Tomorrow GamePro will officially announce that John Davison, who recently sold his start-up, parent-targeted gaming site What They Play to IGN, will assume the role of executive vice president of content for the company's editorial initiatives. The veteran editor told Kotaku he hopes to "reboot" one of gaming's oldest editorial brands.

In the same week that the biggest magazine about video games, Game Informer, is launching a new publication design and a revamped website, Davison will attempt to begin a re-invention of GamePro. The 20-year-old magazine once known for its reviews that rated games based on numbers and used facial expressions rather than stars has "struggled to find an identity for itself," Davison said.

The company indicates that its GamePro Media Network "already engages 7.6 million gamers a month," according to the press release that will announce the hire of Davison. The company's most recent editorial director, George Jones, left the company last month.

Davison sees a potential rebirth for GamePro in a better integration of the magazine and its online component. And he sees a way to explore a fresh way to cover games, avoiding clashing with the giant IGN and GameSpots purely with game-centric coverage but to expand the coverage of gaming's culture and personalities. "Working at What They Play for the last two years and working outside the world of hardcore readers and users you start to notice what some of the gaps are, what people complain about and what they're yearning for," he said. "There's a really good opportunity to reboot." Davison said he's also prepared to re-think the game review addressing, he hopes, what he sees is a malaise about one of the most popular types of content in the gaming media.

Davison's move is the latest in a flurry of changes in the games media in the last two weeks.

-Garnett Lee, former executive editor at the 1up network and host of the Davison-frequented Listen Up podcast is taking the reins as editorial director at GameFly Media, which includes Shacknews. Leaving 1UP came about more as a function of joining GameFly Media which includes the Shack sites. Over e-mail Lee explained his move to Kotaku: "For me, it doesn't seem like a day has gone since I started covering games that I haven't thought to myself I'd like to try this or do that for some sort of content. Not only does my new position put me in control of that, it does it with a core site both respected for its editorial integrity and known for its strong community — the two biggest ideals for good content in my mind. And it comes with a management group ready to back it up and 100% committed to a basic idea as simple as make something awesome. It's hard for me to imagine a much better opportunity to come into."

-Billy Berghammer, the former director of gaming editorial at G4 who was part of the TV network's attempts to beef up its online presence earlier this year is out at that company. Details of Berghammer's departure are unclear. "We do not discuss specifics regarding personnel matters," G4's Adam Sessler told Kotaku. "I can confirm that X-Play and G4tv.com are still as committed to their coverage of gaming as they always have been." Kotaku was unable to reach Berghammer by the publication of this post.

-A founder of upstart site Crispy Gamer, John Keefer, has stepped outside of that operation. Keefer told Kotaku that one of his new projects will be to write for GamePolitics.com. "Crispy Gamer continues to push the conventions of games journalism to new levels of excellence," he wrote in an online message. "I leave the site in good hands editorially. I wouldn't have left a project many of us have worked so hard on otherwise. But it was time for me to explore other opportunities. I'm helping out at GamePolitics and have been exploring other editorial options, as well as options on the development side, as so many other games journalists have. We'll see where it takes me."

Editors fly to Japan fairly regularly to visit Japanese game studios. And those studios and their respective publishers will usually entertain these editors — dinner, drinks…the usual. But I guess flying into strange, alien lands deserves high-end hospitality, so Tecmo in the past has treated their American journalist guests to evenings out at Japanese hostess bars, watering holes where women are paid to keep customers company (not necessarily in a “me so horny!” way…it’s more of a “let me keep filling your drinks and you are so funny and handsome and wonderful and let me hang on to your every word!” male-insecurities-nuking thing). Maybe that in itself is nothing shocking, but this part might be: Tecmo has literally spent thousands of dollars giving a very small handful of American editors some lady companionship for one night. Thousands. That’s some pricey conversating.

I know what you're thinking here. "Fahey, why aren't you going to the Tokyo Game Show? Free ladies!" First off, BlizzCon, murlocs. Secondly, there is no such thing as free ladies. I'm not just talking about game companies trying to woo journalists either. There is a price. There is always a price.

Here at Kotaku Tower, only one of our editors is regularly in the company of a Japanese woman, and I hardly think what Mrs. Ashcraft does can be considered wooing. More like tolerating with the patience of a saint. The man is lucky he's cute.

Behind the Scenes: Gaming Journalism (Part 5) [Sore Thumbs]

Editor's note: It is against Kotaku's policy to accept free travel. We do disclose when we go to events paid for by publishers or developers.

