TirithRR wrote:
So why are reporting, article writing, awards, and game reviews not important? This is a multi billion dollar industry. Just because you think it's a fun hobby for some people means it doesn't matter what people do and say about the games?
Edited, Oct 21st 2014 11:17am by TirithRR
In terms of what gaming news sites are going to post? No, it isn't. Gaming news sites aren't posting the kind of info where integrity actually matters; those articles are posted on business news sites, where the multi-billion dollar industry part actually has an impact. The actual people investing huge sums of money in video games aren't reading Kotaku.
First things first, reviews aren't journalism. They never were journalism. They'll never be journalism. They're opinion pieces. They'll NEVER be anything but opinion pieces.
And that's NOT semantics, because all this ******** started because idiots were pissed about opinion pieces not being more objective. Because that's not absurd at all.
And reviews are fundamentally the most important aspect of gaming news sites, because they have the largest impact on sales and salaries (and even then, it's primarily through metacritic results, not their posted reviews).
Everything else? Doesn't matter. It just doesn't.
Every so often there's a journalistic report that actually approaches something like journalism, like articles on what led to 38 Studios breaking up. Or "Talks at game developer conference include feminism in gaming" or whatever. Do I think they're particularly important in the "let's all freak out and start a movement" way? Hell no. But at least that's journalism.
But that was never the issue. What has these pissbabies upset are op-eds. Op-eds are not journalism, they'll never be journalism, and they never were journalism.
And gaming news sites would never survive if they focused solely on journalistic pieces, because no one wants to ******* read that. Gamers want inside tours of developer studios and ocarinas shaped like Majora's Mask, not stock and sales reports and expectations for the coming fiscal year.