Random Opinion On Games Journalism Discourse From Me, An Unwashed Uneducated Unprofessional Who Only Occasionally Wrote

(To emphasize: my opinion on this is basically worthless. But as someone on the outside who enjoys looking in, this incident has provided me with a lot of food for thought.)

The hot-button Discourse on social media in the wake of the Insomniac leaks has a lot of people knuckling down on black-and-white moral positions. I feel it does disservice to what are actually multiple truths that run counter to each other at first glance, but are all valid and are worth consideration.

I don't think games journalists should ever be beholden to the PR cycle of corporations and should not exist as hype mouthpieces. I believe pretending leaks should never be reported on, as some are suggesting, is ludicrous and plain irresponsible by way of omission. If there is content providing industry insight, I would hope games journalism should feel obligated to report its existence - regardless of the illegality by which it was obtained.

But they are also reporting on art, and I think we need to be mindful about situations in which the artist may be compromised, especially in scenarios where this art is extremely unfinished or easily misrepresented. Signal boosting that compromise in irresponsible ways really only exacerbates that harm.

To me, being mindful about this is not the same as "cozying up" or becoming a marketing stooge. These compromises have real impacts on the health and safety of individual artists. Boiling down arguments against reporting on leaks as people treating corporations as best friends - as I have seen some journalists doing - comes off as deeply reductive and boasting a moral superiority that seems kind of unearned, and the "what about meeting review embargoes and previews" or "what about previous XYZ leak" hand-wringing smokescreens the whole issue.

To me, outlets reporting such events at a high level is fine, even necessary. Selectively examining information in leaks, that have an impact on the creative landscape, actually fulfils the social responsibility of journalism.

However, breaking down the news into individual specific clickables with no function past "look what's coming!" as some outlets have openly done, just looks to me like access journalism enabled by theft. Even without showing the leaked content, low-effort articles about extremely unfinished work only increase the likelihood of bad actors searching for it themselves, and dogpiling employees already frustrated by having their art misrepresented.

Pretending that Just Doing Your Job absolves games media of this kind of responsibility is delusional. Game devs have regularly mentioned that the way leaked content is reported directly impacts the art itself and behaving like journalistic integrity exists in a vacuum, for an entertainment industry whose consumers regularly invent uniquely awful ways to abuse creatives, to me displays kind of a lack of empathy for the people that make up its lifeblood.

I've been saying this for years--Jason Schreier even blocked me on Twitter for saying that reporting leaked/unfinished art was not journalism.

Journalists never have a responsibility to not report things unless such reporting would violate an agreement or subject people to real and serious harm (such as reporting the address of someone hiding from a stalker.)

I don't read articles on stolen game assets and if I were running a journalistic outfit I probably would not report on the specifics because I don't personally think it's interesting, but the idea that journalists have some kind of obligation to the "artists" they are reporting on or, even worse, to individual products is a misunderstanding of what journalism is.

It's just reporting what's true within some very narrow ethical guidelines.

It's not a journalist's responsibility to worry about how their reporting will affect their subjects unless they have made an agreement such as getting an interview on the condition of anonymity (protecting your sources) or unless their reporting would cause real and serious harm (spoiling a game does not.)

A good journalist should probably be a little bit of an asshole, because good journalism often involves hurting people to some degree or other, even people who don't deserve to be hurt (when a company collapses because of a report on fraud the janitor loses his job even though he did nothing wrong.)

I'm not saying it's great journalism to report spoilers for some game or whatever. As I said I wouldn't do it because I think it's not really newsworthy, but I can't judge anyone who does because...journalists' jobs are to report the truth even when that inconveniences people.

The question is, what constitutes mere "inconvenience" and what constitutes "real and serious harm"? Is that for the journalist to decide, or for the artists caught in the crossfire? It is one thing to uncover and critically examine the business decisions of multi-billion dollar organizations. Does it really serve the industry to specifically signal boost barely-placeholder art to get as many eyes from the public on it as possible, knowing how vulnerable their creators are to misrepresentation, death threats and other forms of abuse?

