Are Videogame "journalists" often totally clueless?

This is a question I am always asking by reading some reviews, previews or just news article. Isn't it common sense that you normally should be pretty knowledgeable about a certain topic before you actually publish it? Especially with such a passionate readership that normally knows much more about this topic than yourself.- Wouldn't you be extra careful?

Why I am asking this right now? I am following right now this Gamespot comparison about the new and old consoles and it already was updated four times. It is still wrong and even gets worse...

Here are 3 different Versions:

Of course not all are like that. For example I think Jeff knows a ton about videogames most people do not and there are many others as well but why are so many people clueless about even the easiest stuff like hardware specs

I feel that quantity is more important than quality for a lot of these sites, and they don't care enough to fact check all of the stuff they put out.

Well I think some of the "journalist" become more "advertisers" because of how they relay information.

Company tells us X, we tell you X. Usually this goes without any opinion at all and comes from the mouth of the company really just sort of "linked" through journalist.

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In many other media forms(tv/movies) companies would probably kill to have this information power over their respective markets.

Gaming journalism is a fucking joke. Either they're all paid off, or they just don't care about things enough to pursue facts. All this "journalism" they do is just sensationalist bullshit and it gives actual, respected journalists a bad name.

Yeah sorry for about that. Fixed it.

And for the rest I agree but it is also pretty sad. Let us not talk about leaving out the whole GPU thing for these consoles but why would you even do such a thing when you do not even know that the 360 had an optical drive in it....

Money does seem to come into play when alll your ads are for a certain game or console and you have to review that games competition.

It's important to remember that it's an enthusiast press. "Real" journalism is pretty much non-existant. Even the few cases where people talk about actual journalism it's borderline cases. But then again, what do you expect from news about a luxury entertainment product ? It's not like movies or sports are much better. Actually thinking about it wouldn't it be way more correct to call it videogame reporting rather than videogame journalism ?

@sjwho2: like this?

Everyone who works in gaming media is not a journalist.

There are journalists, personalities, support staff, reviewers, and critics. Those pictures were most likely done up by someone who works behind the scene at the site, not one of the major faces. Its a mistake that should have been caught, but it is pretty crazy to use it as a bullet point against gaming media as a whole.

Here's the short of it, gaming media is no different than any other form of media that covers something at the enthusiast level.

Because what you are reading is not "journalism." Video game writers label themselves as the, "enthusiast press," for a reason. They are just fans that like to write and anyone that looks to them as a sage of gaming truth are foolish.

It is just one of the recent examples of my claim or experience in this regard.

As for the rest. I think there is a difference since it is normally pretty easy to put something like that together by investigating a little bit in the internet or even ask Sony and Microsoft for specs. This is not really science. I get why there are no GPU specs which normally should be also very important for a system, but there are so many little errors even after updating it 3 times, that it should be pretty obvious you should not do it. And maybe even delete the whole article.

And there is also stuff like that:

@darji said:

@sjwho2: like this?

Exactly. How are you going to be critical of a thing you are directly funded by.

This is the difference between movie(and other media) and game journalist. Integrity is often pushed aside for the very realistic approach of "this company is paying our bills"

-Not to mention click-bait. That stuff is the worse.

When did the idiotic paranoia of gamefaqs and NeoGaf invade GB? Been noticing them more and more the last couple of months.

@sjwho2: Yeah I remember the whole Kane and Lynch accident when Jeff was fired for a bad review of a game from one of the "main" sponsors of the site. It is really hard to actually believe a review is honest if your site is sponsored by said company

Alex Albrect is not a journalist, and is a self proclaimed writer/directer. We can pull hundreds of examples of people talking out of their ass in front of a camera on ESPN alone.

Fine me an enthusiast publication that does not have ads from what they are covering.

Gaming media gets such a horrible wrap for some mind boggling reason. What is perfectly normal everywhere else is some crazy taboo when games are involved.

CBSi was not the ones in charges when the whole deal with Jeff went down.

Like this ?

http://uk.movies.yahoo.com/

http://www.rogerebert.com/

Just to show two examples.

