If you pay attention to the machinations of the game journalism world, you may have observed the following sequence in the past week:
- Tony Rice set up a set of links to interesting game blog posts called the Carnival of Gamers on his generally excellent blog, Button Mashing.
- The Carnival gets noticed by quite a variety of influential weblogs which point lots of traffic its way and generally get people to notice some blogs they might not have known about.
- Matthew Gallant at Computer Games Online sees the Carnival and writes a rather negative take on the whole thing based entirely on the Carnival's first entry, a diatribe called The Best Reviews Money Can Buy on peterb's Tea Leaves blog.
- Josh at Cathode Tan wrote up a quick post taking Gallant to task, which resulted in a lengthy string of back and forth comments which quickly descends into petty insults between Josh, Matthew and other involved/interested parties.
- Places like Mile Zero, and Tea Leaves itself jump in to comment, leading to more comment thread flame wars.
After doing a whole lot of reading on all of the above links, here's my breakdown of the arguments presented:
Old Established Media Members and Defenders: You bloggers are a bunch of whiny upstarts who don't know what you're talking about. Getting lots of free stuff from game companies doesn't make us any less credible. We've been doing this for X years and Y outlets and know more than you ever will.
Young Blogging Upstarts: Nice try, pops. You know that the established game journalism industry is so discredited that no one trusts or even reads anymore. Blogs are the only place for serious game commentary that isn't totally bought and paid for by the game companies. Blogs are the future. YAY BLOGS!
OEMMaD: What are you guys smoking? Game magazines are much more serious and thoughtful than you blogs ever will be. And we get read by more than 10 people, so we must be doing something right. Also, we're not influenced by game companies in the least.
YBU: Oh please... every time I read a game magazine review, I immediately know someone has paid for it because all the popular games get good scores. We have a monopoly and thought that isn't controlled by the corporate machine. YAY BLOGS!
etc. etc.
I definitely know the allure of these arguments. I've been dragged into them before. But this one is threatening to get out of control. This has got to stop. You're all wrong. You're all right. Please step away from the fringe and come to the middle ground.
There are a lot of blanket statements getting thrown around in these debates, along the lines of "all game magazines suck" or "all game blogs suck." No. There are good game blogs and bad ones. There are good game magazines and bad ones. In each, there are good articles and bad ones. Which is which is a matter of opinion, but both these spaces are so large that blanket statements about the entire category are next to useless.
The problem is, everyone involved is basing their opinions on their own spotty experiences. No matter how much you read or how old you are, there are almost definitely gaps in your knowledge of game magazines or game blogs or, likely, both. In some cases the gaps are even more extreme -- some are effectively making statements about all of blogdom based on one blog post, or about all game magazines based on one issue of one magazine. This is like condemning the New York Times and all newspapers because you read a stupid article in the National Enquirer. It's like decrying Citizen Kane and movies in general because you thought Plan 9 from Outer Space was horrible.
Neither game magazines nor blogs are going anywhere. Each has its strengths and weaknesses as a medium, and each has the potential for some good game writing. The only danger is when that medium becomes the message, and endless, ultimately pointless arguments about which form is superior get in the way of discussions of real, substantive issues.
Don't let that happen. Take a deep breath and move on. Nothing to see here. The latest skirmish in the blogs vs. the establishment is done and no one is any closer to being convinced.
YAY INTERNET!
Matthew Gallant is an old established media member? That's pretty funny.
ReplyDeleteWell said, Kyle. It was frustrating seeing something like the Carnival be trivialized by one entry when it much more to offer. If Matthew had only read more than just peterb's entry. The discussion did get a wee-bit out of hand. When the discussion becomes personal everyone loses.
ReplyDeleteIn the end I think (at least I hope) everyone will (or has) "Take a deep breath and move on." It's not bad to have this type of discussion but it still has to be kept within the bounds of civility. But this is the internet, so ya.
YAY INTERNET!
Awwwww, feel the love - c'mon now, let's get together for a group hug.... There, now doesn't that feel better?
ReplyDeleteI think maybe you are also guilty of oversimplifying things as well. One reason for the extended flame war in our little corner of the world is that both of them have nearly indefensible positions. peterb's insinuation that a game reviewer would be somehow swayed because the magazine he freelances for gets free games from the publisher is either hopelessly naive or fanboy hyperbole at its worst. Gallant, on the other hand, showed chutzpah and/or ignorance by reading one of the Carnival and then publicly pronouncing all of them as drek. I'm not sure which one is more lame - doing it or telling the world about it.
Unfortunately what was intended to be pointing the finger at just one writer continues to snowball into The Blogosphere Strikes Back. So let me make myself clear.
ReplyDeleteI love the mainstream media. I'm a total news junkie.
I love the blogosphere, because I'm something of an attention whore (let's face it ... to some extent all bloggers are) and the MSM doesn't update itself nearly enough.
What I don't love is some "professional news commentator" getting paid to trash blogs that he can't be bothered to actually read. He hadn't read any of buttonmashing to learn about the Carnival, couldn't even read the Carnival post clearly and I doubt he read the Tea Leaves post with much sound judgement. It reflects badly on the professional press, it does an injustice to the blogs, and it causes wonderful flame wars like this.
If Matthew had just taken his complaints to Tea Leaves like a normal adult - this whole YBU vs OEMMaD thing would have been contained where it belonged. As Kyle says - the medium isn't the message. If someone has a problem, learn to use the medium to discuss.
This has turned into a classic example of how not to do that.
