Very few sites on the internet have what I would call gaming journalism. At least as it’s primary purpose. In fact, off the top of my head, Gamepolitics.com is about the only one. Every other one that comes to mind is a hybrid of journalism and criticism. So what do you call that? Most people tend to go with the former of the two and mark it down as journalism. But the whole “journalist” title bugs me. Journalism by its definition means you are presenting information to people while striving to be unbiased. So when you read an entry on Kotaku, for example, you’ll get the information, but usually not without some of the writer’s thoughts on that bit of info. It’s not really critiquing, so is it simply “blogging”?

Say for a moment that we forget about journalists being unbiased. Maybe that word has become too tainted in today’s society. Let’s take it at face value and then ask; at what point does a person step over the line from being a blogger talking about games, to being considered a journalist? Does it tie in with being paid for your writing (or talking if you consider podcasts)? Does that “payment” not refer to salaries, but goods received from developers and advertisers of the games you review? The questions could go on and on, but I’ll stop there before I get lost on a tangent.

Regardless of what we should be called, some issues surrounding us as writers seem to have worked their way to Washington. The FTC is now looking at what we as bloggers (that’s what I’m calling it) should be disclosing to the public regarding the items we receive from advertisers. So if we get a game to review from its developer, we should disclose that we did not in fact pay for it, we received it for free. I think I see their point. They want the consumers to be able to tell if there is any possible conflict of interest on the bloggers behalf because he got free shit. But on the other hand, there doesn’t seem to be any worry on the FTC’s behalf with big sites like Gamespot or ign, who get money from the games creators for the ads on their sites. That’s where the worry is with the consumers though, and it’s why we’ve been seeing a switch from people visiting these large sites, to the bloggers. Consumers are beginning to realize that the people that they should really trust are other consumers like them.

Now, we here at Multiplaying are small time, a speck on the windshield that is the internet. I can’t fathom a day in which we get free games to review. But I can hypothesize that if that day comes, we would still be doing ½ Assed Reviews. We simply don’t have the time to put more thought into our content than what we already do. Were not journalists, I’m not even sure if were critics, we are simply consumers who like to talk about games.