I recently came across this great article on Gamasutra written by some of the writers at Games for Windows magazine and 1up.com. While overall a great article, the part at the very end was most interesting. If you can't bother to read it, the idea was suggested that people might be willing to take their gaming news from the publishers rather than from an independent games journalist. The examples used are Major Nelson's Xbox site and how Bungie hired former journalist Luke Smith away from 1up to run its podcast and post on its blog.

So the question is - do you read Major Nelson's blog or listen to Bungie's podcast? Does the fact that its a 100% pro-company official corporate production have you treating it differently than you would a blog/podcast from Gamespot or IGN or 1up?

It certainly does for me - in fact, I just skip these productions because I assume I'm not getting anything but biased information from them. Will Major Nelson ever rip on a bad Xbox Live Arcade game? Unlikely. Will Luke go off on a poorly designed Halo 3 level? Doubtful. That is, as long as these folks want to keep working for the company that employs them they won't. In the world of big corporate entities, management takes a dim view of employees that 'call it like they see it' and disparage the company.

Posted by scottsh at Monday April 07, 2008 - 7:17 PM | TrackBack (0) | Category: Editorial | © 2008 Gaming Signal

I'm with you Scott. I have never read Major Nelsons blog for the exact reasons you list. It's an untrustworthy source of information, and you are right, you will never get the "straight dope" from an employee of the company you are getting a product from.

And on top of that... that bastard Major Nelson keeps making me sleep in a bottle.

Posted by tditto on Tuesday April 08, 2008 at 9:18 AM