f13.net

Kotaku Makes Everyone Look Like Assholes



"I hope no one deals with them anymore. When you ask someone not to post something that isn't controversial, you expect that tiny bit of respect." - Anonymous Lead Designer

This hurts to write. My hands are shaking. I can't remember the exact time I read Crecente's post on Kotaku. Sometime this afternoon (March 1st, 2007), I read something that - in any normal situation - would make blood burst from my eyes. Today, one of the most popular gaming blogs on the internet confused integrity and honesty with investigative journalism. Michael McWhertor published a (not quite) rumor about something. You can find out what this something is on nearly every site on the internet, including this one - just a few posts down. In posting, Michael set in motion a series of emails and newsposts that have left - in my eyes - a stain on the entire gaming industry. It hurt the fans, the developers, the publishers, and most importantly - independent gaming sites. And who's pointing it out? I guess I will.

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Bravo.  I was worried about which side was right, but when you went into greater detail about this, it certainly cleared things up.

I just wish Schild would tell us what he really thinks, without sugar-coating it.

Seriously, good job.  Some of us gamers are not high-school hooligans that shoot rubber bands at the teacher just for a laugh from the class.

While I understand that the "Integrity" argument is largely BS, at the same time, I'm glad that they did this. Your entire thesis, schild, it seems, is that if we don't republish press releases from the game companies, then "news" sites will be forced to, uh, republish press releases? Only this time the editors/writers of these sites won't get to be the cool kid knowing stuff ahead of time. As a reader, I'm not sure I care about the difference?

What is the actual damage to me from this?

What can I say about F13?  It's really my favorite website in the entire universe!  I love the irreverent banter and sly wit these keyboard jockeys produce.  And I especially love the staff, they're AWESOME.

No exclusive infos, no dialogue, no access.

Also no respect, but that doesn't directly affect the readership.

I'm hoping this is the next SWG:NGE thread...   :evil:

I don't see it as nearly that big a deal.  Sony should have kept their damn mouths shut if they don't want info to get out.  If there is something you don't want people to know, don't tell them.  Not anybody; you're not doing anyone favors by leaking info that the person has to keep quiet.  If any conversation begins "I could get in trouble for telling you this, but..." you are wrong to open your mouth.

If someone at Kotaku found out about it, and assuming trade secret laws or the like aren't being violated, they can post whatever they like.  That doesn't mean they should, and posting things that Sony doesn't like is sure to spoil their relationship.  That's their bridge to burn.  They burned it.  Sony should only work with them to the absolute minimum extent possible to keep up appearances.  No one else should ever speak to them again, unless they wish to be treated similarly.  There's a reason journalists don't burn sources.

This doesn't, or shouldn't, affect anyone but Kotoku.  It isn't like the gaming industry is going to stop dealing with PR issues.  Hopefully they'll be smarter about PR stuff, but it'll hardly just go away.  All that happened was Sony being stupid, Kotaku being an ass, and hopefully getting the cold shoulder from now on.  And the world moves on.

I'm thinking along these lines.

"News I found out months ago (nay, years ago for some companies) that still isn't released to the public. But I'm not going to. Because that tiny bit of trust... that tiny bit of respect that companies expect me to give them is what keeps that dialogue between us and them going."

So... you're concerned that you personally might not get "juicy secrets" ahead of time ... that you're not going to TELL any of the readers .. you're just going to know them and feel happy you know something we don't? And you'll let us know, when the companies want you to let us know ... right? So you're just a  ... middleman protecting your position?

Maybe there's just something I'm not getting?

The "exclusives" doesn't matter as much in a web-connected world of free news dissemination. If 1up gets an exclusive, I'll probably get the gist of it somewhere else [EDIT: seeing as I rarely visit 1up]. Only if I'm a super-fanboy is it going to annoy me that I get get the exact wording of the info from the developer/publisher/manufacturer.

What can I say about F13?  It's really my favorite website in the entire universe!  I love the irreverent banter and sly wit these keyboard jockeys produce.  And I especially love the staff, they're AWESOME.

(clap clap clap)

Well written Schild.  I appreciated the article and it spoke for many of us here. 

