Video Game Press Goes for the Green Despite Strong Protests

Soon after news broke of Editorial Director Jeff Gerstmann’s firing from the popular video game website GameSpot, a Penny Arcade comic titled “The New Games Journalism” captured the sentiments of the gaming community with its sardonic tone. In the eyes of the public, Gerstmann was fired because of his harsh review of Kayne and Lynch. The game was a major title from publisher Eidos, and it also happened to be the center of a massive advertisement campaign that had its imprint all over GameSpot. It appeared that GameSpot had buckled under pressure from publisher Eidos and the site’s own business division, allowing outside influences to determine its editorial content.

Whether or not that scenario is true—GameSpot maintains that Gerstmann was fired due to internal reasons unrelated to advertiser pressure—GameSpot immediately felt the backlash from gamers and its own editors alike. After an anonymous poster claiming to be a GameSpot editor made inflammatory posts regarding the incident on technology site Valleywag, gamers began to vent their anger on message boards, fuming over the popular editor’s firing. Next, long-time employees like freelancer Frank Provo and editor Alex Navarro began to leave the publication, citing Gerstmann’s firing as their reason. To paraphrase Provo, the gaming community came to believe that GameSpot had released Gerstmann for all the wrong reasons. Public opinion quickly took on an even more negative tone, and GameSpot’s credibility fell apart.

While the fiasco has been particularly hard on GameSpot, Gerstmann’s firing is also a signal that something is fundamentally wrong with video game journalism, from the relationship between game publishers and the enthusiast publications that focus primarily on video games all the way to the editorial content of many publications. More importantly, it seems to be the tip of the iceberg of a new brand of game journalism, one in which editorial content is secondary to business.

The evidence for such a direction has existed for quite some time. As pointed out by N’Gai Croal of Newsweek, the publishers hold the enthusiast press, which envelops the industry in “profound contempt.” This contempt stems from the often-negative views presented by the press on many—if not most—games that a publisher releases in the span of a year.

This is a serious problem because the relationship between publishers and the press is of considerable importance to writers. Publishers are ultimately the only source to which game publications can turn for the information and software essential to two staples of the enthusiast press: previews of upcoming games and reviews of released games. It also so happens that these same publishers are the major advertisers in magazines and websites dealing with video games.

There is an irreconcilable conflict of interest implicit in this relationship. Due to the contempt that the publishers have for the press, it is possible for them to pull advertisements and information from publications that regularly present negative editorial content regarding their products. Publishers will often put pressure on magazines and websites to alter their content in order to maintain the flow of information and advertisement deals. The result is biased content that does not present reliable opinions on games to its audience, such as gamers at Columbia, who regularly rely on the enthusiast press. After all, gaming is an expensive hobby, and college students—who make up a key demographic in the industry—look to the press to make sure that the games they buy are worthwhile.

Though this idea is disturbing—as it is indeed unethical that advertisements should ever influence editorial content—it has happened more often than the gaming public knows. Early last year, the gaming blog Kotaku became the center of the community’s attention after it publicly exposed efforts by Sony,a first-party publisher and creator of the PlayStation brand, to pressure the site into refraining from breaking news of Sony’s rumored online service (now known as Home) by threatening to withdraw its support in regards to software (advance copies of games, etc). Sony later recanted its threats after public opinion turned against the company.

More recently, Electronic Gaming Monthly’s Editor-in-Chief Dan Hsu revealed that major publisher Ubisoft has blackballed his magazine because of the consistently bad press it contained regarding one of Ubisoft’s biggest games of the 2007 holiday season, Assassin’s Creed. Ubisoft vowed not only to end advertising ties with the magazine, but also to refuse EGM coverage of the company’s games. This is the clearest example of a game publisher exercising its advertising muscle to force the enthusiast press into altering editorial content.

As a nascent field of journalism, the enthusiast game press must undergo many growing pains. Nevertheless, undue pressure from the very companies the press is supposed to be objectively covering should not be one of them. The field is new, so the video game industry and community is facing a crisis of ethics and respect that is in danger of stunting the industry’s eventual development into a more mainstream, respectable, and legitimate medium. The game publishers, as well as the publications that choose to cave under pressure, will only have themselves to blame if the industry and the journalists who cover it do not attain the degree of respect and legitimacy for which they are striving.

Luckily, certain figures within the industry are not content to sit back and let this trend go unchecked. Hsu has been an outspoken proponent of transparency, professionalism, and ethical behavior in the enthusiast press. From his insightful 2006 interview with former Microsoft Corporate Vice President of Entertainment Peter Moore—an interview which many hailed as a new beginning for professionalism and gravitas in games journalism—to his recent disclosure of Ubisoft’s attempt to silence EGM, Hsu has been a leader in the field’s drive towards legitimate journalism. More importantly, he has stuck to his guns during his stint as the magazine’s Editor in Chief, always calling for “honest and tough” critiques that the gaming community can rely on for unbiased information. Hsu’s rise has also coincided with a recent increase in the desire of games publications such as Kotaku and the 1up Network (of which EGM is a part) to be more professional and relevant in their work, leading to a renaissance of sorts in the field.

As long as there are figures like Hsu who are willing to uphold and fight for principles that have long been established in other forms of journalism, readers should not fear for the integrity of the enthusiast press any time soon. No matter how powerful the publishers become, and no matter how much pressure they put on the press, nothing can stop the field’s progress. GameSpot may have buckled under the weight of advertisement dollars, but the rest of the enthusiast press certainly will not.