You can take my thesis statement with a grain of salt, but it’s true. We have, today, the biggest, most diverse, and most interesting Gaming Journalism we’ve ever had. Whether that’s good enough, I leave as an exercise to the reader. I suspect that many readers, particularly GGers would think not, and to be honest, I think that most developers, including many of us who challenge #Gamergate on many points, would actually agree. As a matter of fact, at the end of the infamous Milo post, I gave several examples of things that merit actual investigation rather than crappy indie fundraisers and feminists who go mostly ignored anyway.

Here’s the thing. We used to have a smaller, more focused games media. It was sharp. It was glossy. It printed just the previews, and once the game came out, it printed just the reviews. It was the amazing world of Print Media: PC Games, PC Gamer, Computer Gaming World, Nintendo Power, EGM and NextGen magazine. Let ol’ cranky grandpa developer tell you about it.

It was fucking DREADFUL.

I know its hard to imagine a time before there was a high speed internet connection attached to every device in the house, including nowadays some refrigerators. Back then, Internet was something that you only got if you happened to go to college, or connected at a rip-roaring 28.8K. The internet was too slow for rich images, and so if you wanted a screenshot of the hot new, utterly mindblowing ‘Tomb Raider’ where Lara Croft had tits the size of traffic cones made out of 5 polygons each, you had to haul your ass down to Kroger’s and buy a magazine.

And boy, was this content terrible. Every single fucking magazine would get their information from the same incredibly staged fucking E3 demo, and present the same information, complete with the same jokes so awful only a producer would laugh at it, to everyone. We’d also give all the magazines the same screenshots, so in this case, the best articles were almost literally the people who could arrange the same images on a page in the most attractive way while most artistically inserting the words ‘awesome’ and ‘extreme’ in the tritest, blandest of text. Oh, PC Accelerator came along, and tried to shake things up by adding tits, but it was lame, PG13 level Maxim stuff so no one cared. It didn’t really matter, though, since people chose which magazine they were going to buy based on the demo disc anyway.

The lead times of these print magazines were months, which means that every review that you saw was on a build that was old. As day one patches became more normal, the disparity between what you played and what the reviewer played became bigger. There are a few stories of reviewers being told “Don’t complain about the crippling framerate! It’s fixed in the version we sent to duplication!” I mean, seriously fucking bullshit.

And the difference between previews and reviews would also give you serious whiplash. Magazines spent 7 years telling us how Daikatana was going to be so awesome that the CD would actually fellate you, and then, two months later, give a review that called the game crushingly awful, a disappointment from start to finish. And then give a 70%, because that’s as low as reviews would go for major developers.

Why? Because revenues from selling magazines weren’t enough to sustain a magazine – the most important revenue came from advertisers. Since there were so few magazines doing ratings, getting a single bad rating was disastrous. So every magazine editor from that period of time has stories of creepy, roundabout threats. “That’s a nice advertising stream you got there. Shame if something bad were to happen to it. What say I take you to a strip club and explain to you why Mega Blood N Guts deserves at least a 70%.”

You’re an indie developer with no ad budget, though? Fuck you, you get a 36%.

And Then Things Changed

The rise of the Internet has made it vastly harder for all print media to stick around, with even venerable magazines like Newsweek struggling. But with games media, the inevitable was even more obvious. First and foremost, high speed connections – and then connected consoles – made the demo disk obsolete. Secondly, if all you’re going to do is to shove publisher talking points so far up the ass of the consumer that he can’t walk straight, it’s pretty easy just to cut and paste that shit straight into HTML. I remember two kinds of sites being in vogue back then. There were the aggregators, like Blues News and Evil Avatar, which would pretty much post press releases, maybe with one line of commentary. And then there were the sites attempting to replicate old-school ‘Extreme!’ style previews and reviews, with IGN (PCGamer’s web presence) and Gamespot leading the way.

The Internet changed some other things too. In particular, these sites needed daily news in order to get people to come back and visit them. On the other hand, publishing the same review isn’t going to get you noticed. As a result, you saw a sharp decrease in xeroxed previews, and a noticeable rise in more gossipy stories, or stories that can sustain interest for days? Something like UO getting sued in its early days might be a tiny blurb in PCGamer. In the online world, though, that’s a daily gravity well pulling players back to your site. For weeks. It was huge. It was also, to developers, an incredible pain in the ass.

