Video game addiction, mass murderers trained on Call of Duty, the video games warping your children’s brain.
Does mainstream media have an agenda against video games? Does it purposely publish negatively skewed stories?
It often feels that way.
And it’s frustrating. It’s tempting to go on the defensive (or often the offensive) each and every time video games are unfairly chastised in the mainstream press, but video games are mainstream now. More people play video games than don’t play video games. The moral panic is over.
Right?
So why does this type of reporting still exist? Today, numb to the exposure of scare-mongering stories, this might be the only question still worth answering.
So we decided to investigate. We asked a number of journalists who are either working, or have worked, in the mainstream space: What’s the motivation?
Why is the mainstream media still writing scare stories about video games in 2016?
“Anything that instils fear in people. Those stories always rate,” one journalist explained.
Almost everyone we spoke to for this story made this point: Negatively skewed stories score higher than positive stories in terms of traffic.
And that plays double when those stories involve children.
One journalist, who asked to remain anonymous, explained: Stories about video games affecting children’s brains or behaviour were guaranteed traffic hits. For some journalists the temptation to write and publish those stories was difficult to pass up.
“Those were usually written by some shitty journalist quoting research from some moron,” he told us.
“They would quote stupid university professors and build their case of that.”
Stories like these are rarely written or published by tech journalists, we were told. Usually it’s the work of “annoying general news or consumer affairs journalists”.
In the mainstream space negative press releases are “pounced on”. Mainly because negative stories tend to score more traffic, but also as a result of ignorance. When it comes to video games most mainstream journalists lack the knowledge to ask the right questions of any research release that lands in their inbox.
“Even casual gamers know when something is bullshit,” one journalist said. “Those who don’t genuinely think it’s true.”
And that’s the case with many of these scare-mongering stories. There’s no real agenda. Just a simple combination of ignorance and a search for the type of content that has been proven to work for that broad, mainstream readership.
“Traffic is king,” one journalist explained.
And complaints barely even matter.
“Most senior editors of the publication don’t know any better themselves. Most just pass off social media retaliation as dickhead commenters finding something to whinge about.”
There’s no real malice involved, just a simple case of reporters chasing the story their audience wants to read, and an inability to separate facts from spin. Quite simply, a large number of journalists don’t understand video games.
“I’ve never heard of a MSM reporter who actually hated games and wanted to portray them in a bad light,” another journalist told us. “But when an expert or a piece of research tells them games rot the brain … a lot of reporters seem a bit quicker to take that at face value then they might be if it was a different artistic medium.”
Stories in mainstream media don’t need to be negative, but if you’re writing for a broad audience some sort of ‘lifestyle’ hook is required otherwise — according to the journalists we spoke to — the story will completely disappear.
“Our site is so big that the only way to get heaps of hits is have it placed on the front page where a million readers will see it,” one journalist explained. “Nobody comes here looking for games coverage. So choosing a gaming story to cover usual boils down to: Will it run at the front? Is there a hook?
“Stories about games rotting kids’ heads always do well. But so do other stories that have a non-games element that editors and the mainstream audience can grab on to.”
So instead of stories about Uncharted 4, we get stories about video game addiction (apparently stories about video game rehab centres in Asia are a 100 per cent guaranteed traffic hit) or the effects of video game violence.
Apparently there’s a new angle on the block: Esports.
Currently, the “Esports is a real sport now” angle is popular in the newsroom. As is the “Man Makes $1 Million Playing EVE” story.
Stories that work well on mainstream audiences tend to feature games on the periphery. The example we were given was Pokemon GO. Video game sites are more likely to cover the game itself but mainstream sites only wrote about Pokemon GO as a social phenomenon.
“Barely anyone here had any idea what it was,” explained one journalist. “Nobody was playing it, but everybody churned out a story or two about it because it was suddenly of general interest.”
It can be quite difficult for young journalists to write about video games in a mainstream publication. Particularly when the editors they report to don’t necessarily understand video games. Or perhaps they just understand their audience all too well.
One journalist we spoke to told us a story. He had spent all weekend playing and writing about Uncharted 4, but when he got to the office the following Monday he was chastised by his Editor for not writing about Doom instead.
Uncharted 4 was what ‘gamers’ were buying, playing and discussing, but Doom had the brand name and the historic legacy of scare-mongering that would resonate with a mainstream audience.
In this case the journalist we spoke to knew he was in the wrong.
“It illustrates the issue,” he explained. “I thought Uncharted was a no-brainer to take priority, but Doom is a property people recognise even if the last game they played was in 1995.”
Another example: The same journalist asked if there was any interest in a review for the most recent Call of Duty game, considering its enduring popularity among a broad audience.
“Is it the best game ever?” a senior journalist asked.
Probably not.
“Is it the worst game ever?”
Again, probably not, so there was no interest.
“A headline like ‘Is this the best game of all time?’ might have got it over the line,” the journalist said. “But of course very few gaming stories can fairly earn a headline like that.”
One person we spoke to believed criticism of video game coverage in mainstream media was a difficult one to parse. By definition it speaks to a large audience and, if done well, merely presents the views of experts. From that perspective very little understanding is required, but only if the reporting is fair.
