Or…. “Dan Hsu’s beef with the industry”

Yesterday we introduced readers to Dan Hsu and Crispin Boyer’s new blog, Sore Thumbs. We asked viewers to add the blog to their bookmarks list, and for good reason - today the writings of Shoe have provided another critical look into the inside workings of the often flawed industry.

Shoe comments on the state of an industry in which game companies consistently pressure journalists to provide pleasing scores for their products, listing examples as he goes along. It’s fascinating, really, and runs the gamut from jostling for exclusive reviews via “promising” high review scores, doing “make up” stories for companies who have felt jilted by coverage in past articles so as to save advertising dollars, and even…. wait, even providing prostitutes for lonesome editors? (Note: This one’s just rumor, folks, although Shoe has reason to believe.)

One example provided in the piece:

For example, some companies will offer an outlet an exclusive first review with the understanding that the game gets a certain score or higher. I don’t feel this is necessarily inappropriate on the game publisher’s side — why put a poor review out there if you can avoid it? And I can certainly understand why the press would entertain such an offer. First review = high traffic or magazine sales. But my beef with this (and why we officially stopped doing exclusive reviews when I was at EGM): Just bringing up the offer alone taints the reviews process…something that should be as clean and innocent as the Virgin Mary.

As an example of the above, Shoe was kind enough to source two VGMWatch articles; we’ll do the same for the benefit of our readers. Peep the hubbub we exposed over IGN’s Prey review process here and here.

While these are “indirect” bribes, as Shoe points out, aren’t they bribes nonetheless, and subject to the same level of scrutiny? As we have put forth before here at the Watch, when any such activities proceed at a publication, there is an immediate conflict of interest and as such the journalist’s objectivity is immediately compromised on some level, whether they realize it or not.

Again, check Sore Thumbs for more examples, and don’t forget to view the other two installments of “Behind the Scenes: Game Journalism” here and here. And don’t think Shoe leaves EGM untouched - in fact, impropriety was one of the reasons he left 1UP/EGM (see part three).

Source: Sore Thumbs

VGMWatch.com has been able to confirm that IGN Nintendo editor Matt Casamassina is married to Golin Harris Vice President Edie Kissko. Golin Harris serves as Nintendo’s PR firm. Sources connected with both Golin Harris and IGN.com were able to validate this information. While VGMWatch has no interest in personal affairs, undisclosed conflicts of interest plaguing the game industry’s integrity cannot be ignored. To that end, there are several journalistic red flags surrounding the facts of this case.

Unfortunately, we have yet to discover any public acknowledgment from either Nintendo, Golin Harris, or IGN Entertainment informing customers of this conflict of interest. Furthermore, IGN.com has continued to allow the Nintendo channel editor to manage Nintendo product coverage. Likewise, the Golin Harris VP in question is responsible for promoting Nintendo products. Clearly, millions of IGN readers’ trust has been violated by this irresponsible abandonment of principle.

Make no mistake, people cannot help with whom they fall in love. As such, the personal integrity of the two individuals involved with this case is completely irrelevant. Indeed, it is principle and principle alone which concerns VGMWatch. The buck stops with IGN and Nintendo to address any conflicts of interest they may have. Simply put, the line between product coverage and sales should be clear and uncompromised. The mere appearance of journalistic impropriety of this magnitude should be avoided.

When game media outlets and publishers taint product coverage it hurts the industry as a whole. Gamers should not tolerate this type of gross irresponsibility. It is also completely unfair to the game publications and publishers that do practice integrity and sound business principle. Frankly, we are tired of seeing reputable industry outlets dragged into the mud due to the careless actions of others. Let’s face it, a newspaper dining critic would not be allowed to review a restaurant his/her spouse managed. If the publication was aware of the potential for conflict of interest, the journalist would most likely not even be allowed to review any restaurants in town. This is basic journalistic integrity consumers expect. The game industry deserves nothing less.

