Looking at an unfinished game is the equivalent of looking at an unfinished painting, your seeing the first brush strokes maybe some sketches but you have no realistic idea what the end result will be like.
Looking at leaks is a pontless waste of time, the fact they included personal information just makes the “hackers” scummy
People–whether that’s developers, journalists, or players and readers–will always matter more than what’s in a video game and the coffers that information fattens, whether those coffers belong to hackers or corporations. If that’s true today, it can be true tomorrow too.
The actual article here gets to a great, very accurate conclusion: that information about unfinished, upcoming games is really not that valuable for users and an entirely artificial hype machine that insists on only paying attention to games before they exist. This is true.
There is very little genuine value in exploring a game in development, that is mostly a commercial concern. Which is fine, this is an entertainment industry. All parties here (publishers, journalists and audiences) are willingly engaging in a bit of a commercial transaction.
But journalistically and in terms of art criticism, the moment that coverage matters is after a game exists, not before. Really, leaking publishing plans or greenlit projects shouldn't be a big deal because publishing plans and business deals should be insider stuff that end users don't give a crap about. The relevant Insomniac game now is at most Spider-Man 2, not Wolverine or any later games they may or may not have deals to make. Mostly because there's no guarantee those games will ever exist or in what form.
But also, screw leaking personal info of game developers.
It's either journalism, in which you talk about news that comes up. Or it's being a freelance PR for publishers saying what they want, when they want in order to keep in the embargo ecosystem.
But that choices has been decided long ago by the major """news""" sites like IGN aren't, never have and never will be actual journalistisc outlets, they are a sock puppet hype machine for publishers to make ads and generate meaningless 9.5/10 reviews.
This article is about the author’s personal relationship to E3 and how it reminds him about unhealthy work habits he has, which he also thinks are commonly occuring in games journalism.
I think it’s very fair not to like the article, I wasn’t overly interested in it myself, but honestly I can’t help but disagreeing with the negativity directed towards the author in many of these comments. Go ahead and dislike the point of the article, but making a uncharitable reading about the author just seems silly to me.
Look, I’m sorry you’re cat died dude, but just because some bad shit happened to you during E3 doesn’t mean that the escapism in video games can’t provide a healthy relief for other people. It’s also no different from books or TV in this aspect.
It’s funny that Aftermath is writing about bad game journalism practices when they themselves have an initial “you must register to read our articles,” but then after registration, hit you with an actual hard paywall after a couple of articles.
If they want to paywall their content, that is their prerogative, but they could at least be up-front about it, instead of only telling me about it after I went through the trouble of creating an account.
Honestly, I hadn’t realized there was a paywall on the article after having signed up a couple weeks ago.
I’ll actually avoid posting their articles here then. Thanks for the callout.
Edit: Though I’m still interested in hearing about where they are hypocritical. People keep saying Aftermath writers say paywalls are bad, but I haven’t seen that anywhere that I’ve noticed.
I quite enjoy this site. On my journey to replace a lot of my content consumption with RSS feeds, Aftermath found a home in my RSS reader. We are human and humans can be hypocrites but there’s no need to dismiss an entire publication because of a single author’s hypocritical stance.
That is all that has ever existed in the genre and is all anyone wants from it.
I don’t remember you appointing you as the sole representative for all gamers.
Personally, I think games can be written about beyond “game good” and “game bad”. Or maybe it comes down to whether you find gaming something important, or just a silly way to waste time.
“Ethics in games journalism” was a phrase invented to make gamergate’s sexist attacks on women in gaming sound legitimate and I cringe every time people use the term now. Nobody used the term “games journalism” before then.
No one used the specific sentence “ethics in gaming journalism,” is what you meant to say.
The concept of gaming journalism wasnt invented by kiwi farm and 4chan chuds. Because “gaming journalism” is literally that. Journalism. About the industry and artwork involved in video games.
You sound like you bought into their gamergate bullshit.
“Hurrrr, no one writes about games unless its an ad!!” Do you get how stupid this makes you sound? The woman targeted by gamergate is literally a games journalist.
This is pedantic, but journalism is a specific thing and it is not generally considered to be what we see in writing about games.
As an oversimplification: Opinion pieces and reviews aren’t journalism. Reporting on facts and information with research and sources is.
While there may have been a few pieces here and there that qualify, the industry around writing about games has never been heavy on facts and research, and it doesn’t need to be. It’s like any other entertainment section writing.
