Editorial:Beef on Gaming Jounalism

From Wikia Gaming

by Rbrtchng

With the mass and rapid advancements of video games, moving from hardcore gaming to casual hobbiests, gaming journalism has become the only unchecked source for actual public recognition and induction into gaming.

First of all, thanks to the Wii, gaming has become a world-wide phenomenon that brought older audiences and younger audiences together at the same time in front of the TV. That's great. However, along with this wide popularity comes the media that tries to control and explain the world of gaming. The problem with the media is not that it introduces games. The problems with the media is that there are just plain too much media. Too many amateurs are making front page headlines, spewing opinionated bull that not only goes unchecked, but they also manage to slip into mainstream media, creating bandwagon opinions based on a single perspective.

This disease that plagues the media that one amateur journalists can influence the entire industry has crossed the line. With the Wii, journalists have been blinded by a single obscure source that claims "casual gaming" is the future of all gaming. With that, the media began to praise the Wii, therefore, the people began to follow the hype. One journalist, however, had the courage to be the first to admit that the Wii simply is not the right platform for gamers. Wii was and still is meant for people who don't play games. The post-E3 1up show had a unanimous agreement that Nintendo is no longer a gamer's platform; however, if you watch the show carefully, this opinion was derived from a single journalist.

All in all bandwagon is ********.

Returning to the overabundance of the media, there is just too many with too little information. What happens to journalism when there are more media than than there are stores is journalists began to steal stories from other journalists. A spiraling effect of a somewhat credible journalist stealing a story from an amateur on a forum and a credible journalist stealing the story from the somewhat credible journalist results in rumors being construed as facts, or worse, incorrect information being construed as facts. For example, RSX being weaker than 7800 (from a forum post to Kotaku to Cnet)or the continuing saga of "MGS is going to the 360." When the news is coming even slower, journalists might even make up stories to make headlines: i'm looking at you PSU!

And then there're the conventions. E3, TGS, Leipzig, Australia, Las Vegas, Taipei Game Show, PAX, etc. There are too many guys! Game developers are now more concerned with creating a new trailer to present to all these game shows that they are taking time away from developing the actual game *which might be why Halo 3 was quite absent from E3 this year*. Make the journalists actually work, instead of giving them filler news, make maybe 3 conventions for journalists to find what is important in the gaming industry and for the rest of the year, have the journalists go look for stories based on what was at the conventions. For example, a journalist finds UT3 at E3 to be particularly interesting, then the journalists should have interviews, screenshots, visit studios, discuss unreal engine, etc throughout the year. This would prevent a drought of news, and also prevent stealing stories as each journalist would go to each studio to chase stories.

Come On Journalists! Act professional! It's your job to find stories. Do your job.

Edit: And on review scores. Journalists must do a much better job in reviewing. How can Lair get 9/10 from some journalists and 4/10 from others? Journalists must explain each category that is taken into consideration. Journalists should be free from other journalism bias. This is so prevalent in Lair review. The first review had an extremely high mark and a couple more reviews followed it; and then some journalists became brave enough to have an opinion and vaguely made a low score, then all of a sudden, every journalist hates the game. Gamespot tries to do a good job by separating by categories and listing pros and cons; however, that's where they stop being good. Their actual reviews are a hit or miss, often restating what people already know from impressions or interviews, offering absolutely nothing new, some of the reviews are taken from other reviews, other reviews are from a totally different game *since when does the PS3 version of Sonic use the 'A' button!*!

Create categories, stick to the categories, review based on facts.

And people need to understand that reviews are 80% opinions. A bad game to some, may be masterpieces to others and visa versa *I felt Metroid was not a great game by any means, that's right, I went there*. A review is one journalist with only so many hours on a game.