Gaming Journalism & Technical Incompetence
- Thread starter Carl B
- Start date
I find it unbelievable that these people can hang around this much technology and pick absolutely nothing up about how it works! How come gamers are such technology-chumps? Why can't they get game-playing staff that's also technological competant? Actually, answered that myself. Technologically competant staff are working with the tech, rather then reporting on it! These people are journalists, majors in English and Literature, which means technical competancy slightly above 'Mother'.
I guess that explains why gaming news sites are such sources of misinformation - they are incapable of understanding what they're writing about, but are compelled to report on it anyway.
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You don't have to 'keep up with it' - I would hope - to know that the Cell's local RAM pool is the XDR. I mean to think it could be the GDDR that's being used is, IMO, to never have even seen a schematic of the PS3's architecture. For the person on the street, ok yes. For a publication that writes about this thing daily... what?
Well then, if you don't want to be tarnished by sweeping generalisations, all you need do is single handedly lead the mainstream gaming press into a technical renaissance
There's really no oint in one or two technically competant people on a gaming site if they're not going to be used to at least edit/correct articles from non-techie journalists. Adding one or two competant technical articles amongst the mass of misunderstood/misrepresented articles just gives unwarranted weight to those dodgy articles. ie. If IGN were right in article a, aren't they also right in articles b through g?
The mainstream press, all over - from gaming sites like IGN to 'trusted' sites like the the BBC, get so much wrong in the coverage of gaming, it's painful. They make far more effort to be correct in other articles, so why is technology handled so flippantly? It's just providing a disservice.
Anyway, end of rant, has anyone got any reports on YDL yet?
Heh heh... I thought it is both (!) lack of journalism and technical competence when people are covering gaming. Might be too critical, but that's the feeling I get after reading some of the recent ones.
Someone seriously need to get together and shake out the industry. xbdestroya and Sis, em.... I see lot's of writings in your eyes (and future). But you need to get used to being chased for deadlines though (like when's the next article ?)
Someone seriously need to get together and shake out the industry. xbdestroya and Sis, em.... I see lot's of writings in your eyes (and future). But you need to get used to being chased for deadlines though (like when's the next article ?)
Shouldn't the thread be titled "Gaming Tech & Journalism Incompetence"?
Cause really, i'm not technically trained, and i picked up all the things i know from the net. These people work with technology and write about it every day, and still are stupid enough to make glaring mistakes. They don't even care about picking things up or researching into them, which makes them bad journalists.
It's not technical incompetence, it's stupidity and journalism incompetence.
Cause really, i'm not technically trained, and i picked up all the things i know from the net. These people work with technology and write about it every day, and still are stupid enough to make glaring mistakes. They don't even care about picking things up or researching into them, which makes them bad journalists.
It's not technical incompetence, it's stupidity and journalism incompetence.
Ok for the record I didn't start this thread per se - that first post I actually posted in the 'PS3 Open Source' thread as a side rant to the IGN article.
Hupfins just saw fit to hack it off and turn it into something new.
Not that there's not plenty to rant about though...
Hupfins just saw fit to hack it off and turn it into something new.
Not that there's not plenty to rant about though...
Oh i understand hup's post now then now!
I guess it's Journalistic Incompetance from a classical journalism POV, but I think not in contemporary journalism. They want to make sales, not report facts. There's no need to be right. There's no penality for spreading misinformation, so why go to the effort to edit articles and check them for accuracy. That's work for no gain.
What the industry needs is for a few rich people to buy products and then sue the journals for misinformation. The moment they can get hammered for being factually incorrect, they'd be alot more careful!
(Note I don't condone suing people, and such actions would obviously have repercussions. But it'd be nice if something somewhere gave reporters a kick up the arse!)
What the industry needs is for a few rich people to buy products and then sue the journals for misinformation. The moment they can get hammered for being factually incorrect, they'd be alot more careful!
(Note I don't condone suing people, and such actions would obviously have repercussions. But it'd be nice if something somewhere gave reporters a kick up the arse!)
crazygambit
Regular
They're not even good at playing videogames!!! With the amounts of games that they play you'd also think they'd pick anything up. But after seeing some videos, Jeff Gerstmann I'm looking at YOU, it's amazing how much they suck at gaming. So, really, if they can't even play games and it's like THEIR JOB as reviewers, you can't expect them to get the tech right either.
Well if these companies would hire a couple techie gamers they could overcome such simple issues. TeamXbox, for example, seems to have a couple guys on staff who know their stuff. I don't think we should expect them to be ubermadcomputerscientistwithsidejobsinjournalism, but I think basic A+ certification would tell you that an OS might, just miiiight, need to access a memory pool, you know, that is associated with the CPU. Of course nailing them to specifics on what is what could be hard Heh, them knowing something may also help them cut through the FUD and get a better grasp on the PR BS they get from publishers and devs and get a better appreciation of differences and similarities and how they may impact software. I also think they are completely inept in regards to mark factors and forces.
But then again these are the same sort of folks, like Kiko, that think Motorstorm looks like the E3 CGI.
Anyhow, if they want to solve some of their problems give me a call
Ps- Some level of forgiveness is necessary because of their audiance and they do intentionally steer away from ANYTHING overly technical. That said that leeway is nullified by them not having at least a quasi-technical author/section. Could do them so good in pulling in new traffic, seeing as they are already 1 of the top 10 BBS on the internet.
Heh, them knowing something may also help them cut through the FUD and get a better grasp on the PR BS they get from publishers and devs and get a better appreciation of differences and similarities and how they may impact software. I also think they are completely inept in regards to mark factors and forces.But then again these are the same sort of folks, like Kiko, that think Motorstorm looks like the E3 CGI.
Anyhow, if they want to solve some of their problems give me a call
Ps- Some level of forgiveness is necessary because of their audiance and they do intentionally steer away from ANYTHING overly technical. That said that leeway is nullified by them not having at least a quasi-technical author/section. Could do them so good in pulling in new traffic, seeing as they are already 1 of the top 10 BBS on the internet.
Anyhow, if they want to solve some of their problems give me a call
it's a travesty that you are not writing in place of some of these er, um, "journalists
".
Maybe B3D should branch out into gaming news, with contributions from Forumites including peer reviews prior to release?
indeed. great idea and would more viable than most anything else we read on the net wrt to this info. IMO
It needs to be packaged in a way that'll appeal to the masses though. B3D's musings often find their way onto other forums as references for the real deal, but by then most people have been 'educated' by the wrong articles and don't hang around the forums long enough to be corrected.that's what this site's for! the real info
Or perhaps a better solution. B3D could offer a service of technical reviewing to the other sites.
You would think that big sites like IGN could afford to have some technical people review their articles for accuracy. My guess is that think they are technical, and don't see the problem.
You would think that big sites like IGN could afford to have some technical people review their articles for accuracy. My guess is that think they are technical, and don't see the problem.