A question I ponder: Have you considered that the "sooper sekrit" information that's leaked by development houses is done so on purpose.  The development houses are becoming increasingly market-savvy and may be selectively leaking tidbits to generate some press hype.  I know that when I've worked with private sector entities, that truly secret information was just that, secret.  If information is being told to known press agents, I suspect that it's a plant and the fervor that follows is just a marketing device used by those that planted the information to begin with.  I'm wondering if this information was handed to Kotaku for the sole purpose of knowing it would be spread early.  If it were truly to be withheld, then the companies involved would have witheld it. 

It seems like Schild is pissed because Kotaku is threatening the apparently cozy relationship between game sites and developers.  Should game sites have a cozy relationship with developers?  Or should they be like the mad-dog reporters in the White House press room?  This relationship should be explored further.

Thing is, game developers don't have to have contact with the fans.

The reason they do is largely because of the efforts of game sites.

Now this, of course, doesn't go for everyone, but in the cases where it does go it can greatly improve the design of games, making them worth the money we spent.

The job of game sites isn't to tell you news.  It's to get feedback on that news.

But if the companies in question feel that it's costing them more to associate with these sites than it would to just run without the feedback (or to assemble focus groups and get skewed feedback), then that's what they'll do because they're in the business of making money.

Personally, I like being able to speak my opinion and feeling that, with support, it could sway the direction of a game I enjoy but could enjoy more.  It's not exactly common, but it happens.

I'd rather avoid having all the forums here become about as important and relevant as the Politics forum.

The point is that it's very easy for developers to stop listening and start telling us what we want- which is apparently more Madden.  Shit like this just adds weight to that line of thought.  The problem with that is that it leaves a lot of us out in the cold.

As a Game Developer and sometimes "let your personal networks know about this ahead of time so they can be ready" information release type person, I fully and 100% back Schild's position.

I'll give an example:

I just posted today that GGE has gone public beta, and is open to anyone and everyone. A couple of months ago, I offered Schild a private invite during the closed beta so that he could check it out as he saw fit, see if it was something he wanted to write a review about, or something that he could do additional background research on to be ready for when it went public.

I asked him to keep this on background, and not leak the information yet, mostly because of two things:

--our infrastructure wasn't in place to handle mass public usage yet. While not a few communities already had access, and there was no lack of information on Google regarding GGE, the team asked that no additional communities be added quite yet because they weren't ready. F13, being a pretty large community of non-game developers (who we were focusing on at that time) would have possibly flooded us, so we didn't want it publically mentioned yet.

--we had a scheduled "public release date", and that's when we wanted it released. Many marketing relationships actually have contractual agreements that certain sites get "first release permission", and had Schild released the info here, it may have caused GG some issues with our marketing partners.

Schild respected my request. I have no idea if he actually did check out GGE ahead of time, and that doesn't matter---I gave him some "insider info" that really wasn't all that inside, and he respected the source's request for information protection as any good journalist would. I'll fully admit, my concepts of "journalist ethics" derives from movies and books, but hell, it's been working for me so far!

Kudos to you Schild, the writeup to me described a very important level of trust that game developers and their employees need to be able to give out advance information, and I feel you very accurately described a blatent misuse of that trust by Kotaku. Sony in my opinion did exactly what they should have, Kotaku ignored it, and Sony followed up on their position.

Then pussied out and said, "Okay, but seriously this time, don't do it again. K?  :heart:"

I still don't see how this specific incident anything but a "sucks to be Kotaku" deal though. If someone screws you over, by all means cut them off. The issue in question here still doesn't affect me as a reader, except, ironically, in a positive light, since I got to know about this new feature a week before I normally would have. I'm very laissez faire when it comes to my information sources. schild telling me ages ago about GGE would have been beneficial to me, as a reader, simply from a "I know more than I did yesterday" POV. The fact that schild can have a 10,000 word opinion on it the day of, instead of a 5,000 one a couple days later doesn't matter insofar as news/information is concerned.

What can I say about F13?  It's really my favorite website in the entire universe!  I love the irreverent banter and sly wit these keyboard jockeys produce.  And I especially love the staff, they're AWESOME.

