How easy it is to be a "insider"/"The way of leaks"

[Yemeth]

First, had no idea how to name the thread, hope the name is ok, if not please be so kind and change it. Thanks.

A very interesting read, even though I disagree about game-journalism vs. journalism, too many times I listened to "middle-east", "eastern europe" et al experts/"analysts" who did not know the basics about the things they were talking about or were only talking things way too literal from books they read it about (kind of the first VCR manuals back in the day, from japanese to english, back to language y etc ). Ah, the stupid notion that we should be "just" be presented with facts and draw our own conclusions without "anaylsts"...

http://x-surface.tumblr.com/

The games industry is the only one I can think of that will quite happily publish guesswork as news. So-called ‘analysts’ are no different - they make money by guessing. They’re about as much use as a ‘source’ as I am.
So let’s see how easy it is to be a ‘source’.

At 1:41am GMT today I sent out an email to a bunch of gaming sites claiming to be a Microsoft employee working on the new Xbox.

Any thoughts?

 

[JPT]

I have no problem with him outing the news sites, but in general did we expect anything better.

I understand that the news sites might be pissed that they have been had, but we as readers should be seriously pissed that the gaming site does not keep up their social contract with us.
In the end it was the news sites that did not do their job and its all their fault.

 

[oramay]

I don't think gaming media is unique at all. I see plenty of nonsense thrown around like facts in other media too. Writing stories that catch attention is an important part of their work, however they get the stories done.

Regarding the title "how easy it is to be an insider?" It doesn't seem very hard. Some members on Neogaf were apparently fed bits of information about the next MS & Sony consoles by fellow forum members and they went on to talk like "insiders". In the past few days, I also read that patsu had information about these consoles sent to him by "mistake", and Acert93 said someone here PMed him something about the consoles too.

So, hang around some forums long enough, and may be you'll become sort of a tangential insider too. :smile:

 

[DJ12]

Your an insider if you are saying something fanboys like.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

My real life job is basically guessing how companies will do financially, and people making investment decisions upon that guesswork. (its educated guesses, based on lots of school and an a clever brain, but still guesses)

In the beginning i was quite surprised people care about what I guess will happen in some random company, five years from now...

 

[Yemeth]

Hello,

thanks for all your input, I basically agree with all of you (ok, Cheezdoodles, wrote his input where we can only wonder if he is giving his opinions about MS, Nintendo and Sony ), we should not expect anything special from game journalism but I still find it interesting, especially with all these threads + how it all works.

Just look at the Blitter comment and how it took off. But still we have many people trying to discuss it meaningful and without fanyboyism, which is a great thing...

If I were at MS or Sony I would put some hardware in the console that no one knows what it is for and which is only used for marketing, I think it would be an great marketing success (whoah, they have a special chip named saucus specialis (SAUSPEC), only strange that it is written z80 on it but they say it soothes the electrons so they move much more focused and it speeds them up by 3,4%!).

The next round will be when official specs will be released... Wonder how many insiders will then turn their story a la "they must have changed the specs from IBM to AMD in the last week, my source is correct!".

For me, the best of these "guessing" threads were insightful posts of people like joker, nao, ERP et al and the hilarious stare competition gif for the next gen consoles on neoGAF (even though I usually cannot stand the noise ratio over there, I wanted to register there just to filter out the signatures and profile pictures, man...), but I still would like to notice a difference when I read an article from a journalist and a posting from some nick in a forum (sadly, way too often the poster wins hands down, which should be an exception)...

Cheers...