Although I have no real knowledge of contemporary video
games, I’ve been reading with interest about the scandal which has affected
Scottish comedian Robert Florence over the past few days, and his reaction to it. Florence writes a
column for Eurogamer, and his most recent one looked at a picture of another,
fully professional,* games journalist Geoff Keighley sitting beside a table of
Mountain Dew and Doritos, and in front of a promo poster for Halo 4. Here is a
writer indulging in shameless promotion for the same product he should be
critiquing, as well as stuffing his face with garish manufactured foods, as
well as the profits of these foods.
Later Florence brings up an example of professional games
journalists happily entering a Twitter competition to win a PS3, a competition
which involved tweeting about certain games using a certain hashtag. An
argument broke out between various writers arguing over whether it was
acceptable for people in their profession to enter, and win, these
competitions. Two who defended it are named as Lauren Wainwright and Dave Cook
(again, I know little about gaming, and I’ve never heard of these two, so I’m
quite out of my depth in this way. I only know Robert Florence from his
excellent comedy Burniston, which you should definitely watch).
In his article Florence criticises Cook’s response: that a
hashtag is not an advert. Which it is, hence why companies pay for sponsored
hashtags to trend on Twitter, and companies give away PS3s to people to use
their hashtag. Florence also wrote that, after reading Wainwright’s tweets
defending this kind of corporate relationship with journalists he was unable to
take any sentiments she had about gaming seriously.
This is where everything got out of hand. Enter scandal.
Lauren Wainwright complained the article was libellous, and
Eurogamer pulled it. The article, which you can still read in full here,
contains nothing libellous, certainly not that I can see. Wainwright is not
even Florence’s target, as he takes care to note. His problem is with the
system that binds together journalists and corporate PR men. Wainright, Cook
and Keighley just happened to enter his field of view at this time. As he says,
any other day and it could have been two different journalists. Had it happened
even a day later it would not even had made it into his article.
In the first half of the article Florence also tackles the
problem of the Games Media Awards, where the PR men of the games industry
converge with the writers of the games industry to drink and slap backs. He says:
The GMAs shouldn’t exist. By rights, that room should be full of people who feel uncomfortable in each other’s company. PR people should be looking at games journos and thinking “That person makes my job very challenging.” Why are they all best buddies? What the hell is going on?
On the first read I thought that Florence was making a crass
joke about gamers being socially awkward. He’s a better writer than this,
obviously, and his greater point, and the point of this article, is that these
people shouldn’t be friends, not because of personalities, but because of their
jobs. The writers are ‘journalists’. They are intended to be separate from the
industry, of which these PR men are very much a part. This fault line should
run through all industries. It is expected that politics journalists should
stand outside the political world, shining a light into the dimly-light rooms
of power and showing the results to the wider world. This should be replicated
at all levels of journalism, down to ones which are regarded as the least
important, like film and games.
But it’s not the case. As Robert Florence points out in both
of the articles I’ve linked to above, journalists and industry men mingle. It
benefits both sides, in the short term – journos get rewarded with prizes and
exclusives, the PR and marketing men get some help to shift their product, be
it a new Michael Bay movie, JLS album, or Call of Duty. In the long term,
however, the reputation of the writers are sullied – they are not longer proper
journalists, but mouthpieces for companies. They are the new PR men, albeit on
likely much lower salaries. The marketing guys, they continue as usual, moving
from product to product. It matters not to them.
How does wrong-doing become institutionalised? The police
force is institutionally racist not because it is comprised entirely of racists
(they’re not, probably). What happens is that the racism of some is overlooked and accepted by those who may be non-racists. A bond is created where racist is accepted. Managers and bosses, who could use their rank to do something in fact do nothing, either because they do not want to risk a mutiny from their troops. New officers join a police force in which racism has been normalised, and the need to conform and fit into a group which may be hostile to newcomers means that they to turn a blind eye. And so it continues, wasting the lives of black and Asian youths with impunity. With the Savile investigation widening by the day, institutionalised child abuse and victim shaming may well be revealed. It will have come about in the same way, with the opinion formers (popular or high ranking police officers in the first example, celebrities and producers in the second) leading the way.
The examples are not on the same scale as writing about games from freebies, but the method is the same - the system adopts a method, the method becomes the system. It becomes so ingrained that to separate the two becomes impossible, and the system, the industry, or the professional, must be torn down and rebuilt, forever noting the lessons of the old.
I made a similar point about football earlier on this blog, and, of course, this is rather drastic. You may ask - is it even worth it for writing reviews of films or games or music? Florence tackles this as well. He said in his reply in the aftermath of the scandal that what he was saying was about writing and journalism on a wider scale, not a positive review of Fifa 13. I touched on this earlier. Writing 'always matters' he says, and it does. It definitely does. Again: journalists are how we mediate the wider world. They channel real life events into news, which is how the vast majority of us consume these events. You may say that writing about music does not matter, but what if every journalist wrote an article about how much of a cock Chris Brown is? Not just the rock/indie critics who hated his music anyway, and have fun with how creative they can get obliterating his album. I people who write about pop music, who's writing is actually read by the fans of Chris Brown.
The fact that Chris Brown attacked his girlfriend and showed no remorse for it would concern no one outside their immediate circle of friends, were Chris Brown and Rihanna not hugely influential and opinion forming for millions of young people. What does it tell pre-teens and teenagers, who are going through a formative stage of their lives, especially where relationships are concerned, that a man can attack his partner, and he will be forgiven, and continue to be successful? The reason Chris Brown continues to be successful is that he receives backing from a music industry with no moral compass, and is not repeatedly slaughtered in the pop press for what he did. Because, ultimately, these pop journalists are part of the same music industry. They continue to support the career of a vile man they could, and should, have ditched ages ago. But Brown turned a profit, something that is increasingly difficult to come by nowadays. Ditch him and you have to find some new singer to mould into a teenage heartthrob.
Of course, the nature of journalism does not always come down to incidents as important as this. At the root of all this is that old saying 'journalistic integrity'. Journalistic integrity is removed as soon as you step within the realm of the industry you claim to critique. As soon as you give something a positive review for a ticket to the Brit Awards. As soon as you prop up the career of a domestic abuser who happens to be a flavour of the month beloved by marketing and PR groups of record labels. As soon as you don't report a politician for wrong-doing because you have drinks together every Friday. As soon as you accept a PS3 for tweeting in support of a company. Without journalistic integrity what are we left with?
Empty words on a page. An industry not dead, but lifeless.
*I use the term ‘fully professional’ here to denote a
difference between Florence and Keighley, not as a slight at the former. From
my perspective, Florence is a comedian with a sideline in games writing,
whereas Keighley earns his wages solely from writing.
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