This hurts you because it contributes to the idea that game companies need to hide their information so that their market strategies are not blown by overzealous nerds who happen to have the ears of other nerds.

While this one incident won't likely cause a lot of perceivable change, it needs to be decried for the stupidity it is because further incidents would exacerbate the issue exponentially.

You like getting information, companies like to control the release of information.  People screwing with companies means that they will become ever more controlling about what information is released and when, perhaps to their detriment, perhaps to yours.

Honestly, since I'm on the "companies are over secretive" side (though I don't necessarily fault with for that) all I'd lose is the time wasted going to any gamin news site that didn't have a decent forum community. Since they already decide when they want info out, they'll find another way to get it out when they want it. Like big conferences like the GDC. It's a zero sum game, IMO.

What can I say about F13?  It's really my favorite website in the entire universe!  I love the irreverent banter and sly wit these keyboard jockeys produce.  And I especially love the staff, they're AWESOME.

So - in summary... "Trust was betrayed. Don't put every gaming site in the same barrel."

I'll agree - this isn't a "news" industy, it's an "entertainment" industry, they should have shown some restraint.

I'll agree with that.

What can I say about F13?  It's really my favorite website in the entire universe!  I love the irreverent banter and sly wit these keyboard jockeys produce.  And I especially love the staff, they're AWESOME.

Just also wanted to add - Sony should have shown some balls and kicked them to the curb.... This sends a VERY BAD message to other sites.

Catch 22. Sony's PR has been SHIT lately. The frothing retards of gamedom would make a mountain out of a molehill for them blackballing Kotaku. Damned if they do, damned if they don't.

This is the same crowd that has turned the slightest statements by Sony into derisive memes. Case in Point (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaBUeINW_3s).

That's because they are screwing up.

I won't get into that, but the main point is, a lot of gamers tend to be sensationalist when it comes to these things.

The simple fact is that the name of the company shouldn't matter at all.  Yes, they're damned if they do, but they're damnder if they don't.  What is the worst that happens if they blackball Kotaku?  Is the bad PR any worse than the bad PR they suffer now that they've knuckled under?  Not only are they derided for making a bad decision, but now we'll always be able to remember them as the giant mega-corporation that gave in to the demands of a blog.  There's a reason the US government doesn't negotiate with terorrists, and there's a reason that once a corporation makes a decision, it needs to man up and abide by it.

I'm not seeing why this is a big, shocking deal.  Sony is a company, and it's their business to get people to buy their product.  To let people know about said product, they employ sites like Kotaku for cheap publicity.  Kotaku is a company, and it's their business to get people to read their site.  To do this, they posted some limp PS3 feature thing that nobody really cares about, but that Sony doesn't want them to post (yet).  Scandalous, I guess?  I mean, they're just a gaming news page; they print stories about games.  This "sacred trust" stuff seems more than a little bit hyperbolic.  Sony can blackball Kotaku or not, I don't really think it's that big of a deal.  The whole role of sites like Kotaku is just to spread Sony's PR around for them; to tell people that don't visit sony.com that there's some new feature or game or whatever that maybe you might want to please give us money to be able to use.  If Sony tells them to take off, I don't care.  In the unlikely event that Sony tells the entire gaming journalism industry that this incident has forever damaged their trust, or whatever, so what?  Sony will either find some other way to get their message out, (and then Kotaku et al. will just grab their news from that source) or they'll give up and go out of business (mmm hmm...).  And that's the worst possible outcome I can see; it assumes the whole "this hurts the entire industry" thing turns out to be actually true and not just some "THE SKY IS FLALLING" kind of hyperbole, in which case this has pretty much zero impact on anyone whose name is not Crecente.

There are 2 faces that journalists have to put on with gaming companies. The friendly face and the journo face You hear a whold lot of things when you're having a drink in friend mode. But the moment journo face comes on, you don't hear that information again, and if you do, you don't ask about posting it. The things I heard on the balcony at the SOE party in Austin, for example, aren't going to get repeated. What's said over a beer stays over a beer. You never have to be explicitly told not to post something. Kotaku, on the other hand, was explicitly told not to post something - something that honestly wouldn't change their traffic in the long run - and was shocked when Sony got mad.