Another one bites the dust.

While I'm happy and all for Matt Slagle's move into a job he seems to be really jazzed about, I'm not so thrilled about what it means for games' journalism. As the National Technology and Business reporter for the Associated Press, Slagle was one of the few mainstream reporters out there who really got gaming and it's disheartening to see him leave. We need more people like Slagle covering the biz, not less. At least they still have Lou Kesten. Let's hope the hire someone to work with him on ever-expanding beat.

Jubilant, yet still depressing press release on the jump.

SONY ONLINE ENTERTAINMENT NAMES
MATT SLAGLE AS PUBLIC RELATIONS MANAGER
Tenured Associated Press Journalist Joins SOE to Oversee PR for SOE Austin

San Diego, CA January 3, 2008 - Sony Online Entertainment (SOE), a worldwide leader in online gaming, has appointed Matt Slagle to the role of Public Relations Manager. Slagle joins SOE from The Associated Press' Dallas bureau where he covered the video game industry for over a decade. In this newly-created role, Slagle will work directly with SOE Austin, the studio responsible for the highly-anticipated DC Universe massively multiplayer online game (MMO) as well as Star Wars Galaxies®. Courtney Simmons, SOE's Senior Director of Corporate Communications, to whom Slagle will report, made the announcement today.
"Having immersed himself with the players and people of video games, Matt brings to SOE an unparalleled understanding of the industry's business and consumers. His valuable perspective and experience will undoubtedly serve us in launching one of SOE Austin's most important franchises in the DC Comics product. We look forward to much success together," said Simmons.

"Transitioning over to SOE creates a unique opportunity to apply my interests and expertise in the video game industry," Slagle said. "As a lifelong gamer who has made a career out of covering the business, I'm looking forward to working on brands as large and influential as the games created by Sony Online."
While the two interacted directly through normal course of business, a posting by Simmons on her Facebook page alerted Slagle to the PR Manager opportunity.

As the National Technology and Business reporter for the AP, Slagle covered industry features, financial and product news for Fortune 500 technology companies. More recently, he also led the AP's national video game coverage, including reviews and industry features. Slagle, who holds a BA in Journalism from Indiana University, began his career in 1997 as an AP editorial assistant.

Kyle Orland, formerly of Video Game Media Watch, currently of Joystiq, and now the Media Coverage Columnist over at Game Daily, reviewed a year's worth of Electronic Gaming Monthly's Quartermann rumor mill, to see how it does at predicting things to come in the gaming industry.

Orland reviewed the rumors that appeared in the columns that ran from January to December of 2003. He decided to go back that far to make sure he would be able to accurately track whether they turned out to be true or not.

To deal with the plethora of issues that pop up when someone tries to score the accuracy of a bunch of subjective rumors, Orland scored each rumor outcome on a scale of one to five. With one being completely false and five being completely true.

The end result? EGM's rumor ramblings score a 3.1 out of 5 or a bit more than 50 percent (As the big O pointed out to me, his scale starts at one not zero). While Orland says that means that the rumors are right a bit more than half of the time, that sounds like failing in my book.

Hit up the post for the Excel sheet that shows all of the nitty gritty and his thought process. I hope we see more of these in the future. The only thing I like better than statistics and games is the wonderful blending of peanut butter and chocolate. Brian Crecente

Rumor Report Ratings [Media Coverage]

His darkest moments included emergency surgery on his tail bone (I'm not making that up), a computer freaking out on him at E3 and a power-outage at the Game Developers Conference.

Check it out, it gives you a taste of the life of luxury that is the solo game reporter's lot. Oh and he even hat tips my horrid E3 experience:

The next day, I trucked my tale of woe back to E3. Kotaku's Brian Crecente nodded and smiled. He told me that on the Gates day, he left a pen on his laptop keyboard, then slammed his computer shut. His screen cracked and he had to buy a new machine. I stopped telling people my story. He won.

Brian Crecente

Multiplayer: The Year's Darkest Moments Of Video Game Reporting [MTV]

So what's the hold up? Why aren't there any good games critics? I contend that there are, but with the tens of thousands of voices on the internet talking shit on and praising their favorite video game experiences, Klosterman can't hear anything but the noise.

Sure, video game journalism ain't sexy. Nobody ever lost their virginity to a playthrough of Metroid. Few, if any, can equate finishing Phantasy Star II to a life changing experience on par with, say, hearing London Calling for the first time.

