Re-Branding
As you might have noticed I haven’t updated this blog in a while. Partly that’s because I’ve been busy- I moved out of the States to come teach English in Barcelona, I’ve had other projects to work on, etc. etc. Part of it is I haven’t had time.
The other part is I haven’t had the inclination, because to be frank during my time as a video game blogger I became well-fed up with the structure of video game journalism. The orientation of this blog is now more expressly political (and radically left-wing, more on that later), but before I begin writing on political issues in the US, I wanted to take a moment to explain why I left videogame journalism, and what I think it says about the nature of larger media institutions in our society.
Gamergate and Why We Can’t Have Just Things
Where to begin in talking about Gamergate? Nearly everything has been said that could be about this hellish downward spiral of events. The people who stood accused of corruption have been protected by the same institutions which should hold them accountable; the people campaigning for ethics in gaming journalism have proven themselves to be violently bigoted trolls of the most unethical sort.
I don’t think that transparency in media outlets in any world means scaling back progress in social justice. There is deeply ingrained misogyny, homophobia, and racism within what has become a toxic (and largely male) fandom whose pointless, yet increasingly bitter, debates between PC and console gaming, between Sony vs. Microsoft vs. Nintendo have rendered them easy prey for corporate interests. The issue of Gamergate has become so unsalveagable that I think it would at this point be irresponsible to defend whatever kernel of truth lay on the outskirts of the movement’s defenders’ arguments.
And it really is a pity what happened, because there’s no reason, theoretically, why an accountable media institution and a progressive media institution need to be mutually exclusive. So I want to critique the ethics of games journalism myself, having formerly aspired to be a professional in the field, but I want to go at it from a much different angle, and to show a bit of insight that I gleaned from my time as a (semi-professional) journalist.
(I should note here I was never paid a dime for any of my work, so take it for what you will)
Private Media and Corporate Sponsors
In the United States we’ve become witness to a very unique form of propaganda, a sort of voluntary propaganda. I think its rare that, behind closed doors, any one of the “Big Three” networks actually receives a memo from a shady government official telling them specifically what or what not to report. Sadly, that fact isn’t in defense of their credibility, but an admission that such explicit interference is no longer necessary. Instead, major media institutions have become so adept at selling themselves out that obscuring the truth has become inherently profitable, and, therefore, beneficial. No shady government agent tells Fox executives to cast Michael Brown as a thuggish no-good youth; they do it themselves because they make more money off a politically ignorant viewership by pandering to their basest, most bigoted impulses. No one (probably) tells CNN not to report on fast food workers striking for decent pay, en masse, in major metropolitan centers: they don’t report on it because, as a leviathan-like corporate entity, their executives have an interest all their own in under-reporting stirrings of discontent within the working class. And the inane liberalism of MSNBC (which always stops just short of an analysis of class structures) is a disconcerting beast all its own. If I start talking about how a handful of well-connected individuals own most of these outlets and that this alone might lethally influence journalistic integrity people will call me a conspiracy theorist, so I’ll leave it at structural analysis.
In games journalism the problems of this new self-censorship are exacerbated because the field is only accountable to their specific viewership, not “the public,” and so the grievances become more acute. I’m not talking about sex-scandals here. What I’m talking about is the way that journalists are spoon-fed “leads” by the same businesses that own the products they are supposed to review in a kafka-esque series of conflicts of interest so essential to the system that they’re rarely even discussed, let alone critiqued within these same institutions.
Let me be more exact: I was writing for a blog called That Video Game Blog for a bit. I did a couple of reviews, a couple of short news stories, and before I go any further I wanna take a moment to say that the people who worked there were not scheming masters of the corporate media- they were nice. They never censored me. Actually, they seemed to respect my work enough that I was given a pretty long leash to say what I liked. My problem was not with the individuals, but with the system. Because the system was this: every day, a series of press releases was sent out and writers would select which stories to write up- the same was true of reviews. It might be a trailer release for Tropico or an announcement for a new World of Warcraft expansion, but never did it stray far from what felt like simple advertising. It was not that the writers were trying to cast these things in a positive light, but that the very content of what they were reporting on was largely positive. If a company releases an announcement for a new game that consists of a feature list and a couple of flattering screenshots there’s only so much you can do to make it sound objective. No company is going to send out a press release detailing the problems or doubts consumers should have with their products.
Perhaps you still think I’m exaggerating, so take a minute and check out gamespress.com (billed as a resource for game journalists- and ONLY game journalists). Most writers for sites like TVGB, which rely on unpaid contributors, will literally scour this list, choose a “story” they like, and write it up for their site. The stories they don’t get this way are mailed directly to staff from the companies that make these games, or those company’s PR agencies. This is not reporting, it is regurgitation. A large portion of the stories you will read on gaming “news” sites can be found right on gamespress, straight from the tap.
And the rest of the “news”? Well there are the “inside peeks” within studios, triple-A or indie, where journalists are given a walking tour of the production process, always accompanied by owners or employees of the same company hyping their products. There are the reviews for which, to make sure that advance copies can be procured, an incessant buddy-buddy nepotism between critics and business owners is assured, and then there are the trade shows, which by now have become far more fan-spectacle than an exchange of informed opinions for the benefit of the industry. In fact, for a more thorough rundown of the history and practice of review embargos and corporate alliances, check out this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwD2GgWKIrs) video published in 2012 (long before Gamergate began, so it can be watched guiltlessly). He covers far more ground on the issue than I could here.
All that’s left are the editorials, which most people realize by now are hopelessly inane.
Self-Censorship and the Commodification of Information
Gaming journalism has been reduced to little more than an extension of advertising for powerful studios who know that they’re holding all the cards. Advance copies are withheld if their last offering was poorly received by such-and-such outlet. People (like Jeff Gertsmann) can even be fired for upsetting the wrong corporation.