Goddamn amateurs.

Edit: Kail, it's not a _big_ deal. It's a bothersome thing. And everyone needs to know that Kotaku can't be trusted. But everyone else can. I'm not talking about a sacred trust between PR people and journalists. I'm talking about the sacred trust between the QA guy you become friends with at a bar, or the loose lipped lead designer who has drinks with you. Those people expect you not to fuck around with information you're give, and in turn PR people LET you come to events and such.

As for the rumor (I mean the truth?), I think the news actually is pretty interesting. Sounds like Sony is planning some sort of Habbo/MySpace/YouTube 3D avatar portal thing with a Trophy Room/360 Achievement system. Hardly something I'd qualify as a feature "nobody cares about" (though I might not personally). It won't be easy to tell if that's really the case until GDC rolls around though.

Oh, people care about it. It's just not earth shattering enough to steal thunder from a company that you probably have friends at.

I'm curious what you mean by not quite.

It wasn't a rumor the moment NeoGAF posted the patent stuff. I wrote my article after that.

Really well-written piece.

As someone who started out on one side of the Industry Wall and then moved to the other, I know the thrill of having inside info and the responsibility of not throwing it around. I also know how tough it can be to give your trust to someone and hope that they don't take advantage of it.

As much as a hungry public likes to hear rumors and gossip and secrets, sometimes it just comes down to respecting relationships you have with other human beings.

Yeah Schild that post was awesome.

Posting the private emails? These guys think they just discovered that Iraq doesn't have WMD?

There is hope. Outside of the Digg/Gawker echo-chamber I've seen a lot of people side with Sony. Too bad Sony caved. I hope they didn't cave at all and just conveniently forget to send out invites to Kotaku from now on.

The worst part of caving is they make themselves look wrong and Kotaku look right - and Kotaku immediately took the opportunity to gloat and pay a backhanded compliment by saying Sony was man enough to make nice. "You fucked up - good job apologizing!" What clowns.

Edit: Even I have exclusive info now and then. It never even occurs to me to break trust and spill the beans.

I ran into one of my oldest friends at AGC, and we got together for burgers.  While we ate, we talked about his current gig, which is a CR post for a game and a company that I won't mention.  He told me what he really thought and felt.  And that's all any of you will ever hear about that conversation.

Which doesn't mean I won't think about what he had to say any time I address CR issues.  I'd love to be able to quote sections of what he said in a game design thread.  He's a bright man whom I trust; his thoughts matter to me.  But he trusts me, and that matters too.

OTOH, it is bothersome that so much of the news is an old boys' club, whether it is about world changing politics or something like this.  But, regardless of the bigger picture, trust matters, and there should be a very good reason for violating it.

On this particular matter, the impression I had, from reading the Kotaku piece, was that this was something they found out about without SONY being involved.  If that wasn't the case, then maybe Kotaku has broken trust with their readers as well.

I would not be surprised if the leaked information they got came from Sony or someone directly related to Sony. I get the bulk of my information from people in companies when the company has no clue those people are talking.

Test.

Im still missing the great benifit of leaking information that cant be spread here.  Exactly what difference does it make if Schild never got to hear those things on the balcony at the SOE party?  Or what ever random insider tips he has picked up.  I mean, what the hell is the purpose of leaking it anyways?  How does this effect gaming journalism at all?  If it all isnt comming out untill the game company makes the official announcement anyways, whats wrong with everybody shutting the fuck up so theres no chance of a leak?  Not flaming, just seriously dont see the point of the argument right now......

It gives the reporters time to write their report, so that when you yell Boo! they can immediately post their storyit.

But they have to agree not to post the story too soon, too.

e.g. when Raph announced his company, two companies reported the announcement at the same instant as the announcement, and one scooping the other would have been bad, as their website wasn't active yet...

But that's different than receiving a tip from a tipster on your tip-phone.

What he said.

