WholeFunShow

@wholefunshow: I'm not exactly sure what you mean so I'll ask you to elaborate on your post a bit.

I actually think Major Nelson and Treehouse live streams are a great point of consideration though. They have the exact same function as "games journalism" but their "news" is more potent and focused. It's directly from the source. This leads to more relevant/current information straight from the biased mouth. Think about what games journalists do with that info. They either post the video on their website or they make bullet points for the important stuff. They reiterate 99% of all the content they are given.

On the whole I think it's a good thing to have them as a source of information separate from the company selling you the product. But they shouldn't call themselves journalists because that requires an ethical standard that they are incapable of holding. They're freelance marketing organizations. They're who publishers call when they want the hardcore audience to know something about a game they're making.

Games Journalism is actually just marketing and it would clear a lot of stuff up if people accepted that. Especially the games journalists. The reason no one has evidence of corruption is because they don't see that their entire practice, when you call yourself a journalist, is corrupt. All you need to do is open IGN, Gamespot, Giantbomb, Kotaku, Polygon, etc and look at the collection of "news stories" to see what the problem is. It's marketing. There's your corruption. Page one of IGN is all the evidence you need.

It's not actually corruption even, but the gaming press isn't honest about what their job actually is. They want to help the industry and help sell great games. Nothing wrong with that, but it's not journalism. It's marketing. They are part of the marketing arm of the industry.

Posting trailers, release dates, and reviews, for content that is directly given to you by a publisher or developer is NOT in anyway journalism. Opinion pieces about said content or the culture surrounding is also not journalism.

They're pundits reporting on exactly what the games industry wants them to report on. Like CNN talking about the McRib on McDonald's request. Except that is the entirety of what they do. Patrick Klepek and Jason Schreier are the two closest examples of a journalists and they're both at most 10%. At the end of the day, the purpose of their job is to help sell and promote video games.

The real identity issue lies with them not with the "gamer". The press doesn't understand their own job responsibility and probably enjoy being referred to as journalists.

The way GB has handled the whole gamergate discussion or more appropriately lack thereof (We have Patrick to thank for that I presume) has made me very disappointed in this site. And now having that google "pro journos" group being leaked , showing that there was collusion within the gaming press to silence/smear it's critics and organise the "Stop the Hate" petition that came out a little while ago, it's becoming very clear that the gaming press narrative of gamergate being nothing more than woman/minority/trans and also puppy(why not?) hating trolls is a shameless attempt to get their opponents to stand down and be quite.

Patrick and the mods here can have whatever opinion on the matter they wish but to outright silence most if not all discussion on this topic is just something that makes me scratch my head to be honest.

I still don't know what GamerGate is and I don't care about it. What happens on Twitter doesn't really matter to me, especially considering I don't use my twitter account, on which I only follow the Giantbomb staff.

I'm glad you choose to highlight Jim Sterling's conspiracy article it was one of my favourite peaces on the whole thing. I'm fully of the opinion that both sides have valid points but it's being burried by hate. If I'm honest, I can't wait for it to pass. I think that reflection on the whole issue is the last value it can bring because right now it's all too heated.

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Thanks for another week of WR Patrick.

I don't see how that's interesting to note here. Subscription never worked for GS so they dropped, it clearly works for GB. Jeff has been saying for a while now that things are going better than ever in terms of traffic and subscriptions. My guess would be that the suits finally see that subscriptions can be a goldmine for this site. GB has done a terrible job at promoting Premium for years now, so it's good that they're finally promoting one of the big advantages they have over other gaming sites.

What's interesting to note is that GB hired two people while GS laid a bunch of people off. I don't think you have any reason to be worried :)

I immediately judge anyone who self identifies themselves with any label. It just feels desperate like they're trying to cling to some perceived ideal of what that label is. If you are in fact that thing you say you are then you wouldn't need to proclaim it you would just be it.

I think this is an excellent post by Ariel Connor regarding the topic and you should read it if you're interested.