Let's see what's on the front page right at this very moment*, shall we?

A preview of Little Red Riding Hood's Zombie BBQ complete with big breasts (which raises
questions about sophistication in gaming but that's another entry).

Two posts about Left 4 Dead.

An interview with the folk at Mythic.

An announcement of a new DS colour.

An announcement about a third party Wii controller.

Too Human review.

Gears of War 2 colour information from the internet's CliffyB.

An announcement of the Pure demo.

XBLA announcements: Shred Nebula, Pirates Vs. Ninjas and Gin Rummy.

Facebreaker soundtrack.

Rock Band DLC.

Castle Crashers Review.

G4's X-play is going to be an hour long.

Now, with the exception of the two reviews, everything there has been arranged, in some
way, by companies for sites like Destructoid to post. The point behind this arrangement is
so the gaming audience can read about them and get themselves into a wild frenzy over
whatever is being sold to them. And, in most of the cases, it works.

There are a number of ways that a company can do this. Leaked screenshots, minute long
videos, EXCLUSIVE interviews with the makers of games to the extent where we've
started
to get gaming personalities like CliffyB or Jade Redmond. Of course, it helps that these two
examples of chosen to make the following point are both fairly good looking people.
Nothing gets your average gaming male on your side more than a pretty woman who
knows her way round a joystick, eh lads?

Let's take Killzone 2. Regardless of whether or not it is a good game or not, the gaming
audience has been gradually fed snippets of information for over three years. It was
announced at E3 2005 in a delicious looking video that was later famously shown to be
entirely pre-rendered. But that video was enough. It's announcement started a whole train
of hype that's still going on. The teaser showed nothing particularly original, a sequel to
another space marines style FPS but boy howdy, did those graphics look nice. And it's that,
the nice graphics, that did it and are still doing it. It's been shown that the lovely footage of
that E3 2005 trailer can be closely replicated on the PS3 and, instead of saying to
themselves "but the first game wasn't that great so, unless something unexpected happens,
this won't be that great either", there are plenty of gamers typing 'FIRST DAY BUY!' into
comment boxes over the internet.

But it's not just Killzone 2. There's Gears of War 2, Resistance, Motorstorm, Mirror's Edge,
LittleBigPlanet, Left 4 Dead just to name a few. Regardless of whether these games are
any good (and a few of them certainly look like they will be), there is still a ridiculous
amount of hype surrounding these games.

Mirror's Edge deserves special treatment here because whenever I see pictures of footage
I can't help but be reminded of Assassin's Creed. I'm not sure why, it's not because both
feature elements of parkour, but Mirror's Edge just leaves me cold. I'm certain it's going to
disappoint plenty of people who are being suckered in to thinking it is Christ resurrected
because, just look at it, it's a game built around one single concept. If that concept can be
stretched to ten hours of fun then great, we all have something fun to play but I'll be
staggered if that happens. Only time will tell I'm afraid.

The big problem is, and remember that I quite like Destructoid, is that gaming sites get
suckered in as well. Even on simple things. Seven items on the front page listing up
above are nothing more than press releases. Simply regurgitated and stuck up for people
to read so the game companies can try and make us go 'oooh, that looks nice'.

Whenever we see previews of games, and with PAX we're seeing a few of them at the
moment, whoever writes the article will very rarely express a negative opinion. Let's take
the preview of Little Red Riding Hood's Zombie BBQ currently on the front page.

Avoiding the fact that the game features zombies (one of the topics which are currently cool
within our generation, some of the others being pirates and ninjas) and big breasts (check
it out men, phwoar! Buy the game!), both of which will be dealt with at some other point,
let's check the preview itself.

(There are better examples to use, Killzone 2 being a good one, Assassin's Creed being an
excellent one but I have restricted myself to the front page because it makes a nice basis
for the article.)

Here is a game crying out to be forgotten but, as part of the process of selling it to you,
they're offering a preview to the kind folks here at Destructoid (and any other site with
representatives at PAX). The writer, with the exception of their personal dislike for on-rails
games, gives no real opinion either way and still says that they're 'feeling excited about
getting [their] hands on the final title'.

This is not entirely the fault of the writer. The booth and preview have been set-up entirely
so articles like that can be written. Had they given more time to the reviewer, they will
have had more time to formulate an opinion to pass on to the gaming audience. If that
opinion is negative then that spells early trouble for the game. So they give the reviewer a
level or two and send them back to tell us all about it. In the comments section of that
article, of the few replies there are, there are already people saying they're looking forward
to it based on this one story. There is also another person saying they'd have sex with the
big breasted, make-believe Little Red Riding Hood but that's for another time.

Let's look at press releases.

ROCK BAND DLC! XBLA RELEASES! THIRD PARTY CONTROLLERS! NEW DS COLOURS! X-
PLAY WILL BE AN HOUR LONG! FACEBREAKER SOUNDTRACK! PURE DEMO! GEARS OF
WAR 2 WILL HAVE MORE COLOURS!

All of the above will have come to Destructoid through the official channels of the company
responsible for them to post on the front page. And Destructoid do. Almost every time. It
is pointless and they are allowing themselves to become part of the problem. In a lot
cases, such as the third party Wii controller post, the Destructoid story is nothing more than
a bit of introduction followed by a copy and pasted press release.

Gaming journalism deals with an industry where everything created costs a lot of money.
This is not literature where anybody can sit down, write something and send it to a small
publication. Games costs millions to make so the only people that can make them are
large companies. Therefore, the only way to found out anything is through the large
companies who are mainly determined to sell you their product. These companies use the
gaming sites as a medium to get you excited. This is why things are as they are.

The important question is, why? Why, time and time again, do we fall for it? Essentially it's
because most of us are young, middle-class and need something to care about but that's a
massive topic that needs more time to look into. Why do sites like Destructoid endlessly
give space to useless previews and, more bafflingly, to press releases? This is not just
Destructoid either, it is practically all of the websites dedicated to gaming. Surely it would
be better to offer constant critiques? Instead of posting whatever Nyko send, why not say
what a load of rubbish it is? Instead of receiving screen caps from a company and
immediately putting them on the front page to make people care about a game they didn't
know existed two minutes ago, why not take the time to try and craft a genuine, proper,
full-blooded article about the subject you're a journalist for? And I don't mean a top ten
list.

Take Edge Magazine, for example, widely regarded as the only really decent gaming
magazine left. Why? Not for the reviews, previews or anything like that because, after all,
the internet beats Edge by weeks to most of those. But because of the writing. Because
every month there are a number of well-written, interesting articles that are really worth
reading if you enjoy computer games.

As a final thought, I don't want this to be seen as an attack on Destructoid, the community
blogs feature is a fantastic step in the right direction. Monthly Musings in particular is
always worth reading, we just need more of it from all directions.


Added bit: Since starting this and finishing it, a few more stories have gone up on the
front
page. They are:

Screenshots for Prince of Persia.

Screenshots for Rygar.

Make of that what you will.


*11pm GMT - September 2nd.