Inventing the phrase “games journalism” was done to try to legitimise a movement that was about sexism. We just didn’t use that term before and nobody was bothered by that, because it doesn’t really apply.
Its not what you see. Because you are only reading paid for review work. There is no we here. You are in a bubble.
Have you ever even seen anitas work? She was harassed, specifically, for starting a running series of deep analysis pieces about how women are portrayed, discussed, and interpreted within gaming culture from both its players and the games they play.
Just because you never bothered to read her work until someone on an xbox mic screeched about it doesnt magically make her work vanish.
I dont overly care that you only read the paper scraps that flitter past the rock you live under. But the rest of the world isnt your rock. Quit lying about something so easily and obviously disproven.
Anita Sarkeesian’s amazing work as an academic theorist is not journalism just because it involves words. Not all writing is journalism. This isn’t a value judgment of her incredible work that I am fully aware of and found very educational.
Maybe take a step back and realize you’re being incredibly rude to a random internet stranger who has a different opinion than you on what constitutes the term “journalism.”
If after you take that break you can come back without hurling insults at me, then we can have a conversation about it?
So thats a yes, you have literally never actually read her work. You could have at least come out and said so from the beginning. “Just words” what a spit in the face of her work.
Is there any point in discussing a topic with someone who apparently learned of its existence about 20 minutes ago? Go shit talk some other professional bud, youve made enough of an ass of yourself here.
Insane to see someone try and neg anita by pretending to be offended about gamergate
I don’t see how you got “negging anita” out of me complementing her incredible academic work. I was a huge fan of her Tropes vs. Women in Video Games series, as well as the content she was writing at the time. I am sure she’s done other work that I’m not familiar with, too. I am not claiming to be an expert on her entire body of work, but I definitely have seen and read her academic-oriented work.
It’s not journalism, but one could argue it’s more important because it has a thesis and provides evidence through careful academic arguments and research.
None of what I’ve said has warranted how you’re treating me, so I have to ask, what’s going on? are you OK? Why does my definition of journalism threaten you this much?
Why are you still here? Did you not say I hurt your feelings too much to continue?
We already established you do not understand what you are talking about and that you have no interest in changing that. Did you want to insult a different journalist real quick? Do you need an audience for that?
Youre the guy who refuses to call non medical phD holders doctors, and then acts like the indignant victim when people rightly call you out for insulting people by refusing to use their earned title.
You dump tons of praise on a journalists work to deflect from the fact that you dont actually respect the work. Its not of a high enough standard for her to have earned her title to you.
Youre a dick here just like I am sure youre a dick to any doctorate in chemistry. And yet, you pretend so vehemently that your insults cant possibly be rude, so surely its everyone else who is wrong.
Its pathetic, bud. As is the disengenuous well wishing. That kinda cements my point
I figured this would be about the games themselves (not that they are actually good this year), weird. Do people really get hyped about ads? I’m subbed to the YouTube channels that the games i want to play will announce on, why would i care about ads in an event that is supposed to be it’s own thing? Is this how it feels to be out of touch?
The author says that the whole even could easily be shortened but journalists have to watch everything,including useless stuff like ads, carefully not to miss anything.
Why? Because in the field, because of the hype, you have to be the first if you want to have your article read.
This resource is worker-owned and they would often write articles about issues in the game industry that corporatish editors wouldn’t usually let through. This one is an issue that most readers might not even think about.
That title is the exact reason i’m going into aviation maintenance in December. Being able to take things apart and put them back together again plus fiddling around with them to see how they work? Perfect
That will be cool! I do a lot of repair, but aviation is another level! Fixing things is honestly the most satisfying labor overall for me. I take any opportunity I can to learn a new device. I’m in assembly these days, though, so it’s mostly for friends and family. Do you need to go to school for aviation maintenance?
I’m going to be going to a trade school for a few years to learn everything I need! AIM (Aviation Institute of Maintenance) has locations all over the US
Excuse me? It looks OK to me, idrk what you are talking about. There is one annoying cookie pop-up that my uBlock filter didn’t catch, but that’s pretty much it
FF+uB FTW! But I’ve checked the website on other mobile browsers too both with adblocks and without and the experience was the same. I’m super confused what that person and the 2 orher upvoters didn’t like about the website.
aftermath.site
Aktywne