Just in case you guys missed the news, thought I'd share it here, but at least for WoW Insider and Massively fans, there's some good news. Both WI and Massively are striking out on their own. As some of you know, I've worked for both sites, but I've worked for others, and I have to share something you may not know about gaming journalism: the bigger sites usually have stricter ethic codes (Joystiq and Kotaku had the strictest, and Polygon's seem to be up there too, though The Escapist had/has a rigid editing process). I've had editors that take every game code they can get their hands on, even if they don't review wit. I've had others who were fine with plagiarism, not finishing games that are less than 15 hours of content before writing a review, and one that kept promoting an inaccuracy made by a few big outlets but wouldn't fix it when shown evidence because "everyone else is doing it."
The Joystiq network wasn't perfect, but the standards were much higher. I couldn't accept swag valued at over $25, including meals and hotel rooms. I had to install an ad blocker to help prevent my reviews from being swayed by ads on our sites. I was always encouraged to ask the hard, sometimes embarrassing questions straight to developers' faces. If I made a mistake, it would be corrected and the edit would be noted. There were times companies fought to change the review and we just noted their concerns compared to my experience. We even had a situation where a PR team was defending us after we gave a negative review and their developers wanted to blacklist us.
If you want your game news to be something you can trust, at least for Blizz and online games, at the very least, check the links below.
http://blizzardwatch.com/
http://massively.joystiq.com/2015/02/03 ... ell-to-it/
AOL shuts down Joystiq, WoW Insider, and Massively
Re: AOL shuts down Joystiq, WoW Insider, and Massively
Thanks for the update and glad to hear that it will be continuing in a new form.
Interesting about the ethics stuff, it is important.
Interesting about the ethics stuff, it is important.
Re: AOL shuts down Joystiq, WoW Insider, and Massively
Massively's got their Kickstarter up: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nb ... verpowered
Bree, the editor, mentioned one thing in the Kickstarter that I almost forgot: they actually have editors! Other sites say they have them, but often (especially among the smaller ones), the editor just OKs your topics (can't name names for hopefully obviously reasons =/ ). If you have a bad link or really misspell the name of the game or a producer, they rarely catch it, and it makes both the writer and the site look bad.
I've been shopping around for a new gig, but honestly, most other sites really couldn't compete with Massively in terms of pay and ethics in the MMO-sphere (you can read that last article by Bree to see what I mean; I still have to keep my mouth shut since these boards are public ;( ). Don't get me wrong, some of the smaller ones aren't bad, but they even mourned the loss of Massively.
Bree, the editor, mentioned one thing in the Kickstarter that I almost forgot: they actually have editors! Other sites say they have them, but often (especially among the smaller ones), the editor just OKs your topics (can't name names for hopefully obviously reasons =/ ). If you have a bad link or really misspell the name of the game or a producer, they rarely catch it, and it makes both the writer and the site look bad.
I've been shopping around for a new gig, but honestly, most other sites really couldn't compete with Massively in terms of pay and ethics in the MMO-sphere (you can read that last article by Bree to see what I mean; I still have to keep my mouth shut since these boards are public ;( ). Don't get me wrong, some of the smaller ones aren't bad, but they even mourned the loss of Massively.
Re: AOL shuts down Joystiq, WoW Insider, and Massively
Just in case anyone's been reading the site since they resurrected it, they started selling t-shirts recently too (the old site never did that): https://teespring.com/you-are-massively-overpowered
Kind of pricey, but I personally like the mascot, and it's still one of the few sites I trust (and not just because they've paid me!).
Kind of pricey, but I personally like the mascot, and it's still one of the few sites I trust (and not just because they've paid me!).