While this column usually tries to look at the broader issues and personalities in the game journalism world, there are plenty of smaller issues swirling around that don't necessarily warrant a full column of their own. The PressSpotting Round-up will take a quick look at some of these issues on a periodic basis.

　　Sessler Fights the Fanboys

　　Any game reviewer should know that panning a Final Fantasy game will lead to nasty personal attacks from legions of fanboys, some of whom have access to sharp cutlery. Most reviewers just take the heat, ignoring the criticism in much the way they might ignore the brilliance of Final Fantasy IX. X-Play's Adam Sessler went a different route, though, fighting back against the fanboys with a scathing and accurate edition of Sessler's Soapbox that should have reviewers everywhere screaming "Hell yeah!"

　　Sessler particularly takes issue with the oft-repeated idea that reviews "completely out of step with the rest of reviewers" are somehow less valid than the vast mass of homogenous scores. People seem to forget that game reviewing is an almost wholly subjective task. While there are some agreed upon objective criteria for evaluating games (e.g. glitches are bad, responsive controls are good) the vast majority of reviewing comes down to personal taste. How well you explain and defend your specific tastes is what determines the value of a review, not how much the final opinion agrees with the popular one.

　　The real problem here is that a vocal minority of readers takes attacks on their favorite games personally when they should be taken more academically. As Sessler puts it, "It's almost as if the reviews are some way in which you feel more secure about yourself and the opinion you've developed, and that's a little sad."

　　The Media Myth

　　Anyone who thinks games are a fully integrated part of the mainstream pop culture landscape should read Brenda Brathwaite's excellent Escapist article on "They Myth of the Media Myth" Brathwaite uses her personal experience at a dinner party of non-gamers as a jumping off point to show how the large bulk of the "mainstream" population is still relatively unknowledgeable about the state of our favorite hobby.

　　It's important to remember that most of what we game journalists write is directed at a relatively niche, hardcore group of devoted, well-informed gamers. As gaming inevitably grows outside this narrow audience, we're going to have to get used to writing more accessible prose that is well-informed but also interesting to readers that haven't gotten 100 percent completion on every Grand Theft Auto game.

　　Bourne to be Junket

　　To the annals of ridiculous game-marketing stunts, add Sierra's recent promotion for The Bourne Supremacy, which involved mysterious unmarked cell phones, luxury car trips to an abandoned warehouse and personalized media kits that contained creep-tastic spy photos of the journalists in question. The whole affair was enough to get Variety's Ben Fritz to ask "Why are videogame journalists being treated like overgrown 10 year-olds?"

　　The answer, of course, is that it works. Joystiq (which I also write for) and Kotaku both wrote up posts that contained a lot of details about the mysterious junket but few details about the game. The result, judging by the comments on both posts, is a lot of buzz for the game and a lot of people jealous of the cool job game journalists have. I'll concede the second point, but the whole affair begs the question: Has covering the apocrypha surrounding games become more important than covering the games themselves?

　　Gaming the Webbys

　　It's like that old Sesame Street game, "One of these things is not like the other". Don't get me wrong, I was happy with most of this year's games-related Webby Awards nominees: Gamasutra, Gamezebo, The Escapist and Game|Life are all solid outlets that deserve recognition. (Note: The author maybe biased: He's written for the first three sites--ed.)

　　I am baffled, though, as to why a game-specific community site like RockBand.com is nominated alongside regular game journalism outlets. I suppose the site is technically "games-related," but only in the same way that a press release is "news-related." Hey, Webbys, would it be so hard to have a category specifically devoted to game journalism's relatively large corner of the internet?

　　Behind the Reviews

　　I'm a big proponent of transparency as a way to engender trust between cynical readers (who think all games journalists have a closet full of moneyhats) and members of the games press (who generally shroud their review process in a maddening cloud of secrecy). So it's nice to see GameSpot rolling out a new blog that reveals some of the nitty-gritty details of the reviewing process.

　　Of course I may be a little biased, considering the site that runs this column. I may also be a little abnormal in finding this insider baseball stuff interesting, since I write about it for a significant portion of my living. Still, anyone who wants a window into the glamorous world of game reviewing--and its pitfalls and frustrations--should check it out.

　　Quick Hits

　　Save the Robot's Chris Dahlen has an interesting discussion of whether or not game reviewers should cheat to get through particularly tough parts of games they're reviewing. Personally, I do use GameFAQs to get through the frustrating bits of games I'm reviewing, but I make sure to note that those portions were incredibly frustrating in the text of the review.

　　Insert Credit's Tim Rogers seems utterly shocked that game magazines are selling advertisements that go on top of the actual covers. It is a travesty, but it's not exactly new – I've been lamenting the practice since I first noticed it in late 2004. Always nice to see it getting more attention, though.

　　Finally, this incredibly passive-agressive note from a Majesco employee in response to former GameSpotter Alex Navarro's review of Cooking Mama 2 is priceless.

　　Quote of the Moment

　　"I read some breaking news on Destructoid today that an industry insider leaked critical information from an anonymous source about a distribution facility reporting that MGS4 is listed on their Xbox 360 shipping logs for late 2009, so..." -From Shamoozal's latest GFGames Flash animation

　　For more about PressSpotting, check out the introductory column.

　　Kyle Orland is a freelance journalist specializing in video games and based out of Laurel, MD. He's written for a variety of outlets, as detailed on his personal site. He can't dance, he can't talk, only thing about him is the way he walks.

　　Questions? Comments? Story ideas? Bitter invective? Send it to Kyle.