Kotaku: Creating Drama You Can't Make Up

[Calantus]

I am going to remember this thread and link it every time somebody complains about how the media is beholden to X group and how it won't report on any topics their masters don't want them to report on.

Is your world entirely black and white Triforcer? Can you not see the shades of grey between? I can't think of any other reason you would post such a thing. There is a veeeeery big difference between covering up a story and not leaking a press release story early. Veeeeery big. There's so much grey there I can't imagine how you could possibly have missed it unless you simply can't see grey at all. Let me put an example in language you can understand. If a news program found out that the republican party were doing something seriously wrong and did not report it, or sugar-coated the issue, then that would be bad. If a news program found out the contents of a speech someone from the republican party was going to give next week, but they didn't release that information out of respect, that would be fine.

[Koyasha]

THIS ISN'T A FREEDOM OF THE PRESS ISSUE. THIS IS A "BACKSTABBING FRIENDS" ISSUE.

Why can no one see that?

What I meant was that this is what Kotaku has made it into, and most people are both too stupid and don't understand the issue enough to see how moronic they are for trying to claim that getting the 'scoop' on a simple feature-release by a week is some grand journalistic endeavor.  It's less about what it is than what it appears to be, and Sony's handling of the situation allowed Kotaku to make them look bad when their response was relatively appropriate.

When I responded that we were going forward with the story and that sometimes news doesn't come from official sources I was told that if we published we would likely be blackballed by the company.

Specifically, they said we would be asked to return our debug PS3, uninvited from all meetings scheduled with Sony at GDC, including one on blogger relations and a one-on-one with Phil Harrison, and that they would no longer deal with us.

That's what I meant about Sony making threats, though I suppose I worded it wrong.  In the context which Sony's PR intended it in, it was more of a warning, I'm sure.  Like telling someone not to take your last beer or you'll throw them out of the house.  I can only imagine they didn't actually realize how Kotaku would be able to make this appear, or they would have been a good deal more subtle with it in the first place.

Sony left themselves very open for Kotaku to paint them as the bad guy in the situation, which Kotaku took full advantage of.  Kotaku posts a couple emails, points out how Sony was going to un-invite them to stuff and ask for the return of demo hardware, and the internet immediately sees them as the journalists being bullied by the corporation not to post 'important news'.  If Sony had instead simply asked nicely and then not followed up by informing them of the consequences...then if Kotaku went ahead and posted, stop inviting them to any future events and giving them any perks, it would have been handled quietly without Sony leaving themselves open as they did.  Hell, even simply saying 'if you post this, in the future we may have to hold back on giving you any pre-announcement information or demos' would have sounded much better than 'you're uninvited, and give us our stuff back'.

[Dundee]

The problem in a nutshell with what Kotaku did was he violated his source's trust...and any real journalist isn't going to be such a freaking idiot when it comes to the very meat of what his job is all about.

Hmm. I read that differently. Seemed to me their Beep Throat sent an email, that is, to tips@kotaku.com.

It was this line that put my mind on that track, I think: We just received a very interesting tip

Because of this:

I just assumed they'd received an email, sent to the "Here's a story!" email address.

Hm.

• Receive an email 'tip' (assuming it was an email, here).
• Sony neither confirms nor denies rumors, except to confirm it by telling them not to print it or else.
• Or else, eh? They run it anyway. At this point, the only "trusted info" is Sony's confirmation, which they don't mention.
• Elsed!
• So, now they printed Sony's emails. Of course. At that point Sony was no longer dealing with them as partners, colleagues, co-conspirators, or whatever, and what's a game news site to do? Carry on and hope to be forgiven someday, or fight right now?
• Who run Bartertown?

What a great scandal if they traded their tipster's identity for amnesty. I hope if they did that and someone finds out, they'll run the story even if Kotaku asks them not too.

[schild]

Someone tell me where the game companies are in this situation. I've talked to enough people about this in the last couple days to COMPLETELY confirm that game companies now have a strong hatred for Kotaku - moreso than before.

And yet, everyone is quiet.

Is Kotaku a fucking superpower or something? Is everyone retarded?