“I certainly wouldn’t say hardcore gamers should be in charge of who can and can’t cover video games,” he said.
But he did admit there were issues specific to video games. The main issue: Mainstream journalists, in his experience, simply weren’t interested in games. In his experience, senior journalists were more likely to be interested in sports, travel or politics and video games – being what they are – are difficult to understand if you don’t have that specialist knowledge.
In addition, many old journalists still carry that old media view of video games.
“Many reporters I’ve talked to seem to carry the familiar biases when it comes to video games. That it’s mostly for teenage boys but is somehow also the realm of children, that it’s mostly violent and sexist.”
Certainly the games industry and the games they produce are not invulnerable to criticism. Often video games (as a medium and an industry) deserve criticism, but the scare-mongering is what feels unfair.
But there is hope.
“I think we might see those scare mongering stories drop a little,” one journalist told us. “Editors are starting to see the value of games and writing half decent gaming stories.”
But, sadly, the moral panic surrounding video games persists.
“As long as there are those general journalists who don’t know what’s really going on and just want to ‘protect the children’, we’ll still see those types of stories pop up.”
Comments
14 responses to “Confessions Of Mainstream Media Journalists”
If it bleeds, it leads.
Wouldn’t it be a sick twist if the traffic those fear articles were generating were actually from us gamers reading them?
You speak as if that were a hypothetical…
This is exactly why (as a relatively recent development) when those stories get reposted in places like reddit which is home to a large number of gaming enthusiasts they try to link to an archive or mirror so the original article doesn’t get clicks or ad revenue.
Are Renaissance portraits rotting your brain?
Take my house for example. I’m living there with my 12 year old son with my parents while I finish University up. I teach part time at my University while I study my Bachelor of Education as well as in schools. They watch this crap endlessly, I try to implore them not to, to be better than that, but I just can’t get through to them. Despite showing them proof endlessly, repeatedly, I get brushed aside because ‘the people on tv have proof!’ Which is of course, complete bullshit.
I integrate videogames every opportunity I get into my lessons of History or English, I find them amazingly informative in the right context. This War of Mine was great to utilise as an approach to modern conflict in media, Call of Duty was great to use in English about the perversion of war in our current media (the bravado etc, it infects games as well as movies and books etc). Students love it, it engages them, they debate it furiously more than any single book will get them involved, because their digital literacy is incredible these days.
Yet when one of these articles comes on tv, they *consistently* treat the younger generation like they’re idiots, like they don’t have a mind of their own. It’s insulting, degrading and ridiculous watching reports that state these games ‘dumb kids down’ or other claims such as these, when the fact is it’s quite the opposite. I’ve been engaged in conversations about volume and area where Minecraft was brought in, I’ve had conversations in maths classes I’ve observed where they discussed how the velocity in certain racing games wouldn’t be physically possible etc. It’s stunning.
Yet another bullshit article on another hamfisted show like ACA will slip through, people like my parents will watch it and lap it up, saying ‘videogames are ruining our children’ when the fact is, we know it isn’t, it’s mentally degrading shows such as these, reports like these and attitudes that fester a lack of progression in intelligence. Don’t even get me started on the fact a year 8 student can research facts better than these shows or the goddamn racism that appears almost ever night or we’ll be here for weeks…
Yeah, you could say I have bones to pick with these shows (One time, when I was working for a certain collection agency, I sat in on a 2 hour camera interview with my boss that was cut down to 7 seconds on screen…) 🙂
I wish you taught me in high school. Those are some pretty cool teaching methods!
“why is the mainstream media still writing scare stories about video games in 2016?”
One of the most ironic quotes I’ve ever seen from Kotaku.
It was chuckle worthy.
I think people forget that mainstream gaming media is very different and still very niche to mainstream media.
The sad thing is, the people who really need to be reading this article are the kind of people that never will. Still, it’s so good for you to put this out here Mark. Nice work.
The only way its gonna change is when the dinosaurs die off. Idiotic professors keep producing brain numbingly bad research, the old and ignorant mainstream journalists lap it up, then the old farts take it seriously because they think journalists/professors are incapable of being idiots. As though they’re totally infallible.
Seriously, that is the issue. It can be summarised very easily. Its hilarious that editors ignore criticism, much like politicians they ignore the people and keep making stupid decisions. Whatever furthers their career right? Pretty much Corporate Psychopaths. Kotaku is included in all this by the way. Ironic and an indefensible position.
It’s the same as any media really…they report on what people will click on.
Gotta write for your target audience… which means you reinforce existing biases.
No one stays in business long if they’re business model is getting people to pay you to tell them what they don’t want to hear.
Also, most media is dying… damn right they’ll go where the money is.
I remember when I lived in Darwin that the NT News editor admitted that they saw a 25-40% increase in sales when the front page was a story about a crocdile. So, stories about croc sightings, or croc attacks, or croc prevention measures, would happen at least once a fortnight.
I used to despise journalists as fearmongers and sensasionalists. Now I understand that there are mere peddlers of the noxious substance that a significant percentage of the population craves. It’s like despising a barman or the sales attendant at a liquor shop.