Some people talk because they're venting.  Some people talk because they think no one can hear them ranting to a co-worker.  Some people talk because they had too much to drink and are trying to impress a pretty girl.  And some talk just to feel important, when they're making 8 bucks an hour doing the crap work.

When the UO2 document was linked on Dr. Twister's site, the leaker turned out to not even be an Origin employee.  He was (if I remember correctly) a recently fired QA guy in EA Redwood Shores who wanted to get back at the organization.  (note: this turned out to be a really bad idea for him).  There is no way for information to avoid getting out - especially if you want to have a company culture where people people are excited about what other people in the organization are working on.

What a lot of people underestimate, with their slashdot "information wants to be free, yo" attitude, is how much time and energy it takes to recover and deal with a surprise announcement.  Rumors, for example, rarely contain the context decisions are contained in, or key components that turn a wacky, crazy idea into a smart one. 

I think in this case it took more time and energy to react all wrong.  :evil:

Because knowing the truth, or at least what an insider feels is the truth, has the potential to make me (or any other writer) less stupid.  And that is important, for the will to be stupid is a powerful thing.

"As much as a hungry public likes to hear rumors and gossip and secrets, sometimes it just comes down to respecting relationships you have with other human beings"

Spot on dude.

Like/Dislike does not equate to being an asshat when it comes to business. And this goes for any industry, it does not on the other hand mean I want to hang out and drink some beer with people I dont like.

Don't the gaming press and the gaming companies have a symbiotic relationship? Companies want the press to create some buzz around their games. Press wants insider info to get as many eyeballs on their product.

I liked your piece schlid, but it seemed a little dramatic and reminded me of chicken little.

I think Kotaku did everything right up until they posted the private emails.

The reason why I say this is that they got a tip, went around and collected shit Sony said publicly that reinforced that tip and then posted it.

Sony should have said "No comment" or try to give them a "scoop" on something that wasn't all that important.

Either way, both sides made mistakes. Both acted like asshats.

I never actually said the sky is falling. Not even in theory. I'm merely stating that whatever relationship may exist between companies and press was just fucked by Kotaku. It's not crying wolf either - it's exactly what they did. You can call it dramatic, but you have no clue how much information press gets.

At any given time press knows more than they should. Every day, all the time, every member of the gaming press has to bite his tongue about something. The fact Kotaku couldn't bite their tongue for something happening so soon is the problem. Sony really did NOTHING wrong here. Sony knew, the first time Kotaku contacted them that someone had said things they shouldn't have. The only people at fault here are the person who blabbed and Kotaku. Sony, honestly - this time, managed to be involved with something that they couldn't win. They MAY have handled it badly with the emails, but the fact they were published, man - no one ever should have known about them. I want to get drunk and pop Crecente right in the kisser. Scratch that, I want to do it sober. Tasteless motherfucker.

Entertainment journalism serves no particular purpose anyway, besides letting dumbass readers feel like they're "in the know" and somehow connected to the world they're reading about.  Informed criticism is one thing, since it warns you when something sucks and should not have money wasted upon it, but...

If every gaming-related company went to a policy of utter secrecy, and hired a bunch of ex-KGB to enforce this policy, how would anyone be worse off?  Games would still be released, people would still play them, and people here would still talk about them.

That's worse off because it's nothing more than de-personalizing the industry. Treating it no different than bottles of Ajax or canned soup. Entertainment may not need "journalism" per se, but it doesn't need that either.

I'm still not clear on the downside here. I come to sites like f13.net to (mostly) lurk and read insightful debate about MMOs from the perspective of players who play them. Generally the devs don't say much here they don't say on their own blogs (for those devs who have them). I know it probably sucks not to get to go to the back rooms at events like GDC, but that is generally beside the point for sites like this, right? Sure, fan sites probably got screwed a bit, but I doubt one guy posting a lame press release before its time is really going to bring down 1up or IGN. The industry needs lapdog sites just as much as the sites need the industry.

If only it were just a lame press release.

I love you and wish to have your man-babies. And I will be buying you a drink this week if you're going to be at GDC. What really pisses me off is that when it comes time to point out my shortcomings during a performance review, I get these assclowns thrown in my face as the level of posting I should aspire too.