Needless to say, we are disappointed with IGN.com. However, we do want to offer some advice to the network to remedy this situation. First, we strongly urge IGN to not make the network editor a scapegoat in an effort to save face. It is the network’s responsibility to deal with these issues, not the employee. Furthermore, IGN.com should issue a public statement to its readers regarding the conflict of interest. Also, the Nintendo editor should be assigned editorial coverage that does not conflict with his/her personal relationship. We strongly urge Golin Harris/Nintendo to take similar measures on its end.

We contacted IGN and Golin Harris representatives as well as the individuals directly involved. Currently, we have received comment from Golin Harris:“All GolinHarris employees who work on the Nintendo account sign and adhere to a strict confidentiality agreement.” VGMWatch will continue to investigate this story and any other conflicts of interest that come to our attention.

Updated Editor’s Personal Note: I was uncomfortable publishing this story. In fact, I have been sitting on this piece for many months debating whether to run it or not. However, with the game media beginning to take a closer look at cases of corruption, it is time to address this issue. Personally, I find it sickening that these companies’ mistakes happen to be connected with personal affairs. That’s why, rightly or wrongly, I refuse to mention the two individuals’ names. The original story I published did not contain the individual’s names. However, after recommendations from fellow journalists, I have reluctantly decided to disclose the names of the individuals involved. Unfortunately, there is an element of responsibility that falls on the individuals involved as well. Nevertheless, I respect them personally and realize that marriage is a wonderful institution. Rather, my frustration is completely directed towards IGN, Nintendo, and Golin Harris. While it was very difficult for me to publish this type of story, I could not in good conscience continue to shelve it. I also understand that some folks inside the industry have known of this marriage already. However, it would be disingenuous for our publication to not report on such a conflict of interest for the general gaming public. Hopefully, if we continue to engage in open dialog regarding problematic issues facing game journalism we can aid this industry in its maturation.

Update: For clarity, I want to reiterate the central point of the article. This story is about full disclosure on the part of IGN and Nintendo/Golin Harris. It is utterly disrespectful to their readership to not disclose this situation. The personal integrity of the two individuals is irrelevant. It is also unnecessary to assume that there have been any competitive advantages gained with this situation. Rather, IGN and Golin Harris need to disclose this type of information directly to their readers to avoid any appearance of conflicting interests. For example, if we were to find out tomorrow that Katie Couric and George W. Bush were lovers and neither CBS or the White House reported it, we would all be outraged. Just because Couric may have done X amount of negative pieces on Bush’s administration, it doesn’t give the problem of conflicting interests a free pass. I hope you can see the connection here.

Update 2: Golin Harris has issued this statement in regard to the story:
“All GolinHarris employees who work on the Nintendo account sign and adhere to a strict confidentiality agreement.”

>Last week, I received an email from Doug Perry of GameTap.com regarding the Taint or Mere IGNorance? report I published. He was a key figure in the story. It stands to reason that he should have an opportunity to explain his take on what took place with the Prey IGN 360 review. Thus, I have provided his entire response to the piece. Readers are encouraged to evaluate his stance on the journalistic issues in question on a simple premise: was the review process tainted? The answer is rather clear. However, I’ll save my comments for another time. I feel his statement speaks for itself. Below is his complete, unedited response to the piece:
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I have always been a strong opponent of relying on game previews and reviews for a publication’s bread and butter. I firmly believe that much of the problems of corruption and taint that exist in the game media stem from a dependency on publisher exclusives. When a publication makes exclusive game previews and reviews their prime attraction for readers, it cedes power to game publishers. Some publications are often coaxed to cheapen their journalistic standards in an effort to “outbid” competing venues for the exclusive story. This dynamic ends up punishing the honest publications that do uphold their journalistic standards in all cases. I’ll share my take on this topic in greater detail at another time.

