MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
I think it's genuinely hilarious that the news post seems to imply that the games journalists have traditionally been the ones in a position of power, in some way.
I think it's genuinely hilarious that the news post seems to imply that the games journalists have traditionally been the ones in a position of power, in some way.
The comic itself, eh, not their best.
the ideal developer world is one in which games journalists and reviewers do not exist, save for those whose message they completely control
I think it's genuinely hilarious that the news post seems to imply that the games journalists have traditionally been the ones in a position of power, in some way.
The comic itself, eh, not their best.
Yeah, the comic is just kind of meh, and the news post, while not wrong, is kind of weird coming from a website that has traditionally been very critical of the positive coverage for access system.
So I see people who seem perplexed at what they see as a shift in PA's stance on the relationship between the games press and developers/publishers: the peception seems to be that PA used to give the press shit for not being tough enough on developers, whereas now they are giving the press shit for daring to defy developers.
After reading today's newspost from Jerry, I think I have a handle on where he and Mike are coming from. Here is how I think they see it:
1. In the past, the game press and developers had a cozy relationship, too cozy in fact, based on mutual back-scratching, resulting in the press failing to call developers on their bullshit when they needed to be. There are numerous PA comics from the first few years mocking the gaming press for this sort of thing.
2. For a time, Mike and Jerry had hope that as the industry matured the gaming press might actually be starting to hold developers accountable and do real journalism. I think the comic which sums up Mike and Jerry's view during this period the best is this one.
3. Unfortunately, the gaming press realized or decided that they could make more money by trolling for clicks and stirring up controversy than they could by either cozying up to developers OR doing real reporting. The press therefore broke the sort of de facto non aggression pact they had with devs and publishers - which COULD have been a good thing, but instead turned out to be a bad thing because instead of using their new freedom to do substantive reporting, the press increasingly choose to just shit all over everything and troll for outrage. The result is that no more honest journalism is done than during the "back-scratching phase," but now on top of that the enthusiast community is constantly being divided and roiled up and in some cases good games and developers suffer unjustly.
4. In response to the turn towards clickbaiting by the gaming press, developers and publishers begin to say, "Fuck you, you need us more than we need you, you're cut off." While developers are still guilty of just as much nonsense as they ever were (perhaps more), and Mike and Jerry continue to call them out on it, they sympathize with the developers' decision to break with the journalists because the journalists are dishonest and toxic and do nothing to serve their audience community.
Understand I am not saying this is MY perspective (though I do agree with parts of it), this is just my interpretation of how Mike and Jerry's views have evolved.
I think it's genuinely hilarious that the news post seems to imply that the games journalists have traditionally been the ones in a position of power, in some way.
The comic itself, eh, not their best.
There are numerous stories out there about how bad reporting killed a studio. The guys who made Titan Quest suffered. They credit their studio going out of business with erroneous reviews. You see, part of their copy protection is that games running cracked versions would crash when you enter a certain cave. All these pirates took to the message boards complaining about the crash, and reviews picked that up calling the game buggy despite not experiencing any bugs themselves. Then Titan Quest got a reputation for being a great, but buggy game, people should avoid.
Which is all the more ironic since we're talking about Bethesda...
I think it's genuinely hilarious that the news post seems to imply that the games journalists have traditionally been the ones in a position of power, in some way.
The comic itself, eh, not their best.
Yeah, the comic is just kind of meh, and the news post, while not wrong, is kind of weird coming from a website that has traditionally been very critical of the positive coverage for access system.
Traditionally, Mike and Jerry have been very critical of the very concept of people other than them having opinions about things.
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Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
I think it's genuinely hilarious that the news post seems to imply that the games journalists have traditionally been the ones in a position of power, in some way.
The comic itself, eh, not their best.
the ideal developer world is one in which games journalists and reviewers do not exist, save for those whose message they completely control
Publisher :P (which is sometimes also the developer) I suspect most actual developers just want to make things that people enjoy (and also money, but mostly the first part). But the publisher needs to make money to keep the lights on (and also to just make money ).
To be honest though, I would tweak this to say less that they want the media under their control than to simply manipulate them (not necessarily in a bad way, but potentially) to their maximum benefit. This is a marketer's job. They need the media to get their message out, but at the same time a docile and biased media can hurt their message too if it does not come across genuine.
