Gaming in the Mainstream Media June 09, 2006 John JCal Callaham

Introduction

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The truth is, however, there are still a huge amount of people that have little to no experience playing games, at least not the ones that hardcore fans are attracted to. While there are exceptions, from The Sims to Doom to the Grand Theft Auto series to World of Warcraft that have captured mass attention and sales, it has to be said that there are still a lot of people who not only have not played any video or PC games but don’t quite understand why it has grown into an entertainment industry that now rivals movies, music and TV for attention.

For those people, checking out a hardcore gaming site might not be the right introduction to the industry and its culture. A lot of them, however, can read more and more about the video and PC game industry in their local paper or their favorite national magazine or their mainstream news web site. These mainstream news outlets are paying more and more attention to the industry and the people who write for these publications frequently get info on upcoming games and news that even the hardcore game web sites have to wait for.

FiringSquad decided to contact journalists from a variety of well known national mainstream news outlets to get their opinions on covering the game industry from their perspective. Overall, we found that they are all making a bigger push to cover the industry and that could affect how video and PC games are perceived in the mass media in the future (there is one rather large exception to this trend, however, which we will get to later). We received responses from journalists from The New York Times, USA Today and The Washington Post newspapers, along with Time and Entertainment Weekly magazines and the CNN web site. FiringSquad also contacted reporters who have covered the video and PC game industry from The Wall Street Journal but those journalists declined our offer to participate in this article.

Mainstream Vs Hardcore

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Mainstream Vs Hardcore

Mike Musgrove, who covers video games for the Washington Post newspaper, told us. "Sometimes I know a thing or two that doesn't make it into an article, but probably any reporter on any beat could say the same thing -- I have never thought in terms of "dumbing down" a story," Mike Snider, who covers games for USA Today, told us, "I’m not sure if it is dumbing it down. But mainstream readers are typically not as “into” games as the readers of monthly game magazines or gaming web sites. I would say that the mainstream press covers games with a wider stroke than the more detail-oriented enthusiast press. Most of my colleagues at major media are much more astute than I am in covering the industry and have written great stories that are able to translate what one would consider “inside baseball” concepts without totally confusing a typical reader."

Lev Grossman, who has written a number of video game themed articles for Time magazine, has a slightly difference stance on the subject of "dumbing down" such an article for the mainstream media. "Sure. We do it all the time. "Dumb down" makes it sound like a bad thing, but the fact is, I'm not writing for a hardcore audience, and you always want to pitch your writing to the people who are reading." Wook Kim, who has covered video games for Entertainment Weekly magazine, agrees. "Yes. And that's part of the unique challenges of technology or business journalism. Let's face it, terms like 'frame rate' or 'ragdoll physics' or 'collision detection' are meaningful to fans, but they have a certain eye-glazing effect on the uninitiated. Whether it's explaining the basics of a gravity-assist maneuver in space or the technical achievement of the last Grand Theft Auto, it's the job of the writer to present the story using everyday language."

Chris Morris, who writes the regular, "Game Over" column for CNNMoney.com, doesn't think avoiding the terms of the video game culture in a story means making the story itself "dumbed down."Look, everyone thinks if a story is written below their level of knowledge that it’s dumbed down. That’s just not true. Stories for wide audiences *should* be written so that everyone can comprehend them. The gaming industry is rife with buzz words and phrases that, if you take a step back from things, really go out of their way to alienate non-gamers. You don’t see stories about film go into minutia detail about the intricate details of how a movie is made, but that information is available if you watch some of the tech-wonky DVD extras. There’s a huge difference between enthusiast publications and mainstream media. They reach out to different audiences, though there is some cross-over. It doesn’t mean that either is less important. But I don’t think that avoiding phrases like megatexture and polygons and batch data means a story is dumbed down"

Getting Attention

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Getting Attention

So if journalists write for such a media outlet, will they get attention from game publishers that they wouldn't get from the traditional hardcore gaming media? In a phone interview, New York Times writer Seth Schiesel told us, "Actually, I think it's almost the opposite. Doing a big story with us is not necessarily going to sell them a lot of games." Morris agrees, saying, "Not really. As I mentioned (before), it’s two different audiences. Those companies certainly want to reach out to a wide audience, which we reach, but the core gamers are their bread and butter and represent the majority of their income right now. As long as an outlet reaches a significant number of either audience, I would think that it’s an important outlet to a publisher or console manufacturer."

When asked the same question, Kim gave us a different answer, "Yes. For the simple reason, that EW reaches a whole different audience. The person who reads EGM or visits GameSpot and IGN, is more than likely a dedicated gamer who keeps track of product announcements and release dates. And a game company absolutely needs to get product news out to these enthusiast books and websites. But getting a story in EW or Newsweek or Rolling Stone is about hitting a reader who might be hearing about a particular game for the first time." For his part, Grossman told us, "I can't speak for those companies. I know Nintendo and Microsoft (and I would imagine Sony) are looking to expand their audience beyond the hardcore scene, and I think Time can help with that. But that's as far as I'd go."

