Interesting news out of the game journalism industry today, as luminaries from Joystiq, Kotaku, The Escapist and MTV news come together to form the Voltron of writing about games, Vox Games (final name TBD).
The “dream team” assembled for the new venture has the potential to provide a serious shakeup to video game news and journalism if handled correctly. All hail from some of the most popular, well-known sites in the oversaturated field of games writing, and all will have their own take on how to push the medium forward. Hopefully Vox Games, or whatever it ends up being called, will prove to be a site that dares to be different.
But what does that mean? What could a “different” games site look like? Let’s brainstorm.
For starters, the idea of “consensus” among the media needs to go out of the window. Jeff Rivera wrote a good piece on this subject over at Gamer Theory recently, and he’s on the money. All too often we see outlets appearing to predetermine which games are going to be the hotness of the season, sometimes offering review scores which don’t necessarily match up with the words being written. Battlefield 3, for example, was almost universally lambasted for its (apparently — I haven’t played it) woeful single player campaign, but that didn’t stop it picking up a ton of perfect scores and awards. In some cases, this is likely something of a hangover from Gerstmanngate, as outlets don’t want to piss off their advertisers by rating the game that is on the background of every single page of the site less than a 9 out of 10.
Alongside this, the audience needs to be re-educated away from thinking that anything under a 9 isn’t worth bothering with. Eurogamer ran afoul of commenters on several occasions last year by daring to rate big releases with an 8. They weren’t wrong to do so, but commenters were wrong to assume that 8 meant “bad”. This is a hole we’ve dug for ourselves over the years, and it’s going to be very difficult to get away from. It’s tied in to the “consensus” thinking, though — it’s entirely possible that those reviewing a game for a particular outlet might feel the desire to see what other places have rated it, and, whether consciously or subconsciously, seeing these other scores can colour the writer’s judgement.
Which is ridiculous, of course, because scores are completely arbitrary and borderline meaningless. There’s no way to quantify “how good” a game is. There’s no universal measure of “quality” because everyone’s tastes are so different. Some people might think Modern Warfare 3 is game of the year, while I might think it’s the most insulting game I’ve ever played. (I do, incidentally.)
But the review scores debate is well-worn, so I’ll step away from it at this point and consider some other ways in which game journalism can evolve and develop.
Chief among one of the things which needs to adapt is the relationship between developer, publisher, PR and press. At present, publishers and PR hold all the power. Developers are muzzled from talking about their game if it doesn’t fit into the publisher and PR teams’ tightly-controlled marketing plan. We get press releases announcing when trailers will be released. We get countdowns to countdowns to exclusive reveals of some stupid thing on YouTube which they hope will go viral but won’t because it’s trying too hard. Many newshounds in the industry get reduced to little more than PR mouthpieces, frantically rewriting the press releases that flood their inboxes on a daily basis rather than going in search of the “real story”. And why? Because uncovering a “real story” might compromise a relationship between an outlet and a publisher/PR team.
This isn’t an anti-PR rant, of course. Many PR types do a fantastic job of facilitating communication between different branches of the industry, acting as a “gobetween” or “messenger” rather than an impenetrable wall through which information cannot pass. Aubrey “Chupacaubrey” Norris (Deep Silver), Tom “Evolve PR” Ohle (CD Projekt, Larian Studios and numerous others) and Jeff Green (PopCap) spring immediately to mind here, and are certainly a far cry from the PR teams from certain large publishers who take days to reply — and don’t even bother at all sometimes. For the industry as a whole to evolve, we need more people like this who are willing to work with the press rather than, as sometimes seems, against them.
And what can the writers in this brave new world do, besides not feeling obliged to fit in with the consensus of the rest of the industry? Branch out. Explore. Raise the profile of small-scale projects and the underdogs of the industry. Review the crap games as well as the awesome ones. Provide something unique — truly unique, rather than the press release meaning of “unique” — as opposed to what many other sites offer, which is an interchangeable retread of the exact same story also posted on all of the other outlets. Different sites should have their own “voice” — and this doesn’t necessarily mean being snarky, which is a somewhat overused form of humor in the industry today. What I mean, rather, is that different outlets should have their own take on events that are transpiring — editorials, comments, analysis, rather than the same dry old press release facts and improbable quotes from CEOs and VPs of Five Different Capitalised Titles.
Will Vox Games be the outlet to give the industry a good shakeup? I certainly hope so, and should the opportunity ever arise to become a part of it, I’ll be sure to do my bit, too.
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I’m looking forward to another site that I could potentially read and not just skim the headlines to get what I need out of them. Coincidentally, the last time that happened was thanks to you and GamePro, whom I always felt was a veritable “dream team” of games writers.
As exciting as Vox Games sounds, I’ll hold my unbridled joy when I see the end product. I really hope that they do shake things up, rethink the way internet “journalism” operates and makes something that’s as deep and interesting as they’re capable of.
GamePro was a great team! It’s a shame it wasn’t considered one of the “top tier” sites for news and reviews. Too little, too late, I guess. Traffic was on the up prior to its closure, and I hope you don’t think me egotistical to say that my contributions played an important role in that.
I know what you mean about Vox Games. I’d like to think it’ll be a big rethink and a shakeup — it certainly has the potential to be. But on the other hand, it’d be very easy for it to become Joytaku, Kotstiq or whatever groteque portmanteau moniker you want to provide it with.
I agree with you about this sugar-coated attitude. I write my reviews exactly as I see it – I have my own ratings which are self-explanatory, and if I don’t like a game or am disappointed with a game I say so. Although I usually put BigFish beside the game publisher – because that’s where I got the game from so I know it is available through them – does not mean that I am affiliated with them.
I have written several negative blogs, plus a series of ‘Games I have rejected!’,’More games I have rejected!’ and now ‘Even more games I have rejected!’ No doubt there will be quite a few more till I run out of qualifyers. I have also written blogs denouncing the producers for punishing and putting off their possible purchasers, and have clearly stated what I consider to be good and poor game tactics and devices. Not that anyone will care about my opinion i suppose. But I still intend to keep going. I worry that I have become repetitive in my reviews – but that is because the games are all much the same. Plus I have to write it as though it is the first one of mine the reader has seen.
S i g h . . . Keep up the great blogs. Your follower. lol Have you done anything more with your NaNoWriMo novel? Mine is sitting untouched due to all the damn games reviews I have to do to catch up with the ones I’ve tested so far. But today I set up a Page each for them on Facebook, so that might bring a little more traffic to my site. I have now written 92 blogs on this site. Jud
There’s a lot of discussion surrounding reviews at the moment, particularly after a number of controversies in the mainstream press in the last year. It’s going to take a lot more than talk to get people rethinking how we write about this medium, however. Hopefully Vox Games will be a step in the right direction — and in the meantime, it’s up to smaller and independent outfits (like yourself!) to try other things.
Haven’t done anything more with the story, no. Have tweaked the novel I have on the go in Google Docs a bit, though I haven’t worked on it anywhere near as much as I intended to. Good intentions and all that.