[Stephen Zepp]

Given how Sony got lambasted in the "press" for their very expected and in my opinion quite reserved response, do you think anyone else (besides me, but I'm dumb like that) is going to respond publically without having weeks of PR people soaping it up? :)

Kotaku really shot themselves in the foot...nah, in the stomach, and imo will bleed for quite a long time--they just haven't realized it yet. Meanwhile, those that take the stance of following their sources issues will do better in the long run.

[Margalis]

Reporting rumors from anon sources is the worst kind of journalism.

Wow that's just mind-boggling to hear people say that.

You do realize that we are fighting a war in Iraq largely due to that style of "jounalism"?  And that after the truth about Iraq came out the NYT and other agencies reformed their policies on anonymous sources?

Anonymous sources are a starting point. Someone gives you a lead, you follow it up. You get the real dirt and report that. The Watergate scandal reporting was not just "some anon source says some bad shit went down!" The source got the ball rolling and resulted in real investigation.

But this whole line of conversation is silly because there was no journalism or investigation here. It was just jumping a press release. I'll say it for the hundredth time: I'm all for real journalism. I'm all for not printing PR hype as-is, not giving undeserved reviews, for reporting product failures or valuable consumer info.

If Sony doesn't want you to go ahead with a story that only 100 games are going to be backwards compatible you run the story. If Nintendo doesn't want you to publish a technical analysis of the Wiimote that finds it very unresponsive and innacurate you publish it.

What you don't do is take what someone told you in good faith that is simply a news tidbit and ruin a PR opportunity by jumping the gun on it.

If they tell you "hey don't tell anyone but the PS3 causes cancer" yeah it is your duty to report that. If they say "hey, don't tell anyone but we are already half done with God of War 3 for the PS3 and it fucking rules" you should probably just keep your mouth shut. And when you do blab you don't then cry that the people you backstabbed don't want to deal with you any more.

[Dundee]

Someone tell me where the game companies are in this situation. I've talked to enough people about this in the last couple days to COMPLETELY confirm that game companies now have a strong hatred for Kotaku - moreso than before.

And yet, everyone is quiet.

Is Kotaku a fucking superpower or something? Is everyone retarded?

Well, I'm not a publisher so my opinion matters for squat anyway...

It just doesn't seem like it should have been a big deal, to me. Or even a small deal. Sony has the trained parrot to answer the phone and say "We never comment on rumors and speculations," and apparently it even did. I don't know why they didn't just let the bird handle it. The parrot had it under control.

Then some would have heard of a rumor posted to Kotaku, and a week later there's an announcement. New to most, confirmation for some. Pretty much the same result either way, or if only close to it, maybe spending some advertising dollars to advertise isn't so much to ask.

Saying Kotaku is unprofessional just sounds like it gives them a pass. Sony isn't unprofessional, or shouldn't have been: Of course the email you send, describing your cessation of cooperation, is going to be published. Back when you were cooperating it wouldn't have been, but as that very email just said...

I've never been comfortable with the use of exclusive information as currency to purchase favor  in player-press negotiation. It feels as dirty to me as if we just used money.

A live MMO specific thing: I've been irritated on more than one occasion by an inability to maintain player-dev communication due to marketing's desire to fill its wallet with exclusives for a press-favor spending spree, while the current players wait and wait for a dialog which will eventually begin with them asking, "Why in the hell did we have to read this information somewhere else?"

I've been frustrated by what looks like a failure to comprehend that you can announce anything, anywhere and it will find its way to everywhere... no need to give smaller community sites - such as the game's official one - somewhere between nothing and who cares.

I dislike that the game press news channels are set in stone. Gaming is broad and becoming a lot broader, and there are already some gaming categories with demographics ill-served by all game news being crammed out the same tubes. Many MMO players are flat out not gamers otherwise. How many players of The Sims are served by their game news being delivered along side Warcraft IV, Hello Kitty Online, and Lego Star Wars?

I don't like the distinction between professional journalists, citizen journalism, columnists, bloggers, etc. They're all journalists, some good and some bad. "Citizen journalism" is already quite good, game journalism is still quite bad. Print media still champions the worst web implementations on the net, so even less trained and experienced journalists who are more net savvy seem quite competitive to me, etc.