And what if you're looking for tastemakers? They're out there. Go to GAF. There are a handful of posters who turn thousands of people onto underground, import-only hits like Ouendan, Earth Defense Force 2, Ikaruga, the Bit Generations series. These are people directly responsible for number-one selling titles at importers like NCSX and Play-Asia.

But Pitchfork has a multitude of reasons why video game journalism hasn't supposedly caught up to romanticized, half-century old rock and roll reporting glory. It's a good read, but just part of the answer. Michael McWhertor

The Next Gonzo Journalism

Kotaku graduate and big-headed leader of the 1Up news crew Luke Smith just gave Square-Enix a public dressing down for an absurd email the publisher sent out to some game writers reminding them what not to cover.

In the email, the company points out that they have released Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria in Japan, but not yet in North America and proceeds to outline all of the stuff publications should not write about the game.

The list includes spoilers, movies, music, and entire sections of the game until specific dates. For instance, we're not supposed to even mention, say, the Sukavia Gorge or Royal Underground Path until after July 21 and, under penalty of death we should never ever say anything about Bifrost, Yggdrasil or Hall of Valhalla until after Aug. 4.

You know Square, there's a name for this kind of tactically outlined, well-timed release of information, it's called an advertisement, so go and buy one and get your nose out of legitimate game coverage.

Thanks to Luke for uncovering this bit of publisher crap, and when you get fired know there is always a warm spot for you back at U of Kotaku. Brian Crecente

Dear PR, You Cannot Embargo Public Knowledge [1Up]

When I launched Kotaku's Preview Ho column a couple weeks ago, I did so on the assumption that the gaming press hyped up their previews primarily to stay in good stead with the publishers, whose access and ad revenue they depend on. But in the case of the top two gaming sites, at least, I quickly learned that the story is more complicated—and disturbing— than even that.

Shortly after the first Preview Ho, I was contacted by a former media buyer for various game publishers. This person was irked by the game media's pretense that previews were pure editorial. But unlike their readers— or for that matter, me— my source had hard proof they were much more than that.

"I was the media buyer who made the purchase," the source told me, "signed the insertion order, and then followed up to make sure that what we had been promised was in fact delivered."

What was delivered, my source went on, was editorial placement on the two largest game websites for a sizeable fee.

This source sent me some invoices for a game studio client. (For good measure, I faxed copies to my Gawker editors.) Several were from Gamespot, and while most of the items referred to legitimate ads, a couple mentioned something called "Front Door rotation"— or what Gamespot staffers refer to as a "gumball". Gumballs are those thumbnail screenshots you see on the front page of Gamespot, when you visit the site— clicking on these takes you to an article about the game.

In the Gamespot invoice I looked at, a gumball for two weeks cost the media buyer's client over $7000.

"You can purchase messaging plus units that increase the likelihood of an article about your game showing up on their front page," the source said. In other words, if you want your game to get more editorial prominence, you pay extra.

Then the source showed me an invoice for the same game, this one from
IGN/Gamespy. What Gamespot calls a gumball, Gamespy calls, less charmingly, a "Gamespy Spotlight". But the content and the principle is basically the same: the Spotlights are those thumbnail screenshot links that you see on the site's front page. "What you're looking at on the front page is not what the editors decided is the best game," the media buyer informed me.

Reached for comment, both the editors of Gamespot and Gamespy, unsurprisingly, have a much different way of looking at their policies.

"I can confirm that GameSpot does offer publishers programs that promote their content on our site using a variety of means," Gamespot Executive Editor Greg Kasavin acknowledged. "The promotion causes gumballs linking to specific content to appear more often than other gumballs (which are auto-generated for all new content and displayed randomly and dynamically upon page load)." But for the "vast majority of cases", he goes on, the gumball doesn't feature Gamespot editorial, but an official asset like the game's trailer or a playable demo. "Our editors have the authority and responsibility to decide which content gets top billing," Kasavin added.

I asked Kasavin about this "vast majority" of gumballs— what was an exception, where a paid gumball linked straight to Gamespot editorial?

As it happened, he said, such a gumball is currently in play, for Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter for the Xbox 360. "I wouldn't want you to jump to the incorrect conclusion that the extra push being given to the review must mean that the game's publisher somehow influenced the review in the first place," Kasavin added hastily. "My guess is this promotional deal was negotiated after we decided to give the game a positive review, but since I'm not privy to the details of these types of deals, I don't know for sure." He insisted that Gamespot maintains a strict separation between editorial and ad sales.

