Working in the industry AND professional game reporter?
polycounter lvl 14
[EDIT] I guess I should have put "journalist" in the title instead of "reporter".
Just a little question how the rest of you guys look at this.
Say someone is employed at a game developer, while at the same time freelances for a gaming publication, writing reviews, and articles.
Is this ethical? Does this, in your eyes, make this person less credible as a professional?
In my eyes, yes it does, and I can't but feel this is a really bad combination of professions. If said person had decided to freelance reviewing music, or movies, or food, then I'd have no problem at all. But games?
If you disagree with me on this one, I'd love to hear abouot it.
Just a little question how the rest of you guys look at this.
Say someone is employed at a game developer, while at the same time freelances for a gaming publication, writing reviews, and articles.
Is this ethical? Does this, in your eyes, make this person less credible as a professional?
In my eyes, yes it does, and I can't but feel this is a really bad combination of professions. If said person had decided to freelance reviewing music, or movies, or food, then I'd have no problem at all. But games?
If you disagree with me on this one, I'd love to hear abouot it.
Replies
only if you were reviewing your own game other than that i think its fine.
Ok, but what if you were reviewing a competitor's game? For example, do you think it would be fine if someone from Blizzard were to write a review of Warhammer Online.
I still say it's a conflict of interest to work for a dev and write reviews, regardless of what you are reviewing.
Also game publications allready have a pretty bad name for biased reviews so i doubt they would want to make it even worse by hiring someone from the industry.
I guess you could write about how the industry works and maybe enlighten people about the technical aspects behind the games sorta like an expert.
Writing articles about the industry, etc, is OK, but reviewing is really not a good idea.
fixed and +1
Odd though to see the kind of hostility against game journalists. They do fill a place, even if there's a certian amount of corruption that's unavoidable, but to be honest that's just as much our fault (and our publishers') as theirs. While most of us who are in the industry can tell a good game from a bad one, and make the decision ourselves, a majority of buyers don't have that option. People need some kind of guidelines so they don't waste money on some of the shit we try to push out onto people.
Freelancing could work as a side job. But you get your biases while in the biz and that could effect one's journalistic integrity. But then again no one should have die hard readers that only listen to the articles of one journalist, especially for determining if one likes a game, I would argue the ethics a bit on that.