I can't tell if big announcements go to big news sites because they are big news sites, or are they big news sites because they get the big announcements, or both and so always will, even when better things come along.

I'd love for their to be a game gossip/rumor site doing just that. I don't expect them to be invited to media events on purpose.

I can't tell if I answered your question.

[schild]

Big announcements go to sites that are big because they have the exposure. Why would anyone give f13 a REAL announcement? The stuff I've broken has required actual work to confirm. Well, some of it was handed to me on a platter, but not much.

Anyway, big sites. Yea. They sell more games than f13 or kotaku. That's all it comes down to. That's why the currency is exclusive information. it shouldn't bother you simply because that's all there is.

[Calantus]

A live MMO specific thing: I've been irritated on more than one occasion by an inability to maintain player-dev communication due to marketing's desire to fill its wallet with exclusives for a press-favor spending spree, while the current players wait and wait for a dialog which will eventually begin with them asking, "Why in the hell did we have to read this information somewhere else?"

I've been frustrated by what looks like a failure to comprehend that you can announce anything, anywhere and it will find its way to everywhere... no need to give smaller community sites - such as the game's official one - somewhere between nothing and who cares.

I hate this. There has to be somebody either between or looking over the shoulders of devs wanting to release information so that things don't get spilled too early (ie. they are still in flux), but that thing should not be marketing. I think the larger companies just don't understand that you don't market a game that is already released to the people already playing it. You don't have to wrap everything up in market speak and put it into the right channels. You just have to give the players the information in the fastest and easiest way for them to recieve it. They already play your game. Getting new players into your game and hyping the shit out of it is what expansion packs and special offers are for, chain marketing up in a basement somewhere between those times.

[stray]

To follow up on what I said about more "open communication", here's a good example of what I'm talking about.

Insomniac (developer of the Ratchet and Clank series and Resistance) are now starting their own podcast (it's called "Full Moon" or something). That's cool as shit to me. Not because I want to them to hear "secrets" or anything, but just to hear what those guys are up to, and what general ideas are floating around in their heads at any given time. It's a cool source of info to set beside the typical PR approach.

I still think Kotaku are dumbasses, but I also think the sort of news that they offer, rumors and whatnot, is indicative of a bigger thing. A lot of gamers want to know what's going on in between PR releases and the occassional "Exclusive Preview" at IGN. And because of that, I think it's in game companies' interests to offer things like developer diaries and podcasts. They should be the ones giving all of this "in between" news, not rumor sites.

[Yegolev]

I think Kotaku's existence mostly signifies that people are dumbasses that like reading about World of Whorecraft instead of something important to the industry.

[Dundee]

Big announcements go to sites that are big because they have the exposure. Why would anyone give f13 a REAL announcement? The stuff I've broken has required actual work to confirm. Well, some of it was handed to me on a platter, but not much.

Anyway, big sites. Yea. They sell more games than f13 or kotaku. That's all it comes down to. That's why the currency is exclusive information. it shouldn't bother you simply because that's all there is.

Still don't get it. If you break the story, they can still post that news on their site (just like when they post a press release even though it's been sent to thousands of others). I'd bet way more people get the exclusive reports via it being reblogged to a site they frequent, than even frequent the big web sites.

But it's the purchase of favors (with exclusives) which gives me drama, more than who gets them and why.

If the internet isn't lying to me, there's basically just News Corp. CNet, and GameStop, right?

Sure, many also-rans, but with numbers so insignificant by comparison... seems silly even to bring them up.

Funny thing is, I hate the way of news reporting on these sites. I don't get my news from them (not first hand anyway), and probably never will. I want some local color with my daily dose of game news, from a website that doesn't have blinking, flashing, moving shit all over it, with only the tiniest of boxes reserved for a hodgepodge array of game announcements. Organizing games by platform alone makes me think of libraries in Olden Tymes sorting their books by color.

e.g. GameInformer and EGM's news this month:

Even GI's 2 million readers are a trivial number, when compared to the number of daily unique visitors to popular gamer websites.

But it gets exclusives in spite of not being a big website. It even put an exclusive behind a members' only login screen, how annoying is that?