I think truth for the sake of truth is a noble ideal, but deliberately ignoring the human impact that good journalism has on society voids its purpose. If all that was needed were reported facts, we could leave games journalism entirely in the hands of machines.

I despise how secretive the video game industry is for seemingly no reason, yet most of the leaked infomation is barely newsworthy. However I can't think of real world situation where this worldn't get reported regardless of the cost.

@bludgeonparagon: There is a whole field of journalistic ethics (and law around journalism too) that defines what constitutes an acceptable harm to the subjects of journalism. There are gray areas but "oh noes they spoiled the plot" isn't anywhere near those lines.

The idea that journalists shouldn't report because sometimes people are dicks about it is a very smart one...if your goal is suppression of journalism and free speech. I mean apply that to political journalism, where the stakes are much higher and you'd never see anything reported. These leaks do not single out any individuals for abuse and to my knowledge nobody has ever been harmed because of some plot leak, even when that plot was extremely controversial. And rabid fans will do death threats and other horrendous behavior regardless of when the information comes out. Awful people do not get a veto on journalism.

Journalists are not loyal to "the industry." They have absolutely no obligation to worry about the companies they report or what the "artists" want them to say. Thinking that they should worry about what is good for the industry fundamentally misunderstands the role of journalists. Journalists serve first their audience and second, sometimes, the public discourse. They are naturally adverse to the industry and should be. That doesn't mean they need to always be dicks or not take some care in truly sensitive matters, but they have independent journalistic ethics boards to tell them about that stuff, definitely not the subjects of their reporting.

Reporting can't be done by machines because machines don't actually understand facts they are only able to remix information created by humans.

@bigsocrates: Time and time again, we've seen developers get harassed when leaks like this happen. That isn't the fault of journalists, but it ought to be a consideration at the very least.

I think there are two separate issues going on here. One is about institutions and one is about individuals. No one should give a shit that a corporation's plans for marketing products have been disrupted. At the same time, it's extremely shitty that people's art has been shown to the public before they were ready for it. That does not serve the public in any way.

There is a third issue going on in this particular case, which is the selective nature of the reporting. The vast majority of people who write and talk about video games are not journalists, they're enthusiast press, and it shows.

They are not secretive for no reason. Video Games are now a billion dollar business, and the competition is fierce. It's the reason Namco decided to release Tekken 8 in 2024, when the game is already finish and could be released this year. Because they didn't want to go up against Capcom and Netherrealm Studios. That's the mindset. They don't want any leaked information getting out, because of competition and how gamers these days have low attention spans and whine and complain about every little thing. Look at The Last of Us: Part 2. Even though the game was still an overall success, the massive leak that happened did hurt them quite a bit. It's like any other major industry. The car industry, and film industry, and so on. The last thing any of them want is a project getting leaked before they're ready to reveal it themselves so they can fully control the message. Which is also why E3 is now dead, speaking of video game journalism.

@bladeofcreation: Time and time again we've seen developers get harassed. Full stop.

They get harassed when games are delayed. They get harassed when games are released with bugs. They get harassed when games are released with aspects people don't like. They get harassed over business decisions they have no control over.

The leaks don't cause the harassment. It's caused by the toxic fanbase's reaction to LITERALLY ANYTHING. You can't let it dictate your actions.

Now there are considerations that are relevant here. For example personal information should be redacted from any released documents. That's definitely in line with journalistic ethics. You try your best to prevent people from coming to harm for things that are totally not newsworthy, like the home address of a writer or artist. But you don't not report something just because some asshole will have a bad reaction. And it's not your fault when they do.

It is shitty, FOR THEM, that people's art got out early. That's on Insomniac and the hackers. Saying it doesn't serve the public in any way is wrong, though, because the public wants to know. It clearly does serve the public, which is to say the audience, because they click on the articles. I'm not saying that should be the only driving determinant behind what gets reported, but it's maybe the most important.

I don't personally read this stuff but a lot of people do. And a journalist's first loyalty should be to her audience.

As for the quality of game journalism vs enthusiast press etc...I probably don't disagree with you there except that enthusiast press can be journalism too.

@av_gamer: Movie studios lay out plans years in advance even outling story arcs etc, sometimes plans change yet movies tick along fine, the same with box office figures.

