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I read an incredibly, incredibly petty article today. It’s written as a defensive piece that lashes out and, ironically, proves the very thing they’re railing against. Short version, so you can skip the article if you choose: Polygon is upset because Bethesda has evidently claimed that games journalism doesn’t matter. They cite Bethsoft’s “late” review copies as an attack on reviewers and, by extension, customers. They strike back by offering the “sage” wisdom of not preordering games. It’s honestly sort of a pity that this kind of thing is coming from Polygon, because of all of the gaming media outlets out there, they’re the ones who flirt the closest with actual journalism the most. Polygon has some really excellent articles on occasion. I have a variety of thoughts about this. First of all is the difference between “journalism” and “enthusiast press”. We have a name for news written by fans of a thing, about that thing, that is generally excited about said thing. It’s called enthusiast press, and it is what virtually every gaming media outlet actually is. Enthusiast press is fine, it’s a way of being a marketing signal boost, it’s a way of celebrating common interests, it’s great for building hype, it’s great for getting the word out about upcoming things. It is not hard-hitting journalism. Journalism is a different thing entirely. It takes a goodly amount of training, and is genuinely very difficult. You have to extract information from potentially unwilling people, you have to know exactly how to protect your sources, you have to understand concepts like fact-checking, reduction of harm, integrity, and accountability. You also have to find a way to keep the lights on in your office WITHOUT that revenue stream being a conflict of interest. You can lament reality all you like, but that separation is absolutely vital to calling your content “journalism” and having anyone take you seriously. I have no doubt that there are people at Polygon who understand this. It probably chafes them, I’m sure they would love to be able to do actual journalism. It chafes me, because the games industry could use some really great journalist outlets, ones that can report and make the entire industry better through transparency without pandering to major publishers or allowing themselves to be influenced or controlled by the very people they’re supposed to be reporting on. The industry could use it. Unfortunately, what’s happened instead is that the games enthusiast press has, as their relevance has shrunk, started throwing around the term “games journalism” to regain credibility, painting an illusion of separation where, realistically, none exists. In so doing, they’ve devalued the term “games journalism”. Allow me to retell a story I heard: A group of people from games media outlets were invited to a closed-doors showing of an upcoming title. Their trips were paid for by the publisher, as were their meals and their hotels. Fairly standard practice. While viewing the game, several of these people heckled the presenter, disrupted the play session, and otherwise made big enough asses of themselves that they had to be escorted out. Their later-published reviews of their experience were, unsurprisingly, extremely negative. The publisher said nothing, simply did not bother to invite said people to another event. They quietly made a note, remembered the behavior of the hecklers, and acted accordingly. Some of you may think you know who I’m talking about here. You probably don’t. This is a story I’ve heard retold MANY times, and the only difference is the publisher response– did they uninvite people to future events or did they grin and bear it? Otherwise the stories I’ve seen and heard are virtually identical. There’s a term for this: it’s called “biting the hand that feeds you”. This kind of thing is why journalistic integrity is important, and why it’s vitally important for any kind of “honest” reporting to have that separation. Lest you think I’m absolving the publishers from this, consider: if the publisher is paying for the trip, controlling what reviewers see, and otherwise bankrolling the entire thing, how do any of us possibly think the results are unbiased? What possible value is there in paying money to show someone something and have them announce publicly that it’s awful? From a business standpoint, that’s unacceptable and expensive risk. It’s not an unsolvable problem. If games media outlets don’t like being classed as “enthusiast press” and don’t like what they consider honest reviews to be characterized as “biting the hand that feeds them”, they can take the route of legitimate journalism. The difficulty here is that journalism in general is getting crushed out by enthusiast press which can be controlled by the things it’s reporting on. Finding a way to make money, to keep the lights on, without becoming beholden to the very people you’re trying to report on is a difficult obstacle to overcome. Not a lot of media outlets have figured it out, and I’m not limiting that to games here. It’s a nasty problem, and it’s not one with a clear and obvious solution. Highly trained professionals with decades of experience are trying and failing to solve it. There’s no shame in being enthusiast press, because it pays the bills and keeps the lights on. It’s what a LOT of media outlets have been doing. But much like publishers can’t get both unbiased, publicly trusted mouthpieces and universally good reviews, the reporting side can’t get both the trust of journalistic integrity and the money/support from their targets. Games reporters can accept this and either live with being enthusiast press or try to forge a path to journalistic integrity, but sniping at companies because they cast aspersions on your relevance is, well… petty.

A bit of a personal post today.  Bear with me.

It hasn’t been a good year. I suspect a lot of people can relate with that feeling in general; for me it’s been a pretty steady grind with very few (highly cherished) bright spots. It’s been an extended exercise in coping, and staying not just functional but managing to excel in what I can despite it all. I’ve basically had most of what I used to consider my identity removed and don’t have a lot to replace it, paired with an uncertainty about my future that colors pretty much every decision I make. As of this writing, none of the likely outcomes look great; I’m basically hoping that in the next couple of months, something changes from what I’ve been doing for the last 18+.