Andy JoeWe claim the land for the highlord!The AdirondacksRegistered Userregular
Kotaku has put out a lot of good long-form pieces lately; their Destiny post-mortem and the Trails in the Sky localization story in particular are quite good. Does that make up for most of the rest of its content being kind of clickbaity? Ehh, it does for me, at least to the point where the usual stuff inspires eyerolls instead of genuine antipathy.
I think it's genuinely hilarious that the news post seems to imply that the games journalists have traditionally been the ones in a position of power, in some way.
The comic itself, eh, not their best.
There are numerous stories out there about how bad reporting killed a studio. The guys who made Titan Quest suffered. They credit their studio going out of business with erroneous reviews. You see, part of their copy protection is that games running cracked versions would crash when you enter a certain cave. All these pirates took to the message boards complaining about the crash, and reviews picked that up calling the game buggy despite not experiencing any bugs themselves. Then Titan Quest got a reputation for being a great, but buggy game, people should avoid.
Which is all the more ironic since we're talking about Bethesda...
Nah
Titan Quest is a buggy-ass game, and I love Titan Quest more than most people
Also it reviewed fairly well across the board, and even critical reviews had more to say about the idea that it wasn't doing enough to differentiate itself from Diablo
Reviewers weren't holding THQ hostage by any means, stop trying to invent villains
I think it's genuinely hilarious that the news post seems to imply that the games journalists have traditionally been the ones in a position of power, in some way.
The comic itself, eh, not their best.
Yeah, the comic is just kind of meh, and the news post, while not wrong, is kind of weird coming from a website that has traditionally been very critical of the positive coverage for access system.
Traditionally, Mike and Jerry have been very critical of the very concept of people other than them having opinions about things.
The danger of being a comedian and a critic at the same time I suppose.
Kotaku has put out a lot of good long-form pieces lately; their Destiny post-mortem and the Trails in the Sky localization story in particular are quite good. Does that make up for most of the rest of its content being kind of clickbaity? Ehh, it does for me, at least to the point where the usual stuff inspires eyerolls instead of genuine antipathy.
I swear, I'm not trying to be trolly here, where are these "clickbaity" articles on Kotaku people keep talking about
I read the site every day; there are certainly articles I'm not interested in reading but when I hear "clickbait" I think stupid shit like Upworthy and headlines that tell me how I'll never guess what happened next.
Kotaku has put out a lot of good long-form pieces lately; their Destiny post-mortem and the Trails in the Sky localization story in particular are quite good. Does that make up for most of the rest of its content being kind of clickbaity? Ehh, it does for me, at least to the point where the usual stuff inspires eyerolls instead of genuine antipathy.
I swear, I'm not trying to be trolly here, where are these "clickbaity" articles on Kotaku people keep talking about
I read the site every day; there are certainly articles I'm not interested in reading but when I hear "clickbait" I think stupid shit like Upworthy and headlines that tell me how I'll never guess what happened next.
Kotaku has put out a lot of good long-form pieces lately; their Destiny post-mortem and the Trails in the Sky localization story in particular are quite good. Does that make up for most of the rest of its content being kind of clickbaity? Ehh, it does for me, at least to the point where the usual stuff inspires eyerolls instead of genuine antipathy.
I swear, I'm not trying to be trolly here, where are these "clickbaity" articles on Kotaku people keep talking about
I read the site every day; there are certainly articles I'm not interested in reading but when I hear "clickbait" I think stupid shit like Upworthy and headlines that tell me how I'll never guess what happened next.
Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
edited November 2015
Still something they published. Personally I can't stand all the random crap on that site - articles about Mario cakes or love advice or things that have nothing to do with games (ex: been a ton of comic book reviews lately). I don't know if those qualify as click bait, but they feel like they serve the same purpose.
Hrmm if those are the terrible scourge of clickbait articles ruining journalism then this is seems like a whole lotta noise about nothing. Like why even get mad about headlines like that?
I'm not too invested in Kotaku or Gawker (but I do enjoy io9 and find them a reliable source of info when trying to discover sci-fi books, movies, etc.) That being said, I also find them to post the occasionally enjoyable article.
Sure, they're going to post "10 Disney Princesses Reimagined as Wastelanders in Fallout" and show a bunch of stuff from DeviantArt, but... I dunno, I like that stuff? It's stuff I wouldn't really go out of my way to find, so if it shows up on my social media stream, awesome.
