A few years ago, I wrote a blog post lamenting the sorry state of game criticism at the time. The critical discussion of games back then was not much concerned with the examination of their aesthetic qualities, or with evaluation of the creative decisions that led to those aesthetics, but instead was almost exclusively constrained to discussions of what happened in the story of a game, or what its feature set included. Almost before I could blink, however, that turned on its head. The subsequent year saw a total transformation of the nature of game criticism – at least online and particularly in the blogging space – and gave rise to what I would today consider to be a healthy and vibrant (though still very young) culture of game criticism.
Over the past several months, with this series of articles, I have turned my attention away from the criticism of games and of game design, and have instead been examining the game industry itself. I have been trying to take the industry to task for all of the elephants that seem to be standing around in our collective living room. By our elephants, I mean those issues both so serious that they must be dealt with and also so obvious that we can only be ignoring them intentionally.
Embracing failure
For the most part (leaving room for exception as regards my article on workplace gender imbalance), I feel I have failed in that task. With each new month, as I sit down to write about each now topic on my hit-list of 'things the game industry needs to do better', I slowly find myself rationalising away the heart of my criticism. Of course, I was trying to be discerning, even-handed and fair in my analysis, and it is certainly true that in most cases my first blush appraisal of the industry's failings was overly simplistic. But in striving to elevate simple-minded finger-waving to the level of rigorous examination, I often ended up rationalising away the very real problem of the three-ton pachyderm that was standing in the living room.
They say that a simple thing is something whose complexities you are ignoring, and perhaps that was true of my initial stance on issues like the industry's approach to the annualisation of sequels, or on the limits of freedom of information, but in justifying the industry's stance on these issues (which is at least as simplistic as my own) by saying 'it's complicated', I feel like I have been at once misrepresenting myself and, at the same time, doing someone else's job for them. And that sucks. And I apologise.
Pointing the finger
By way of salvaging something out of all of this, though, I hope this acknowledgement points a big finger at the real elephant that has been standing in the room of this series of columns from the very beginning, and that is that, as a member of the very industry I am trying to criticise, I lack both the perspective and the credibility to do it correctly. And I suppose the real question that falls out of all of this is: 'Who should be writing these columns?'
Last year, following a piece in Rolling Stone magazine, US army general Stanley McChrystal was forced to resign his command following remarks he made that seemed to imply he was challenging presidential authority. In response to criticism of the article itself, the author, Michael Hastings, defended his piece by saying: "Reporting is what someone, somewhere doesn't want known. Everything else is advertising."
So to answer my own question, the people who should be writing articles that take the industry to task for its many elephants are not developers like me, but rather reporters working for the gaming press. Just as a few years ago the state of game criticism was in a relatively sorry state and the bloggers and game culture writers stepped up to fill in that gap, the time has come, I think, for the gaming press to stop re-reporting corporate press releases and public- domain information and start writing about the things that the industry doesn't want them to write about.
Journalism that matters
Of the hundreds of thousands of words that the gaming press generates monthly, how can there not be room for a well-researched exposé on the cultural impact of annualising a brand? How can we not have an unbiased investigative report into how industry employment contracts constrain (whether fairly or otherwise) freedom of information and freedom of workers? It's sad that we must rely on whistle-blowers like EA Spouse to air the industry's dirty laundry with a massive and shocking reveal of secrets that were never really secrets in the first place.
Over the past decade, the game industry has transformed from a fast-and-loose collection of upstarts and startups into a multi-billion-dollar industry and a primary driver of technology and culture. In face of the tremendous power of such an industry, it is now more important than ever that the press begins living up to its responsibility as the so-called fourth estate – the societal institution that stands alongside our other institutions and is granted both the freedom to point to our elephants and call them out by name, and the protection to do so without fear of persecution.
Comments
8Yes, games journalism is getting sketchy. Games are exciting, so the news about them should be delivered in an exciting way.
Also, reviews seem to be getting very relaxed. Far too many high scores getting thrown about the place, not necessarily Edge, but by the whole medium.
Speaking mostly of print media - and those websites that are just online presences of printed media, such as this website - surely the main impediment to true gaming journalism is advertising revenue. Whereas, for example, The Guardian can draw on a strong selection of advertisers so that it's investigation of the NHS doesn't affect its profits from advertising, gaming magazines are beholden to those they would criticise, which in itself makes them - at worst - not much better than mouthpieces for the publishers.
As an example, when the much vaunted PC Gamer review of Dragon Age 2 went live, it would've been a brave reviewer indeed who would've given it a "fair" score, when the background to the PC Gamer website was one big DA2 advert. By acquiescing to such an advert, it could be argued that PC Gamer became a PR tool for EA (and that review still haunts the magazine to this day).
Another example, using EA. Anyone following the EA/Steam situation will be well aware of EA's excuses for the removal of DA2/Crysis 2 on Steam. However, not one magazine has truly investigated what has happened, whilst every EA press release on the subject has been regurgitated. In this way, EA has been allowed to sell its narrative of what has happened with no critical analysis by any of the press. The consumers are spoon-fed what EA says, by the very people who should be questioning it.
