Every once in a while, gaming journalism betrays a certain bias toward the subject it reports on. I’m not talking about the fact that most video game journalists happen to love video games. That’s no surprise and should actually be expected. Who would trust a film critic who didn’t love film? Or a theater critic who dreaded going to see performances.
But perhaps a more analogous subject matter would be sports. Pick up any player profile or well written feature, and it’s clear that the journalist who wrote it has a unique relationship with, and profound love for, the world of sports.
Sports are also a widely accepted and hugely popular pass time, both for participating in and spectating. As a result, rarely do sports journalists feel the need to defend their hobby or report on it with righteous zeal. When’s the last time you saw sports journalists on the whole cozying up to the NFL and parroting it’s side of the story?
And then there’s video games, still much in their infancy, still not very accepted by the public at large. In addition, the audience skews younger with the main audience in their early to mid 30s, unlike sports viewers, the median age of which is north of 45 for the NFL and MLB.
So I guess it shouldn’t be that surprising when video game journalists step just slightly out of their objective role just for a moment and champion the “the industry.”
This was certainly the case when the Supreme Court ruled that a California state law prohibiting the sale of violent video games to minors was unconstitutional. On the basis that it was too broad and ambiguous in its attempts to achieve this end, the Court ruled 7-2 that video games remained protected under the First Amendment.
At the time, every video game media outlet lauded the decision, with a subtext that California was the villain, especially the state representative who championed it, mirroring the victimized triumphalism exuding from the gaming community as a whole.
Though as many were quick to note, a victory for gaming was never much in question, leaving the celebratory atmosphere after the fact in somewhat disproportion to what was actually at stake beforehand.
That episode has been followed up by this tiny news piece which made the rounds at the start of this week.
Every major gaming website reported on the ESA’s press release that they had, “filed a motion to be reimbursed for attorneys' fees totaling $1.1 million.”
Now of course, simply reporting on and regurgitating an industry press release is nothing bad or out of the ordinary. What I’m looking to draw attention to here are statements like these:
“So, regardless of whether the ESA is awarded the money it's seeking, California has yet to spend its last cent on attempting to restrict the sale of videogames.”
“If only California had heeded the ESA's warning after it publicly posted the $282,794 reimbursement check for legal fees it received from the state, following a lower court's decision back in 2008.”
“In other words, California knew what it was getting into, and this is the cost.”
In addition to the fact that none of the above stories or ones elsewhere bothered to have someone other than ESA comment, none of the stories even attempted to provide a context for ESA’s motion. Are reimbursement requests like these normal? What would the money go toward?
In fact, none even bothered to mention, or remind readers, that the filed motion only applied to expenses incurred while arguing the case at the Supreme Court. That is, expenses resulting from the preceding cases had already been reimbursed by the state, and thus were not at issue with this motion.
So first, the video game media in carelessly echoing ESA’s press release not only failed to provide context or but didn’t bother to get an opposing point of view to comment. Secondly, they blatantly picked sides in a publicity war between a state government and a commercial institution.
"Gee, can I quote you on that Mister Mike Gallagher?"
What concerns me is the gaming media’s apparent willingness to jump on anything even slightly resembling “hard” news as long as it’s video game related. And then upon doing so, not providing any information outside of what the ESA hands out in a press release, since presumably the only valid point of view here is the one advocated by “the industry,” and the one supported by the gamer community.
Far from being a typical request on the part of the ESA, SCOTUS blog called it “a highly unusual plea,” explaining that “ordinarily, the custom in American law is for each side to pay its own legal fees in a lawsuit,” and noted that “the tone of the new motion is somewhat accusatory,” and cites, “ no Supreme Court ruling directly ordering a fee shift in a case before the Justices.”
This isn’t to say that the ESA is wrong to file the motion, or that they are the villains somehow, or that California shouldn’t reimburse them.
What is distressing is how biased the gaming media can become when reporting on issues related to gaming institutions, in this case the ESA, and some other outside group, whether it be state governments, politicians, advocacy groups, or research academics.
Understandably so, the gaming community has a complex about being misunderstood and unfairly attacked or blamed by non-gaming outsiders. As the newest popular media, gaming has the privilege of being the target of politicians looking to score easy points with parent voters, lazy pundits looking for an easy topic to bungle, and frantic academics looking for new areas in which to publish specious research
But if gaming is going to be taken seriously and ever considered a normal or even traditional part of the media landscape, it needs to start taking itself more seriously. One place that could use some work is it’s journalism.