As for them covering non-game stuff like comic reviews, etc. that's just the state of the geekosphere right now. Every site is practically the same or spitting out the same stuff. Comic Book Resources regularly talks about non-Comic things from Breaking Bad to Fallout 4 to whatever. It's like when G4 showed rerun episodes of COPS and Cheaters as opposed to any of their original content.
Anyways, Kotaku still made their bed. If they were responsible for leaking the info, then I don't blame Bethesda/Ubisoft/Publishers. If they were just reporting on a leak, I don't get why it's worth blacklisting them. That's like me being mad at my local news station because it reported on something CNN reported on. At the end of the day I kind of think Kotaku is being petty for writing this article and trying to be the victim, but it's also kind of petty that Bethesda/Ubisoft aren't even replying to inquiries or comments about ANYTHING.
Still something they published. Personally I can't stand all the random crap on that site - articles about Mario cakes or love advice or things that have nothing to do with games (ex: been a ton of comic book reviews lately). I don't know if those qualify as click bait, but they feel like they serve the same purpose.
That doesn't sound like clickbait at all; it sounds like Kotaku simply isn't being the exact site you want. Its core focus is gaming but gaming sort of overlaps with a lot of other parts of pop culture, and Kotaku focuses on that too. They're also part of Gawker Media so there's obviously going to be crossover with io9 and Gizmodo. Personally, if the only thing Kotaku wrote about was games I'd find it a very boring site, and if all they were allowed to write about was games we'd probably get a hell of a lot more "clickbait" filler than the six examples in 3 months mentioned above.
Is Jerry just really mad the PA game didn't sell well or something?
The PA games sold just fine. Hence there were four of them.
That was actually meant to be a joke but I guess I should have gone with "did Kotaku kick Jerry's dog" or something like that. I truly don't understand what inspired such rage against Kotaku from him. He had the same Hulk-out when Roger Ebert said that dumb thing about video games way back when too. I don't get it. He acts so often like he literally hates other people talking about video games.
They blacklisted them because it's the only weapon that the gaming industry has. The site I write for was blacklisted because we gave an EA game a "terrible" review of "only" a 7.5. Another site my friends wrote for was blacklisted by Activision for not being positive enough in an E3 preview. This is how they lash out at the game journalists because in the end its the only weapon that they have. Is it right? Well if a journalist leaks stuff you don't want leaked or you don't like how they review games, then sure. It's perfectly in that company's right to do so. You might not like it but it's their primary tool to deal with people they don't like.
But it's also perfectly justified for a game journalist to point out that this is happening to explain why coverage for certain games may be lacking or why they aren't covering a particular console as much. Back when Kotaku had been blacklisted by Sony, can you imagine the fan outcry if they hadn't publicized it? All the Sony fanboys would be even louder in their cries that someone is biased against Sony since their reviews are up late / previews are scarce.
There's been this shift where people get their info straight from companies nowadays via blogs, official streams and the like. This seems to have people kowtowing along the company line and cheering on shutting them down the media for... being the media I guess. Then when they get burned by said company blaming said gaming media for not "accurately" reporting on these companies while pointing to sites like PA to explain how the gaming media is evil or doesn't do its job. It's a weird situation to watch.
That doesn't sound like clickbait at all; it sounds like Kotaku simply isn't being the exact site you want. Its core focus is gaming but gaming sort of overlaps with a lot of other parts of pop culture, and Kotaku focuses on that too. They're also part of Gawker Media so there's obviously going to be crossover with io9 and Gizmodo. Personally, if the only thing Kotaku wrote about was games I'd find it a very boring site, and if all they were allowed to write about was games we'd probably get a hell of a lot more "clickbait" filler than the six examples in 3 months mentioned above.
I selected those because the question was "Where's the clickbait on Kotaku?", as if it didn't exist, and those are clear examples. Those are not the only examples in the past 3 months, but I have a feeling that no matter how many I list it won't be enough.
In any case, I have no opinion on how Kotaku wants to run their ship, only on how they want me to perceive the way they run it.
That doesn't sound like clickbait at all; it sounds like Kotaku simply isn't being the exact site you want. Its core focus is gaming but gaming sort of overlaps with a lot of other parts of pop culture, and Kotaku focuses on that too. They're also part of Gawker Media so there's obviously going to be crossover with io9 and Gizmodo. Personally, if the only thing Kotaku wrote about was games I'd find it a very boring site, and if all they were allowed to write about was games we'd probably get a hell of a lot more "clickbait" filler than the six examples in 3 months mentioned above.