A further example, using Skyrim, though it can be said for any major release of the past year. There was a time when review copies were shipped out early and reviews were published well before the game was released, and a few magazines made their names being almost retailer handbooks for Grade A games. There was a Crash retrospective where the editor reminisced about Boots waiting for the Crash reviews before buying in games for their stores.
Now, however... Well, Skyrim is released tomorrow. When was the Edge review published? Today. The print review will be out long after the average Joe in the street has purchased the game on a whim. What point reviews, when the product is out for a couple of weeks before the review is aired? Any other industry would be ashamed at how reviews are handled - certainly, in the film industry (which the gaming industry loves to copy so much), any film that is shoveled out into cinemas without a review is acknowledged to be a turkey. Why do games get a free pass?
In my opinion, the major videogame press is too reliant on the publishers to truly criticise their products. When your advertising revenue comes almost solely from the industry you're meant to be criticising, there will be a lack of dedication to truly informative - and investigative - journalism. Gaming magazines - both print and online - need to seek more neutral advertisers in order to be given more freedom to write, and need to broaden their financial backing, so that any exposés that are written can be weathered, should there be a backlash.
The symbiotic nature of the press and publishers has also raised the disturbing thought that consumers who should be warned of poor quality products are not. Partially this is due to publishers enforcing review blackouts until the appropriate time, but this is also the fault of the press, for allowing such a state-of-affairs to occur in the first place. Again, though, who is going to criticise the spoon that feeds them? Financially it makes little sense.
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Pixieking/Morville O'Driscoll
There is that threat but where else are they going to advertise and why couldn't they get advertisement from companies making other products? Surely if gaming's audience is so mature now it makes sense to advertise things like alcohol.
@toadwarrior
Yeah, alcohol was one of the advertisers I was thinking of when I was writing all that. JD, Captain Morgans, even whisky adverts wouldn't be out of place in Edge and PC Gamer. But then you've got all manner of other things if you think about it. Comics publishers (I could see DC wanting to promote their latest Batman reboot alongside the Arkham City review), book publishers (especially genre fiction - an ad for the new Mistborn book would fit right in with an issue that's got a review of Skyrim). Deoderant/shampoo/condom manufacturers, Sky/BBC/HBO. Lush, maybe, and Debenhams. This is the thing - there's such a vast amount of advertising revenue out there that Future (as an example) doesn't need EA's money. Even in the economic downturn.
A lot of fair points, and there is an inherent need in any democracy for reporting as defined by Michael Hastings, regardless of its subject. But surely it depends on the type media of outlet and audience. For example, I don't expect or want hardcore investigative journalism from Empire magazine.
I agree with Clint and more people need to be critical of the gaming press. Edge isn't really that bad but online sites especially are pretty much a joke. The likes of Kotaku aren't even worth going to if you have any dignity.
It's perhaps a bit of a stretch to expect what are essentially trade magazines to run investigative pieces. I suspect most lack the staff to do anything other than meet their existing obligations.
4-5 years later and I still haven't seen a proper investigation into RRoD or YLoD. Closest we got was Watchdog.
Though I noticed the press suddenly found its critical voice when Grainger Games ruined their party. Funny that.
I may stray off topic here but bear with me...
I saw that EA Norway were caught skewing the reviews of BF3, not shocking in itself as I'm aware that it must go on but then myself and FB friends were subjected to a taste of EA's progaganda machine:
There are several of EA's employees on my FB and XBox Friend's lists, something that makes me feel a bit sorry for them when they join a party to have us bombard them with complaints. Some credit to them here: They have passed on some of our comments and done something about it in the past.
Then came BF3. I played the Alpha, I played the Beta (which seemed to exhibit exactly the same problems as the Alpha).
For days after release and all through the weekend we experienced server time outs, connection errors and massive lag...that was when we managed to get into a game!
These were issues that had plagued the release of every other EA game we'd played. Exasperated at the lack of foresight displayed by such a gaming giant, the multitude of connection issues, the inability of BF3 to put a squad into the same match/side etc. we made a few disparaging comments on Facebook.
This was greeted by patronising comments from one particular EA employee, who accused us of having our consoles set to the wrong region and asking one of us to not "...jump on the bitching bandwagon..."
During a conversation with him on XBox he admitted that the initial feedback for BF3 came from their own PR Dept.
Not surprising but dumb as hell.
Not long after this we received a message from him stating:
"I wanted to drop you a note about your experiences in BF3.
I'm sorry to hear you've still been experiencing what seems to be a game riddled with issues, and i've been actively listening to what you've been saying and relaying that on to the team to add to the list of fixes they're working on. Not to mention reporting back to you on these items and the reasons for some of the issues.
But despite that, I really don't appreciate you guys bitching about it all so openly on your FB pages - if you're still having problems, come to me (like I asked) and i'll speak to the team. But don't go on about the game being shit and that you're trading it in 'cos it's completely broken - it isn't. "
Later in the message he offers us DLC to make up for the issues, yet it was far too late.
We had just been asked to censore our posts for anti EA comments.
Even if these were the actions of a "rogue employee" they seem to be the overall view of EA itself:
"Our games are great, buy them and shut up."