In a similar arc, these sites also began to move to kill Strategy Guides. I remember working on UO and discovering that Stratics was a better source of information than anything we had in Origin, much less than whatever partial ball of stats we handed to the Prima Strategy Guide guy that became obsolete in patch 1.

In this time, there was an EXPLOSION of online gaming media. It was rough going. It turns out that its pretty easy to set up a website. It’s pretty hard to come up with a reason why people should visit your site when IGN and Gamespot exist. On the flip side, you’re STILL probably doing better than the print media, most of which by this time had gone the way of the Dodo and the 8-track tape.

And then things changed again

Around this time, things changed again. First off, the game companies discovered that they DIDN’T REALLY NEED THE PRESS. We could set up our own web sites, and there we could be sure our manufactured, glossy, marketing approved buzzwordolicious bullshit press releases were fully, 100% in our control. If you wanted to copy that information, the fans would CALL YOU OUT if you tried to deviate from whatever wording we’d sprinkled holy water.

Secondly, Twitter, Reddit and Facebook happened, which were largescale social networks that rewarded the quick dissemination of information and exciting news (which we learned to milk: “Exciting news! We’ll announce some exciting news on Tuesday!”). Which means that, if you’re one of the big sites who can get early info or exclusives by promising a large audience, your market dominance gets reinforced. If you’re a small site that can’t get that kind of content, though, you’re going to fall further behind, because you’re just hotlinking to content someone else wrote up, either a publisher or a big zine. Why the fuck do you exist? And so these smaller sites tried to answer that question.

The answer? Find a niche. Find something, some ANGLE that you can cover the games industry with so that people have a reason to choose you over Gamespot. The Escapist was the first that I know that I felt really succeeded at this angle – they basically positioned themselves as wanting to examine games as a cultural force. A little highbrow, really, and a mission statement that’s changed somewhat.

By now, the Games Industry is so large and so successful that it is completely possible for more niches to happen, and they did. Polygon focused more on social issues. Rock Paper Scissors is my favorite reporting of the indie scene. Kotaku traffics in gossipy stories and weird japanese shit I don’t understand. They start to tailor their content TO their audiences – and some of those audiences turned out to be NOT SMALL. Polygon has enjoyed massive success by exploring this otherwise ignored side of game coverage. Which is to say, the fact that Polygon’s coverage of things differs from Gamespot’s is a feature, not a bug. They have different audiences. Those audiences have different priorities. If Polygon moved to be more of a carbon copy of gamespot, there would be no reason for them to exist. They HAVE to own their niche. The people hoping they somehow stop writing stories that audience cares about are EXACTLY WRONG.

It’s kind of like if the readers of CNN got mad that DailyKos or National Review didn’t report politics exactly like they saw on CNN. Fuck that. You like CNN, read CNN. You think Huffington Post is the right place to get your news? I think you’re fucking wrong (I’m a liberal, and the site STILL makes me want to put an axe through my computer), but why the fuck should I care?

Advertisers will go where the audiences are. Each of these sites has a unique community around it. DailyKos doesn’t care if people from RedState think it’s the worst site ever. They only care if their community starts to think so. Funny thing, though. When you yell at a tribe that they’re wrong, you tend to bond them, not break them apart.

Oh, and one more thing: by now there were so many web magazines doing reviews that getting one bad magazine review no longer matters. I keep people complaining that Gamespot gave Dead Rising 3 a bad review because of SJW bullshit. Who gives a shit? Game devs no longer care what Gamespot says. Game devs care what Metacritic says, and metacritic has taken all the reviews, averaged them together and given them a 71. Outlier reviews are just washed away. As for that SJW bullshit argument? None of that keeps good games from getting good reviews, as shown by GTA V’s 97%.

But Wait – It’s Changing Again: Streamers

One of the most underappreciated angles of the GamerGate event is that it really is the story of a new media form, youtube personalities and streamers, coming of age, and engaging in pretty much open revolt against the established order of web journalism. But that’s really happening here. Basically, the YouTube guys are pointing at the web guys and saying “YOU DON’T KNOW AND REPRESENT GAMERS LIKE WE DO.” And they’re right.

