Naughty Dog needs to bring back Amy Hennig to filter Neil’s ideas and make something coherent out of them.
After wasting 10 minutes of my life analyzing it… I don’t see the point of people getting enraged, nor how this relates to gaming journalism
Without journalism (or just a third-party in general) providing perspectives and communication in some way, you are relying primarily on the information coming directly from the companies themselves.
In this case we see that Sony was willing to fabricate quotes about an interview.
It’s an unpopular opinion in most forums, but I love most gaming journalists. I prefer their podcasts and their articles and their opinions way more than any YouTuber/streamer. I just get more insightful and less bias information from them.
There’s a reason for the early rise in popularity of independent gaming reviewers and it isn’t the hard-hitting, honest quality of mainstream entertainment journalism at the time. With the advent of influencers though, it feels like everyone is just regurgitating the same pre-approved, publisher-friendly nonsense. I’m sure there are exceptions, but it feels more difficult today to find an honest review when every random internet personality is signing sponsorship contracts that require them to praise the game every 20 minutes.
I’ve gone back to written content by some no named randos on forums or image boards.
People should just stop thinking about gaming journalism as a monolith, and start thinking of it as any other job. Some people are capable of doing it and they show it, others are completely incapable of writing a decent article without resorting to snarky comments or biased opinions.
A local website in my language employs a YTuber as a reviewer for reviews on games that he is a sponsor of on his channel, and those articles are laughable to say the least (I’m not going to name the games nor the person). But I’ve also read good articles on the same website, written by people who actually care about their job and have the skills to do it well.
But for some reason, gamers keep parroting this awful opinion of gaming journalists being incapable of playing games or having opinions on things. No, it’s just that certain journalists are better than others. (And for god’s sake, people should stop using the Cuphead video as a talking point. It was not a true review, it was a joke video, ffs)
No, it just shows that we shouldn’t trust everything published by a company.
Why not both?
It’s also possible that he did say all of those things and they’re only changing the story due to the negative reception. It’s a Sony site/interview after all.
No, it just shows that we shouldn’t trust everything published by a company.
“Not trusting” is easy but not especially useful if no one is attempting to figure out the truth.
I still don’t understand what job “game journalist” entails.
Say a politician takes bribes. A journalist can investigate public record documents and paper trails, and visit state houses, to interview workers to uncover what’s going on there.
Game studio is working on a new sequel, but hasn’t announced it. But this is a private company that’s not required to report to anyone. They’re not consuming taxpayer money. What, legally, should a game journalist be doing to reveal this info?
They’re basically just there to echo press releases and provide scheduled interviews, all of which must be basically at the publisher’s approval, since there are far more journalists than interesting studios.
Sony’s Neil Druckmann Interview Shows Why We Need Journalists
Says a game journalist. Yeah, no bias here.
We need good game journalists. Who care about video games.