IGN/Gamespy had a similar explanation for the selling of their editorial space.

First noting that the practice is "pretty common both in print and online", Peer Schneider, IGN's VP of Content Publishing, described their Spotlights as "'sponsored' slotting, sometimes called 'digital reprint.' This is a practice where advertisers want to make sure coverage of their titles is seen. For example, some magazines sell their cover image (or part of it) to the highest bidder." Schneider insisted IGN and GameSpy don't sell their "top story" placement to anyone. "We have, however, designated spots that can be 'sponsored.' What this means is that a publisher interested in exposing more users to a title (including games, movies, etc.) can book a one-day sponsorship in what we call 'spotlights.'" Like Kasavin, Schneider enunciated a principle of strict separation between editorial and ad sales.

"In the time I have been here (six years now)," Gamespy editorial director John "Warrior" Keefer added, "there has never been any deliberate intent to deceive our readers. If anything, we try to err in the other direction. I am a strong proponent of editorial integrity. My staff knows that the quickest way to get on my bad side is to mess with GameSpy's name or reputation. We have made a few mistakes (Donkey Konga, anyone?), but those we have never shied away from or tried to sweep under the carpet (I spent three days after Donkey Konga answering questions and posting on boards)."

Hos, or honest brokers? We leave that to the readers of Gamespot and Gamespy to decide. To us, however, their answers raise more questions than they answer. Can any indy game studio really compete for attention against publishers who can afford to stack the deck? With so much money at stake, how separate can editorial and ad sales truly be? And what would happen if it were discovered that, say, the websites of Premiere and Entertainment Weekly charged the studios extra to put their trailers (no matter how mediocre) in a prominent place on their page?

We leave readers with those questions to ponder, as well. For now, consider this a glimpse inside the sausage factory, where games often reach the public awareness not because of their quality, but because of the billing that goes with them.

And the search for Hos continues.

Send samples of egregiously fawning game previews and information on backroom deals that influence them to au@kotaku.com. Tips from editors and writers in the game press especially welcom—all correspondence kept strictly confidential.

The games writer for Salon and the embedded journalist in Second Life rallies Kotaku readers in a war to save games from their worse enemy—the gaming press. This is an expanded version of a talk delivered March 11 at South by Southwest s ScreenBurn Fest in Austin, Texas.

Why do games, for the most part, unrelentingly suck such ass? If you happened to hear veteran designer Greg Costikyan s acclaimed rant last GDC 2005, you d think the trouble was due to the rising cost of development, and outdated distribution models. He is right as far as it goes— but right in a way that doesn t leave much hope for change.

After covering the game industry for some five years, I think I ve found the primary source of the trouble. Not the only source, but the weakest link in the greater chain of suck and more key, the one that can be hammered at by blogs like Kotaku.

I found it at an E3 cocktail party in Beverly Hills, shortly after I d begun introducing myself not as a journalist but as a writer with the virtual world Second Life—not a game per se, but close enough, evidently, for folks on the business end of the industry to lower their shields. The topic was the gaming press, and on that subject, the opinion of a top exec from a major publisher was decidedly bottom line.

Press previews are very important to our sales, he casually mentioned to me over martinis, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Retailers don t know anything about games. So we show them previews of our titles from the game press, and they reserve shelf space for our games on the strength of those.

And just like that, the gaping mouth of suckage was staring me in the face. Or rather, it had always been there, but I just hadn t noticed until then.

For the thing of it is, game magazine previews are almost uniformly positive, even for the most undistinguished titles. So it unrolls thus: publisher makes mediocre game; press previews depict mediocre game as being good or at least worth a look; excited gamers read previews, foolishly believe them, start making pre-sale orders of mediocre game; driven by preview press and pre-sale numbers based on that press, retailers stock up on mediocre game; publisher makes money from mediocre game, keeps making more games like it.

And the circle jerk is complete. All started by the gaming press, in their preview section.

Consider these excerpts selected at random from game magazine previews from last year:

Batman Begins and The Incredible Hulk No longer are you limited to just reading about your favorite superheroes for once, you truly are the superhero.

Rainbow Six: Lockdown we re quite certain that the new online career mode will justify a purchase.

Call of Duty II We don t need any more convincing [on the studio s qualifications to make this game.] The hard part now will be waiting until this fall, when Call of Duty II hits shelves.

These aren t impartial descriptions, let alone critical evaluations. These are words that directly drive sales. None of these previews had a single critical word to say either, except perhaps to point out easily fixable technical issues and missing content.