I selected those because the question was "Where's the clickbait on Kotaku?", as if it didn't exist, and those are clear examples. Those are not the only examples in the past 3 months, but I have a feeling that no matter how many I list it won't be enough.
In any case, I have no opinion on how Kotaku wants to run their ship, only on how they want me to perceive the way they run it.
I'm just saying, I'm looking at Kotaku's home page right now, and I wouldn't call any of their articles there "clickbait." I would certainly call one or two "not to my interest" and another one is clearly "paid advertising" but I just don't see a level of this that seems to draw so much outrage and consternation from many of Kotaku's critics.
I imagine part of this is that there seems to be a difference in opinion on what actually constitutes "clickbait." Someone joked about "10 Disney Princesses Reimagined as Wastelanders in Fallout" upthread; if that article existed, I wouldn't call that clickbait. Fluff, sure. Stupid and played-out, maybe. But I wouldn't call it "clickbait" because the article says exactly what it is and in doing so, fails at what clickbait is meant to do, which is make me click the link to see what they're talking about.
"Here is a list of stupid things that you won't enjoy reading" isn't clickbait to me.
"Can you believe this is in Fallout?" is clickbait.
+6
MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited November 2015
I think this it is good that this issue is being discussed again, and that focusing on Kotaku is missing the point.
There's more analysis of the greater issue coming out of this, and that is always good.
So I see people who seem perplexed at what they see as a shift in PA's stance on the relationship between the games press and developers/publishers: the peception seems to be that PA used to give the press shit for not being tough enough on developers, whereas now they are giving the press shit for daring to defy developers.
After reading today's newspost from Jerry, I think I have a handle on where he and Mike are coming from. Here is how I think they see it:
1. In the past, the game press and developers had a cozy relationship, too cozy in fact, based on mutual back-scratching, resulting in the press failing to call developers on their bullshit when they needed to be. There are numerous PA comics from the first few years mocking the gaming press for this sort of thing.
2. For a time, Mike and Jerry had hope that as the industry matured the gaming press might actually be starting to hold developers accountable and do real journalism. I think the comic which sums up Mike and Jerry's view during this period the best is this one.
3. Unfortunately, the gaming press realized or decided that they could make more money by trolling for clicks and stirring up controversy than they could by either cozying up to developers OR doing real reporting. The press therefore broke the sort of de facto non aggression pact they had with devs and publishers - which COULD have been a good thing, but instead turned out to be a bad thing because instead of using their new freedom to do substantive reporting, the press increasingly choose to just shit all over everything and troll for outrage. The result is that no more honest journalism is done than during the "back-scratching phase," but now on top of that the enthusiast community is constantly being divided and roiled up and in some cases good games and developers suffer unjustly.
4. In response to the turn towards clickbaiting by the gaming press, developers and publishers begin to say, "Fuck you, you need us more than we need you, you're cut off." While developers are still guilty of just as much nonsense as they ever were (perhaps more), and Mike and Jerry continue to call them out on it, they sympathize with the developers' decision to break with the journalists because the journalists are dishonest and toxic and do nothing to serve their audience community.
Understand I am not saying this is MY perspective (though I do agree with parts of it), this is just my interpretation of how Mike and Jerry's views have evolved.
Hmmm...That makes sense. I certainly don't agree with the latter 2, at least not to these same extent that M&J see it. Then again, maybe I'm not seeing the stuff they are and am just lashing what I see others do (and myself circa 2014) in calling anything they don't agree with "bad games journalism".
That doesn't sound like clickbait at all; it sounds like Kotaku simply isn't being the exact site you want. Its core focus is gaming but gaming sort of overlaps with a lot of other parts of pop culture, and Kotaku focuses on that too. They're also part of Gawker Media so there's obviously going to be crossover with io9 and Gizmodo. Personally, if the only thing Kotaku wrote about was games I'd find it a very boring site, and if all they were allowed to write about was games we'd probably get a hell of a lot more "clickbait" filler than the six examples in 3 months mentioned above.
I selected those because the question was "Where's the clickbait on Kotaku?", as if it didn't exist, and those are clear examples. Those are not the only examples in the past 3 months, but I have a feeling that no matter how many I list it won't be enough.
In any case, I have no opinion on how Kotaku wants to run their ship, only on how they want me to perceive the way they run it.
