A Tale Of Two Jims

On Wired now is a long public apology of sorts from Jim Redner, the one-man PR team that 2K Games had contracted to deliver Duke Nukem Forever to reviewers. You may have already heard what went down: In a now-infamous Tweet (since deleted, but now screencapped on the Wired site), Redner implicitly threatened to withhold future review copies from those in the press whose tone he didn't like.

Naturally, we games journalists do not take kindly to those kinds of threats. The review copy isn't payola; we do not make a bargain with PR to help them get good press and sell their games. The job of the reviewer is to evaluate the product for consumers.

Before I go any further, a clarification is in order: I don't write "reviews" per se myself these days, although many of you have read my critical responses to or articles about certain games and called them "reviews." For the context of this discussion, "review" refers to work done by the employed games press with a score that appears on Metacritic, as those are the reviewers of primary interest to public relations.

Although in the past, I've done regular reviews for Paste, Variety and the Onion's AV Club, I don't do that kind of work anymore, for several reasons some of which would probably constitute their own blog post. However, I consider all of the professional games press to be colleagues, as we're all in the business of talking to gamers and the industry about games, and I consider us to share a common interest, although we may approach our work from different angles and for different subsets of the audience.

For the record, I didn't receive a review copy of DNF, nor did I play it or write about it after launch. In Nylon Guys I did a pre-release article about the environment around the game's launch and Gearbox's attempt to resurrect a classic, featuring an interview with Randy Pitchford. Aside from some blog-based personal editorialization that illustrates I've a negative opinion of DNF's tone and themes, I have not published any opinions on the final product itself except to direct you to coverage done by others -- colleagues whose opinions I trust as educated, and whose reviews I believe.

Okay, Now That That's Out Of The Way

Most of us, myself included, publicly bristled at Redner's implied threat. In our long-fought battle to earn credibility with our audience, it's become important to us to both demonstrate and inhabit honesty to consumers at all costs, even if game companies get angry at us. That's our job. Conversely, it's PR's job to ensure the best possible coverage for the game they are representing. If that means denying coverage to reviewers they expect will treat the game negatively, that's their right to do.

It's an uneasy dance that often gets difficult when what game journalists want (to be truthful) clashes with what PR wants (to be positive). In fact, that tension is what makes it hard for all of us, whether we write reviews or not, to do our job. In an industry where so much hinges on Metacritic, a bad score can be devastating to a development team, its publisher and its PR team alike: After two years' work and millions of dollars, a score can ruin it all. It's a lot for us to carry and to think about.

Scoring and Metacritic are problematic in and of themselves (Adam Sessler's GDC 2009 anti-Metacritic rant is an excellent illustration why). But where that tension exists, the fundamental mistrust and struggle for control between writers and PR escalates into a bigger struggle between games journalists in general and the games industry. Because so many reviewers also do other types of work, such as interviewing developers, looking inside industry process as part of a preview, or attending events, that there is so much fear and mistrust means it's often impossible to get at the truth.

Very few of us are trusted well enough to be allowed access to even a neutered on-message interview with executives who make major decisions on the industry's shape. Very few of us are allowed inside a studio for an honest look at how games are made, or at the people who make them, information that would illuminate and enrich audience experience with the medium -- and equally-importantly, as far as I'm concerned, would educate developers at different studios about one another and the business in which they work.

The games industry seems to me to be unusually secretive, and it continues to be allowed to be secretive because there's no easy solution to this vicious cycle of mistrust. The unfortunate side effect is that gamers hardly trust their games press, either, watching to see which of us are being "bought", making the wrong kinds of ethical compromises, whether we're telling them the truth.

The net effect: At least when it comes to consumer-facing stuff, we're a crippled, often powerless media contingent that feels bad even using the word "journalist" to describe ourselves even when that is absolutely what we do for a living. We hear all the time that we're "not real journalists" or that there's "no real games journalism."

Neither of those things are true, but you can't deny that there's a landscape that might often lead people to be that reductive about it. There's a poor definition of roles: My audience can't tell a consumer review from free-roaming critical thought; can't tell a news report from an opinion piece, can't tell a business article from a blog post ("great blog on Gamasutra," someone will tell me, after I publish a news interview wholly free from my own voice).

That sucks for our readers, it sucks for us, and it sucks for the game industry.

The Review In Question

Ever since Redner's self-described Twitter "brain-fart", he's said that it was one particular review that set him off -- both in today's Wired guest column and in a long email apology he sent to numerous members of the games press. He claims that this one was not a fair opinion of DNF, but a "scathing diatribe." Personally, I feel that his explication loses most of its steam when he refuses to call out which review was so egregiously possessed of "venom" that it warranted that kind of response -- how can we evaluate whether or not his position is fair unless we can weigh the review in question?

However, the offending review is widely believed to have been done by Destructoid's Jim Sterling, who gave the game a 2 out of 10 and said the game could "only endear itself to the sociopathic and mentally maladjusted." Not having played the game, I can't personally say whether his blisteringly low opinion is warranted. That it's such an outlier tone and score-wise from many other decisively negative reviews of the game seems telling to me, but either way, it's definitely a venomous writeup.

Harsh, yes, but not surprising: Jim's made a career out of his inflammatory public persona, biting language, and viewpoints that are as likely to be jaw-droppingly juvenile and offensive as they are to be crazy hilarious to some.

