Gerstmann and the state of videogame criticism

Over in the world of gaming they're currently dealing with a truly epic shitstorm revolving around the website Gamespot's decision to sack Editorial Director Jeff Gerstmann over his "tone", including that used in the following video (which has since been removed from their website).

Now, anyone who has read the reviews I've published on this website and elsewhere will know that as far as negative reviews go, that's a mild one.  Gerstmann's criticisms are precise, clear, even handed and are almost apologetic as he stresses that there are still some good ideas buried in the game.  Indeed, if tone was an issue with Gerstmann's output then this particular review seems like a weird reason to get fired.

In fact, while the games sites were flapping around unsure as to what to say or even whether to cover the story, it fell to game-related comic strip Penny Arcade to fill in the blanks on why Gerstmann got canned.  PA claim that Kane and Lynch's producers Eidos spent hundreds of thousands of dollars buying ad space on Gamespot and they were none too pleased when Gerstmann's review appeared and, as a result, they decided to pull hundreds of thousands of dollars of future advertising in response.  This massive loss of revenue is, according to PA, what cost Gerstmann his job.

Unsurprisingly, this has prompted many gamers and game-related journalists to re-examine the principles their industry is based upon.  Is it healthy for sites that should be objective to be supported entirely by sponsorship money from games companies?  is it acceptable that it took a comic strip to break the story while the massed ranks of professional game journalists stood around scratching their arses and waiting for press releases rather than hunting down sources.

Personally, I'm pessimistic that anything is going to change in the wake of such a high-profile sacking.  I'm pessimistic because we've known about this problem for years now and not only has nothing been done but gamers don't seem overly bothered by it.  In short, the problem is that gamers neither need nor want honest writers who aren't afraid to stand up to corporate sponsors, what they want is the kind of insipid blend of validation and purchasing suggestions that come only with the principles of lifestyle journalism.

Back in 2004, Atari games released Driv3r, the third in a successful series of driving games.  When the game was released in the US the response was overwhelmingly negative, people accused Atari of releasing an unfinished game.  However, when the game was released in the UK, magazines that are part of Future Publishing mysteriously gave the game 9/10.  Subjectivity goes a long way but to move from a sub-par 5/10 to a superb 9/10 takes something other than different tastes.  As the story percolated outwards, rumours started to spread that Future and Atari had cut a deal which meant that some Future titles got access to early code (giving them early screen shots and early reviews) in return for the promise of excellent reviews.  At the time, the story caused quite a stir but in the long run nobody was sacked, nobody apologised and people continued to buy Future titles despite the fact that they were manifestly editorially corrupt.

Later, in 2005, Dan Hsu of Electronic Gaming Monthly drew attention to himself for writing an editorial claiming that editorial content could be "purchased" at a number of magazines in return for advertising sales.  He then went on to interview the head of Microsoft's marketing department regarding the launch of the 360 but rather than use the traditional 'advertorial' methods favoured in videogame interviews, he attempted to hold the Microsoft man to account surrounding problems with the XBox 360.  Needless to say, two years later Hsu has yet to name the magazines he knew to be taking money for content and we find ourselves confronted with the specter of a reviewer being sacked for giving a negative review to a game that had spent a lot in sponsorship money.

In 2006, Joystiq spoke to Phil Harrison from Sony about the launch of the Playstation 3 (a launch accompanied by such high-handed and arrogant PR from Sony that they managed to turn public perception so profoundly on its head that now evil mega-corporation Microsoft are seen as plucky underdogs) and when the journalist pressed him on these PR problems, Harrison reacted with a sarcastic comment implying that he was expecting "positive" up-beat questions.  Indeed, some pointed out that the problem is that people in power have come to expect a compliant press corps, happy to cut-and-paste from official press releases with no interest or desire to take a critical stance, let alone go out and dig up stories of their own.  When did you ever hear of an investigative games journalist?

All of this in the last three years and we find ourselves surprised that a games journalist has been sacked for providing a negative review.  Gamers have brought this upon themselves.  Part of the problem is the move from monthly dead-tree publications to constantly updated websites. 