I'm just saying, I'm looking at Kotaku's home page right now, and I wouldn't call any of their articles there "clickbait." I would certainly call one or two "not to my interest" and another one is clearly "paid advertising" but I just don't see a level of this that seems to draw so much outrage and consternation from many of Kotaku's critics.
I imagine part of this is that there seems to be a difference in opinion on what actually constitutes "clickbait." Someone joked about "10 Disney Princesses Reimagined as Wastelanders in Fallout" upthread; if that article existed, I wouldn't call that clickbait. Fluff, sure. Stupid and played-out, maybe. But I wouldn't call it "clickbait" because the article says exactly what it is and in doing so, fails at what clickbait is meant to do, which is make me click the link to see what they're talking about.
"Here is a list of stupid things that you won't enjoy reading" isn't clickbait to me.
"Can you believe this is in Fallout?" is clickbait.
I think it's just a difference of opinion on what constitutes click bait. I would consider that type of article click bait, in the same vein as a "Top 10 Celebrity Blunders" type of article - sort of a "look at this shiny thing that isn't actually news!"
I suppose this is Kotaku's "style" but that doesn't mean a lot of it isn't done just to generate clicks.
Either way, this is probably meandering off the original topic too much so that's all I'm going to add there :P Though one small bit to bring it back on point - I personally think those kinds of articles are what make the site seem less professional and thus give Bethesda and others more justification for "we don't need to support this" over an IGN or GameSpot.
I totally support Kotaku (I actually kinda hate them but they do do news from time to time) and I totally support Bethesda (but fuck you PipBoy). I like the fact that there is some tension between the media and the people they cover. People like to pile on Kotaku because they and their parent company have some kind of reputation for being dicks, and that is fine. As a journalistic principle though, it looks good on them not getting a review up on day 1. Who trusts those reviews anyway?
“Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
0
Goose!That's me, honeyShow me the way home, honeyRegistered Userregular
Not sure I understand the complaint. A news reporter was given news. They reported that news. The games journalist has been cast in a wholly unfavourable light here, but if you just turn this into two people talking who are aware of each other's jobs, I don't exactly see the games journalist in the wrong.
IMHO there is a lot more to this than Kotaku's selfish whining about how all they did was report news. Kotaku has been the epicenter of some of the most atrocious reporting ever done in video games, and regularly, if not making up rumors out of thin air, distorts facts to inspire rage. Their bread and butter is baseless accusations.
I bet a lot of people in this very thread still believe Brad Wardel sexually harasses employees thanks to Kotaku, despite his court case being thrown out with prejudice, the judge demanding the accuser write an apology, and nearly every news outlet which covered the story (except Kotaku) retracting their coverage once the court documents were made available.
It may be possible that this really is all about Kotaku breaking embargo. But to ignore the rest of Kotaku's blatant malfeasance and portray them as the victim here requires some incredible blinders.
I realized halfway through my post I stopped responding to you, and started just venting my undisguised hatred of Kotaku. So yeah.
I really hate Kotaku.
Do you have any citations for this? Not the Wardel thing as I can google that myself, but the "regularly distorting facts" and/or making up rumors?
If your definition of clickbait is functionally identical to your definition of "things that don't interest me," do us all a favor and stop using the term clickbait.
Clickbait for me, anything that has a vague title that may be interesting but you aren't sure because the words, you wont believe what happened next or something equally stupid is used.
Lists and articles posted above aren't really clickbait unless the image they are using is like..TITS or something completely unrelated to the article.
I dont read clickbait anymore because I use this one weird trick that journalists hate.
I wonder how many people here still hate #GG after watching all of these sites turn to shit. Kotaku especially, and the bullshit their writers like to get up to on various social media.
I wonder how many people here still hate #GG after watching all of these sites turn to shit. Kotaku especially, and the bullshit their writers like to get up to on various social media.
Loved the comic and the post. If you really think G&T are soft on game developers then, well, I dunno. That's a weird thing to think, check out any of their previous comics. Equally weird is thinking this has anything to do about actual reviews instead of the rumors and speculation that make up the majority of certain game news sites. And if we're talking about Kotaku in particular, It could even simply be neither Bethesda or Ubisoft feels like their audiences overlap significantly enough to be worth giving Kotaku anything. Kotaku generates a lot of political faux-outrage against developers, but developers want press. Maybe even bad press, but not nuclear, fuck-this-company! press.