@sjwho2: What are you talking about? Other media does the same thing. That's why the business sides of media outlets are almost always separate from everything else.

It's easy when you care about something to assume everyone else in your hobby knows it too, or should know it. Knowledge is pretty scattered though for most people. I'm sure whoever wrote those charts knows more than you about other things.

Reviewers are in a bubble though. They get all systems and have access to all games, and for reviews they play games in situations most people never would, like binges. So you have to keep in mind when reading a review that it's a very particular kind of opinion that might not really pertain to you.

Don't you be talking garbage about my Alex Albrecht. Love that dude.

As for being a journalist, he's not one. he's just a guy who plays games and I think he'd be the first one to say so. On TRS he was continually saying that he only liked a small selection of games and pretty much only stuck to what he liked.

@darji said:

This is a question I am always asking by reading some reviews, previews or just news article. Isn't it common sense that you normally should be pretty knowledgeable about a certain topic before you actually publish it? Especially with such a passionate readership that normally knows much more about this topic than yourself.- Wouldn't you be extra careful?

Why I am asking this right now? I am following right now this Gamespot comparison about the new and old consoles and it already was updated four times. It is still wrong and even gets worse...

Here are 3 different Versions:

Of course not all are like that. For example I think Jeff knows a ton about videogames most people do not and there are many others as well but why are so many people clueless about even the easiest stuff like hardware specs

I'm about 99% sure who you mean to be getting mad at is the graphic designer and not any "videogame journalists".

As a guy who has made plenty of mistakes like that in my past... sometimes it's no fun to be a designer.

Anchorman contest at the bottom of the Yahoo site, but yeah, Ebert was usually pretty disconnected from that side of the business other than the whole free movie thing. Gamers sure love to rail on reviewers for getting free systems and games all of a sudden.

@jazgalaxy: She actually claimed she made it herself so I do not think it was some designer at all. This is really not hard to do to be honest.

As for Albrecht. My bad but still as a well known Xbox fan he should at least know that you can not play MP with silver before going to a show talking about this stuff....

@drdarkstryfe: I would never do that. For example they need it for their job so I personally think it is totally fine to get a box or these games all the time. Today Jim Sterling made a video about this topic and I totally agree with him here.

Also I think there is a difference between an add and the whole site used up for the same company. I totally understand for the needs of adds but do you really need a whole site sponsored by a company you then also have to do a HUGE review about one of their products?

I think part of that has to do with Sessler's Twitter freakout, which may or may not have revolved around the Sony event in New York where journalists went to pick up their pre-release PS4s.

@hailinel: Actually Jim said that Sessler wanted a DEVKIT wihch only really big companies get and also open up piracy. And in the end Sony gave in and gave him one.

I can't remember the last time I actually heard or read of anyone in the media/analytical side of the games industry refer to themselves as a "Journalist". I only ever see angry people online perpetuate that label. They usually call themselves critic enthusiasts or analysts.

Eh, gaming enthusiast press is an entertainment personality gig, not a serious job in the literature sense (and full time reviewer is probably not a thing for most people). If you leave an RSS feed open on a news aggregation site you'll probably know more than most of the games press types - or at least my listening to (sometimes to many) podcasts indicates that. It is a decent gateway job to move into a portion of the entertainment industry if you are not doing the personality driven thing, but I don't think something like "game reviewer", "feature writer" or "news editor" is much other beyond a dead-ender career at any point.

Giant Bomb is sort of the ahead of the curve largish site in terms of really focusing on being solid entertainment.

That or they like to massage the facts to make a story sound better. Russ Pitts' fluff-piece about Xbox Live started with the line, "How Microsoft's engineers created the world's first broadband-connected game console." This is factually incorrect. He tried to defend it by pointing out that the Dreamcast shipped with a dial-up modem. However, that doesn't prove his case, since it still had a broadband adapter before the Xbox came out, making it a broadband-connected console before the Xbox could ever be the first.

I guess "How Microsoft engineers created the world's first game console with an ethernet port built in" doesn't sound as good.