Firstly, one of the nice things about a longer publication schedule is that you have time.  When you have to get your story out NOW lest the competition get the story first and get more page views than you, you have no time to do research, no time to watch events unfold, no time to do a considered analysis.  You just type it up and hit send.  This is the same problem we have with rolling news channels.  Constantly in competition for content and new stories, the rolling news channels frequently put up rumours, press releases and half-stories in order to get something on air, only updating the story later if it turns out to be completely untrue.  You can see this phenomenon quite clearly in the way that the rolling news channels dealt with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann as explained neatly by Charlie Brooker in the following video :

This creates a climate whereby journalists come to rely upon being fed information for publication.  They don't have time to be critical or to take a wider perspective and the younger journalists simply never develop the skills necessary to keep that necessary critical distance from the ever-moving information stream.  This lack of critical faculties then permeates outwards taking in reviewing and interviewing and before long you're left with a publication that places more importance upon its relationships with the providers of news than they do upon their own integrity and intelligence.

Secondly, the move towards free websites has also changed the economics of videogame publishing.  Back in the old days, game companies were smaller than they were now and had less money to spend on advertising.  This meant that game magazines were ultimately depending more upon their customers than upon their sponsors.  This meant that it was the readers' values and beliefs that sculpted editorial policy, not the sponsors'.  However, now that we have the internet a large chunk of gaming publications are online and available for free.  Their costs are met not by subscribers (though some websites including Gamespot do provide exclusive material to subscribers) but by the sponsors who now produce far more product and are willing to spend far more advertising this product.  This means that games magazines are now entirely beholden to their corporate sponsors.  They are in the PR business, not the journalism business.  However, this shift in the balance of power is not limited to the online magazines as print magazines now have to work harder to compete with the free internet magazines and one way in which they can compete is by providing free demo DVDs, demos which are, again, provided according to the whims of the games companies.

This creates an environment where even a mildly critical review that suggests we shouldn't buy a game at full price is seen as "a savage flogging" (compare it to my review of Gibson's Spook Country is you want to see a brutal flogging).  Frankly, it's amazing that there are any negative reviews at all anymore.  but the real problem is that gamers are quite happy with the way things are.  Oh they'll bitch and moan whilst posting to forums and blogs but ultimately they are the ones who don't buy monthly publications anymore, who want the new stories rather than the considered ones, and who not only don't reward integrity in their journalists, they actively complain when they get it.

This is because being a gamer is all about being a consumer.  The vast majority of people have no creative input into the games they play, they simply sit back and enjoy them.  in fact, they enjoy them so much that this passive activity has come to define them... they describe themselves as gamers... people who play games.  in fact, they even distinguish between casual gamers (who have other influences) and hardcore gamers (who usually don't).  Chances are if you define yourself in terms of the videogames you buy then you're not the kind of person who wants hard-hitting investigative reporting or intelligent critical coverage, what you want is people telling you what games to get excited about, what games to buy and what games to feel better about once you've bought them.

These are the values of the lifestyle section...

If you look in the lifestyle sections of most newspapers, what you find is not hard-hitting journalism, insightful interviews or scathing criticism... instead you find articles about food, interior design and holiday destinations intended not so much to give you an objective opinion about these things but rather to give you ideas about how to enhance your life... maybe you need a new wardrobe?  isn't it time you went on holiday?  how about Mauritius?  have you tried yoga yet?  how about those new iPods?