The ultimate point is, you get stung, why would you touch the scorpion again?
Expect the following Kotaku articles soon, "Remember how prejudiced PAX is?" and "Mike Krahulik is still a horrible human being".
Their coverage of Fallout 4 so far has been very positive, running multiple stories about how to find neat gear or characters in the game. That's a very weird way to get revenge against a company.
I expect their PAX coverage to be the same as it is every year, "Look at all this cosplay" and "here are some games that were just announced" and probably 1-2 stories about how hard it is to get tickets. Maybe a scandal de jour if something nasty happens.
Not sure I understand the complaint. A news reporter was given news. They reported that news. The games journalist has been cast in a wholly unfavourable light here, but if you just turn this into two people talking who are aware of each other's jobs, I don't exactly see the games journalist in the wrong.
IMHO there is a lot more to this than Kotaku's selfish whining about how all they did was report news. Kotaku has been the epicenter of some of the most atrocious reporting ever done in video games, and regularly, if not making up rumors out of thin air, distorts facts to inspire rage. Their bread and butter is baseless accusations.
I bet a lot of people in this very thread still believe Brad Wardel sexually harasses employees thanks to Kotaku, despite his court case being thrown out with prejudice, the judge demanding the accuser write an apology, and nearly every news outlet which covered the story (except Kotaku) retracting their coverage once the court documents were made available.
It may be possible that this really is all about Kotaku breaking embargo. But to ignore the rest of Kotaku's blatant malfeasance and portray them as the victim here requires some incredible blinders.
I realized halfway through my post I stopped responding to you, and started just venting my undisguised hatred of Kotaku. So yeah.
I really hate Kotaku.
Do you have any citations for this? Not the Wardel thing as I can google that myself, but the "regularly distorting facts" and/or making up rumors?
I don't have a lot of interest in researching tons of historical instances. I am aware that they've run hitpieces on Denis Dyack, David Jaffe, and recently that giant teddy bear, Boogie2988 posted about his own experience with Kotaku trying to make his life difficult.
As far as I'm concerned, Kotaku getting nailed over leaks is like a serial killer getting nailed by a rigged traffic light camera. Maybe they were in the right just this once, but good god man, look at who they are!
I think there's always been tension between the creative industry and the critics / commenators. Recently this tension is becoming even more pronounced as the big sites, especially those that aren't providing quality and value, are losing ground to individuals. Individuals with popular youtube accounts hold massive sway over a game's perception and popularity. That's a new thing.
Posts
The comic itself, eh, not their best.
the ideal developer world is one in which games journalists and reviewers do not exist, save for those whose message they completely control
Yeah, the comic is just kind of meh, and the news post, while not wrong, is kind of weird coming from a website that has traditionally been very critical of the positive coverage for access system.
After reading today's newspost from Jerry, I think I have a handle on where he and Mike are coming from. Here is how I think they see it:
1. In the past, the game press and developers had a cozy relationship, too cozy in fact, based on mutual back-scratching, resulting in the press failing to call developers on their bullshit when they needed to be. There are numerous PA comics from the first few years mocking the gaming press for this sort of thing.
2. For a time, Mike and Jerry had hope that as the industry matured the gaming press might actually be starting to hold developers accountable and do real journalism. I think the comic which sums up Mike and Jerry's view during this period the best is this one.
3. Unfortunately, the gaming press realized or decided that they could make more money by trolling for clicks and stirring up controversy than they could by either cozying up to developers OR doing real reporting. The press therefore broke the sort of de facto non aggression pact they had with devs and publishers - which COULD have been a good thing, but instead turned out to be a bad thing because instead of using their new freedom to do substantive reporting, the press increasingly choose to just shit all over everything and troll for outrage. The result is that no more honest journalism is done than during the "back-scratching phase," but now on top of that the enthusiast community is constantly being divided and roiled up and in some cases good games and developers suffer unjustly.
4. In response to the turn towards clickbaiting by the gaming press, developers and publishers begin to say, "Fuck you, you need us more than we need you, you're cut off." While developers are still guilty of just as much nonsense as they ever were (perhaps more), and Mike and Jerry continue to call them out on it, they sympathize with the developers' decision to break with the journalists because the journalists are dishonest and toxic and do nothing to serve their audience community.
Understand I am not saying this is MY perspective (though I do agree with parts of it), this is just my interpretation of how Mike and Jerry's views have evolved.