Ask yourself if you ve ever read anything like the following in a preview:

While technically impressive, there s really no design feature here which hasn t been done before in previous games.

The story looks like one more series of boring cutscenes you ll be skipping past, since they re pretty much derived from a dozen movies you ve already seen.

If one more slightly different looking set of futuristic weapons is so goddamn important to you that you re willing to part with $50, why, this is the game for you!

None of this is meant as a slam at all individuals in the gaming press, many of whom are personal friends who have my respect and sympathy. Generally they are just as pained by the compromises they feel they must make by running non-critical game previews. (I m not claiming purity for myself, either; in retrospect, for example, I regret over-praising a technology demo of Molyneux s Black and White without ever asking uncomfortable questions such as, Where s the, um, game? ) I don t even think the press does it in exchange for all the free trips, gifts, and other benefits that publishers ply them with. They do it for fear of losing early access to games and their developers, and endangering their advertising revenue.

But they are gamers, too, and they must feel just as keenly the indignity of hyping crap. Like any dedicated gamer, they can tell when a game is fundamentally bad or undistinguished, even in Beta; they know that a game with unoriginal gameplay will still be unoriginal, after all the bugs are rooted out and the unfinished levels completed.

Talking with them, I can sometimes seem to see a mortified look in their eyes, a kind of Stop me before I hype again! plea. We saw an example of this personal tumult in recent months, when Electronic Gaming Monthly editor Dan Hsu unleashed a rant about fellow editors who sold coverage for ad space—a groundbreaking story that most of the gaming press cravenly failed to follow up on. It s gotten so bad, members of the game industry are themselves begging for the press to reform witness God of War s David Jaffe much-discussed critique of the gaming media. (Both Hsu and Jaffe s editorials, it s worth noting, didn t show up in game magazines, but in their personal blogs.)

If editors were to break this unspoken agreement they ve made with publishers to write groveling previews, they d be heroes to gamers everywhere. They d also be out of a job. Which is why it s up to gamers to save them from themselves and in the process, to help save games.

This is where blogs like this come in.

Starting in April, Kotaku will launch a regular feature called Preview Ho of the Month , and the object is to name and shame.

Preview Ho will be a compilation of the most egregious, blatant promotion for unreleased games from across the gaming press. We will challenge the editors of these magazines and websites to justify their hype on behalf of their advertisers products. We will ask them why they gave so much glowing press to games that were so unfinished as to be design documents with conceptual art, or gave any attention whatsoever to yet another movie spin-off with no perceivable originality at all. In doing so, we will go after previews as they exist now for what they are: the mortal enemy of good games.

This is a task that will require the help of every reader of Kotaku who also reads game magazines. Go hunting for these handjobs, clip them out, and e-mail (au@kotaku) the text to us. Help us find the biggest Hos and win public praise—and the satisfaction of knowing you helped create a future of better games.

Think what a gaming press which no longer acted as the publishers fluffers would look like, where journalists felt free to state their actual impressions of a game in preview Beta. There would be some pissiness in the beginning, yes; some publishers would threaten to yank their advertising, after particularly harsh previews. All for the better: this would push magazines to court more non-gaming advertisers, and thereby, expand their audience demographic. The less dependent on game ads for revenue, the more editorial freedom they ll have, in future issues. No longer able to rely on the gaming press booster-ism, publishers would be forced to take more creative risks. They d also put more effort into creating playable demos early on in the development process, to generate a fan base the old-fashioned way, by earning it.

Meanwhile, the gaming press would actually become a genuine force for good and innovation in games; honestly harsh previews would kill or suspend projects in early development, or force studios to rethink crucial elements of the design. In the same way, honest positive previews would build up buzz for the titles that deserved them. We would see more games like Katamari Damacy, which began its life in the US on a single demo machine on the E3 floor, while the publisher devoted its promotional resources to less worthwhile games only to see gamers (largely gamers who blog) drag it into the spotlight.

Bloggers have transformed the mainstream media (think Dan Rather and those fake memos), US politics (think Trent Lott s hasty retirement after praising a segregationist), and Hollywood (think Ain't It Cool News, an ur-blog that forced the film industry to improve their geek genre films.) It is time for blogs to do the same thing for the game industry, breaking the closed circuit of suck once and for all.

Sometimes game journalist/sometimes game developer Wagner James Au writes the New World Notes blog, the journal of the online world Second Life.