Friends and family ask me how I’m doing, and for months it’s been pretty much the same answer: no change. I appreciate the sentiment, but rehashing my situation over and over doesn’t make me feel better about it. It’s not something I bring up, because I value my friends and family greatly and I know how much it sucks to have someone close to you suffer and be able to do nothing about it. You want to talk, you want to do something, but there’s nothing you can contribute so you’re relegated to making sympathetic sounds and looking sad, or if those gestures feel hollow, making any recommendations you can think of. As much as I don’t like being on the receiving end of any of that, I don’t really know how else to respond.

Someone asked me a different question, recently. I was asked “how are you coping?”, and when I responded with the usual “oh, you know, as best I can” the followup was pointed: “No, I mean what are you doing to cope, how are you mentally handling everything?”

It’s an interesting question, and one that had been riding in my subconscious for a while. It’s a question I appreciate, because it’s something I can articulate, and it doesn’t feel like the same circular thrashing of “things are bad, I don’t know what else I can do to make them better”. As a followup, my friend mentioned that I haven’t been posting here as much anymore– my reasoning was that I don’t trust my mental state enough to stay objective about the things I write; maybe that isn’t so healthy. So, here we are. Here’s the answer I gave about how I cope with stress:

I’m a very results-driven person. It’s a core that runs deep, something I’ve inherited from my parents. Being overwhelmed by stress and completely shutting down isn’t productive, it’s a response that, however powerful, runs counter to the fiber of my being; even my subconscious won’t let me do it. This would probably boil over if I didn’t have really great release valves built in somewhere.

I developed release valves in martial arts. I started my martial arts training as The Fat Kid; I couldn’t even complete warm-ups without being exhausted, and I was in the same space as others who completed the same exercises without breaking a sweat. Pair this with the fact that failure has never been acceptable for me, and you’ve got a stressful experience waiting to boil over. My instructor keyed in on this and focused on it, he first taught me to redirect that stress into motivation, watching to make sure I got better at it. I was eventually in good shape, which is when the real training began. My instructor would occasionally provoke me, try to get through my usual emotional wall, to provide motivation. Knowing I could react in anger and lash out was never in question for me, I just had too much self-control to ever let myself do it, and I avoided ever coming close. I tamped down my negative emotions to an extreme, and tightly channeled them through very controlled channels, if at all.

Flash forward to undergrad, where I had my first taste of failure. Going from breezing through high school to the much more intense and rigorous curriculum of a very competitive college was a shock, and not one I emerged from unscathed. At the time, I had it suggested to me that I should consider dropping out, that maybe my chosen school was too hard for me, and that, perhaps, I had bitten off more than I could chew. I think part of me was despondent, ready to give up and give in just so the stress would end, but another part of me was enraged. I was angry at myself for failing, angry at the suggestion that I might not be good enough, angry at the obstacles in my way, and years of martial arts training kicked in. Of the two emotions I was facing, one of them felt productive and one of them didn’t. I channeled white-hot anger into my studies for a year and brought my GPA up nearly two full points, and graduated on time.

Anger is probably a misleading word; it has a lot of negative connotation. I could also use “passion” to describe it, passion for myself, passion for self-actualization, passion for growth, passion for my interests and motivations. I see anger and passion as not terribly different, and useful but needing to be kept under control. I’ve gotten good at controlling it.

For myself, when faced with apparently insurmountable difficulty, I can see despondency and passion looming on the horizon, and of the two, passion is productive and it’s something I know how to channel. It gives me energy and drive to push through, and it sublimates well into excitement and joy when I do finally push through. It’s not without cost; without good outlets for energy it tends to build, and I tend to retreat from people and things when it does, because I know it’s sitting closer to the surface and can be provoked more easily. When I’m stressed and don’t have an energy outlet (like work), I tend to avoid putting myself in more stressful situations because I want to minimize that buildup of energy, and because I don’t want spillover to affect anyone around me. I don’t want to snap at people, and when I’m extremely stressed and can’t do anything about it, I’m aware my tight controls are weaker, so I try to avoid situations where I might snap.

I cope with stress by channeling it, and I tend to keep a few side projects going at all times to have outlets. What I’m starting to run into lately is that those side projects feel meaningless and arbitrary in the shadow of my actual situation, so putting time and energy into them doesn’t help. Also not helping is the rest of this year, everything going on that *isn’t* directly part of my day-to-day life that’s just a massive garbage fire. I try not to watch the news but it’s difficult to avoid.

I’m not really sure how this ends. I can maintain, for now. I can probably maintain for as long as the idea of quitting just makes me angry, and want to try harder.

Maybe that’s enough. Maybe that’s just what “perseverance” is.