The old sites are reluctant to talk about #Gamergate because they don’t know how. It’s been framed as a story about them. They feel the need to recuse themselves, that anything they write will be seen as inherently slanted. The streamers don’t seem to have that problem. In fact, I’d daresay that from where I sit, it seems like MOST of the daily ‘press’ about Gamergate nowadays seems to come from this new, increasingly important form of video games criticism. And humorously enough, where just ten years ago paper media seemed positively quaint in relation to the emerging web media, nowadays the same can be true for web media in the face of the streamers.

There are so many things about the Streamers that make sense for games criticism. First off, they show games in motion, which shows the user the game much better than any screenshot could. Second, they incorporate a personality, hopefully a fun and engaging one. When you watch a streamer play a game, if he has any positive reaction at all, it feels like an endorsement. Also, the very nature of the commentary makes it very hard for streamers to simply cut and paste publisher talking points the way the web so often does. The streamer has to put these things into his own words, or he becomes inauthentic.

Oh, and did I mention fun? Streamers make games look fun. I’ve seen streamers make 15 year old games look fun. Given that fun is what I sell, this is pretty significant, and holds HIGH VALUE for advertisers.

Now then, I confess freely that I know less about streamers than I should, because I’m old and fuck change. That being said, it’s worth considering their place in the media marketplace. They are in the journalism landscape, but they are in general a lot closer to commentary than actual journalism. They do, effectively, what Jon Stewart and Bill O’Reilly does, only for the games landscape. Which is good, but it also tends to frequently bend towards entertainment more than journalism (and I’ve no doubt that some of them insist that’s what they are more interested in being. Note: Rush Limbaugh also uses that line, although usually only after following bad behavior).

Streamers have some other problems, too. Streams aren’t easily googleable the way text is, nor are they very blurbable, which makes them hard to share and also criticize (the worst part of doing my pieces on Anita and Christina was actually having to transcribe the bits that I criticized). Streamers are much better for game reviews instead of game previews. In the absence of games to review, streamers (much like Jon Stewart) do better when talking about controversy, which is why #gamergate is like catnip to them. And there are ethical issues swirling around payola for streamers that make normal media seem saintlike by comparison.

But man, they make games look fun a hell of a lot more than most marketing departments.

So What’s Good About Media Now?

Here are the things that are way better about the media than most people give credit for.

We now have a huge ecosystem of game sites, from mainstream gaming sites like Gamespot and IGN to more niche sites like RPS and Polygon. Which means that both hardcore fans and SJWs can find media and communities that match their tastes.

We now have TOO MANY REVIEW SITES for one bad review to tank a game.

Sites now can provide reviews of the game that shipped, and can even update reviews and notify players if patches fix problems.

Streaming sites now provide highly engaging, highly tactile reviews and fun, interesting commentary.

Being online only instead of print means that column space is practically infinite. In the old days, an indie game would be lucky to get a half column blurb. Now, any article can be nigh-infinite in length, and amount of content that you can provide is limited solely by how many journalism hours you can spend writing content.

Game companies now can and do talk directly to the fans, and the whole network is very good at dissimenating information.

The need to have content that differs from site to site results in… gasp… occasionally very good reporting. Including, and I’ll say it, Kate Cox’s investigation into the Brad Wardell sexual harassment suit and countersuit. Sorry, guys, that was a clean investigation of a public case, leaning on publically available documents. Gamers have a right to know if their game companies are crooks.

So what’s the problems now?

1. Games Industry Journalism is an Enthusiast Press, so Integrity is always in question. Which is to say, it’s like Car & Driver or Guns & Ammo. These people are only bought by people who like cars, or guns. And as such, the only people who want to advertise in these magazines are… people who sell cars or guns. And car or gun related accessories. All of which are the sorts of things which merit coverage in the magazine. Same thing with Games. In fact its worse than it used to be – PCGamer used to get SOME of their money from the checkout stand at Wal*Mart. Websites don’t have that revenue stream.

And if you want good journalism, you need paid journalists. This is a huge structural problem for the industry, and I don’t know how to fix it.

2. All of the money comes from the big guys. Most AAA games spend 1/3rd to 1/2 of their budget on advertising. Destiny had a budget that was easily nine figures (though the number of $500M has been disputed by their CEO). Still, think about HOW MUCH FRIGGIN MONEY THAT IS. And think about what it means to spend, oh, $50-$150M on marketing. Basically, the big boys can completely and totally saturate the market with advertising. They can have full paid staffs go and shill the games and drum up press. They can force the price of advertising up so the little guy can’t afford the ad space. They can make the game seem like it’s EVERYWHERE. And the little guy can’t compete.

