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"Lost Humanity 18: A Table of Doritos"
"An Utter Disgrace"
"Libel, alleged legal threats, and conflicts of interest: the twisted story of MCV and Eurogamer"
(EDIT)
A couple more links on this, both from Forbes:
"Video Game Journalist Robert Florence Leaves Eurogamer After Libel Complaints"
"All The Pretty Doritos: How Video Game Journalism Went Off The Rails"
I found this comment thread on RPS to be interesting as well (and is where I got the above two Forbes links). If absolutely nothing else has come of this, I have at least now added Forbes Games to my Google Reader feed, fwiw.
(EDIT 2) Also, this, found again by the above RPS comment thread. (/EDIT 2)
(EDIT 3) Another good article about this ongoing story. (/EDIT 3)
(/EDIT)
I don't think I'll be surprising anyone at all when I state the obvious by saying that the above articles once again shine a light on yet another facet of what is (and has long been) wrong with the video game industry today, i.e. the gaming "journalism" part of that industry in particular. It shouldn't be a shock to anyone by now that such dirty dealings happen. If anything, the fact that they're more and more brazen about it just makes it all the more difficult to ignore even if you wanted to. It's pretty much par for the course. Kudos to the rare few guys who try to rise above it and not take part in such things, but those guys are clearly the exception. If anything, in my not at all humble opinion, it should be Lauren Wainwright[1], among others, who is languishing in the doghouse right now, instead of Robert Florence. Maybe that will still come to pass in the coming days. We can but hope.
However, so-called "gaming journalism" is only a microcosm of "journalism" in general. This sort of thing isn't limited to just Doritos and free PS3s for games journalists, you know. It's just that games journalists are apparently less interested in keeping such under-the-table dealings, you know, actually under the table. Anyway, with mainstream news media as bad as it is today, what with your Faux Noise and such ilk on one side and your so-called LIEbrul media on the other (at least in the US anyway, as I'm not sure how it is over in the UK and elsewhere), why should gaming journalists in particular aspire to be held to any especially lofty standards?
There was a time when journalists and others in the news media were actually taken seriously. Lyndon Johnson allegedly once said "If I've lost [Walter] Cronkite, I've lost Middle America." meaning that if you didn't have the press on your side, you were well and truly sunk, because the press was generally seen at that time as being honorable and truthful. Nowadays, most people just believe that the vast majority of the press are simply in the pockets of big business and the government (though government is often claimed to also be in the pockets of big business, so I guess it would be one and the same in that case).
The days of journalism from the likes of Cronkite or Edward R. Murrow are long behind us. It's little more than a joke these days, generally speaking. Again, of course, I'm just stating the obvious here. None of this is revelatory or anything.
(EDIT)
Of course, to hear some so-called gaming "journalists" tell it, they actually scoff at the idea of being called "journalists" in the first place (e.g. Jim Sterling from Destructoid, who I've often taken aim at in the past before I just stopped following Desucktoid altogether, has explicitly said this on more than one occasion, and he isn't the only one to say so either, by far). They're just "bloggers" or "some guys on a website" and all that. That's all well and good, but that's not a Get Out Of Jail Free card. When you are writing articles and reviews for a gaming website, and being paid to do so (by your employer, I mean, not by the game companies whose game you are reviewing), it would still behoove you to not blatantly act like a corrupt jackass, you know? Or, even better, how about not actually being a corrupt jackass. That would be nice, too.
(/EDIT)
[1] - Who, it doesn't surprise me a tiny bit to learn, apparently was associated with Destructoid at one point, and maybe still is for all I know. In fact, I do indeed clearly remember the user name "athiestium" showing up in the comments a lot back in the long ago days when I used to actually give something of a damn about that site. It has been years since I actively interacted with that site in any capacity, so I can't recall if she was among all the ones making the type of egregiously asinine comments that eventually drove me to stop caring about the site, but I'd say the odds are probably pretty good. At the very least, however, it's not a shock that she'd be okay with whoring herself out for swag, given that it has happened before. Of course, she is not the only one who has made a big production out of receiving press kits for video games in articles and Youtube videos, not by a long shot. (Hers, apparently, have since been deleted from Youtube along with the post linked to in the Destructoid and 1up blurbs, but you should still get the gist of it all from those two links anyway).