Gamespot, and IGN also offer so little in the way of news reporting.

I don't understand where the hidden difficulty is there...

[schild]

Whoa whoa. Game Informer website? Are you kidding. No no, my brotha. We're talking about the magazine there. It's the only gaming magazine with a subscriber base, since they play catcher for EBGamestop.

And both IGN and Gamestop have a large news section. Those little boxes are just the frontpage - and you know it.

I'm not defending them, but they both offer more unbiased news about games than you'll find on any blog. Ironically, all of their previews sound like blowjobs - but I've already complained about them.

[Dundee]

Whoa whoa. Game Informer website? Are you kidding. No no, my brotha. We're talking about the magazine there. It's the only gaming magazine with a subscriber base, since they play catcher for EBGamestop.

Yes, I saw.

First six months of 2006:
GAME INFORMER MAGAZINE 1,994,488 total paid & verified

...and also saw:
As of June 2005, IGN claimed 23 million unique visitors a month, with 5 million registered users through all departments of the site. IGN is ranked among the top 200 most-visited websites according to Alexa, and the IGN forums are among the most active Internet forums.

I think there's hardcopy bias at work. I just don't accept that ~4 million offline eyeballs are worth ~46 million (or even ten) eyeballs online.

And both IGN and Gamestop have a large news section. Those little boxes are just the frontpage - and you know it.

Yah, I'm more dissatisfied by the lack of arrangement: by not getting news from them, I can get MMO news from an MMO site, which gets its MMO news from them, etc.

Likewise, advertising on a site so broadly definied as "topic: nerdery" is a considerable expense compared to advertising on a more narrowly-defined, "topic: MMOs", site. Even with press releases, to ensure they make it to the MMO players, send those press releases to MMO sites directly too, rather than trusting them to be manually caught.

That's me straying off course there: point is that's a hodge-podge, so I want news from elsewhere even if that news came right from them, just so it'll be organized.

I'm not defending them, but they both offer more unbiased news about games than you'll find on any blog. Ironically, all of their previews sound like blowjobs - but I've already complained about them.

Oh, don't say that... I paint 'blog' with a very broad brush. Just because the professional columnist's idiotic newspaper can't make the links in their online column links, nor apply future corrections to the original article, nor figure out that requiring (false)  information from users prior to displaying their editorial is stupid to the power of ten, and can't properly manage trackback's, comments, and spam all at once, wage or no, doesn't mean they aren't bloggers blogging.

[Margalis]

A blog is just a web page and a blogger is just a writer.

[Dundee]

A blog is just a web page and a blogger is just a writer.

Old skool newspapers, likewise.

[Margalis]

The difference I see is that newspapers are in theory about news reporting, have some journalistic standards and that as Americans we expect the news media to perform certain duties like serve as watchdog and keep the populace informed.

I can write a blog about what I ate for dinner. There is nothing that ties blogs together in theory, other than that they all have writing. Blogs don't have any agreed-upon duty, we don't expect them to avoid bias or serve the public interest.

Now of course in reality our news media does a horrible job. There is supposed to be something more there like journalistic integrity but usually there is not. It is also worth pointing out that unlike other professions like lawyers journalists have steadfastly refused any formal code of conduct or set of ethics to maintain.

It isn't so much a difference in content than in expectations. I can say that by doing poor, one-sided reporting a newspaper is not doing it's job. I can't say that about a blog because blogs don't have any job to do.

I doubt we are far apart in our views.

One good thing I see coming out of this whole "are blogs journalists" thing is some sort of formalized journalistic creed or set of ethics that journalists are actually held to. Then being a journalist won't be a matter of writing on a blog vs. a newspaper but rather if you take journalistic duties seriously.

[Dundee]

It isn't so much a difference in content than in expectations. I can say that by doing poor, one-sided reporting a newspaper is not doing it's job. I can't say that about a blog because blogs don't have any job to do.

Oh, I disagree there just a bit. While I wouldn't say all bloggers are journalists, there definitely are many who are.

Meanwhile many editorials are written by columnists, not to report news and with a personal bias expected: just doing exactly what bloggers do and with the same set of expectations, too.