A bit of a personal post today.  Bear with me. It hasn’t been a good year. I suspect a lot of people can relate with that feeling in general; for me it’s been a pretty steady grind with very few (highly cherished) bright spots. It’s been an extended exercise in coping, and staying not just functional but managing to excel in what I can despite it all. I’ve basically had most of what I used to consider my identity removed and don’t have a lot to replace it, paired with an uncertainty about my future that colors pretty much every decision I make. As of this writing, none of the likely outcomes look great; I’m basically hoping that in the next couple of months, something changes from what I’ve been doing for the last 18+. Friends and family ask me how I’m doing, and for months it’s been pretty much the same answer: no change. I appreciate the sentiment, but rehashing my situation over and over doesn’t make me feel better about it. It’s not something I bring up, because I value my friends and family greatly and I know how much it sucks to have someone close to you suffer and be able to do nothing about it. You want to talk, you want to do something, but there’s nothing you can contribute so you’re relegated to making sympathetic sounds and looking sad, or if those gestures feel hollow, making any recommendations you can think of. As much as I don’t like being on the receiving end of any of that, I don’t really know how else to respond. Someone asked me a different question, recently. I was asked “how are you coping?”, and when I responded with the usual “oh, you know, as best I can” the followup was pointed: “No, I mean what are you doing to cope, how are you mentally handling everything?” It’s an interesting question, and one that had been riding in my subconscious for a while. It’s a question I appreciate, because it’s something I can articulate, and it doesn’t feel like the same circular thrashing of “things are bad, I don’t know what else I can do to make them better”. As a followup, my friend mentioned that I haven’t been posting here as much anymore– my reasoning was that I don’t trust my mental state enough to stay objective about the things I write; maybe that isn’t so healthy. So, here we are. Here’s the answer I gave about how I cope with stress: I’m a very results-driven person. It’s a core that runs deep, something I’ve inherited from my parents. Being overwhelmed by stress and completely shutting down isn’t productive, it’s a response that, however powerful, runs counter to the fiber of my being; even my subconscious won’t let me do it. This would probably boil over if I didn’t have really great release valves built in somewhere. I developed release valves in martial arts. I started my martial arts training as The Fat Kid; I couldn’t even complete warm-ups without being exhausted, and I was in the same space as others who completed the same exercises without breaking a sweat. Pair this with the fact that failure has never been acceptable for me, and you’ve got a stressful experience waiting to boil over. My instructor keyed in on this and focused on it, he first taught me to redirect that stress into motivation, watching to make sure I got better at it. I was eventually in good shape, which is when the real training began. My instructor would occasionally provoke me, try to get through my usual emotional wall, to provide motivation. Knowing I could react in anger and lash out was never in question for me, I just had too much self-control to ever let myself do it, and I avoided ever coming close. I tamped down my negative emotions to an extreme, and tightly channeled them through very controlled channels, if at all. Flash forward to undergrad, where I had my first taste of failure. Going from breezing through high school to the much more intense and rigorous curriculum of a very competitive college was a shock, and not one I emerged from unscathed. At the time, I had it suggested to me that I should consider dropping out, that maybe my chosen school was too hard for me, and that, perhaps, I had bitten off more than I could chew. I think part of me was despondent, ready to give up and give in just so the stress would end, but another part of me was enraged. I was angry at myself for failing, angry at the suggestion that I might not be good enough, angry at the obstacles in my way, and years of martial arts training kicked in. Of the two emotions I was facing, one of them felt productive and one of them didn’t. I channeled white-hot anger into my studies for a year and brought my GPA up nearly two full points, and graduated on time. Anger is probably a misleading word; it has a lot of negative connotation. I could also use “passion” to describe it, passion for myself, passion for self-actualization, passion for growth, passion for my interests and motivations. I see anger and passion as not terribly different, and useful but needing to be kept under control. I’ve gotten good at controlling it. For myself, when faced with apparently insurmountable difficulty, I can see despondency and passion looming on the horizon, and of the two, passion is productive and it’s something I know how to channel. It gives me energy and drive to push through, and it sublimates well into excitement and joy when I do finally push through. It’s not without cost; without good outlets for energy it tends to build, and I tend to retreat from people and things when it does, because I know it’s sitting closer to the surface and can be provoked more easily. When I’m stressed and don’t have an energy outlet (like work), I tend to avoid putting myself in more stressful situations because I want to minimize that buildup of energy, and because I don’t want spillover to affect anyone around me. I don’t want to snap at people, and when I’m extremely stressed and can’t do anything about it, I’m aware my tight controls are weaker, so I try to avoid situations where I might snap. I cope with stress by channeling it, and I tend to keep a few side projects going at all times to have outlets. What I’m starting to run into lately is that those side projects feel meaningless and arbitrary in the shadow of my actual situation, so putting time and energy into them doesn’t help. Also not helping is the rest of this year, everything going on that isn’t directly part of my day-to-day life that’s just a massive garbage fire. I try not to watch the news but it’s difficult to avoid. I’m not really sure how this ends. I can maintain, for now. I can probably maintain for as long as the idea of quitting just makes me angry, and want to try harder. Maybe that’s enough. Maybe that’s just what “perseverance” is.