There are many stories that illustrate the taint introduced in the game review process. Recently, I was informed of an unfortunate event involving 2K Games and IGN Entertainment. I spoke with a former IGN.com editor who wished to remain anonymous to avoid any apparent conflict of interest (The individual is still employed in the game media). I will let the individual’s story speak for itself. Below, I have paraphrased the journalist’s recollection:
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As game journalists, often I think we gain an exaggerated sense of self-importance regarding our coverage of the industry we canvas. It’s become commonplace for many to smirk at the troubled reporting of the mainstream media as they attempt to cover a story within the gaming industry. We downplay the mainstream’s significance in this realm by considering their coverage nothing but a hackneyed attempt by a bunch of over-the-hill news anchors, blissfully reading words like “Xbox” and “Nintendo” off prompters. After all, what do they know, right?

In the past, mainstream coverage seemed different solely because it was deemed inadequate by comparison. With the advent and rise of Nintendo’s Wii and DS, however, the distinction between “hardcore” gaming outlets and the CNNs of the world has taken on a whole new flavor. The mainstream press are celebrating the virtues of the Wii, blaring their trumpets from on high at every opportunity… Dr. Phil is giving them away on his show, for instance. Meanwhile, Nicole Kidman is touting the usefulness of the DS’ More Brain Training in a special print and television campaign over in Europe. It’s essentially a “Be like Nicole and train your brain for minutes a day” deal, and hey, who doesn’t want to be like a filthy-rich, award-winning actress with pleasantly high cheek bones? (Did I really just mention “pleasantly high cheek bones”?) And none of this is to mention all the stories of mothers sharing delighted stories with the press over how their young x-amount of pounds overweight teenaged son/daughter is now staying “active” through Wii Sports.

With all this feel-goodness going on in mainstream land, what are the talking points among the traditional, gaming-only media outlets and associated entrenched industry pontificators? Obviously, there is still a lot of love for the Wii out there, but there’s an undercurrent of… something else.

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It wasn’t too long ago that IGN received quite the critique from 1UP.com’s News Editor Luke Smith over IGN’s editorial policy when 1UP broke the story that the Stamper brothers were leaving Rare. (IGN originally didn’t link to 1UP’s story.) IGN later tossed a link to 1UP’s story in the news story. However, it wouldn’t be the last time. Now its happened again, as a VGMW reader pointed out to me yesterday.

Both Cubed3 and Sp0ng produced similar exclusive interviews this week with Square-Enix’s Hiromichi Tanaka this week, and many sites (1UP, Game|Life, Detructoid, Joystiq) sourced one of these publications in their stories. However, when IGN ran their story, they sourced no one (see below).

The story said “In a recent interview,” but then failed to provide a source for the quote. Usually you’d see “In a recent interview with [insert publication name here]” or “When talking with [publication name], Tanaka had the follow to say.” Or when citing your own publication, there should have been at least been a self-referential citation (”When speaking with IGN, Mr. Tanaka…”). Yet there was nothing.

I contacted IGN’s Editorial Director Tal Blevins for clarification as to why there was no source attributed to the quote. He told me he would be looking into the matter, and then restated IGN’s policy on citing sources (”However, it is always our intention as reporters to cite relevant sources.”).

A few minutes later, Tal got back to me and said, that after talking with the editor who wrote the story, that the lack of attribution was incidental and an “oversight.” He said that the article would be amended, and it indeed has, with a link to Sp0ng’s interview with Tanaka.

This might come across as petty, but imagine how you’d feel if you were a writer for Cubed3 or Sp0ng, sites with readership much smaller than 1UP, IGN, or GameSpot. Scoring an exclusive are lofty dreams, and then it happens and people don’t source you? That’s a crappy feeling, and ultimately not fair to the sites who originally broke the story.

Let me make it clear that I’m not trying to vilify IGN here. They admitted it was an oversight, corrected the problem, and now the source gets their due. However, proper attribution is becoming an increasing problem because as writers, especially those for internet publications, rush to post stories they sometimes can’t peel back through all the layers of the onion to find the story’s original source. Let’s all make a concerned effort to help curb this problem by taking an extra few minutes to properly cite our sources.

