The Selective Hearing of Gaming Journalists

It's always been curious to be aware of the little details the journalist 'forgets' to divulge

Let me get this out of the way at the front. I am incredibly biased against Video Game Journalists. But I would think that they know exactly why that is.

I have virtually zero respect for the work they produce, I question their value and relevance in the broader industry, most of the time I don’t think they get the level of scrutiny and criticism of their work that is required for them to create works that result in more good than harm, and I range from the impression that the cause for their oversights are at best lazy, incompetent and at worst maliciously misinforming people in pursuit of social credit and profit.

While most AAA game devs wouldn’t go as far as I do in expressing my distaste for journalists, the consensus does not hold them in very high regard. Some are sympathetic to the whistleblowing utility they can provide, and there’s a range of view on the their writings and ratings when it comes to the marketing a of a game. IGN certainly exists as an entity, get’s a notable amount of traffic, and executives certainly care enough that they hope to get a positive review for marketing. But would me or most devs feel fulfilled with privately exchanging ideas around design, development or the larger industry with such journalists? It’s hardly a serious question.

But for the most part when journalists are not trying to write a rage bait review for attention, they’re writing a piece about some very limited context studio drama, when they release it, I then need to reach out to an old colleague to get a real version of the story. Maybe the journalist couldn’t get that part of the story, but they’re generally incapable of constructing an accurate depiction.

When it comes to forensic journalism By far the most incompetent one would be Grayson and their site aftermath, who suffers from having enough knowledge to access and reference SEC Filings, but lacks the faculties or desire to comprehend them. The saving grace is the lack of relevance within the industry, I can’t say I’ve ever heard another developer invoke their work in my life, and my exposure to them has been entirely self inflicted.

But I would reserve my most genuine and tone conscious criticism to the more well branded journalists, Schreier, Tassi, or Totilo. On one hand I do consider it a notable achievement to be able to pay bills strictly through writing in any avenue. Yet I find when it comes to games journalists, they tend to turn a blind eye to the details of their stories that don’t fit quite neatly into the narrative of the story they are ‘reporting’ on.

Schreier for example thoroughly enjoyed mining impressions from people with his reporting on Kotick’s Activision compensation, and seems to enjoy constructing the wording of his reporting in a way that causes most readers to double count the numbers. He likes reporting on bonuses and exit values in ways that are easily interpreted as two separate things. Curiously, despite showing a proficiency in parsing through SEC Filings, i’ve never seen him write anything about some of the final years of proxy statements from Kotick’s era. I’d love to ask him why that is sometime.

For Tassi I think I’ve got a relatively good model of his sourcing around Bungie, i’m not sure if he envisions himself as some sort of crusader of a cause. But it wouldn’t be a significant leap for him to be able to ask the people with the right information, he also writes for Forbes yet seemingly doesn’t seem to ask questions that would indicate a notable level of financial literacy. Yet he clearly has the faculties to do so. The reasons are unclear.

Totilo’s reporting is clearly not catered to people like me. The sloppiness of the numbers he uses, plus lack of analysis to infer from filings makes him unapproachable. When I read his work, he deliberate writes in a way to depict a certain amount of hopelessness. He finds a specific number that he wants to sensationalize, and injects a few deliberate word choices to to frame things suspiciously. For example, saying “cash and stocks” and imply the compensation is incredibly liquid, but accurate reality is closer to 5% cash, and 95% stocks released on a 3 year performance dependent schedule. I truly cannot tell if he doesn’t understand these concepts, or if he knows better and is writing in an intentional way to portray his narrative in a more appealing way for the social media landscape. In either case he seems to do no investigation or researching to try to better understand the numbers he looks at, or ask someone to add context, even off the record. When it comes to understanding a subject he is writing on, the impression I get is that the amount of work to deconstruct the faulty assumptions and then rebuild them with new information is a task that Titilo appears unwilling to engage in.

In each example, reading their work results in two sentiments. There seem to be pieces of information that I’m confident they have come across, but have left out, which is doing a disservice to the public. And second, that for when they are missing a context or piece of information that they have access to the resources and proficiencies to find those answers, however it is quite clear that they know those answers will not further the narrative they’ve constructed for their reporting, so they will not pursue that line even when they know they’ll get a better answer that way.

While I think it’s critical to have journalists at least adjacent to the industry to be discrete confidants. The ones who have remained have chosen to play in to the narrative their audiences wish to consume rather than take the hard steps to better inform the audience. Which is why I cannot hold them in any sort of high regard.

CGD