@monetarydread said:

Pretty much sums it up. Also most organisations separate the people who obtain revenue streams (getting advertisements on their sites / magazines) and the people who create content. I'm not suggesting its chinese wall stuff but I doubt there are many people who create content are ALSO making deals for advertising. A lot of professionals have people marketing to them frequently (see doctors) but can still behave ethically, hopefully some of the people in the industry view themselves with enough integrity to also behave in a similar fashion.

Also would you call morning news anchors journalists? Because a lot of these people who are cited as journalists have more in common with anchors.

That's why I never understand the backlash about doritos and mountain dew. Turns out they don't care what you score a game.

We are this personality driven sites, it's a lot like Bill O'Reilly who has his own spin on the big network manger's notes on what are the talking points of the day. So they have "enough" facts to just get by to "entertain" an audience. Hence Alex Albrect comes off like Regis Philbin on a drunken day with Kathie Lee Gifford.

Seriously, I love it when Ryan Davis just called out Respawn on "Cloud AI" term on Titanfall, that's what we want. We want them to be called out like that.

I'd say not clueless but ironically very often really out of touch with the common consumer.

I dunno, what is "journalism"? (follow up question: Should Journalism talk?)

To me, it's just people who write stuff that's posted in a story. Sure, some people are more creditable then others. But I don't see any reason to trust a newspaper or local news network anymore then gamespot. To me, they are the same thing. They have a product people want to read that they put ads into to make money.

No need to make a new thread about this but damn this is one of the worst reviews ever. Not because of the score no. but because of the text. Does no one really check reivews fiorst before they go up and tell people that you can not write something like that? And no this is not even a matter of different taste or opinion.

http://venturebeat.com/2013/12/06/gran-turismo-6-review/

some highlights:

First sentence:

My first time on the track was a disaster. I hit the wall three times. I spent more time off the track than on it. I even wound up driving the wrong way at one point. My lack of digital driving skills is without question. Yet, here I am reviewing Gran Turismo 6, Polyphony Digital’s latest entry in its long-running “Real Driving Simulator” franchise

More:

There’s an age old argument that simulation racing games are ‘just cars going around in circles’ – Gran Turismo 6 has no retort.

Gran Turismo 6 is not a game for the uninitiated. It’s made for racing fans by racing fans. It’s for people who know that front/rear weight distribution isn’t a euphemism for holiday weight gain and that the Gap doesn’t refer to a mall clothing store. As a nonracing fan, there’s a lot about it I still don’t understand. What are performance points and why are they important? I have no idea what torque is. I have no idea what an exhaust manifold is or why it improves my car’s racing ability. Admittedly, some of this information is available in the game, but it’s densely packed into the user-interface and might prove intimidating to newcomers. I didn’t care enough to look for it. More importantly, Polyphonic did nothing to make me care. Outside of a few beginner driving lessons, it feels as if you’re supposed to know all of this stuff already, and that could alienate some of the new blood this aging franchise needs to stay relevant in the next console generation.

But thee are more reviews like that: (Note it is not abotu teh score:

Polygon: If you're not into racing games, it can be easy to dismiss them as repetitive — "You're just driving in circles."

Videogamer: There’s an age old argument that simulation racing games are ‘just cars going around in circles’ – Gran Turismo 6 has no retort. Played for 11 hours. Drove quite a few Mazdas.

I mean WHAT?

Spoiler Alert - Stop going to IGN

the reviews i cant stand are the in progress reviews where they give you and update just do the review already..or when is the review going to be on the site or the exact time its going to be on. Why we can't put it up earlier or who really cares? i mean most sites now have reviewers i have no clue who they are? so i don't i know what their tastes are in the first place and whether i can relate to it

Xbox One doesn't have bluetooth...Wow.

There are youtube channels that have a more critical and in-depth views than the video game covering websites. Its probably because they have more time on their hands. I think they have realised that certain viewers will always have more knowledge about a certain genre because they focus their time on it. Its more about shedding a light on the newcomers that don't have prior experience with the subject.

One thing that is bothering me is that the reviewers tend to value story a bit more over gameplay. I think that for a medium that has one unique quality over the rest it should be valued the most.

You have no idea.