And here is why double checking your sources or, as it was mentioned in the comments of the last Sloppy Reporting 101 post, picking up a phone to check the validity of a rumor/rep with a rep is worth five minutes of your time. IGN got some egg on their face after they mistakenly reported the existence of Metal Gear Solid: Triology for the Xbox 360 after seeing an altered press release posted by one of the forum members on Neo-GAF.

The page now reports its an “{ERROR ENTRY}” and includes the phrase “pwned by Neo-GAF.” However, should this have really happened in the first place? In the race to be the first to post a new game announcement, writers shouldn’t loose sight of making sure they have their facts straight. What the writer should have done after seeing the post is called up his or her contact at Konami to see what the deal was with the Metal Gear Solid: Triology. Or perhaps in this case, the law of “if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck its a duck” could have played a pivotal part in making sure this didn’t happen in the first place. Seriously, a Metal Gear Solid trilogy on the Xbox 360? That just smells fishy. Double checking your facts are great, but the initial judgment of the source by the writer is equally important and can prevent your site from getting “punk’d” by message board posters.

It was awfully nice of Spike TV to spare us the effort of having to actually watch their Video Game Awards show by releasing a list of the winners weeks before the show’s Dec. 10 broadcast date.

Among the nominated sites attending the Friday taping and offering commentary over the weekend were:

Gamespot: “As much as Spike might have refined the show over its past pair of efforts, it was clear the network had not yet found a way to perfectly merge the subject matter, the celebrities, and the audience.”

1up: “Surprisingly, the show wasn’t half bad — in fact, it was by far the best VGA show yet.”

Kotaku Am I the only one who thinks [Game of the Year] should have been WoW? … Anyone else out there who thinks the VGA picked the wrong game?”

and Joystiq: “We’re usually not ones for award shows, (yawn) and this isn’t much different”

These sites even gave away some of the night’s best jokes and scripted banter, removing the last remaining reason for anyone to waste their Saturday night on this thing (My favorite reported line: Jack Black, accepting the award for best human performance by a male, thanking “all the people of the b******* academy over there … Who votes on this thing?” as reported by Gamespot).

Although the general consensus is that the show has taken a step forward in quality, it feels like it has taken two steps back by replacing the drama of last year’s live show with a taped farce.

Speaking of farces, the awards for best blog, gaming website and gaming magazine are still being decided by votes on Spike TV’s web site. Yes, you can still vote as many times as you want with a few clicks and yes, the awards are still squeezed in among detritus like “best boss character” and “best feel like a tough guy moment.” As of this writing, the current leaders are Electronic Gaming Monthly (64%), 1up (70%), and Slashdot Games (40%). Surprisingly, Official Xbox Magazine and GameSpot both have an embarrassingly low 4% of the current vote. Maybe they should emulate Ziff Davis and start begging for votes on the front page of their Web site and in the text of practically every EGM editor’s blog.

Nintendo has announced its participation in the previously discussed IGN Live event. According to the tongue-in-cheek announcement, this could be bad news for some IGN editors:

As if that weren’t enough, you can use IGN Live as a public forum to exact your long-planned revenge on the editors of the site. Writers including Matt Casamassina, who gave Luigi’s Mansion a low 7.0, and Fran Mirabella, who scored Mario Kart: Double Dash!! a paltry 7.9, will be on-hand at the event. We may even throw them in a water-dunk machine. Make those horrible bastards pay for underrating your favorite Nintendo games. Your chances of dunking them will increase significantly if you buy 47,000 tickets and invite entire American cities to join you in your crusades.

Don’t taunt the fanboys IGN. Some of them don’t understand the concept of sarcasm.

Yeah, I know the last one was only 5 months ago. This is the third year of the blog since August. So there.

Now that we’ve all had a week to fiugure out if Nintendo’s new Revolution controller will raise Nintendo back to market dominance or be the blow that drives Nintendo out of business (middle ground? P’shaw!), let’s take a look at how some outlets covered the unveiling.

