to be talked about. This means producing a biased story that will split the readership in half. This applies to any contemporary medium, though. How many people choose to browse through the Sun and the Daily Mirror everyday rather than read the Washington Post or the New York Times? As other papers fight to compete with tabloids, journalism has become more sensational, and, given its vocal audience, video game journalism is no exception.

Here are the common pitfalls that writers choose to use to become more widely read (or tips if that's what you're after):

Letting the editors modify the content

Not every editor in the world is a bad person, but one thing is a clearly underlying current in journalism: it is a business. Editors will do whatever they can sell the most copies or give one paper the edge over another. This means editors will often change stories to either fit in a certain space - which normally means cutting out insightful analysis or expository explanation - or to maximize its exposure. The latter normally means aggrandizing something mentioned in passing in the article. A one-liner about "God of War III" being mentioned at a Sony conference might become the headline of the article, i.e. "God of War III Revealed: Bloodier, Grittier, Better." Remember, in mixed journalism areas, not every editor knows what a writer is going on about, which means messages get abandoned on the cutting room floor. Editors just want to maximize the amount of people reading the content produced on a daily basis - and that's not necessarily a bad thing when looked at on its own.

Producing a biased article

Journalists are increasingly writing for a particular audience, a certain demographic that responds to particular stories being written. Though it is strongly contested in liberal circles, Fox News still has a high, dedicated viewership, despite its relatively skewed choice of highlights. What better place to put this sort of bias into practice than the video game industry? Writers normally find great response to their pieces when it caters to a particular system. It's difficult to write a balanced article on, say, the financial trouble the economy finds itself in, without seeming negative and downcast.

The most successful authors ditch this altogether. More and more Web sites and news publications are finding success on focusing on a particular product. There is already a built-in following in most cases, and this cuts down cost since resources don't have to be allocated to cover other events. There has to be some reason for why the publication decided to take this route, which makes them seem like they are advocates for a particular console than actually provided balanced coverage. As long as the readers don't mind, and anti-console flamers are kept out of forums, this subsistence can continue in a hermetic, self-contained culture vacuum. If the content is produced on a site that covers every console, these articles tend to be the ones most widely read and commented on - something that only encourages the writer to continue. It's a reader love/hate theory at work.

Mistakenly being an outlet of information for authority

This one is self-explanatory. Misusing one's position of information provider for conveying unverified or false information will ultimately lead to a breach of the readership's trust. But, for that fleeting moment of publicity, some publications will resort to this. This is why there are such things as "unconfirmed rumors."

Letting funding

influence content

This has been the problem for independent video game journalism for a while, one that came up when Gamespot's Jeff Gerstmann was fired for his negative review of a game. The core question of the problem was: who funds video game journalists? Just like any newspaper, Web sites run on ad revenue. As is most often the case, game Web sites receive their money from the actual publishers whose games they are constantly reviewing. Will they review a game more favorably if the publisher flies them out to play it? Publishers don't like seeing their investments return unfavorably either, so they pull funding from a Web site when their review doesn't pan out as they had hoped.

So what happens then? Web sites either cave to the whims of those who pay their bills, therefore losing journalistic credibility until the public forgets about the occurrence, or they become unemployed and risk being a liability for future journalist jobs that produce stories in a similar situation. Do journalists bite the hands that feed, do they pick their battles, or do they go along willingly? This is the most common problem facing independent video game journalism at large, often making them advocates not just for specific consoles (if they play that angle to begin with), but also individual games.