If Namco want to hold Tekken 8 for a better in window, what does it matter what a loud minority think? The Last of Us: Part 2 is a great example looking at the furore around the game you'd think it struggled, yet its out pacing Part 1 at a much higher price without a native PS5 port. It also has a very high completion rate, the people who bought and played the game really really liked it. Why keep this a secret? its literally only good news.

If more people knew how the sausage got made they might actually learn something and react less irrationally. E3 died because God of War Ragnarok sold 15m copies of the back of two YouTube trailers. It doesn't make sense to spend 20/30m putting on a show to shout over the competition, when a random Tuesday and YouTube will do.

@av_gamer: There's a difference between full games being leaked into piracy and information leaking.

There's no real evidence that informational leaks hurt games.

The game industry is secretive not out of any proof that it's important to be secretive but because it's just the culture that's grown up around games for various reasons. The same reason that a game like Mario Wonder has lives in it. It's just convention.

There are specific times when it does work out (HI-Fi Rush's shadow drop got that game a ton of attention all at once when it was already available) but there are also times when leaks act as marketing and increase interest. Nobody really knows if leaks hurt business, but companies hate them, of course, because they want to control the narrative around their games and they have expensive maketing plans.

Did the GTA VI trailer leaking early hurt that?

This is entirely distinct from the idea of release windows. I don't think anyone argues that it doesn't sometimes make sense to delay the release of a game to a more favorable window if you're up against impossible competition.

But the point is, with movie studios, is that they don't want any of those plans leaked beforehand. And in some cases changed the plot and direction because there was a massive leak prior, and they went back to the drawing board. No industry likes to be blindsided, whether you believe this is silly or not is your choice.

What does it matter what a loud minority think? Because they can potentially do damage to sales, this is what the industry believes. Again it's about the bottomline. The Last of Us: Part 2 got lucky because it's still an amazing, well crafted game, and that's mainly what saved it from the plot backlash onslaught on the internet before it was released. And notice that Naughty Dog had to release the game early because of the massive leak. They didn't want to do this.

It's well known that the main reason E3 failed is because of Nintendo starting their Direct yearly broadcast. Why? Because Nintendo is very serious about having complete control of their properties and controlling the message of said properties, with an army of ruthless lawyers at the ready. When other game developers saw how this worked for them, they got on board and followed the leader. This was how you got State of Play from Sony and so on. You had huge Youtube trailers of games being viewed by millions long before E3 started to tank.

@av_gamer:

But the point is, with movie studios, is that they don't want any of those plans leaked beforehand.

I'm not talking story beats or spoilers but knowing a thing exists, knowing Insomniac are planning an X-Men title doesn't really do anything. Seeing GTA6 a fews days early aint gonna do anything its silly to think it will, even if it isn't my choice.

The narrative around GT Sport was that it wasn't a proper GT game and Forza's mindshare had overtaken it, yet seeing 12m copies sold and at a decent price kinda shifts perspective. Its the inverse of The Last of Us, Drive Club & Days Gone with several others have done much better than publicly perceived, why the secrecy?

Nintendo publish detailed sales figures annually even during Wii U it hasn't done the Switch any harm.

The Nintendo Directs had a minor part in killing E3. When publishers started focusing on fewer bigger games the prestige titles which need massive media campaigns. When your spending 150m letting people know you exist, then E3 is simply not needed.

@av_gamer: Nintendo and everyone else stepping away from E3 to do their own thing was not, to my understanding, driven by "control" so much as it was by not wanting to pay E3 enormous sums of money for no real benefit when the directs accomplished the same things. That's why they also stopped having booths and other stuff that had nothing to do with presentaitons.

And Microsoft eventually stepped away too for a lot of its stuff even though Microsoft has always leaked its E3 stuff. Basically a tradition at this point.

I guess in the end you can't prevent what you can't prevent, even if you tried, if you report gaming news and don't report on a popular leak then i don't feel like you're doing your job, the extent at which you report on it is up to you, even if you don't include all the leaked info you've still got the page view, and those desperate enough can find it all on Reddit or elsewhere.

