“The weird thing that I’ve noticed in the last year is that when I want to read something really interesting about a video game, or about video game culture, more often than not it’s not going to be published on a gaming website, but by a gaming enthusiast on a blog. Just as an example, there’s this guy that sometimes writes for gaming websites, The Gonzologist, but he writes really interesting stuff that I wish more people saw. It’s not some nerdy, obscure stuff that’s only interesting to a couple of game developers and passionate players. That’s what has surprised me, that when I find something really touching or revealing it’s not from a gaming website.”

“It’s not like it doesn’t happen,” he adds. “Kotaku had a great article about a dark sex side of gaming, and that was an incredible read, but other than that, there’s nothing really interesting there, at least for me.



“I use lists extensively on Twitter, but I just don’t click on gaming news, maybe only once every two or three weeks. Then when I do scroll down, it’s like, ‘I know everything that’s here from Twitter anyway’. If there’s a new trailer for Tomb Raider, I know about it, if Microsoft announce a new console, I know from Twitter. I very rarely find something there that’s not the usual social media noise and is a unique take on something, or an exclusive. That’s my problem. Every now-and-again the mainstream gaming press does something fantastic. It’s just not happening often enough for my personal taste.”

The role of the gaming press is changing in response to new media and the internet, but compounding these issues are difficulties that still surround some of the more outdated practises employed by many outlets.

“The numeric score is just idiotic,” says Chmielarz. “I can maybe be convinced that something like five stars makes sense, but going from 0-100 like Metacritic ultimately does is just simply idiotic and really doesn’t tell you much about the game.

“I can give you my own game as an example. We released on PS4, and initially we had like 10 reviews or something, and most of them were eights, eight and a halves, nines, and generally people were highly recommending the game – that was wonderful. But then one guy gave us 4/10, and that brought the Metacritic score down to 79. So now if you weren’t an advanced user, so to speak, you go to Metacritic, see 79, and you go, ‘ehhh, ok, so nothing special then’, because it’s not immediately clear that it’s not just an average game, but a divisive game. Not even divisive. Just one guy decided to give it a really insanely low score. That’s just misleading. So I prefer what Rotten Tomatoes are doing where they only look if the review is positive or negative.

“When a new game comes out, and I want to learn more about it, I go to Steam reviews, not a professional website. I don’t know exactly why that is, but when I go to a Steam review, I will learn exactly what that game is. It’s not that Steam users focus solely on mechanics, they talk about feelings, the visuals and the story. It’s a condensed version that basically tells me everything I needed to know about the game.

“It’s why we pay 19.99 instead of 20, right? That’s how human psychology works. When you see 79, you got into the 70s zone, so to speak. In my case, there’s no big correlation between the score and people buying the game, so it’s fine. But for bigger studios, that’s actually serious issue. The majority of AAA studios have a clause in their contract that a bonus will only be paid if the score is this or that. Sometimes it’s crazy, like 90 or 95+, but most of the time, it’s 80. There’s the famous story with Obsidian hitting 79 with New Vegas, but trust me, that’s not the only story. It’s absolutely insane, because you can have a game that’s a best seller, and makes a lot of money, but the developers won’t see a bonus, and I’m sorry to say this, because a couple of amateur journalists who didn’t just have a different opinion, but didn’t know what they were talking about, brought the game down.”

“It’s absolute idiocy,” Chmielarz explains. “And I’m not talking about the journalists, but the publishers. They have a studio of 200 professional developers making a game over two years for $50-60 million. And they base bonuses on a couple of glorified bloggers? That’s really bad. I don’t blame the journalists, it’s exclusively the publishers’ fault for using Metacritic like this.”

This touches on one of the more interesting conundrums tangled up in the discourse surrounding games journalism. What is the difference between a journalist and a blogger? And who is qualified to say?

“I expect a certain level of research, ethics, accountability and work to go into an article that is supposedly written by a journalist,” says Chmielarz. “Bloggers can do anything, I can write some amateur bullshit or I can do extensive research and write about something, it’s whatever. When I read a website that’s supposed to be professional, I expect professionalism.

I’d recommend this to everybody – find more unique sources of information and don’t assume that all of the truly interesting content comes only from the biggest websites.

Another issue is that of balance. Some would argue that mainstream gaming sites only tell one side of the story, and leave out everything that doesn’t fit their narrative.

“Games do not exist in a vacuum,” Chmielarz explains. “We’re still trying to find out the effects of gaming on a human being. We can’t say that art has no effect on people because then art would be nothing but a time-killer. How do games affect us? Do they make us murderers? Or do they actually increase the general safety of the world? Which in my opinion seems to be the case. All of that is interesting. I think that the problem some people have is not even the fact that people are talking about this. The biggest problem is that there’s no counterpoint.

“The Witcher 3 is a great example here, because you had progressive websites discussing the issues of race, or of feminism, all of these things that they love to talk about, they talked about. Most of the biggest websites just present one side of the political spectrum. Every counterpoint to that narrative that you’ve heard, came from the blogosphere, from gamers, from developers even. You’d never get a trace of the other side of the argument if you just read all of these bigger websites. That’s the problem we’re having here. And I’m not sure how to solve it, because I’m, what I’d call a soft libertarian, so I believe that if Polygon wants to be Polygon, they can be Polygon. It’s their money, so if they want to be extremely one sided, that’s ok.”

The take-away here is that while problems persist, quality work is there if you’re willing to look for it. Everybody has their own personal biases, including journalists and the gaming media as a whole, and to see past them, readers and viewers need to search out a variety of perspectives.

“Maybe my expectations are too high,” says Chmielarz. “I’d love to read some deeper analysis and deeper articles that require extensive research, but maybe there’s just no market for it.

“I’ve complained about AAA games being mostly crap, but then some being excellent. Then I complained about the indie scene being mostly crap, but then some indies being excellent. Maybe it’s the same with gaming journalism. Maybe most of it is crap, but every now-and-then you have something truly excellent.

“How I try to deal with it is to always have multiple sources of information. I’m not an avid reader of Polygon, to put it gently, when it comes to how they deal with social issues, but some of the other things that they produce are great. I do follow a few journalists or websites that make that type of content on Twitter and I’m interested in their side of the story. I’d recommend this to everybody – find more unique sources of information and don’t assume that all of the truly interesting content comes only from the biggest websites.”

Find Adrian Chmielarz on Twitter.

You can reach James (me!) on Twitter @Jiffe93.