Press Pass: September Roundup

With the holiday season getting into full swing, the gaming press is gearing up for its annual three months of crunch time. Before the festivities begin, let's take a look at some of the issues that have been swirling around the world of game journalism in the past month.

Lies, damn lies and rumors

Xbox Pure Speculation

Are gaming blogs too quick to post news stories based on shoddy, Web-based evidence? The issue came to the forefront this month when an intriguing Cheap Assed Gamer (CAG) forum post purported to show evidence of a planned "Xbox Pure" system. Sites from Xbox 360 Fanboy to Gizmodo to Destructoid (since taken down) quickly posted the story as a rumor and commenced speculation on the system's existence and nature.

Sorry, Microsoft fans, but it turns out the story was a total fake. Not only that, but it seems the poster was responding to a CAG podcast contest designed to get a major blog to post a bit of fake news as truth.

Kotaku's Brian Crecente was none too happy about the stunt, arguing that the contest cost CAG a lot of credibility. "In the past CAG has proven to be a reliable site, having broken a number of stories through apt reporting. It appears that may no longer be the case," he wrote in an update to the site's initial Xbox Pure post. Forum posters around the web, as well as the CAG podcasters themselves, argued back that Crecente was the irresponsible one, running with an obviously fake story without performing the requisite fact-checking first.

Sorry guys, but I have to side with Crecente (and the other gaming blogs that ran the story) on this one. As far as I saw, every blog that posted a link to the story did so with the word "Rumor" right there in the headline and with a good deal of skepticism in the text of the post. These blogs were basically saying, "Here's something interesting we saw someone else reporting on the Internet. It's just a rumor, and we have no idea if it's true or not, but we thought you might be interested."

Of course, hiding behind the rumor tag isn't a carte blanche excuse to post anything you want. In the Internet age, it's important for journalists to be constantly on the lookout for obvious signs of Photoshop trickery, nonsensical speculation and industry moles planting FUD. And if a site posts too many rumors that turn out to be false, readers are going to start ignoring even the reliable rumors.

That said, I don't think it was irresponsible to post this story as a rumor. The blogs that posted it were counting on the credibility of CAG to be a sort of backstop of minimal credibility for the rumor, a backstop that apparently was never there. As Crecente put it in a Kotaku comment, "Kotaku's decision to run rumors is always based on the credibility of the site and the information contained within it." (Yes, I know the post was technically only on the "forum" section of CAG, but the way it's presented on the site as part of a "blog" seems to put the full imprimatur of CAG behind the content).

These blogs were trusting that the folks at CAG had some sort of minimum standard for the content they were willing to post as fact. Sorry, CAG, but when you knowingly promote the spread of fake information, you're not allowed to yell "gotcha" when other outlets unknowingly, and skeptically, post the same information.

TV specials show the right way to handle game launches

Usually, when a television network devotes programming time to a big, upcoming gaming release, the result ends up more like an infomercial than anything resembling entertainment or, god forbid, journalism. See, for example, G4's hours of fawning coverage leading up to the midnight launch of Halo 3 or MTV's celebrity-studded, largely content-free pre-release "unveiling" of the Xbox 360. Microsoft marketers probably thought these shows were manna from heaven, but for the audience the results were about as interesting as that show about the Geico cavemen.

"How to Build a Better Being," on the National Geographic Channel

So I was heartened this month to see two separate programs which I think struck a good balance between pre-release hype and interesting television. The first, National Geographic's "How to Build a Better Being", was a compelling hour-long look at how the real-world science of evolution influenced the design of Will Wright's Spore. The second, Spike TV's Rock Band 2 Countdown to Midnight, used the new game's launch as an excuse to host an entertaining game-show style competition between some of the best fake rockers on the planet (with cameos from some real rockers, to boot).

Both shows obviously had an overt promotional element to them -- the Spore special often stressed the game's revolutionary nature and the Rock Band 2 special constantly stopped to breathlessly remind viewers that the game was coming out in mere minutes. Still, they both managed to transcend their infomercial heritage by focusing on compelling, related content from outside the game -- in effect, using the games as a jumping off point to explore how gaming and the wider culture interact. The result was programs that were interesting to watch in their own right, not just as extended previews for anticipated games. Here's hoping more television producers will follow the lead when the next big game launch comes around.

Movers and Shakers -- 1UP exodus edition

When one person leaves an outlet, it's an outlier. When two people leave, it's a coincidence. When a dozen people leave a massive game journalism publisher in a matter of months, though, it starts to look like a trend. This month, Ziff Davis/1UP veterans Jeff Green and Shawn Elliott announced they were leaving game journalism for the greener pastures of development -- Green to work with EA and Elliott to join 2K Boston. Green ends a stunning 17-year run at the publishing house, where he helmed the now-defunct Computer Gaming World and Games for Windows magazines, while Elliot's departure seems to have killed off the popular Games for Windows Radio podcast.

What's up at 1UP?

These departures aren't that unusual -- game journalists leave to work on the development side all the time. But the sheer volume of departures at 1UP is beginning to look a little strange. In addition to Elliott and Green, the last 12 months have seen the departure of Dan Hsu, Crispin Boyer, Mark McDonald, Patrick Klepek, Bryan Intihar, Sean Malloy, Darren Gladstone and Kathleen Sanders. Extend the range out another six months and you can add prominent voices John Davison and Luke Smith. I know turnover can be high in this business, but this mass of departures comes close to rivaling the exodus from GameSpot in the wake of the Gerstmann-gate scandal. Are more departures to come? Time, as they say, will tell.

News Bits

How do you get online gamers to pay attention to a print magazine about their hobby? Simple: Give them free in-game items!

Kirby in the Sky With Diamonds

Speaking of the need for attention, what would happen if a major publisher held a public relations event and no one came? The answer can be found in this hilarious coverage of a sparsely attended event for Kirby Super Star Ultra.

Speaking again of the need for attention, ever wonder what effect savage reviews have on the developers who work so hard on a game? GamesRadar did, and they actually asked a Kane & Lynch developer how he dealt with the negative press surrounding Kane & Lynch: Dead Men. Key quote: "I'm not quite sure why, but I remember that [GameSpot] review hit the team like a hammer. You can just 'absorb' a bad score but there was something in the tone of that review that was tough on people, and on me."

Speaking of dealing with reviews, some game developers are deciding to skip the middleman by reviewing their own games, tongue planted firmly in cheek, of course.

Speaking of tongue-in-cheek, Something Awful this month featured a pitch-perfect parody of the kinds of awful game reviews you find in men's magazines. My favorite, perfectly awful line, from a review of Warhammer Online: "Humans can fight against dwarfs or orcs in many environments."

Speaking of difficult reviews, gamers might not like Roger Ebert's views on videogames as a medium, but anyone interested in game criticism should be interested in his thoughts on the difficulty of using a 5-star scale to grade movies. Every word of his cogent essay could be applied to the inexact science of grading games with minimal changes.

Quote of the Moment

"We looked at the Metacritic scores for Sims 2, which was around 90, and something like Half-Life, which was 97, and we decided -- quite a while back -- that we would rather have the Metacritic and sales of Sims 2 than the Metacritic and sales of Half-Life."
-- Spore designer Will Wright tells MTV Multiplayer why he isn't too concerned about Spore's somewhat underwhelming review scores.