I, for one, would love it if the whole thing died down. Given that this is the second, "It was silly, but it's mostly over" post in the last few days, it looks like the pot is still being stirred. That isn't to say you didn't have good points to make, you did. Just recognize that for many of us, ongoing discussion of the topic is motivated by the same things that motivated you to make this post.
ReplyDeleteAs far as my issue with Matthew; I feel that for submitting a post to the Carnival, I was dismissed, very publicly, by a "professional" as being irrelevant. As I've said elsewhere, if Matthew had read my submission and dismissed it publicly, that would have been one thing. He didn't, so I felt unjustly judged. My issue, fine, I'll try and move on. It'd be easier to do if people stopped pointing out that "the bloggers" are misguided and in cahoots against the MSM, and vice versa.
MSM vs blogs? No. An ongoing discussion on credibility in game commentary? Yes. I feel Matthew's position is made pretty weak by the fact that the article in question lacks credibility.
Now, if I were smart, I'd close this pop up window without posting this...
Kyle, great summary of the entire affair. "Take a deep breath and move on" is excellent advice, and I wouldn't be heeding it if I typed one more word on the subject...
ReplyDeleteHey now, I didn't say blogs are stupid, I said the Carnival of Gamers was stupid. It was. As a collection of quality writing, it failed miserably. Remember the Grammy Awards when they gave out the new award for Best Heavy Metal album to Jethro Tull instead of Metallica? Well this was like giving it to The Backstreet Boys.
ReplyDeleteMy "not bothering" with any of the other articles had nothing to do with their assumed quality and everything to do with the eye for quality of who was collecting them. Thus, the line about asking kids for good links. It was a comment on the collection, not the individual submissions.
Maybe the next one will be a bit more thoughtful in its acceptance of submissions. I would hope to see more articles like the one about San Andreas' plotline not meshing with the player's idea of what his CJ would do. Since it's being collected by the MileZero guy, it might be another case of a broken clock being right twice a day. Which doesn't do anybody any good.
Good clarification, Matthew. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteI was going to respond again, but I think at this point Matthew's professionalism speaks for itself.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to see that people on the one hand call into question "professionalism" from a major news source, yet seem to want more of a "blog-like" approach from the same news sources.
ReplyDeleteSo which is it? Should everyone act more professionally, or is it only okay to act unprofessionally on a blog? Or can major news have some fun and get nasty only when talking about Electronic Arts?
Does anyone defending the blog note the irony of criticizing a news report for not bothering to read all of the blogs when the original piece used a single example to condemn an entire industry? At least Matthew admitted he didn't check everything out, which let you dismiss his opinion.
And if Tony was looking for civility in the Carnival thing, why was the Tea Leaves piece selected? Because last I checked, it wasn't exactly civil.
Well, that's very egalitarian. Then again, so are vanity publisher poetry anthologies.
ReplyDelete"But people assume that the Carnival hates game reviews because of one link? That's silly."
ReplyDeleteThat would be silly, if that's what he assumed. Which, if you look at his original piece, isn't what he said at all. And the comment above about irony was directed at the Tea Leaves piece, not the Carnival itself.
If the Carnival just wants to put up whatever anyone submits, without editing, then the criticism of "why bother?" becomes even more valid. If I want to wade through a handful of awful blogs to get to the good stuff, I may as well use the Gameblogs website and randomly click on links. Wouldn't picking the "best of the blogs" be more valuable? I'm pretty sure a carnival doesn't just pull guys off the street to be performers.
Anonymous Coward wrote: "It's interesting to see that people on the one hand call into question "professionalism" from a major news source, yet seem to want more of a "blog-like" approach from the same news sources.
ReplyDelete"So which is it? Should everyone act more professionally, or is it only okay to act unprofessionally on a blog? Or can major news have some fun and get nasty only when talking about Electronic Arts?"
You're missing the point. Demanding professionalism from Matthew Gallant eqautes to asking that if an author dismisses 20 blog entries as juvenile and pointless, he should at least READ the blog entries. We're talking about one of the LOWEST standards of professionalism, here. We're not asking for a damn pulitzer every time someone writes something. Just be intellectually consistent and somewhat logical when deciding that something is crap.
The thing that frustrates me the most, is that people need thousands of words in discussions like these. It is too boring. Learn to write. Cut to the chase.
ReplyDelete"Well, that's very egalitarian. Then again, so are vanity publisher poetry anthologies."
ReplyDeleteRight, it's a shame the carnies didn't use that exacting journalistic standard of not reading stuff.
"I may as well use the Gameblogs website and randomly click on links."
Yeah, it's true that if you are familiar with Gameblogs then you are probably already familiar with lots of the blogs that will be linked. Course, these are bloggers trying to showcase what they think is their best. Can we insure you'll like them all? Of course not ... but it might be useful anyway.
And naturally if you don't refresh gameblogs every minute, then this might be a way to try out blogs you wouldn't normally find. Hell, I blogroll daily and check gameblogs frequently and I still found posts I didn't know were out there.
CoG isn't a magazine. If you want to judge it by it's weakest link, then so be it. Can't stop you. But dismissing the first set by the first link is just damn stupid no matter how you look at it.
If you want the editorial acumen of a magazine, go buy one. If you want to find some blogs you may not have seen before - check out Mile Zero in a couple of days. It's really as simple as that.
And if someone feels they have the judgmental capability to comb through all the gameblogs and define the truly best of the best - I don't see anyone stopping you. Stop bitching and do it.