I was wandering the net tonight and happened upon Tina Wood's blog. In it she wrote up a short defense of her Nintendo gig.
Man! What a day! First day of E3 and what a blast. First though, let me absolutely defend myself with the Nintendo Press Conference. I did not recieve one single penny do demo Nintendogs. In fact, when I flew up to Seattle to meet with Nintendo I spent over $100.00 on GBA games. I did not do this to kiss the rears of Nintendo. I did it for the company I work for and am passionate about and the opportunity to work with a man I absolutely admire. I knew I would take heat for doing this and I welcome and understand it. But if I did this job because I cared what people thought then I would have given Starfox a ten a long time ago. Get paid? Please, I can't even get invited to the E3 parties.
As I said a few days ago, the fact that Wood wasn't paid does sort of reduce the ethics a bit, but the problem still remains.
When you do what Wood did, the question isn't whether you are going to be biased from then on out, it's whether your viewers/readers will think you will forever have some bias toward that company. For good or bad, it's all about perception. I think Wood made a bad choice, but that doesn't mean I think she's on Nintendo's payroll. I don't have a clue, it's just that the question is out there now.
On another note, I do regret being so, well I guess you could call it nasty, in the way I first pointed this out.
P.S. I can't believe Tina wasn't invited to the E3 parties when I saw Laura Foy hanging out at the Msoft party.
Follow gamingeditorials on Kotaku