Gaming Journalism & Technical Incompetence

[NavNucST3]

One of the worst was, EGM once stated that developers were telling them the PS3 was "orders of magnitude" more powerful than the Xbox360 (back well before the PS3 came out).

I mean, one order is 10X, Orders plural is then a minimum of 100X. So, devs were telling them the PS3 was at least 100X more powerful? And EGM, a supposed knowledgable gaming magazine, believed it?

It's ridiculous how technically incompetent some of these publications really are.

Btw, listening to the 1up podcast will give you another clue just how generally technically incompetent these editors often are. They only understand what's under the hood of the machines in the vaguest of terms. Garnett a few weeks back got the 360 EDRAM mixed up with regular ram for example. They were doing the "news" and the story about Mark Rein getting the RAM upped to 512 and costing MS a billion was discussed. For about 5 seconds. At the end Garnett says something like "yeah well good for them. Developers are always talking about how one of their favorite things about the 360 is that extra EDRAM" or something like that, where he equated the EDRAM with the whole Mark Rein deal.

Another good one was where IGN accusingly asked a microsoft rep if the 360 really had the necessary "internal bandwidth between the CPU and GPU" to do "true" 1080P..whatever that was supposed to mean.

I would say the most telling episode is where they were discussing NAT on the 360 and how to go about opening ports...you could here echoes in the room as the audio engineer, who on that show happened to be on of their IT guys I believe was explaining how to get OPEN on the 360. I still like the show because it has great entertainment value...which means...when do we get the B3D podcast .

But I will reiterate what I said above, you cannot ask of journalists what doesn't even take place in-house. Not to pick on the artists but on this very forum, whenever an artist says something (if it happens to be something negative about your preferred gaming system) he is lambasted with, "wtf, does he know?" the Josh Robinson incident comes to mind. The reverse is also true. Journalists are supposed to report...GIGO happens within our own lives. I'm sure we have all spewed inaccurate and incorrect information before, with all the different topics that reside "under the hood" you would essentially be asking them to know more than yourselves. Does it piss me off when someone says something that I would consider public domain knowledge, maybe, but at least on the 1up show the next week they typically correct themselves, I rarely if ever see that in print and tv.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

but at least on the 1up show the next week they typically correct themselves, I rarely if ever see that in print and tv.

That's the advantage of the internet. More journalists should make use of it. However, I think there's a Wiki approach encouraged by this. Internet site reports any old rubbish and lets the forum goers research the subject to correct them. That makes journalism little more than gossiping. All they need do is pass on rumours and info as they get it. Real journalism doesn't run a story until it's been investigated - corrections are nice, but sould be few and far between if the journo's took their job seriously.

 

[Bohdy]

Having a definitive gaming tech section is a great idea! I do get tired of correcting IGN's nonsense to people who don't believe me anyway. Now I can just post a link to gaming.beyond3d.com and call it a day

 

[Carl B]

Shifty I think you captured the essence perfectly with the gossiping allusion; that really is what it's become with a lot of these gaming 'journalists.'

I'm excited to see what comes of this homegrown B3D gaming effort... it's the right time for it an industry otherwise gone mad.

 

[Rolf N]

On a different note, I find it worrying how little your average games journalist knows about games. How they function, what they do, the different ways in which they can be entertaining.
So many journos are content with just being overwhelmed by their own subjectivity. They don't understand it, can't acknowledge it, can't control it. I'm looking at you, Petra Schmitz!

As a parallel to the thread's topic, this is like Futuremark forum dwellers bickering about a score ("But I'm having so much fun here!") and temporary visitors explaining them why the scores stack up in the way they do. Good games journos should know how to look deeper than "I'm having fun"/"I like this better than <competitor>".

 

[22psi]

On a different note, I find it worrying how little your average games journalist knows about games. How they function, what they do, the different ways in which they can be entertaining.
So many journos are content with just being overwhelmed by their own subjectivity. They don't understand it, can't acknowledge it, can't control it. I'm looking at you, Petra Schmitz!

As a parallel to the thread's topic, this is like Futuremark forum dwellers bickering about a score ("But I'm having so much fun here!") and temporary visitors explaining them why the scores stack up in the way they do. Good games journos should know how to look deeper than "I'm having fun"/"I like this better than <competitor>".

The problem extends further than the average Joes too. I often find retailers (people who work at Best Buy, EB Games, etc) spew crap and/or mis-information to customers. I was at a game store the other day and heard that the 360 had a 50% failure rate and that 'you should wait until they put in a new graphics card in the 360 then get it'. I mean come on, you are going to tell a CUSTOMER this?

I let out a noticeable 'chuckle' and hastely left.