And why? Because the way these outlets make money is from page views. I cannot stress to you how important page views are. The better your page views, the more valuable you are to advertisers, and advertising is where the money comes from because these outlets rarely charge for subscription. I also wrote for The New York Video Games Critics Circle for a while. This was a collection of leading game critics who would come together for the purpose of discussion or to arrange events, like an awards show. I, being an intern, was somewhat out of place among them. I won’t name names (I can’t, really, I’ve forgotten most of them though they can be found here http://nygamecritics.com/members/) but when they talked business, the talk was always about page views- that was what they strove for, that was the criteria to which practices and articles were held.
Its an interesting mutation of the “profit motive” that we hear so much about when learning the virtues of capitalism in school. Under the original version of the “profit motive” a producer will try and create the products that they think are the best so that the market will favor them and they will make a profit (I will make the best chair so that I can make the most money). Now, however, with their “profit” coming from advertising, journalistic outlets (and I’m not just talking about games journalism here) do not attempt to write/produce (in the case of video coverage) the best or most informative articles and let the “market” of the audience decide. Instead, they attempt to write the most exciting or inflammatory articles, which don’t have to be responsible or true necessarily, because it is the attention itself, not the approval of the content, which is profitable (I will make an interesting-looking chair because I make money every time someone sits on it- whether the chair is good or not is irrelevant). Advertisers do not care if your reporting is honest- they care how many people stare at it.
Remember, these news outlets are themselves businesses, and a business has one primary goal for which all other goals are a means towards an end- profit. That is the condition of whether a business survives and if it thrives. Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, a business has to make money. A couple decades ago, this was accepted as an objectively good thing, as profit was the result of the production of a quality product. That standard no longer holds, and I hope that by now you can start to see the parallels between the ethical problems plaguing gaming journalism and those afflicting the mass media. While the major private media networks still broadcast on television, the majority of their viewership is now digital, and that means that success comes from page views; CNN operates according to essentially the same criteria as Kotaku or IGN, though sporting vastly different content and on a much larger scale. Of course, the problem of advertising plagued television as well, but with the digital format it has become so much more acute.
The Bigger Picture
What I’m trying to do here is not to indict any individual journalist, video-game or otherwise, as ruining the media- that would be an exercise in futility. What I want instead is to show that media outlets, operating not as individuals with individual goals, but as institutions with institutional goals (i.e. profit) have subverted such “truth” as they were once capable of presenting. Yes, perfect objectivity is impossible, but I would much rather read articles from people at least attempting to retain professional distance rather than fixing page views as the criteria for whether or not their writing is worthwhile.
But I won’t fix it, because I can’t. And its a shame, because I truly love interesting, original video games, and when the media outlets that are supposed to be taking companies to task for the quality of their products abandon their responsibility to consumers then the whole industry goes to pot. More money is being spent on riling up an insatiable hype machine that gaming media outlets are all too happy to foster as it creates the sort of frenzied interest they need to maintain their business models. More money is being spent on trailers, and advertising campaigns, and hip “first looks” that give the impression of innocuous “chats” from impassioned individuals that share their audiences concerns and desires, and slowly but surely the quality of mainstream titles is declining. More sequels, more safe-bets, more reliance on presentation which is becoming more distant from the content of the experiences themselves. Does the community not remember how great the trailers were for Dead Island and Star Wars: The Old Republic? Two games that are now by-words within the industry for abject disappointment? To my mind there could be no more perfect allegory for the increasing celebritization of political campaigns within the United States, where the corporate media has been complicit in endorsing ever-grander spectacles of political candidates campaigns, thought the candidates themselves are proving increasingly incapable of leading the nation. The spectacle, which produces profit, is secondary to the result, which is valuable only to the consumers/voters and not the media institutions that are supposed to inform them.
So I’m not going to write on video games anymore, save for the occasions when they intersect with political discourse. I am of the mind that truth itself is threatened by the relentless quest for profit, and the result is not so much lying as simple inanity. A neutrality, rather than hostility, towards truth. The commodification of information in the digital age means that profit-driven institutions no longer have an interest in reporting the truth, they have an interest in reporting what will grab people’s attention. The clickbait approach has crept into digital media institutions and systemically undermined their role in fostering the intelligent discourse necessary for a democratic society. I don’t want to beat my head against a wall for the sake of video games anymore; if I’m going to beat my head against a wall I at least want it to be the most morally repulsive and terrifying wall possible, and that means American politics. I fear for this future of truth in this country because people, not just institutions, seem content to consume entertainment instead.
So What Instead?
Instead, I’m going to try and update this blog weekly with at least one well-developed article on an important national issue, or a philosophic dissection of some aspect of (primarily American) political life. I meant it when I said that I fear for the truth, and seeing as how no one is going to be paying me to write any time soon I’m in the unique position of being able to say what I like without any pressing special interests influencing me. This makes me feel a bit like a street-corner doomsayer wearing a sandwich board with “THE END IS NIGH” scrawled on it in feces, but to be honest I’ve always had a sort of respect for those individuals.
I’m going to be an internet crank, like Diogenes but with less masturbating in the marketplace (less, not none). I think mainstream commentary in the States is failing the public at a time of what could be great political upheaval if we’re willing to look at the situation broadly and frankly. The powerful bloc of allied corporate and government interests is tightening its grip on the facade on democracy and people are losing faith, yet despite this few strong new political options have emerged. I don’t expect my every reader to be a social libertarian by the time they’ve finished an article, but I hope to at least ask questions that people can appreciate, and that can prompt meaningful discussion about the society that we live in.
STOICYNIC 