In terms of employee harassment it's not something that will ever go away, but to play devils advocate i have to point out some game devs who kind of ask for it, there are some who make themselves very available on Twitter and feel the need to attack their attackers, if you're very passionate about the project you're working on i can see it being hard to take that abuse without defending your friends on the team and yourself but it only fuels the fire, usually followed by "Well, guess i need to step away from twitter for a while" which, i would have recommended from the start.

I feel it happens more with game development than in other industries, imagine if a chocolate maker changed the recipe and the guy responsible proudly shouts about it on twitter, naturally he's going to get a ton of hate, it's better not to expose yourself to millions of people if you can help it.

@cikame: I get what you're saying but a lot of devs have also gotten harassed just for being women or POC or trans or whatever, or trying to include stories about people who share those characteristics. Like yeah, the guy from Typhoon Studios kind of brought it on himself by being extremely obnoxious and demanding that streamers should pay to stream games. But I don't think he got a lot of death threats (though I don't know) and for every one of him there are 10 people who put out an indie game about a biracial lesbian and it gets some attention and then suddenly they get flooded with negativity just because some people are hot garbage.

But that's what I'm talking about, which is why I used the Last of Us: Part 2 example. Yes, knowing a game exist or is coming out does not hurt anything, but spoiling the details of the game does, hence the secrecy in the first place. We all knew a Wolverine game was coming out, because Insomniac announced it a year or so ago. But they didn't want plot details and other stuff getting out. Which is why the hackers tried to ransom them to keep silent. Think of it as a chef who is known for a certain dish that makes him/her millions because it is so good. And the main reason it's good is because of a so-called secret ingredient. Now said secret ingredient gets leaked and now everyone knows. Sure, you can say it's no big deal, because it was cinnamon anyway. But now everyone knows, and you're going to get a ton of imitators trying to copy the recipe. This is why many in the gaming industry don't want their development process getting out. Sure, it might be dumb, but it's business and people are paranoid when it comes to business.

@bigsocrates It was both, but I personally believe it was more about control because of how Nintendo is a control freak over their properties.

@av_gamer: The Last of Us Part 2 leaks caused a big reaction because a small portion of gamers were super salty about a couple of specific elements of that game.

They would have been super salty whether it leaked first or not. Now you can argue that some people might have bought the game before they knew if not for the leaks because of embargos and such, but that just speaks to why there is a journalistic angle here. If a game has controversial elements (and for the record I had no issue with either of the things that people were mad about in TLOU2) that might affect people's buying decisions then that's newsworthy. That's important to the audience.

There are lots of other games that have leaked or where the story has leaked and it has had no effect.

Tears of the Kingdom leaked before launch and some people got mad about spoilers but nobody argues that the leaks hurt sales.

TLOU2 is a special case because they were hiding major elements of the game.

No journalist has a responsibility to help a game company hide elements of its game. And while secrecy might make sense when you have a big twist most games aren't like that at all. Hi-Fi Rush, a game that was successfully kept secret up until launch, had zero surprising twists. You could see them all coming a mile away.

@bigsocrates: You misunderstood. I'm not arguing whether journalist has a right to report leaks or not, My post have solely been about why many developers in the video game industry are secretive about their games and don't want leaks to come out.

And you can say The Last of Us: Part 2 was a special case, and it usually doesn't hurt the sales of other games this happens to, but the point is, the potential of it happening is still there, hence the paranoid behavior. If there is one thing Baldur's Gate 3 might have proven, is that there really isn't a need for the clock and dagger stuff. But I don't think many developers while go that route anytime soon.

As far as my opinion on journalism, I mostly agree with you. The news is the news.

@av_gamer: I think I mostly agree with your recent post. Especially the part about it being paranoid behavior most of the time. In certain specific scenarios it might be beneficial but the game industry defaults to secrecy to a ridiculous degree. Most leaks don't actually hurt sales, but paranoid publishers don't see it.

@av_gamer: It literally doesn't make any difference as @bigsocrates says its has happened in the past and we have no evidence to the contrary. The vast majority of consumers don't follow gaming or any other media that close. Reddit, forums and gaming media are a tiny fraction of the audience, most people simply don't care.

