Every so often, something blows up in the games industry, and everyone freaks out about. We had Gamergate, we had Steam’s paid game mods, we had the Xbox One debacle, Mass Effects on-disc DLC, and on and on. Some of these are what could be considered a ‘storm in a teacup’, some were serious breaches of trust, others just plain bad for gamers. Regardless of your stance on games journalism, it’s hard to argue that as a subset of journalism as a whole, there’s a minimum standard of ethics we should be expecting from the people that report on our industry.
Today, it seems that Polygon decided to throw out all that and make a mockery of an attempt at journalism. Phoning this in would have done a better job. People noticed, including veteran writer Chris Cullion, who has written a well thought out open letter to lazy journalism in the industry. Read the open letter over on Tired Old Hack.
The sheer contempt this article has for the game in question is breathtaking. Bear in mind here, it’s this person’s job to report on video games. On this particular day he has been sent to cover Rock Band 4. It doesn’t matter if he couldn’t care less about it or, as his writing implies, thinks it’s beneath him. It’s his fucking job.
I have to keep reminding myself that I’m now technically a games writer. After writing for a DJ technology website (DJWORX) for the last couple of years, I’ve slowly gotten used tot he idea of being a writer at all, but whatever I may be, I pride myself on doing proper research and writing with enthusiasm, even with a seemingly mundane subject to talk about.
One of the many reasons I don’t want to run game reviews on Press to Jump is to avoid any semblance of bias towards or against anyone that could potentially turn into an advertiser. There are plenty of examples where news outlets manage to remain impartial while reviewing hardware or software, but rather than devote energy to keeping that status quo, I’d rather run stories about games we are enjoying, hence the ‘now playing‘ posts. We can happily publish how we’re feeling about a game because we’ve already admitted we love it. It’s transparent. I should write another one of the posts, as soon as I get the time to play any games!
Do you think Polygon made the right move by publishing the piece? Let us know in the comments!