Blanket Coverage Award: IGN

Holy heck! Besides the above linked hands-on impresisons, IGN had an article on possible uses for the controller, some initial developer comments and an editor’s roundtable discussion… all on Thursday night! Matt Casamassina is a madman!

Late For a Blog Award: Kotaku

The Revolution controller news didn’t break on Kotaku until late Friday morning, when practically every other big site already had something on it, including big blog competitor Joystiq. This is the same site that posted a huge Xbox 360 expose concurrent with the big MTV unveiling. In the world of blogs, the rule stands: get it first, but get it right (but, really, just get it first).

Runner up in this category goes to me, for posting these awards roughly a week late.

Self-Disclaimer Award: IGN

Specifically, this award goes to Levi Buchanan for saying in a roundtable, “I’ve been called a Nintendo fanboy for years. Hell, I’ll confess that I actually worked for them for a year writing for Nintendo Power.” This adds important context to comments like, “I am 100-percent behind Nintendo’s drive for innovation.” Is there any way to remove the implied stain of bias that comes from having Nintendo Power on your resume? I mean, besides hiding it?

Praising With Faint Damns Award: Talk Xbox

Despite calling the controller “mindblowing” and “interesting,” the post also says that “the design makes it a huge pain for 3rd party publishers to port games to the console. But, then again, the GameCube has been mostly 1st party games this generation, so this won’t be a large leap for Nintendo.” Ouch! Nintendo, are you just gonna sit there and take that?

Best Summary of Industry Response Award: Next Generation

Sure, this article wasn’t out until Monday, but Next Gen spent the weekend getting opinions from a whole lot of influential people in the industry. And Tommy Tallarico! Including the media response is important, because while the developers can bring the games, the media are the ones that can doom this thing or ensure its success before it even ships.

Future Stenographer Award: Wonderland

Alice managed to take down Iwata’s keynote speech practically verbatim as he gave it, and delivered the result to the world mere hours after the speech ended. Usually I can’t write and listen at the same time, which is why I rely on audio recordings and e-mails a lot. Alice obviously does not have this issue.

Describing Controllers to Old Folks Award: CNN/Money

Chris Morris wins for the parenthetical in the following:

While it will chiefly rely on those internal sensors to reflect movement on screen, the controller does have a D-pad, which can be easily reached with your thumb. (A D-pad, which is a standard feature on today’s controller, is a movement director that resembles a plus sign.)

Seeing as the D-pad was first introduced over 20 years ago, what is the statute of limitations on having to describe it to a general audience? Perhaps “a plus-sign-shpaed D-pad” would have sufficed?

Effective Efusive Praise Award: Kieron Gillen

“Whether they get it or not immediately divides the entire gaming universe into cowardly, tedious luddites who are perfectly happy to sit in their squat-like holes forever and Good People.”

Best Bitter Bellyaching Award: Curmudgeon Gamer

“As the saying goes: it’s not the size of the sword, but the skill of the swordsman. Remember that Nintendo is addicted to rereleasing its older games. For every new and original game they release, there will be 9 remakes of games they put out on the Super Nintendo or NES. Now all you fans can go out and buy A Link to the Past all over again! But with spatial controller gimmick! Yeah, you have fun with that.”

Cute Headline Award: EuroGamer

Remotely? What does he mean by… oh… it’s shaped like a remote! HA! I got it! HAH HAH HA! Haha! Hehehehehee. *Giggles*. Whooo! Good times.

Best Editorial Pictorial: Jeremy Parish

I had a U-Force. I spent $60 on that piece of crud. I should revoke Parish’s award just for reminding me of it. So bitter! GRRRRR!

Press Release Hyperbole Award: Nintendo (duh!)

“The response from all major publishers worldwide has been extremely positive. ” So I guess if you didn’t like it, you’re not a major publisher, eh?

That’s all I have time for now. Expect updates when I figure out what awards to give to some of these other articles I’ve got bookmarked.