That logic doesn't even work The Last of Us 2 sold 2.8 million units in the first month, its at 10m+ like with every other game most people play well beyond release day anyone can spoil the story themselves, heck movies often give away most of the plot and key moments in their own trailers. If people want to seek out spoilers beforehand they can, only a small number play day one.

The Last of Us 1 game sold incredibly well after the TV show, its basically the same plot.

@bigsocrates said:

Yet all of the same people who are reporting on the content of these leaks are the very same people who will gladly sign NDAs from these companies for access to early/pre-release versions. These people and these video game sites already keep secrets and limit their reporting to content and timelines that are beneficial for the video game companies.

@bladeofcreation: Every journalist keeps secrets if that's the price of getting information from a story. Journalists in every walk agree not to reveal their sources all the time, and agree to restrictions for access to certain documents or materials. It's not the same thing at all and it's legally binding.

That's like saying that the New York Times is keeping government secrets if they agree to not report on certain sensitive aspects of documents they are given access to for another story. That doesn't mean other reporters aren't tying to get that same info through other means. It's just how certain aspects of journalism works.

And many journalists don't do that at all since not all outfits that cover games do preview or even review coverage and often they ae done by different staff.

@bladeofcreation: Leaks can be handled differently, though. If the cat's out of the bag, they might as well run it. And things like leaks don't always come from the press sector.

@shindig: I'm not saying they should be prevented from running it. I just think it's extremely shitty to do so.

@bigsocrates:This is nothing like saying that the NYT is keeping government secrets. This is writing about entertainment. It's nowhere near as important or vital as other forms of journalism.

If things that I wrote were leaked (or stolen) to the press and shared before I was done working on them, I'd be pretty fucking pissed off. That's where I'm coming from with this.

yeah, this is a quandary that- at the risk of sounding like an noncommittal coward- i can see from both sides (withholding reporting in an attempt to minimize impact vs. reporting details...goes without saying i don't think anyone should be reposting the stolen material itself).

at the end of the day, outlets will have their own code of ethics, so they should be clear and consistent about those and everyone should focus on their own individual comportment. newsworthiness is not a universal standard, so whatever happens- it's on editorial or individuals to figure out if they can sleep at night.

speaking for myself- i would probably want to work for an outlet that didn't feel obligated to try and make lemonade out of others' lemons of misfortune. and yes- i know that's 'The News,' but counterpoint- we're talking about an entertainment company that was extorted and exposed product/business plans- not exactly the Pentagon Papers. it's not quite ambulance chasing, but it's in the ballpark (for me). maybe paparazzi is a better analogy.

The idea that this would somehow not get reported on is truly ridiculous.

@bladeofcreation: The two examples are similar in that journalists will often agree to only report on certain aspects of things in order to be granted limited access. Because they wouldn't get to do any reporting if they didn't agree there's a net gain for the audience. But that's a specific agreement for a specific purpose and doesn't mean they are "withholding information" generally. They are entering into binding agreements in order to get information they have no other means to get. Whether that's looking at an important document to confirm a story or getting to see a game early.

If my incomplete work were shown and judged ahead of time I, too, would be furious. But so what? A journalist needs to be willing to piss people off. And the Insomniac people should be mad at the hackers and their own lax IT security people, not the people reporting on stuff that's out there now anyway.

I want to clarify and get a little specific here, because to split hairs here I'm not entirely referring to just plot spoilers:

In the days that the Insomniac hack occurred, a lot of straight-up previsualization gameplay footage was released. We're talking white-box levels with untextured models testing movement and combat, stuff that clearly makes up the meat and potatoes of the videogame part of the game. Publications like Kotaku and IGN laid the existence of these and other details out, with headlines for individual games that were clearly designed for clicks by people who wanted to see it, even if the footage itself wasn't necessarily included.

Amongst this signal-boosting, bad-faith actors online whipped up a frenzy on social media by finding and posting said test footage, and the devs from the team voiced their pain and frustration at having that work so badly misrepresented. Pretending like there is no correlation at all between the two is being willingly ignorant in pursuit of some absolute moral high ground, and telling victims "don't be mad at us we just reported the facts" to minimize their feelings on it is missing the forest for the trees when it comes to the way in which that sensitive information was handled.