I keep seeing people say that the problem is that people like Zoe Quinn, Phil Fish or the TFYC are doing shady things to get, or are unworthy of, press. That’s not the problem. The problem is that if you’re one of those little guys, the only way you GET significant press is if shit goes horribly, horribly wrong somehow. Which is really fucked up, when you think about it. But the fact of the matter is that, if you want to talk about corruption in the games industry, and you’re talking about indie games, you’re basically talking about the change under the couch cushions while the big boys are lighting cigars with one hundred dollar bills.

3. The importance of streamers is still not truly appreciated. So Metacritic is the most important press input that game developers care about, right? Yeah, they don’t factor in anything from streamers right now. Hrmmm, seems kind of like there’s a business opportunity in here somewhere….

4. Some media writers get out of sync with their audiences. Let’s go back to the Gamespot review of Dead Rising 3. For me, the question is not “Is this a fair review” as much as “Is this review useful to the audience of this particular media outlet.” It’s not the reviewer’s job to represent the game to ALL GAMERS. It’s the reviewer’s job to represent it to THAT AUDIENCE. As an example, if you went to political sites to get reviews for Game Change, you would hopefully get VERY DIFFERENT reviews from DailyKos than you would from NationalReview. I find Gamespot to be much closer to the ‘standard gamer’, so I can understand some criticism there. If this review had showed up on Polygon or some girlgamer site, I’d have no problem whatsoever.

5. Game publishers have more control over their message than ever before. Now that I can talk directly to my fans, I worry a lot less that I’ll screw that message up, or that a vicious edit or unexpected/unwanted query will sideswipe me. It’s INCREDIBLY easy to keep feeding the population information, and force the magazines to fight for crumbs of information found on twitter between cutting and pasting what I put up on my official site.

6. Clickbaity bullshit headlines. You know what the problem with Leigh Alexander’s ‘Gamers are Over’ article was? The fact that ‘Gamers are Over’ was in the title. I don’t think she did it well, but she was trying to address some very troubling issues of harassment in the games industry. But because of that clickbaity headline, the article never had a chance, and it erupted into full-blown war. (edit: corrected from ‘gamers are dead)

7. Games Journalism needs to Embrace the Principle of an Ombudsman. It turns out that the New York Times gets accused of shady shit all the time. It comes with the territory with being one of the most important political players in the world. However, it’s crucial that they maintain a sense of impartiality, and a sense that their shit don’t stink. And so they have an ombudsman (what they now call a Public Editor) whose entire job is to write a column about the NYT’s own reporting, as critically as possible, based mostly on feedback from their community. Their job is like Internal Affairs – it’s to be sure their own shit doesn’t stink. Typically, they have very public contact information so they can take complaints directly from the press, and report outside the normal reporting and editor structure. This ensures they can sidestep any pressure from the editorial board of the paper.

Right now, the gaming press has actively had to recuse themselves from this story, because they are at the center of it. They are afraid that anything they say will be viewed as slanted or tainted. But that’s ridiculous. The New York Times, all the time, has to report on stuff where they are major players, such as when the NYT helped Bush in the march to the Iraq war. It’s dereliction of duty if they DON’T. The Ombudsman allows them to do that – effectively in these instances, the ombudsman’s job is to verify the story is clean and ensure that it is as transparent as possible to the concerned public.

If I could suggest one meaningful, effective thing the press could do to reduce the appearance of imagined and actual instances of corruption in the gaming media and improved transparency, it would be to embrace the principle of an ombudsman

Games Journalism is no rose. The fact that it is an enthusiast press means that there are structural problems that I don’t know how to fix. And lord knows, I still hear about hints of tons of shady stuff, and lord knows there’s a lot I’d do if I were king for a day to make it all better.

That being said, I remember the old days, and comparatively speaking, we’re living in a golden age of rich, multivaried news and commentary on gaming. For a long time, I said that the only thing I missed about the old days of magazines whose only redeeming quality is that I could easily read them on the toilet. And then the iPad came along and took that away from them, too.