Geoff Keighley?
Morgan Webb?
David Jaffe?
Michael Pachter?
Jessica Chobot?
The Game Grumps? Ok, maybe not them...
@Suburban_Hell Certainly not Geoff Keighley. He has unfortunately turned over to the dark side. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-10-24-lost-humanity-18-a-table-of-doritos
I would give a shoutout to Angry Joe though.
I'm not convinced that Doritos & Mountain Dew make Geoff Keighley not a gaming culture personality to follow. That image could be taken out of context he could be shilling that giant load of junkfood in some kind of twitter campaign.
That being said, I think most of the most well known are jaded and cynical because of how their respective television networks treat them. See anyone at G4 over the last months of their existence.
@bowlingotter @Suburban_Hell "And bigger deals should be made if gaming journalism is ever to be respected." -- No argument here on that, but I think that's an inherent problem across the board, very few have that situational awareness it seems. That, or, and I shudder to think, there's a rampant payola scandal within the industry.
I don't think "hey remember that game we gave you a month before anyone else so your review got read first?" should ever translate to "10 outta 10", but having come from the radio industry, I have seen some shit...
@Suburban_Hell @bowlingotter And yes, gaming journalism is far from respected in its current state.
@Suburban_Hell @bowlingotter Everyone gets advertisements to pay for programming. It's when a GAME is paying for programming that there's a problem. Every time. It's not like Slim Jim was promoting a game. Doritos and Mountain Dew were heavily promoting Halo 4 at the time.
There needs to be strict line between journalism and press. In gaming right now, there isn't. It's obviously not just Keighly, but as a respected journalist, he was expected to be one who would distance himself from it. He didn't. Easier said that done, of course, but the message is sent.
Until there's a stronger line drawn, there's always going to be questions about how press influences journalism in gaming. Such questions are rampant right now. This is why a big deal has been made, and should be made. And bigger deals should be made if gaming journalism is ever to be respected.
@bowlingotter @Suburban_Hell What I'm saying is I don't think that Sessler's Slim Jim product placement nor Keighley's Mountain Dew/Doritos product placement was necessarily their own doing, but the company who provides them the outlet in which they report our news (in these cases Spike TV & Rev3).
Spike got paid to shill Mountain Dew & Doritos as part of advertising revenue at the same time Microsoft was running some kind of promo with the junk, but I don't see Keighley saying everyone go buy Mountain Dew & Doritos because Master Cheif says so, by the way, 10 outta 10.
I think a bigger deal was made here than needed. If this was about the GMAs, well, yeah, no-brainer all those events across all forms of media, see also Oscars, Grammy's, etc are corrupt and overrated and shouldn't be taken seriously to begin with. I see no evidence that Keighley was paid by Microsoft to give Halo 4 a better review than if they hadn't. Look at IGN news desk videos, littered with game paraphernalia in the background, does that mean they too are in the pockets of the gaming industry and are paid to give good reviews? I sure hope we can't make that leap just from what anyone is sitting around at the time they make a judgment call.
@Suburban_Hell Entirely missing the point by focusing on the food. Would anyone care if Roger Ebert did an Oreo commercial? Of course not. But if he did an Oreo commercial while they were clearly running a huge Zero Dark Thirty campaign, the film critic industry would lose its shit, and rightly so.
Actually, when our more prominent faces in the field show that they have been "bought," they lose huge amounts of credibility. It's NOT something that happens with regularity. If Jeff Gerstmann or Kevin VanOrd showed the same poor judgment, they'd be vilified, too. But they didn't. Geoff Keighley did, and he rightly loses credibility in doing so.
@bowlingotter Should we then also vilify Sessler for his latest Sessler's Something sponsored by Slim Jim with Slim Jim product placement strewn about during his video?
Our more prominent faces in the field show on a relative basis that they have been "bought", usually through some marketing ploy by the company airing their pieces. I blame Spike more than I blame Geoff for this, and unless he went on to give Halo 4 the most outstanding review ever written without playing a minute of it, I'd still find him to be a credible source of information.
@Suburban_Hell The picture symbolizes the uncomfortable link between gaming PR and journalism. It's hard to take it out of context when it's clearly a promotional campaign for Halo. Not the kind of place you'd like to see a respectable journalist's face.
@bowlingotter @Suburban_Hell I wanted to stay as far away from developers as I could with this list, hence why Jaffe didn't make the cut. People like Pachter couldn't really be considered a culture personality. He's an analyst (if you really want to call him that).
As for the Game Grumps, I was very tempted to put Two Best Friends Play on this list, but decided against it since the series really didn't seem venerable and seasoned enough to affect culture so intensely (unlike Red Vs. Blue, which kind of did it first/best). Under those circumstances, I couldn't put Game Grumps on this list.
Maybe another list could be in the future...?
@PostMesmeric @bowlingotter @Suburban_Hell Indeed, perhaps a who's who of gaming on YouTube would be more relevant for Angry Joe & the Game Grumps.
