Sensationalism in the Video Game Media

   I would like to start this off by saying. I have been a gamer for the better part of my life. I am 27 years old. I have watched consoles rise and fall. Companies come and go. I have watched as the idea of video game media, reviews and journalism has become something of it's own.

   That being said. I have to say as a gamer I try to stay away from a lot of the drama. I try to avoid specific topics. Yet now that I myself am working on being a gaming journalist. (so to speak) I can't keep my mouth shut any longer. These topics need to be discussed. The main topic that I have an issue with. Is sensationalism in the gaming media, journalism, and within the development community as a whole.

  As a gamer I am tired of hearing how we as gamers were promise something, that never makes it into the game. I am looking at you Peter Molyneux. Yes you have made some great games over the years but come on. Telling us that Fable would be this and that when it wasn't... Or that Fable 2 would be even better and you would make good on all the promises from Fable one only to flip flop again... Really?? Then this whole issue with Godus. I am tired of being promised things only to have them not even be a part of the game. Time and time again other companies have done this as well. Just to use it as a selling point. To make money for them and leave those who are their bread and butter out to dry. It is heinous, for these people to use their consumers like that. If something isn't going to be in the game then don't and I repeat DON'T tell us it will be.

  Now moving forward with this, I believe another issue the gaming media has is something that everything in our world is having issues with as well. That something is Feminism. Now hear me out. I am not against it at all. In fact I fully support woman in every thing they do. Yet I have to wonder about some of these approaches that are being used. Singling out specific sections of a game only to prove your point... This is journalism people not politics. We don't chicken pick. This isn't sunday school and we aren't children. Anita Sarkeesian has some valid points. Yet she also seems to be just taking things and using them to her motivation. (I am not bashing her or anyone else in this post. I am just using these people as examples.) Games are like movies, radio, and even books. They are open to interpretation. Then again when those games are turned into a form of sensationalism to meet someones motivations it, destroys the gaming media as a whole. It makes us look like children having a peeing contest. Who can have the biggest story? Who can get the most views or responses?

  This last year we saw so many sensationalistic view points about lost air planes, weather, and Kim Kardashian. Do we really need to make the same sort of stories out of video games. Do we really need to create drama just so people can get hyped or not hyped over a game? Do we really need any of this crap? The real answer is no. If the game is good you will tell your friends, who will tell there friends and so on and so forth. We don't need Superbowl ads to tell us to get this game. We don't need those in marketing to tell us this game will be awesome. We will find out for ourselves, we will get hyped ourselves if we like it enough. Before big corprate gaming there was the small close knit group of gamers. Who were just that... Gamers. Gamer has become an insult from many of the major media outlets who say they review games or are promoting games. When you bash those you are saying you are working for. (in a sense)  Then what the hell are you doing in this form of journalism or media promotion anyway.

 I personally (Gamer me) can't stand reading articles about how gamers are dead or are dying... We are the ones who helped make gaming what it is today. If it wasn't for us the jock next-door, your girlfriend, or your grandma. Wouldn't be playing video games. I think that we should spend less time creating drama or causing sensationalistic stories about how this is a damsel in distress and just enjoy what we have. Gaming has come so far and it still has so much farther to go as a medium. Yet when we create these stories or chicken pick the plot or desensatise those who play the games. All it really becomes is a market for children throwing temper tantrums because they can't have a candybar from the store. (Reviewer Me) I hate that we have to be so dramatic. I don't understand how something as great as gaming can be redused to a damsel in distress or a promise that wasn't ever kept. I can blame the media for starting a lot of it. Yet I also have to take the blame myself, because I am a gamer as well. When people who love gaming say things like gamergate needs to go. Then they get death threats, phonecalls, and emails. What has the world come to. Or when an awesome twitch streamer gets swatted... What are we all thinking?! How did it come to this?

 What, have we stooped so low as to be a reality tv series. We were once a group of friends. We were even close enough to be a family. Yet now we are more devided than ever before. MoBa players bash MMO players. FPS players go off on each other. I was in a game the other day with a group of people I call my friends. Only to be met by insults and hatespeech in the remarks. Yes I understand some friendly insults. Yet why would you go off on a person you call your friend when they have to go to bed? I thought as I grew up so would others. I thought that as I became more mature so would gamers. Yet after that night, I felt ashamed. Ashamed to look at what we all have become.

  I remember going to a local internet cafe type place, and helping teach kids how to play some of my favorite games. I even ended up teaching my three younger brothers how to play video games there. Yet here we are over a decade later and, I am ashamed. I am ashamed because we aren't that close knit group anymore. We aren't fighting for a common goal of defeating Hitler or the Devil. We are devided and trying to conquer the world. In every RPG you need a team. A team to face all the monsters and bad guys with. To save the world form something or another. That group is always a group of the least likely people to save the world. Well ladies and gentlmen as gamers we are that group and we are failing on every single fight I see us come up agianst.

  We have done nothing but prove we aren't ready to be taken seriously as a medium. We only have so many pheonix downs people, and we are running out. We need to stand up and be counted as gamers who are ready to take the next step. To be mature enough to admit we messed up and to help reshape an industry that has prided itself on the masogonistic point of view. The sensationalistic view points of the media. The exagerations of those who promise us things but never give them to us. We need to  the media, and the coperations accountable. Most of all though we as gamers need to hold ourselves accountable. We aren't children anymore. We are young adults, adults, grandparents, children, parents and so much more. Yet most of all we are GAMERS. So we should act as such.


UrielLocke

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