There are numerous stories out there about how bad reporting killed a studio. The guys who made Titan Quest suffered. They credit their studio going out of business with erroneous reviews. You see, part of their copy protection is that games running cracked versions would crash when you enter a certain cave. All these pirates took to the message boards complaining about the crash, and reviews picked that up calling the game buggy despite not experiencing any bugs themselves. Then Titan Quest got a reputation for being a great, but buggy game, people should avoid.
Which is all the more ironic since we're talking about Bethesda...
Traditionally, Mike and Jerry have been very critical of the very concept of people other than them having opinions about things.
Publisher :P (which is sometimes also the developer) I suspect most actual developers just want to make things that people enjoy (and also money, but mostly the first part). But the publisher needs to make money to keep the lights on (and also to just make money
To be honest though, I would tweak this to say less that they want the media under their control than to simply manipulate them (not necessarily in a bad way, but potentially) to their maximum benefit. This is a marketer's job. They need the media to get their message out, but at the same time a docile and biased media can hurt their message too if it does not come across genuine.
Nah
Titan Quest is a buggy-ass game, and I love Titan Quest more than most people
Also it reviewed fairly well across the board, and even critical reviews had more to say about the idea that it wasn't doing enough to differentiate itself from Diablo
Reviewers weren't holding THQ hostage by any means, stop trying to invent villains
The danger of being a comedian and a critic at the same time I suppose.
I swear, I'm not trying to be trolly here, where are these "clickbaity" articles on Kotaku people keep talking about
I read the site every day; there are certainly articles I'm not interested in reading but when I hear "clickbait" I think stupid shit like Upworthy and headlines that tell me how I'll never guess what happened next.
Here's an absolute dandy
Uh-oh I accidentally deleted my signature. Uh-oh!!
To be fair that is a 3 year old article written as a guest by someone who doesn't work there.
A Fallout 4 Boss That Scared the Crap Out of Me
Fallout 4 Has A Ton of Junk, And It's Stressing Me Out
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Hrmm if those are the terrible scourge of clickbait articles ruining journalism then this is seems like a whole lotta noise about nothing. Like why even get mad about headlines like that?
Sure, they're going to post "10 Disney Princesses Reimagined as Wastelanders in Fallout" and show a bunch of stuff from DeviantArt, but... I dunno, I like that stuff? It's stuff I wouldn't really go out of my way to find, so if it shows up on my social media stream, awesome.
As for them covering non-game stuff like comic reviews, etc. that's just the state of the geekosphere right now. Every site is practically the same or spitting out the same stuff. Comic Book Resources regularly talks about non-Comic things from Breaking Bad to Fallout 4 to whatever. It's like when G4 showed rerun episodes of COPS and Cheaters as opposed to any of their original content.
Anyways, Kotaku still made their bed. If they were responsible for leaking the info, then I don't blame Bethesda/Ubisoft/Publishers. If they were just reporting on a leak, I don't get why it's worth blacklisting them. That's like me being mad at my local news station because it reported on something CNN reported on. At the end of the day I kind of think Kotaku is being petty for writing this article and trying to be the victim, but it's also kind of petty that Bethesda/Ubisoft aren't even replying to inquiries or comments about ANYTHING.
That doesn't sound like clickbait at all; it sounds like Kotaku simply isn't being the exact site you want. Its core focus is gaming but gaming sort of overlaps with a lot of other parts of pop culture, and Kotaku focuses on that too. They're also part of Gawker Media so there's obviously going to be crossover with io9 and Gizmodo. Personally, if the only thing Kotaku wrote about was games I'd find it a very boring site, and if all they were allowed to write about was games we'd probably get a hell of a lot more "clickbait" filler than the six examples in 3 months mentioned above.
That was actually meant to be a joke but I guess I should have gone with "did Kotaku kick Jerry's dog" or something like that. I truly don't understand what inspired such rage against Kotaku from him. He had the same Hulk-out when Roger Ebert said that dumb thing about video games way back when too. I don't get it. He acts so often like he literally hates other people talking about video games.
But it's also perfectly justified for a game journalist to point out that this is happening to explain why coverage for certain games may be lacking or why they aren't covering a particular console as much. Back when Kotaku had been blacklisted by Sony, can you imagine the fan outcry if they hadn't publicized it? All the Sony fanboys would be even louder in their cries that someone is biased against Sony since their reviews are up late / previews are scarce.
