Corrupt Games Journos – Let’s Improve Things

Our thoughts on how journalists are becoming indistinguishable from PR mouthpieces are no secret. MCV (p.17, 3/11/06) published our proposition to lead us not into temptation:


“Every so often, the question of whether games journalists count as being part of the games industry is raised. The question is largely based on semantics: of course games journalists (or at least the specialist press) are just as much a part of the industry as the publishers, the PR and the marketers, but they’re not directly involved in the process of making games.

But the truly important question isn’t about whether or not games journalists are part of the industry.

The question that should be asked – strongly – is: “Are journalists independent of the industry?” If they’re not, the specialist press is in trouble.

In a debate about the first question on Sony’s David Jaffe “cake’s” blog some time ago, I reminded every reader of the true purpose of the games media. The free press is there to commentate, to critique, and to inform the public.

Or, in less flowery terms, to test out games and tell you if they’re worth buying.

To carry out this role competently and fairly, journalists have to be impartial and professionally unbiased. Despite this, publishers pour collective millions into the pockets of PR machines whose jobs are to make sure the journalists are talking about their games.

The PR folk achieve this by lavishing journalists with treats, from previews of games through to expensive trips abroad – complete with a quick look at the code, shoehorned between dinner and a lapdance.

Most press events are overblown and unnecessary. Because of the needless luxuriance of these jollies, which often see journalists being flown to fancy locations around the world, hacks become open to suggestion. Maybe these journalists who are supposed to be taking an unbiased and impartial view of a game aren’t quite living up to their readers’ expectations.

It would be unsportsmanly to suggest journalists are deliberately nice about a game because of the attention they’ve received courtesy of that nice PR man’s credit card. But it’s nothing more than natural to assume that maybe, just maybe, the critics might be slightly influenced, even if sub-consciously, when summing up the latest release.

There you are ready to start ripping the game apart before you suddenly remember how nice Mr. PR Man always is to you, and, oh, the fun we all had on that trip, and those developers are just so dang ‘nice’… where was I? Oh yes, maybe I won’t mention that below-par bit of the game after all…

And that’s where the danger lies. A critic is supposed to approach a game just as a reader of their magazine or website would. The problem is the critic has played several versions of the preview code, interviewed the developers, and been arse-kissed by the PR. In some cases, they’ve actually had their faces scanned into the game or have got to record their voice as one of the characters. They’re as far removed from an everyday purchaser you can get.

One of my Anonymous Knights recently commented that reviewers should be made to list all the free stuff they’ve been given, as well as any contact they’ve had with the game’s makers.

I’d propose something stronger: don’t assign the review of a game to the journalist who’s been to press events and seen previous versions of the code unavailable to the public.

Give it to someone who can approach it with a fresh and unbiased perspective, just like those who eventually purchase the game at retail.

Reviewers are only human, so lead them not into temptation. Otherwise, they’re more a part of the industry than they ever should be.”


The original comment we posted on David Jaffe’s blog a year ago was this:

“I think two issues have been confused here. The first is the notion that games journalists/writers/critics/whatever aren’t part of “the industry”. Just like movie critics are an integral and vital element of the movie industry and music critics are likewise for the music industry, games critics are just a much a part of the games industry. An industry is made of elements that if one was removed, the whole would fail. The movie, music and games industries would be nothing without their respective press, as there would be no interface between the consumer and the creators. The second issue is that games “journalists” simply don’t live up to their job descriptions. The point made about magazines being full of PR puff is valid as, speaking as a UK journalist, most magazines are glorified mouthpieces that pander to PR whims. “Features” start and end with press trips laid on by PR firms or publishers, and result in little more than speculation wrapped up in positive spin. Good, honest, aggressive (but fair) journalism is all but impossible to achieve now, but it’s not always the fault of the journalists. While some are content to sit back rewriting press releases, the specialist UK games press is monopolised by a publishing house which, in association with the selective PR firms, calls all the shots when it comes to what gets covered by its magazines and journalists. This effectively makes the concept of independent editorial thinking and a truly free press a fiction. The only journalists brave enough to stand up and speak their minds are quickly shunned and blacklisted from the “club”, leaving true honesty to be the bastion of the exiled, or working journalists cowering behind a shield of anonymity.”


And here’s a shit quality scan of the MCV article:

Antipathy Under Fire

In the 18 months this blog has been running, we’ve taken abuse from all sorts. It’s understandable – human nature means anyone who disagrees with a viewpoint will always be much more likely to bother to respond than if they agree. We learnt that when we disappeared for three months and previously silent supporters e-mailed us until we came back.

Most of the flack we’ve taken has been from certain types of people. Someone we’ve criticised directly or disagreed with their viewpoint, or one of their friends or colleagues. Sometimes fans of a company or writer will jump in to defend their idol. Fair enough, but it’s always weird when someone who’s completely unrelated to the industry pipes up and joins with the nay-sayers, but there’s usually a motive.

