Word Play: The Evolution of Game Journalism

6/23/2008 5:56 PM | 2 Comments | Page 8 of 10

These trips were called "junkets." As the competition for editorial space heated up, the junkets became more and more elaborate.

For the launch of NiGHTS, SEGA staged a mystery party in one of California's most renowned haunted houses. NovaLogic flew a set of reporters to Florida, gave them an hour's worth of training, and sent them out with a qualified pilot to experience flying helicopter combat maneuvers over the Everglades to promote Comanche 3. Eidos took a couple of reporters to Egypt to talk about Tomb Raider. Nintendo, SEGA and Sony all took reporters to Japan.

Not all junkets worked out as planned. In 1993, Nintendo of America engineered a junket designed to demonstrate the addictive fun of their first Zelda game for Game Boy, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. The idea was to provide a crew of top journalists with Game Boys and copies of the upcoming game, then place them in an utterly boring situation to show how Zelda made time pass quickly. To do this, Nintendo booked the journalists on a first-class train trip across the continental United States beginning in Boston and ending in Seattle.

That summer, rain storms caused flooding throughout the Midwest closing many train routes. The original itinerary had the journalists traveling in cars with beds and berths across Iowa, but when floods closed that route, the plans began to fall apart. Nintendo was able to reroute the trip, but there were no first-class cars available, so the journalists ended up sitting in standard coach cars for the week-long trip.

And things got worse. When other passengers complained that the journalists were making too much noise, the journalists were asked to put away their Game Boys and stop discussing the game among themselves. There were no dining cars on the new train, and some of the journalists contracted food poisoning from the food stand onboard. By the time the train reached New York, some journalists had already had enough. More departed at future stops. In the end, only a few journalists including the father-and-son team of Chip and Jonathan Carter saw the trip through.

In the late 1990s, junkets became an issue as outside forces challenged the ethics of the videogame journalism corps. David Israel, a game reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle, wrote a column about junkets and journalistic ethics. When Herb Weisbaum, a CBS News consumer reporter, complained to a friend at the Columbia Journalism Review about game reporters accepting junkets and game systems, the publication launched an investigation.

Under the increasing scrutiny, publishers like Ziff Davis, IDG and Larry Flynn Publications began to pay for travel expenses. Videogame journalism has always relied heavily on freelance reporters, however, and game companies have continued to pick up the tab when they invite freelancers on trips.

In 2002, Los Angeles Times reporter Alex Pham released a blistering attack on junkets, singling out a few specific reporters in particular and even contacting their editors to ask about possible ethics abuses.