"An Utter Disgrace"
"Libel, alleged legal threats, and conflicts of interest: the twisted story of MCV and Eurogamer"
(EDIT)
A couple more links on this, both from Forbes:
"Video Game Journalist Robert Florence Leaves Eurogamer After Libel Complaints"
"All The Pretty Doritos: How Video Game Journalism Went Off The Rails"
I found this comment thread on RPS to be interesting as well (and is where I got the above two Forbes links). If absolutely nothing else has come of this, I have at least now added Forbes Games to my Google Reader feed, fwiw.
(EDIT 2) Also, this, found again by the above RPS comment thread. (/EDIT 2)
(EDIT 3) Another good article about this ongoing story. (/EDIT 3)
(/EDIT)
I don't think I'll be surprising anyone at all when I state the obvious by saying that the above articles once again shine a light on yet another facet of what is (and has long been) wrong with the video game industry today, i.e. the gaming "journalism" part of that industry in particular. It shouldn't be a shock to anyone by now that such dirty dealings happen. If anything, the fact that they're more and more brazen about it just makes it all the more difficult to ignore even if you wanted to. It's pretty much par for the course. Kudos to the rare few guys who try to rise above it and not take part in such things, but those guys are clearly the exception. If anything, in my not at all humble opinion, it should be Lauren Wainwright[1], among others, who is languishing in the doghouse right now, instead of Robert Florence. Maybe that will still come to pass in the coming days. We can but hope.
However, so-called "gaming journalism" is only a microcosm of "journalism" in general. This sort of thing isn't limited to just Doritos and free PS3s for games journalists, you know. It's just that games journalists are apparently less interested in keeping such under-the-table dealings, you know, actually under the table. Anyway, with mainstream news media as bad as it is today, what with your Faux Noise and such ilk on one side and your so-called LIEbrul media on the other (at least in the US anyway, as I'm not sure how it is over in the UK and elsewhere), why should gaming journalists in particular aspire to be held to any especially lofty standards?
There was a time when journalists and others in the news media were actually taken seriously. Lyndon Johnson allegedly once said "If I've lost [Walter] Cronkite, I've lost Middle America." meaning that if you didn't have the press on your side, you were well and truly sunk, because the press was generally seen at that time as being honorable and truthful. Nowadays, most people just believe that the vast majority of the press are simply in the pockets of big business and the government (though government is often claimed to also be in the pockets of big business, so I guess it would be one and the same in that case).
The days of journalism from the likes of Cronkite or Edward R. Murrow are long behind us. It's little more than a joke these days, generally speaking. Again, of course, I'm just stating the obvious here. None of this is revelatory or anything.
(EDIT)
Of course, to hear some so-called gaming "journalists" tell it, they actually scoff at the idea of being called "journalists" in the first place (e.g. Jim Sterling from Destructoid, who I've often taken aim at in the past before I just stopped following Desucktoid altogether, has explicitly said this on more than one occasion, and he isn't the only one to say so either, by far). They're just "bloggers" or "some guys on a website" and all that. That's all well and good, but that's not a Get Out Of Jail Free card. When you are writing articles and reviews for a gaming website, and being paid to do so (by your employer, I mean, not by the game companies whose game you are reviewing), it would still behoove you to not blatantly act like a corrupt jackass, you know? Or, even better, how about not actually being a corrupt jackass. That would be nice, too.
(/EDIT)
[1] - Who, it doesn't surprise me a tiny bit to learn, apparently was associated with Destructoid at one point, and maybe still is for all I know. In fact, I do indeed clearly remember the user name "athiestium" showing up in the comments a lot back in the long ago days when I used to actually give something of a damn about that site. It has been years since I actively interacted with that site in any capacity, so I can't recall if she was among all the ones making the type of egregiously asinine comments that eventually drove me to stop caring about the site, but I'd say the odds are probably pretty good. At the very least, however, it's not a shock that she'd be okay with whoring herself out for swag, given that it has happened before. Of course, she is not the only one who has made a big production out of receiving press kits for video games in articles and Youtube videos, not by a long shot. (Hers, apparently, have since been deleted from Youtube along with the post linked to in the Destructoid and 1up blurbs, but you should still get the gist of it all from those two links anyway).