If you read MCV or follow the blog, you’ll know about a recent article David McCarthy wrote about new games journalism and the letter we wrote in response. It was standard fare for us. There was nothing new in our arguments, we were just taking the opportunity to put them in print and in context with the views of another writer. And so it took us by surprise when we opened the next week’s issue (29/9) to find two-thirds of the letters page had been dedicated to us.

One of the letters was by Stuart Campbell. We won’t bother typing it here as it wasn’t one of his better pieces of work, (feel free to stick a link to a scan in the comments section if you like though) as despite claiming to be addressing our rants about NGJ, he was really just having another moan about us being anonymous.

“Why doesn’t he say so using his real name (or even just ‘Bill Smith’ or whatever), instead of cultivating the (cough) mysterious ‘RAM Raider’ persona?”

What difference would using “Bill Smith” instead of “RAM Raider” make? Oh well, moving on…

The letter which really caught our eye was by a certain John N Sutherland who is a self-professed “Senior Lecturer in Video Games” for the University of Paisley (funny they only offer courses on computer games technology and art – not quite the same thing, is it?). If it was April, we’d have thought he was having a laugh. In fact we still thought it was someone having a laugh, but this guy really exists. Here’s his largely incomprehensible letter:


“RAM Raider descends in the lowest form of naff media-ism. It’s the kind of laugh, grunt and burp school of boys drinking their first beer from a bottle. What form of mass entertainment other than games would consider taking his (I assume Ram is a him) approach to critical enquiry into the medium? (The kind of industry which rates Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter the BAFTA-winning game of the year seeing as you’re asking.)

Indeed, what, when and how he says what he says is itself a text to be duly analysed. He is part of the message that games put out: a sniggering in darkened rooms at block graphics, of body parts coming apart in mock gore, tempting the Daily Mail to mock schlock horror. (Yes readers, he’s subjecting a rant-blog to an NGJ-style analytical deconstruction. You couldn’t make this shit up.)

There is another possibility, which is the one used in the critical analysis of movies, television, music, drama, books, painting, clothing, language, form, etc. It is to ask the question: what is going on here? Video games are not a unique medium never seen before; they are simply another mass entertainment medium as capable of being subject to deep questioning as any other form of human activity.

From where he stands, Ram Raider is quite possibly, as he admits, incapable of understanding this ‘crap’: the analyses, concepts and sentences used by such critical analysis. But, with a little more education I’m sure he could.

There are probably a range of courses on textual criticism available at his local universities. For one, he needs to realise that objectivity is not an absolute. For example, the meaning of a word such as ‘fun’, which is core the video gaming [sic], is almost entirely subjective. I too play games that I enjoy playing. The question is: why?”


Yes – why? Why talk a load of fucking bollocks about games when you’re supposed to be entertaining and informing your readers – that’s what I’ve been banging on about for so long now.

Perhaps Sutherland should take his own advice on reading up on how to write a legible piece, as responses from friends and colleagues we showed this to ranged from “Is it meant to be a poem? The structure’s all fucked, he’s trying to make it into a poem” to “He’s taking the piss – he must be.”

The best response was from a veteran games journalist who wrote for the mags in the 8-bit glory days of the C64 and Spectrum. Being away from the industry and games journalism for so long, he was completely baffled by it all.

“None of this shit went on in my day. I mean, who the fuck cares? We just had to load up the tape and write some shit about whether it was worth buying. It’s like these people are writing in a different language now – how is that helping? Jesus Christ, I’m pleased I got out of this lark. What a load of bollocks.”

Amen. Anyway, our response was published the following week (6/10):


“My goodness, it looks like I’ve got some thanking to do. After Stuart Campbell pitched up last week asking why I moan about NGJ (although he seemed far more perturbed by my anonymity), along comes Mr. Sutherland to answer the question for me.

From a ‘senior lecturer in video games’ (suddenly ‘Games Journalist’ doesn’t look so bad on the old CV), Sutherland’s letter is a living and breathing embodiment of exactly the kind of nonsense that needs to be kept out of games journalism.

In a series of disjointed and unrelated paragraphs which appear to be making points but, upon closer inspection, aren’t actually saying anything, Mr. Sutherland suggests I’m too thick to understand the needless deconstruction of the magic of gaming.

I’ll be sure to sign up to his three year degree course in video games at the earliest opportunity to rectify this, and get to know the three people in the UK who failed their A-levels whilst I’m learning a whole new art.

I’d also like to thank Mr. Sutherland for putting me straight on a few things that I’d so foolishly been mistaken on. Objectivity is a relatively recent concept apparently – and there was me thinking it had been around as long as subjectivity. Aren’t I silly!

And ‘fun’ is also actually almost entirely subjective, which makes virtually unanimous praise of excellent games such as Half-Life and Elite nothing but a hilarious coincidence. What a fool I’ve been all this time!

Thank you, Mr. Sutherland. Thank you for proving my point about why over-analysis of video games should stay well away from the realm of games journalism.

And thank you for making me quite literally laugh my grunting, burping backside right off.

