RPG Codex - Where Journalism Goes to Write Itself
 

RPG Codex has an interesting aticle about journlism and game press.

More information.

Thanks for that. Not surprising, actually expected. And one of the better articles I've read from the Codex. :)

Their last few articles have surprised me actually. Question is will this be permanent or just temporary?:)

I wasn't surprised by the article conclusions, but perhaps a bit by the quality of the article.

Where would we be without the integrity of indie media? :rolleyes:

The author's wrong to suggest games journalism is different - most conference type events are very similar no matter the genre. Just go to a car show to see exactly the same thing.

For what it's worth, even at big publisher events you sometimes get to grill developers for juicy information. I got a lot out of a Bethesda one a while back, before some PR person took me aside and politely requested I don't use the material I had just gathered :/ Was fun anyway :)

And then, there's the " 2 classes" thing : As a fan, you just aren't allowed to visit most smaller companies, since they reside within the "trade visitors only" area.

But - most journalists don't go into the "public visitors only" (oh, wait … * ) areas as well.

It's like … two classes living separately from one another, in parallel worlds.


* I always find it interesting that public visitors are just not allowed to visit the trade visitors areas - but trade visitors are allowed to visit the public areas.

Trade visitors should be not be allowed to visit the public areas - but no-one thinks like that.
And here comes my point : The fact that no-one things like that actually shows how much used we are already to this "second-class-system" !

Nobody questions that anymore. Everyone takes for granted that trade visitors are allowed to visit both worlds (although they rather don't do it, because of the loudness war, for example), but the other way round just isn't possible.

EDit : I found this bit from an there linked article not uninteresting as well :

Source : http://www.cadred.org/News/Article/200167/

And, besides, my "Games Com Snippets" are just similar : I took what I was presented with and took it into this forum here …

To be honest I don't see why it's a big deal. With the help of the web finding all the information about a game that the developer is willing (or allowed) to give is nothing more than trivial. If you have a question that hasn't been answered already, you can simply ask it on the developer's message board or somewhere, and I guess if they want to give an answer they will do so. I assumed it should be just as simple to arrange an interview with anyone willing to give one, I don't expect you could squeeze more info out of them on a conference that you could under different circumstances. After all, it's games, not politics where you might want to corner them to prevent them from hiding important info or lying. So it seems to me that focusing on showing off your best work on such an event makes sense.

Do previews really matter? They give us something to look forward to, but if we're that bothered we can just wait for the game to come out and get properly reviewed before buying, there can't be that much of a rush.

Plus the rise of DLC & add-ons makes it extra tempting to just wait a bit these days so you can play the complete game rather than just the first tranche of it.

Might of course reflect the fact that I'm hopelessly behind on even starting most of the games I've paid for in the last couple of years.