So now we have Kotaku who is one click away from upskirt celeb shots and New York queen gossip coupled with Joystiq and AOL as the paragons of our field. I'll be over here, arranging my shotguns by barrel flavor.

Even in my hypothetical dark alternate world, all our rednames would still be free to come here and talk about the interesting (but non-confidential) things they talk about now.  Every bit of discourse you, Stray, currently encounter would remain as it is, since it's all public anyway.

Or to put it another way, Schild, if everyone in the industry decided to never tell you any supar seekrit infoz ever again, how would the average reader know the difference?

I will volunteer to jump on that grenade and serve as schild's liquor proxy.  8-)

Coordinate with the Waterthread Tard, and let's be Barbarians at the Golden Gate.

The avalanche has already begun. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.

What the fuck are "gaming journalists" going to report on that is so super important that you have to be a mad dog reporter? NOTHING. The scandals in the game industry are TRIFLING, and scandals are the only thing worth maddogging a story about. It isn't like people are dying here; the best we have is kids having seizures to Pokemon games, or letting their babies starve to death because they won't log off of EQ. We all know the PS3 is overpriced, we all know Microsoft is trying to borg whatever market they get into.

Gaming journalism is part of the hype machine, not the Fourth Estate of the Gaming Nation.

Well said. I certainly hold our hobby in a high regard, and respect it as a legitimate creative art and all the rest of it, but Jesus, it's just not that important.

So no real impact from this Kotaku thing for us unwashed masses, then.

Other than bloggers like myself getting MORE ignored from game companies, and folks like schild having to suck up to publishers instead of just emailing them and being given some common fucking courtesy, no, I don't see much impact for Kotaku being a dick.

It's funny, the developers of the games I've dealt with have always been damn helpful when you email them asking about stuff like review copies or interviews. It's when you start to reach the publisher level that it gets shitty. IF they even deign to respond to you, it's usually dismissive. I will give THQ props for being very helpful when I emailed them about review copies of a few X-Box games. None of the other publishers bother responding to me.

The developer/press relationship is usually pretty good. The developers want every single outlet they can get, and they deserve some respect. The bigger publishers don't respect bloggers/indy press outlets, but getting in a tizzy because they want you to wait on an announcement? It's trifling, it's stupid and it makes all the indy writers look bad. But in the end, the hype machine will continue to work like it always has, because there's always another Kotaku out there somewhere.

One aspect of this that I don't think you're seeing is that dependency runs both ways when journalists and their sources both have a need to circulate information or content.

A game developer can't entirely shut out all gaming journalists and commenters even if they wanted to, even if every gaming journalist in the world was a lying cocksucker who would betray any confidence just for shits and giggles. Because when you want to get information out there, where are you going to go? Because when your product depends on buzz and hype, how you going to do it?

It's no less the case when it's Washington reporters and people inside the White House. And that's an instructive case: sometimes when that relationship gets too symbiotic, too cozy, then the overall quality of information available to the public declines precipitiously. We're dealing with some of the fallout of that problem now at the national level.

And, I'd submit, Sony is dealing with some of the fallout of that now as a company, and the games industry has some endemic problems that are a result of its inability to bend its head around the possibilities of games and the necessities of being both a content and service provider. The relationship between gamers and game developers is not like the relationship between TV producers and TV audiences, by and large, "fan studies" notwithstanding. It's a much closer, more complex relationship. Sony has gotten itself in a place where their managers are in see-no-evil, hear-no-evil mode, and that leads to consequences. Among them, ill will from gamers, and attenuated loyalty from people in a position to do expert or journalistic commentary on Sony's business and design decisions. For which I would argue Sony is largely to blame.

Game developers, by and large, would benefit from greater transparency in discussing how and what they do, in multiple ways. I think Schild is going in the opposite direction with this by arguing that Kotaku's dickery somehow makes it impossible for game developers to be confidentially straight with a small class of journalists "in the know". I would rather argue that this shows that the games industry remains, like many cultural industries, too obsessed with controlling the flows of information, and too confident in its ability to manage those flows. When the product is good, the discussions are good. You can help persuade gamers about the goodness of a product by talking transparently about what it is, and how it came to be. When the product has serious issues--as the Sony PSP does, and the PS3 does--you can't somehow manage your way out of that, or use confidential channels, etc.

