"DoritosGate's Distractions: Watch The Wire, Not The Angel"

[kane_magus]

This is a follow up article about all this other crap.

Yeah, if journalists would quit taking these obvious bribes from PR people, that would be great, but if the PR people would quit offering these obvious bribes, well, yeah, that would be great too. Why should the PR flunkies be held to a lower standard than the journalists, as though the whole PR thing is a trap that it's entirely on the shoulders of the journalists to avoid? It makes the game companies look just as scummy to offer these things as it does the journalists for taking them.

As for me, to answer the question posed at the end of the article, I don't want to read game reviews or editorials that have been bought and paid for by the publisher of the game in question. So, I don't. To restate: By that, I mean that I simply don't read game reviews anymore. At all. I don't visit websites that offer game reviews with a token numerical value tacked onto the end. It's really that simple. At the very most, I might occasionally glance at metacritic or something, but even that is nigh onto completely useless.

(EDIT)

Upon rereading this, another thing has struck me.

This line: "If a point of disconnect has been reached to such an extent that activities judged grossly offensive to the audience are totally normalized, that needs to be addressed."

This has happened with the games industry even outside of the whole journalism thing. Think about the various heinous DRM schemes like "always connected" or things like Day One DLC and so on and so forth. Those are clearly examples of "activities judged grossly offensive to the audience" that have now become "totally normalized." Totally normalized to the extent that some members of the "audience" no longer even find them "grossly offensive." This, too, definitely "needs to be addressed."

(/EDIT)

Comments

[owsf2000.livejournal.com]

I completely agree on both points.