Cranberrys
Member
I don't care about Zoe Quinn or Gamergate. I care about exposing parasitic games 'journalists' that attempt to bully or pressure developers into changing their vision. I also despise the relationships many of these so-called 'journalists' have with developers and publishers (giving out great reviews in exchange for trinkets or trips). Video Game journalism has been going downhill since the early 2000s, and it has accelerated its downward spiral since the Kane and Lynch debacle with Gurtsmann. I doubt current games journalists even fully play through the games they review.
They are not giving out reviews in exchange of something, it's not blunt like that. I worked in the gaming industry for 17 years. I was a marketing strategist (and still am but for an advertising agency) and my job, among other things, was to manufacture consent. Any consent profitable for my company (I've worked for a major french video games retailer).
So, in this kind of job you need a journalist for various reasons but not reviews because in retail, you don't give a fuck about review scores.
I'm not going to meet the guy and tell him "I want you to do that for me". I will pick a guy on various criterias and then I'm gonna send the dude some promotional material, goodies and stuff. I'm gonna invite him as a VIP to some trade shows and stuff like that. When I meet him, always in a professionnal environment, I will talk to him like we are buddies, grab a few beers, have a few laughs, if he need access to a certain publisher, I will call whatever friend I have there and arrange something, and I will do that for a certain period of time, let's say about a year. So there I've got my web in place. To him, I'm this cool guy he knows. I never ask anything and never will, but I established a relationship with him. So if he has to write a piece about my company is going to call me out of professionnal courtesy, if he hears that some other publication is going to write a piece about my company, I will also know, if I need to know what review score his publications is planning to give to a specific game, I also will know beforehand and that means I will now be able to call the publisher and give him the heads up (and so strengthening my relationship with this publisher) and so on. I will know have access to privilege information, with a few days before publications which in my line of business is golden. But, in fact, I never asked him for anything, and we are just two friends meeting after work and talk shop.