I'm also wondering: if strong preservation of confidentiality helps someone like Schild get information which he really never can process into some kind of open discussion, who does it benefit except Schild or someone like him? When does it come into play that helps the consumer of information, the reader, a wider community, etc?  I think it does lead to a benefit to a wider readership in the end, but it's not an obvious claim.

None of this is to say that Kotaku aren't dicks. Or that it's right to betray professional and personal confidences. There are plenty of things that people in the industry have told me over the years that helped me to understand design issues. But at the same time, I've occasionally been told that for some reason a shared professionalism between academics and designers should keep me from criticizing MMOG community management, or should lead me to presumptively respect the decisions that designers make as being legitimate. Neither of which I agree with: professionalism and personal trust always has to balance against the delivery of honest, fair-minded criticism. If you let the former consistently outweigh the latter, you become little more than a mouthpiece. That's what has happened to some inside-the-Beltway journalists in the last ten years: they've become court jesters who are easily manipulated by mid-level bureaucrats with an agenda. It's what happens to some cultural journalists: they get so cozy with the subjects of their reporting that they are easily manipulated into praising or hyping a product that the wider audience regards as dubious or flawed.

Money. See, most industries don't have ready-made frothing zealots so eager to get the latest info first that they'd sell their withered genitalia to get an alpha copy. Those industries have to use what we call MARKETING, and that costs money. They use TV ads, direct mail, advertorial pieces in newspapers, print magazines, whatever it takes. The game industry has been consistently dysfunctional, one would even say RETARDED in its growth, because it's had that ready-made base of zealots. Hell, it gets hordes of them to do quality assurance testing FOR FREE, and not only to do it for free, but see it as a fucking privilege. Ford Motor Company would give their employee's medical plans to have it that easy.

Removing the random indy mouthpiece would either mean they'd have to spend more marketing money or find another whore willing to write knob-slobbing puff pieces for a free copy of the game.
 

Except, the publishers don't need indy "journalists." See above. They just make the marketing cheaper.


Sony's problems have to do with the arrogance of success, the arrogance of thinking a $600 console that's not quite fully baked is a good idea. That's fallout they'd have gotten with or without the Kotaku's of the world. The PS2's success has hurt the PS3, because of the ivory tower nature of the design and pricing. Kotaku's snit fit has nothing to do with that.

Except, that the absolute best story any game media outlet can break is... advertising.

Kotaku ran with their story and in a fit of integrity (or lack thereof) broke... advertising.

The only real story in game media is when a game sucks.  Do you know what a 2000 word story is when it's about a sucky game?  It's advertising, there is no such thing as bad press.

Good luck with trying to establish the moral behavior codes and ethics of free advertising outlets.

And it isn't just that it's free advertising outlets. It's parasitic advertising outlets, dependent on the publishers themselves for all they can get in order to be relevant. After all, many fewer people will read a review of a game that's been out 2 weeks. They want that review DAY ONE! And the only way to get that review day one is to pirate the game, buy the game and stay awake for 24 hours playing in order to have enough material to write a relevant review or get a free copy early. That doesn't even take into account that those who can't wrangle free copies by hook or by crook have to spend the money to buy the game before reviewing it. And since not having the review up the day of release means less people read your site, advertising dollars on your site aren't being used to buy games because you don't have any ad dollars.

Thus, gaming sites are generally parasites, sucking up content to excrete as free advertising for the host organism.

I can't tell from the way you write if that's something you consider a good thing, a bad thing, or just a tough-noogies, suck-it-up thing.

It's a make up your own mind thing.

I frankly think it's a bad thing, but I think there's so much rotten with the games industry, it's as much a tough titties stance as anything else. The game industry needs an enema.

From their Fable story:


Reading is hard.

Dont worry that little problem is being fixed :)~

Oh, is it.

Only in the web 2.0 sense of the word, I should have been more clear