The only thing that's preventing games journalism from resembling the lifestyle section of your local paper is that everyone feels better about the veneer of authenticity that comes from the idea of objectivity.  Most gamers may well be passive consumer slaves but they don't like to be told that they're passive consumer slaves; they'd never boycott a games company or refuse to buy a game on principle or try and change something about the shocking ways that the games companies behave themselves but they don't like to be reminded how frightened and weak-willed most of them are.  So nobody wonders why more and more games are starting to look alike and the FPS genre has reached a point where any new weapon is treated as a genre-defining innovation.  Nobody wonders why there are so many war and car games.  Nobody wonders what happened to point-and-click adventure games.  Nobody asks if it's really a good thing that some people spend 40 hours a week on WoW, effectively turning their hobby into a second job that they have to pay to go to.  nobody wonders whether it's okay that in order to fully appreciate the new game machines you need to spend thousands on a new TV.  None of these questions get asked because they're bummers... they bring you down.  What people want nowadays is journalism that makes them feel good about themselves... hype they can participate in and enjoy.  Nobody wants to think too much... so nobody is interested in intelligent and challenging games journalism, let alone games journalism that isn't entirely corrupt.

Similarly, the game companies might consider their 9/10 reviews to be paid for but they realise that a seemingly objective 9/10 is worth more to them than an obviously advertorial 9/10.  Plus that way they get to feel good about themselves when they get awards or 9/10s despite the fact that these are no more worthy of being proud of than the thai hooker you could have purchased for a fraction of the amount.

Games journalism is effectively a vanity press for the games companies and the worst thing is that this is the way most gamers want it.

Comments

[Max Cairnduff]

It's an issue with online games journalism, but not print in my experience. Print depends heavily also on the subscriber base, which would be lost if editorial and review integrity were under suspicion. Online has little beyond advertising revenue.

PC Gamer, which I subscribe to I admit, is a Future title. It slated Driv3r and still refers back to it as an example of a bad game in a good franchise from time to time and gave Kane and Lynch a fairly poor review (much the same as the chap who got fired actually, it's a competent and playable game which will get some fans but brings nothing new to the genre and isn't worth buying given how many other, better, games are out there).

So I think you may be overselling this one, I do see it as an issue with the online gaming press (who in any event are trying to move from a hardcore to casual demographic as advertising revenue depends more on casual as opposed to print which depends more on hardcore), but I think the economics take the print mags down a different path.

It's also important not to confuse the news section of a mag that deals with upcoming releases with the reviews section or the articles section. The news section is basically fluff, and for me basically valueless, but I routinely see games heavily hyped in previous issues get crappy reviews as on delivery they turn out not to be that good. I often see heavy advertising for them in the same mag as the bad review. The news is fluff, for them as wants fluff as many folk do, but having read the mag steadily for around three or four years now I don't see that section influencing the actual reviews, if anything a review may be more critical if the reviewer was themself excited by the fluff but disappointed by the game.

Articles tend to be actual journalism, stuff on why people grind in WoW and what the lifestyle of the top grinders is like in real life, or a very good piece on gold farming in WoW and what it means for the people in China actually doing it.

So yeah, the online stuff is not so good, but the print I think due to the economics of needing your subscriber base to trust you isn't experiencing the same issues.

As for fan feedback, I have seen calls for boycotts (though I doubt that will happen in meaningful numbers) and gamespot had so many protests they had to take their fora down. I think this will damage gamespot, certainly more than Eidos and to be honest I think that's right, companies will do what they can to get good reviews, it's the online or offline magazine's job to resist that and in publicly failing to do so I think gamespot has damaged itself very badly.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

I think that if gamers cared about the integrity of their mags then, when it was clear that Future had sold good reviews in exchange for early footage, there should have been a reaction. What there was was an online flap but those titles are still being read. In fact, if you talk to people from Future they don't acknowledge that it happened.

Admittedly it wasn't all Future publications as Edge also slated Driv3r but in the end, market forces won out and it's now a number of years later and we're still dealing with "payola" scandals.

I predict that the same thing will happen with Gamespot. People will rant about it and in 6 months it will be basically forgotten and Gamespot's page views will be back to normal.

I agree that the news is fluff but I'd argue that that's precisely what gamers want... they want stuff to be excited about, they want purchasing advice and that's pretty much it. The articles on goldfarming might well appear in PC Gamer (PC Gamers being generally more thoughtful than console gamers) but those types of article don't appear in most dead tree videogame mags.

I think it's telling that CNet hired a guy from Maxim to oversee their gaming sites. It's all about the lifestyle now.