‘Bill Smith’
RAM Raider Towers
ramraider.blogspot.com”

In Defence Of Old Games Journalism

Dave McCarthy (Taurus from the Triforce) interviewed Gillen a couple of weeks ago about NGJ for MCV. McCarthy was irreverent, but Gillen in between his pretend (we think) pretentiousness threw in a few snipes at OGJ including “there were only three things you could write about games: a review, a preview or a tips guide” and “The best Games Journalism now is better than it’s ever been. We probably should be grateful.” It angered Dave Perry who vented on the Triforum and mentioned his viewpoint in a letter to MCV last week, but the main defence of OGJ was left to us. So here it is, how they printed it:


“Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. That describes Kieron Gillen’s take on NGJ and his opinion in last week’s article by cheeky Garry Bushell impersonator Dave McCarthy (‘Games Journalism RIP?’, MCV 8/9). I’ve not got much space, so I’ll keep this brief.

On Gillen’s Definition: For someone who sneers at NGJ’s detractors for not having read his ridiculous article about it, he needs to get his opinions straight. One minute it’s ‘travel journalism to imaginary places’ (puke), the next it’s ‘anecdote based writing’. Make up your mind, because the difference is quite important, you know.

On NGJ: Why does it exist? Gillen thinks there’s an audience for subjective journalism. You know, like when one of those terrified kids sat there during Bad Influence droning in a monotone, “I like playing Altered Beast because I like playing it.”

Sure, it sums up what that reviewer’s feeling. But isn’s [NOTE TO MCV’S SUB-ED: READ THIS] games journalism there to tell gamers what they might like to buy? And doesn’t that mean you have to be just a tiny bit objective?

On Gillen’s Opinion: Gillen not only thinks there’s a market for this crap, but that it’s overtaken Old Games Journalism in terms of quality. Of course, Jaz Rignall, Stuart Campbell, Gary Penn and Dave Perry only used to be able to write reviews, previews and tips guides back then.

Now we can discuss the existential ramifications of post-feministic perspectives on the use of the silencer in Counter-Strike as a symbol of phallic rape. Wow, I’m so grateful games journalism is so bloody great now.

New Games Journalism is the mother of all misnomers. It’s not ‘new’. And it’s got more to do with the faceless boring writer than the ‘games’. Writing ‘my monitor and me: a pretentious autobiographical account’ will never qualify as journalism.

You want to know what NGJ really is? Old Writer Narcissism.

RAM Raider
ramraider.blogspot.com”

RAM Raider Makes Print Debut

We're going to pretend to be a workblog for once. After some courting by industry rag MCV, we decided to fire off a response to an article they printed about how being a games journalist is the best thing ever. They printed it on page 61 of the 18/11/05 issue:


“Another week, another ill-judged, misinformed and overly-aggressive editorial. In the last issue of MCV (11/11), Matt Martin took it upon himself to declare that games journalists have "one of the best jobs in the world", and forcibly poured scorn upon those of us who have dared to complain about the games industry. Well excuse me Mr. Martin, but you can take your "put up or shut up" attitude and stick it up your arse.

In case Mr. Martin has forgotten, games journalists are part of the national press. The press are there for a specific reason – to tell it how it is. We witness incompetence and poor practice flying at us from all angles, and it's our duty as the press to report this to the consumers. Of course the job is better than scraping grease from biscuit-making machinery, but I bet when Martin did that for a living he wasn't leaping out of bed every morning praising the heavens that he wasn't a one-legged leper with AIDS. Everything's relative.

Ignoring Martin's point about the "hundreds of talented kids out there who would kill" to be in our position (purely because they don't exist – ask any magazine editor how many legible applications he receives in a year and you'll receive a single-figure answer), scolding us for not appreciating the "perks" is yet another flaw in the argument. Does he really think PR trips are laid on as a massive favour for the journalists? They're there solely to convince us to portray their forthcoming games in as favourable a light as possible – glorified advertising at best, borderline bribery at worst. [The second half of that sentence was edited out]

But we should of course all follow Martin's advice immediately, and leave the games industry. After all, why bother standing up and speaking out against everything that's rotten and joyless about the games industry when we could just take the coward's way out? Oh, that's right – because it's our jobs to tell the truth.

We're moaning about the games industry because we care about it. We've seen how great it can be, and it can be saved if only more people would make a stand against charmless asinine journalism promoting poor industry decisions. Martin demands that we should "rekindle the passion", but if there's anyone more passionate about games than the journalists who are prepared to openly debate the games industry, warts and all, regardless of what the PR and publishing overlords dictate, then they've done an excellent job of flying under the radar.

How about this for a counter-proposal – end the sterility coursing through the veins of modern games journalism and rekindle the fun and honesty, or piss off.

RAM Raider”


MCV’s reply was “It’s great to see such passion, but surely the “coward’s way out” is criticising from behind the safety of a pseudonym…?”

The answer to that is simple and obvious. We’ve all seen what happens to journalists who actually do their jobs and tell the truth instead of toeing the corporate line so, to quote from a comment we left on some guy’s blog a couple of weeks ago, “honesty is the bastion of the exiled and the anonymous”.

We’re not ready to be exiled from the industry yet, so we’ll stick with anonymity for now.