Kotaku today released an article about Spiderman 2's budgetary concerns, Insomniac's staffing issues and the overall problems with AAA development. If they had lead with this kind of analytical content instead of low-effort clickbait, I wouldn't have found their response to this nearly as disrespectful.
I am not saying that journalists should not cover this kind of content at all - in fact I'm very sure what I said supports the opposite. I am not calling for the suppression of journalism and free speech or whatever - as I stated in my original post, critically disseminating important information that meaningfully shapes the landscape of the industry actually fulfils the social responsibility of journalism. But what some of these publications did on day one of the incident was absolutely not that, and I think the journalists still being hyper-defensive about this issue today are doing their colleagues with a different stance a disservice.

@bludgeonparagon:

Kotaku today released an article about Spiderman 2's budgetary concerns, Insomniac's staffing issues and the overall problems with AAA development. If they had lead with this kind of analytical content instead of low-effort clickbait, I wouldn't have found their response to this nearly as disrespectful.

I would be very wary of reading too much into this none of us know how the day to day operations of a video game studio actually works, we are getting fragmented snap shots of information which can easily be falsely interpreted.

"Games journalism" isn't really a thing, as they've been trade press for 20 years now

@bludgeonparagon: It seems what you're arguing here is not so much about what should be reported on and rather how things should be reported. And sure, you can always criticize reporters for how they present things and what they focus on. But that's kind of a different argument. Obviously things should be presented with context and in a way that isn't going to promote false narratives. But that's not so much about worrying about the subjects of their reporting as "don't do bad journalism."

It's not about the leak. Sensationalism and misleading articles are bad no matter where the information comes from.

@bigsocrates: The crux of my original post was mostly that calls to never report on leaks were misguided and silly, but also that exercising restraint on the ways the leaks were covered in consideration of the victims is not the anathema to "real" journalism that journalists were claiming it was.

A number of orgs like Gamespot decided against covering the leaks in detail, and some of the responses from fellow journalists were downright questioning the professionalism of those who took that stance.

I don't think being mindful of the health and safety of one's subject is necessarily disparate from good journalism, especially when bad journalism has the power to do immeasurable harm. And after all, it's just as much about what [i]isn't[/i] being said as what is being said.

@thepanzini: not particularly the central point of the topic, but this is par for the course with all exposes, Kotaku or Bloomberg or otherwise. However, it does give voice to concerns about the state of game development that have been broadly echoed across the entire industry for an extremely long time.

@bludgeonparagon: I think the idea that this kind of stuff endangers the health and safety of people is a little ridiculous, and I don't think that's the reason it should be covered better You mentioned things like employees being "frustrated" their art was misrepresented. That's not health and safety. If you work in a public facing job you're going to be frustrated and it's not journalists' job to worry about that. I think the reason to cover it better is, instead, to serve your audience and public discourse well. Clickbaiting and misleading your audience is crappy,

Showing an unfinished scene from a game may annoy an artist or make them feel bad but it doesn't put them in danger in any way. Revealing their personal information like address or whatever might. Journalists don't have to worry about the first but should take the second into consideration, which is what most journalistic ethics codes say.

The idea that you can do "immeasurable harm" by revealing some art assets is kind of silly.

It's not particularly hard to find accounts from developers online who have received death threats and mail in their home addresses over the mildest changes to the videogames they developed.

If you can't find any possible correlation between that and the personal information of Insomniac employees that was directly embedded in the hacked data that was released, then I think we're at an impasse and don't have a whole lot more to discuss.

@bludgeonparagon: As I've already said developers receive death threats and bullshit from basically any reporting on games. That's on the unhinged weirdos not the reporters. Should reviews not mention when a game is LGBTQ+ friendly because it will lead to death threats?

And you've now totally changed the subject from plot points and unfinished animations to personal information of employees. I haven't seen anyone defending reporters reporting on that personal information and I have personally said that such material must be redacted from anything released according to basically every journalistic ethics code I've seen.