They're blogging in the paper.

And wasn't that long ago that many towns had two local papers: one conservative, one liberal.

Check out the Wikipedia entry on citizen journalism. The history section is pretty cool.

I doubt we are far apart in our views.

One good thing I see coming out of this whole "are blogs journalists" thing is some sort of formalized journalistic creed or set of ethics that journalists are actually held to. Then being a journalist won't be a matter of writing on a blog vs. a newspaper but rather if you take journalistic duties seriously.

Yeh, I pretty much already feel that way. A journalist is a person practicing journalism. A blogger is someone who is blogging. Sometimes a person does both.

Like this guy.

[DataGod]

Meh...you know I had to start a blog for our site and it was a pain but fuck I've learned to dig it actually, they ARE pretty damn convienient. Also I've had to do some articles for our news reader. Because well, its a news reader, and its not like it takes some goddamn brain surgury to regurgitate the stuff incomming on gamebiz, gamasutra, or game press news, and a finely tuned goodle reader.

All this has caused me to do is at times sit around in amazement at how craptastic most game news sites are, oh its bad when I can check my email and google reader and then go to IGN and see the same shit parroted as news to gamers, I dont doubt they have thier shit fully automated and just scrape headlines and text then upload it as news, its not hard and I could hack that together in a weekend.

Heres the thing, I dont dig having to write "journalist style" stuff. I'm not a journalist, the closest I got to the journalisim department in college were a few hot co-eds with that major, I've never even taken a journalism class But you gotta do whatcha gotta do in a start up but hell even I can grock how retarded a stunt this was.

Anyhow I've removed Kotoku from our news reader options that our end users can subscribe to. Even though we're in closed beta I'll be goddamn if I'm ever going to drive traffic to Kotoku, and any other Gawker media property is definately out.

The upside of not having to blow marketing, and owning your own site is that the possibilities of ex-communication when you find someone to be an asshat are endless....

Dundee is right on as far as how badly designed and implimented those sites are, my feeling is they pay to play though, and they have got to be farming out the  site design, unless they have well trained monkeys, another similarly situated data analysis service told me early on very bluntly that IGN, Ziff et al basically gives away a product similar to ours to ensure the advertising revenue.

But where does that leave everyone else? And what quality is the reporting and the data?

Whatever I'm kind of bullheaded and stupid, and I reject the notion that shit like information, data, and opinion has to go through some kind of channel, marketing department, and be well vetted, while toeing the corporate line. If something sucks, so be it it sucks for a reason, I'm sure they hell not going to tell my community to go buy it because I have an advertising agreement in place. Not so with Journalists, but thats the problem when your bread and butter comes from increasing advertising inventory as much as possible. I think IGN and gamespot are going to have to open a child window on load now with just links to actual content they have so much advertising.

This is exactly why blogging should probably remain free wild and crazy, I like reading real opinions by real people. I dont think I'm alone in this

The problem with corporations that they arent getting, and that developers are getting is that games arent new, no in fact most of them look the exact fucking same. So guess what gamers arent going to buy whatever piece of shit someone decides to ship. Gamers understand this, and no amount of spin is going to make them suddenly decide to go buy the game.  Gamers who are amenible to this read sites like Kotoku.

[HaemishM]

Wow, what a tempest in a teapot.

Gaming journalism doesn't exist. Gaming journalism is various shades of advertorial copy slathered with fanboi service. You don't get journalism credentials because you break a story about a firmware release a week or so before it's released. You might get it if you find Phil Harrison sodomizing Asian children with Sixaxis controllers while playing Wii Sports in lederhosen, but even then, no one gives a shit. Gaming journalism has about as much respect as the sycophants and namedroppers who make up entertainment journalism. It's fluff.

The best you can hope for is honest, unpurchased reviews and a few sneak peeks at shit a few weeks before other people. That's it. Expecting anything more out of "gaming journalism," either as a writer or a reader, is foolish.

This kind of stupid is why I hate when gaming sites report unfounded, unlinkable rumors, because none of it matters a fuck when 2 weeks down the road everyone will have it. If all you care about is a 1-day bump in traffic, you shouldn't be writing whatever rumor you are working on.