Snider gives us the last work on this subject, saying, "I wouldn’t say that. I would say they target the news that they have or want covered to the media that it fits. The companies regularly court magazines such as Newsweek and Time at the same time they are courting EGM or Game Informer. Having said that, when I am working on a fairly large industry story, game publishers and hardware makers want to make sure they get to bend my ear because they know we don’t always devote that much space to coverage. In the case of the enthusiast press, companies know that they have to constantly feed the beast and may be able to get them to cover incremental news that USA TODAY might pass on."

The Generational Shift

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The Generational Shift

Having said that, coverage of games in the mass media is only now beginning to reach that of movies, TV and music. Some encouraging news on that front included having The New York Times' Seth Schiesel author an E3 blog from the Times's web site, complete with video. The Washington Post send a mini-army of reporters, including Mike Musgrove, to cover E3 and they constantly updated the Post's web site with their own blog. Both outlets also covered the expo for their print newspapers as well

So when will we see video games covered in the same breath as TV or movies? CNN's Chris Morris told us, "I think there will have to be a generational shift. Right now, the people who run networks (and, for that matter, Congress and other major pieces of our life) are Baby Boomers, who didn’t grow up playing video games. As people who are currently in their mid-30s and younger assume those positions of power, you’ll probably see more widespread coverage. But will gaming news ever be as popular as TV news? No way. A side note here, also… consoles will likely continue to grab a more sizable portion of the gaming news spotlight, since they have a lower price point and wider distribution as pure gaming machines."

Schiesel is a bit more optimistic, saying that the New York Times is trying to overcome that kind of age gap. "My editors are looking past that. They are smart enough to cover what they don't know." He adds that as times change people in power will have grown up with games in their lives, saying, "One day there will be a President of the US who will have played video games." Schiesel also feels that this change could benefit people who want to cover the game industry as more and more media outlets decide to give regular coverage to games. "Hopefully we can create a lot of jobs for journalists."

Snider, however, feels that newspapers may not get to that point. "I’m not sure games will ever have equal coverage in the newspaper. However, online, where space is not an issue, is where games will actually get more coverage than traditional entertainment pursuits because of the interactive nature of games." Grossman adds, "I think there's a bit of a wait-and-see attitude with games, as to where they'll ultimately wind up in the culture - whether they'll be more of a storytelling medium or something more analogous to a sport, or something else. I don't think they have to end up in the same category as TV shows and movies, etc. -- it's not a perfect fit. We love games, we cover them, but - at the risk of sounding defensive -- we're not entirely sure what to make of them yet. And I think we're not alone in that."

One media outlet that has done little to no coverage of the video game industry for the past few years has been, ironically, Entertainment Weekly. The magazine did a cover story on the industry a few years ago and did a feature on the launch of Halo 2 in 2004 but for the most part coverage of the industry has been few and far between. EW, for example, failed to cover E3 last month for its print magazine, relegating coverage of the expo to some blog posts on the "Popwatch" section of the EW.com web site.

So why is a magazine that is arguably the biggest print mag covering pop culture in the US ignoring video games? As Kim told us, "A good question. It's not as if we unaware of video games and their very real significance as both a pop cultural and economic force. Without giving away too much, we've discovered that game coverage is just not that important to our particular readership. And reader scores bear this out., “ Kim added, “There seems to be a public perception that console gaming is a pasttime of the chronically adolescent or the perpetually stoned-that it is an artless product served up to a largely unsophisticated audience. And perhaps there is some truth to that. Another reason is pretty obvious: gaming is not a star-driven business. Movies, music, TV shows-they all have very public faces. Even books have their celebrity authors. People have heard of J.K. Rowling and Dan Brown and Tom Clancy. But Will Wright? Hideo Kojima? Cliff Bleszinski? Not so much."

Game Journalism in the Future

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Games Journalism in the Future

Despite Kim's claims, most of our correspondents do believe that mainstream journalism will continue to give more coverage to games. As Snider told us, "In general, I think there is more coverage of games today than, say, five years ago and that it is more in-depth and better written. With any luck, that trend will continue." Morris adds, "I think we’re starting to see more interest in the gaming world by traditional media outlets, which is encouraging. It has been frustrating, though, to see the learning curve for some people who have been assigned to the industry. That’s the enthusiast side of my personality coming out, though. Like anything, it’s going to take time. As the industry continues to mature, I think we’ll see coverage of it mature as well. Either way, it’s an exciting time to be on this beat."

Grossman is a bit more cautious, saying, "I guess all I'd add is that gaming journalism is at a very interesting place right now. There are still a lot of people who are suspicious of games, and who don't understand their appeal, and there's an opportunity for people who write about games, if they do it well enough, to bridge that gap, and make games interesting to people who don't get them yet." However Musgrove gives us the final word on this topic. " I guess I'd say that game companies know that anyone reading a game magazine already loves games -- to flourish and to become a bigger cultural force as an industry, game and console makers have to keep reaching for the mainstream, they have to grow the market. If they succeed, then mainstream media outlets will probably continue to give games more coverage every year."