There's been this shift where people get their info straight from companies nowadays via blogs, official streams and the like. This seems to have people kowtowing along the company line and cheering on shutting them down the media for... being the media I guess. Then when they get burned by said company blaming said gaming media for not "accurately" reporting on these companies while pointing to sites like PA to explain how the gaming media is evil or doesn't do its job. It's a weird situation to watch.
I selected those because the question was "Where's the clickbait on Kotaku?", as if it didn't exist, and those are clear examples. Those are not the only examples in the past 3 months, but I have a feeling that no matter how many I list it won't be enough.
In any case, I have no opinion on how Kotaku wants to run their ship, only on how they want me to perceive the way they run it.
I'm just saying, I'm looking at Kotaku's home page right now, and I wouldn't call any of their articles there "clickbait." I would certainly call one or two "not to my interest" and another one is clearly "paid advertising" but I just don't see a level of this that seems to draw so much outrage and consternation from many of Kotaku's critics.
I imagine part of this is that there seems to be a difference in opinion on what actually constitutes "clickbait." Someone joked about "10 Disney Princesses Reimagined as Wastelanders in Fallout" upthread; if that article existed, I wouldn't call that clickbait. Fluff, sure. Stupid and played-out, maybe. But I wouldn't call it "clickbait" because the article says exactly what it is and in doing so, fails at what clickbait is meant to do, which is make me click the link to see what they're talking about.
"Here is a list of stupid things that you won't enjoy reading" isn't clickbait to me.
"Can you believe this is in Fallout?" is clickbait.
There's more analysis of the greater issue coming out of this, and that is always good.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/11/analysis-kotaku-blacklisting-and-the-independence-of-the-gaming-press/
As far as I'm concerned anything that promotes self awareness among a community is a net benefit.
There's no such thing as "this has been done" for this kind of thing, because the company/journalist/consumer relationship is not static.
Hmmm...That makes sense. I certainly don't agree with the latter 2, at least not to these same extent that M&J see it. Then again, maybe I'm not seeing the stuff they are and am just lashing what I see others do (and myself circa 2014) in calling anything they don't agree with "bad games journalism".
Steam: pazython
I think it's just a difference of opinion on what constitutes click bait. I would consider that type of article click bait, in the same vein as a "Top 10 Celebrity Blunders" type of article - sort of a "look at this shiny thing that isn't actually news!"
I suppose this is Kotaku's "style" but that doesn't mean a lot of it isn't done just to generate clicks.
Either way, this is probably meandering off the original topic too much so that's all I'm going to add there :P Though one small bit to bring it back on point - I personally think those kinds of articles are what make the site seem less professional and thus give Bethesda and others more justification for "we don't need to support this" over an IGN or GameSpot.
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
Do you have any citations for this? Not the Wardel thing as I can google that myself, but the "regularly distorting facts" and/or making up rumors?
Lists and articles posted above aren't really clickbait unless the image they are using is like..TITS or something completely unrelated to the article.
I dont read clickbait anymore because I use this one weird trick that journalists hate.
Seriously...? You're doing gamers a disservice by making game journalists seem like evil scorpions.
Soon all you'll have left are press release fluff. Enjoy that.
Eyeroll
Or it would be, if there were any.
The ultimate point is, you get stung, why would you touch the scorpion again?
Their coverage of Fallout 4 so far has been very positive, running multiple stories about how to find neat gear or characters in the game. That's a very weird way to get revenge against a company.
I expect their PAX coverage to be the same as it is every year, "Look at all this cosplay" and "here are some games that were just announced" and probably 1-2 stories about how hard it is to get tickets. Maybe a scandal de jour if something nasty happens.
I don't have a lot of interest in researching tons of historical instances. I am aware that they've run hitpieces on Denis Dyack, David Jaffe, and recently that giant teddy bear, Boogie2988 posted about his own experience with Kotaku trying to make his life difficult.
As far as I'm concerned, Kotaku getting nailed over leaks is like a serial killer getting nailed by a rigged traffic light camera. Maybe they were in the right just this once, but good god man, look at who they are!
I think there's always been tension between the creative industry and the critics / commenators. Recently this tension is becoming even more pronounced as the big sites, especially those that aren't providing quality and value, are losing ground to individuals. Individuals with popular youtube accounts hold massive sway over a game's perception and popularity. That's a new thing.