You may not know this, but years ago I was part of Destructoid's staff with Jim. The site was quite young then -- we would all talk amongst ourselves about how we dreamed of making it big --and I was still learning how to do this games journalism thing. Without the welcome of Niero, the site's founder, and Colette Bennett, the friend who discovered Sexy Videogameland and invited me to join the scrappy Dtoid team, I don't know whether this blog would have discovered its wider initial audience, or whether I would have become visible to those who eventually hired me for the projects on which I built my career. I owe them a great debt of thanks, and I think well of the entire staff as people.

Oddly, that includes Jim, to an extent. While I definitely don't always approve of his language, his tactics, many of his viewpoints or his method of dealing with conflicts, I respect his right to do it. He has an audience that likes his shtick and he drives massive traffic for those who employ him. It's not the way I'd do it, but there's room for all kinds. I told him as much when I saw him at E3, gave him a hug and tweeted a photograph of us together. While we'll probably clash in public many times when he insults someone or something I like, we'll probably never want to work together, and we'll probably never want to read much of what one another writes, there's no actual feud.

Whenever people ask me about this, I've always said, "The fact that Jim's out there doing his thing doesn't stop me or anyone else from doing ours."

However, an episode like this makes me wonder if that's really true.

Well, Actually, It Makes Our Lives Harder

Jim Redner did the wrong thing, of course; while he is free to send or not send review copies to whomever he wants, threatening people in the public forum is just tacky. It got him fired by 2K. Yet, what's the responsibility of a reviewer, especially in the Metacritic era where that stupid number means so much?

Jim Sterling's cult of personality commands such a large and loyal fanbase that it would be foolish for the public relations community to ignore him. More importantly, it would be foolish for his employers to stifle and censor him: He defines communities wherever he goes, and he manages to command the conversation. Here I am writing about him right now, and this happens whenever a Sterling-centric conflict flares. That's power, whether anyone likes it or not.

Maybe we don't owe anyone good press or a positive review, but do we owe the review process -- and by extension, the industry we cover -- a basic level of dignity? That's an open question for all of us to chew on, but more importantly, for now: To what extent should a cult of personality impact the way this industry relates to its press?

One thing I've always appreciated about Jim is that, at least in the conversations I've been involved in, he has never claimed to be a "games journalist." He's accepted his role as pundit and entertainer and he enjoys it, and he's been honest about not giving a damn how professional we think he is. Again, let him do his thing.

The problem is, Jim disdains the idea of being a professional, but the industry is forced to treat him like one because of the audience he governs. Imagine if a PR firm said, "no, Jim, we don't like 'that thing you do', and we're not going to send you any more review copies." Mass hysteria from the community! "Someone is blackballing Destructoid," the conversation would go; "they're quashing Jim's voice!" people would shout.

That kind of snafu would be even more destructive to a company and its brand than a bad review from Jim. So when Jim doesn't like something, PR has got no choice but to take the hit. That's as much of a vicious standoff as anything PR has ever done to the games press.

Not only does that seem a little unfair, but it does affect the rest of us. We may be able to see Jim as a single figure in a broad landscape of writers, but some of our audience doesn't. The industry doesn't. Again, we suffer from our poor definition of roles. I can't tell you how many people have told me that they think "we are all" bullshit, and they cite Jim Sterling. How many times do the rest of us have to say, "we're not like that?"

Even still, all we can do is to do our own thing, the best we can. I'm not disputing that. The issue I have is this: Why call Jim Sterling a "reviewer" and allow him to participate in the Metacritic system when his methods are so frequently aberrant from the work the rest of the product review community does?

So Hey, Jim?

I'm sure someone will point this blog post out to you, and if you're reading this, all I'd like is for you to consider framing your Destructoid work outside of the review format and to remove yourself, just your "reviews", from Metacritic. Probably achievable just by not headlining it 'review' or whatever -- no one makes Yahtzee give an "official" score. Yes, again, Metacritic sucks and is problematic, but unfortunately it's the ultimate distillation of our relationship with the industry and until we find a better solution, I believe it's best for everyone involved if we approach it with a sense of responsibility and a measured attitude.

I know you believe we cover an entertainment medium and none of us should take ourselves seriously, but you chose your own role, so let us choose ours. We can respect what you do for your readers, but we'd like you to respect what we're trying to do for ours. If you don't want to be a professional, if you don't want to be a games journalist, then leave the reviewers to their own space.

It'd be a win for everyone, I think: You'd be free to say and do whatever you want, and about whatever games you want, without busybodies like me banging on about how you should be more responsible; Destructoid will probably have an even better time working with the business once PR's less afraid of your power as a rogue variable, your audience can get whatever uncensored whimsy you feel like producing at any given time, and no one on any side of the fence will have to argue about whether the impact you're having on people's scores is fair.

Part of why I hate writing formal reviews is because of this ethical minefield and these drawn-out conversations that keep rearing their heads. Bet you hate them, too. So let's neither of us be reviewers, and hopefully the result is more fun for you and helps us journalists improve our relationship with the industry.

Please just think about it?

UPDATE: Responding via Twitter, Jim politely disagreed with me; the following is an unedited quote from his feed:

"To answer: If I wrote my reviews in the same tone that I write my satirical or rant pieces, I think there'd be a point in what Leigh says. However, I do not. I didn't write the Duke review, or any review, to be "funny." There's a significant change in tone when I write them. Even when harsh, I work VERY hard to back up my scores with solid reasoning & feel points of view similar to mind deserve a voice on MCritic.

And as far as DNF goes? I'm not the only one and Redner may not have even been talking about me. This was harsher: http://is.gd/sXGODu Anyway, that's my response. Feel free to debate it, but don't flame Leigh or anything. I respectfully disagree - emphasis, *respectfully*."