Gaming Journalism Bias: Overview
A long time ago in a galaxy far far away…….You used to be able to pick up any gaming mag or go to any site and see real objectivity. Multi-year delays would bring calls of vaporware instead of calls of “be patient”. A mediocre title would be given a review score of 5 not 8. Titles, such as Haze, would have had the stamp of mediocrity before launch, instead of being hyped right up to the point of release. At some point in the past 8 years gaming journalists stopped objectively covering the gaming industry and started becoming it’s advertising arm.
There is more to gaming journalism bias than preferring one console over the other. This type of bias is largely the result of writer preference, and by and large does not effect their ability to be objective.The real bias lies in how gaming industry interests are considered over consumer interests. Nothing has made this more noticeable than the way gaming journalists pile undeserved praise on a mediocre product, but pass over stories that put the industry or one of it’s players in a poor light.
Take for instance the recent rumor of Tomb Raider features being cut out for DLC at a later time. While stated as a “rumor” this behavior is virtually guaranteed. Too many companies have been caught doing it. EA with unlock keys for DLC already on the disc with Need for Speed Carbon, Battlefield Bad Company was testing fully developed DLC weapons before the title even launched, and who really believes that Bethesda managed to produce all the assets for 3 exclusive DLC in the three months since the games launch. No one touched the Tomb Raider story…not even under a “rumor control”
It’s not hard to see where the pressure comes from. To the companies that make the games it is a business, and a business will do everything it can to keep itself in a favorable view. If you are too critical of a platform, a game, a developer a gaming site can lose advertising dollars, exclusive scoops, review copies, convention invites and even total media blackout. Unfortunately the big game mags and sites have let themselves be pushed beyond the bounds of credibility. They give perfect 10s (9.9.s 9.5s) on games that while good are nowhere near perfect. They’ve fired and/or let go writers who toed the line. Some have even done editorials that step beyond the bounds of credulity. In the past year this behavior has started effecting them negatively.
The big sites viewership is down and the smaller sites are seeing increased traffic. They have mistakenly concluded that the smaller sites are gaining traffic because of their “fanboy” mentality when in fact it is because the smaller sites cover the gaming industry more objectively. See the smaller sites have to buy their games just like the consumer, and like the consumer they get irritated when they purchase a game that has been hyped for a year or more only to find it is flawed to the point where the 10/10 review score it was given isn’t accurate.
single person writing a review of a game should be obsolete by now…why is noone doing a group review? i have yet to see 5-10 intelegent gamers come together at a table and discuss a game while being video taped. i have yet to see more then 1 person agreeing with another of a different perspective to a game score. this is why i need to be in the industry, id bring something new to this fake journalism man, fuk that
Im glad people are starting to talk about this. It is only going to get worse. Its far to easy to get a rumor going because blogs have become more mainstream for news rather than a side street for a personal approach.
Excellent write up here, about time someone said this stuff. I cant agree more about the big sites becoming even more biased because they think that is what the readers want.
We have seen these big companies get away with hurting gamers on so many levels, yet we see small things blown way out of proportion just because the company that did the small thing happens to be not favored by the writers.
Keep speaking up, this trend needs to stop or we will all be hurt by it. If no one makes a big deal of it when companies delay everything they promise, then turn around and under deliver on those promises, nothing will change. The sixaxis fiasco was a perfect example, Sony got off way too easy for that, and consumers got screwed in the end, and Sony lied through the whole incident yet we heard very little if any condemnation from the big 3 online media outlets. That was just plain wrong, and this sort of thing is happening all throughout the industry.
@Sasa: Have you ever heard of Podcasts?… you might want to start there before you embark upon your revolution.
Small sites are NOT immune to rabid acts of fanboyism to say the least.
- AnalogHype - http://www.analoghype.com/features/podcasts/underground-hype-episode-7-npd-nerds-gone-wild/ (skip to the 9 minute mark to get an idea)
- Ripten - http://www.ripten.com/2009/01/15/dear-internet-quit-overhyping-killzone-2/ (read Dan’s posts in the comments section, he always acts this way)
These sites among others are all showing some extremely biased colours as of late, maybe they saw how well Kotaku was doing with catering to fanboys?
These are considered smaller sites, but they are being more fanboyish than the big boys.
Just my 2 cents.
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Overall, good article… but the whole “rumor” thing being “virtually guaranteed” is pure BS. Could it be true? Of course, and I’d agree it probably is. But to say it’s true just b/c you point out other examples where it appeared to be true is even worse than the bias you’re accusing them of. The Battlefield DLC thing is particulary weak - if they were testing them when the game shipped, they obviously weren’t ready. Games have to be pressed weeks before you see them on the self, which means any QA would have to be done weeks before that. A good chunk of that time would leave the devs free to work on DLC.
@Darkie
It seems like the gaming industry has taken the political approach. They deny, deny, deny, until it is worse than obvious then they admit and understate, understate, understate.
@Mike
“The Battlefield DLC thing is particulary weak - if they were testing them when the game shipped, they obviously weren’t ready.”
No. They were beta testing the DLC guns BEFORE the game shipped. Beta test is the end of testing, it’s to make sure there are no bugs and unless something turns out grossly unbalanced it usually doesn’t get tweaked.