Just desserts?
The relationship between journalist and corporation is forever one rife with conflict and disagreement, even in hobbyist journalistic fields. (Although ideally; considerably less so on the 'friction' angle.) It is in the mantra of the hobby journalist to report on news and in the general best interest of companies, even gaming companies, to keep a handle on the proliferation of information out to the world. You know, lest leaks start dripping. (That has sunk a fair few games in the past on it's own.) Sparks of indignation can rustle when two opposing materials collide, a friction that has the potential to spark industry wide turmoil if it lands in the right powder keg. Afterall, what headline gets blood boiling hotter than 'evil company censors hard hitting journalist for just striking where it hurts'? The journalists in these situations are always the beleaguered underdogs who are forever in the right and merely being picked on for their shining dedication to their almighty journalistic integrity... right? That is... that is the direction we're going with this... isn't it?
Well this conversation really rose up around about the time of the previews for the upcoming title which I'm becoming gradually more painfully obsessed with, the video game tie-in adaptation of King Charles' coronation: 'The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom'. (I wonder if Charles is going to blow half of London up into the sky to exist as floating chunks; really nail in the comparison.) During this time you'd see various outlets post their thoughts on the new Zelda, brimming with bushy tailed anticipation and sizzling with enough nerd stank you can smell it through the computer screen. Except one of the stankiest game journalist sites of them all, ol' Kotaku, got nothing. Now all the millions of readers who come exclusively to Kotaku for their gaming news, presumably during 'free internet hour' at the psychiatric ward, won't get to hear the insightful prattle of their favourite website!
I mean, isn't it just increadibly 'unprofessional' (to use that contributor's words) to blacklist a news reporting site from doing their job? What kind of backwards games developer actively antagonises the associated press? Why, that's grounds for high censorship! And what's more, it really would be Nintendo who become the despotic news censor's, now wouldn't it? Tyrannical monsters they are: kicking over lemonade stands, rubbing playpit sand in their fan's eyes, and locking one man in wage slavery until his death- at which point I can only assume that Nintendo will try to sue to have his descendants pick up on the 10 million debt. They aren't good people at Nintendo. But... I mean Kotaku were also blacklisted by Bethesda, Ubisoft and the Final Fantasy IV team so... you know at some point you really need to look around and ask who is the common denominator in all of this.
Oh wait, I guess that would be the Kotaku people themselves, wouldn't it? Pariahs from the community slowly working their way up to becoming pariahs of the industry too- it won't be long until all their articles are self-indulgent diatribes into the meaningless personal squabbles of the editorial team. Sure, you could say I insert myself into this blog a bit- but I'm also this blog's only contributor and reader, I'm pretty sure I can do whatever I want here. When you have the responsibility of 'millions of readers', as they boast, and industry level access- there's a certainly level of professionalism you are expected to maintain. Oh, there's that word again- 'professionalism'. You know, there's a fairly universal proverb that says 'what goes around comes around'. The same energies you put out are returned. If Nintendo are so very 'unprofessional' with their blacklisting conduct, would it be fair to assume that Kotaku may have made a few significant blunders back at some point in their muddy journalistic career as a glorified scream rag?
Well, that was that time when Kotaku went around posting leaks about a recently announced Nintendo product... but then everybody does that these days. But to give the N some ground, Kotaku were a force given access to pre-release Nintendo content for review purposes, who then simultaneously believed it utterly within their rights to post content opposed to the wishes of their business partners. That is... questionable conduct to say the least. But on the otherhand, I do understand how hard it is to be objective journalists in an industry that relies on industry access to be relevant. But then, Kotaku has never been about objective journalism, so that pyre the company tried to place itself upon is a bit of an ill-fitting seat of bark and dust if you ask me. Honestly, I think of the 'leaking incident' more as- the straw that broke the already affirm and ailing camel's back. As for the other luggage? Well...
There was that one insanely 'unprofessional' time when a Kotaku contributor, following the early days of the much-anticipated Metroid Dread release, posted an article directly calling out how well the new Metroid game ran on emulators. I'm talking in the release weeks here. They went over how non Nintendo-system owners might run the game on their hardware, talked about how powerful enough systems could squeeze out higher resolutions than what Nintendo could offer on their Switch, and although one might argue that he could have been advocating for a legal acquisition of a copy of the game to simply extract it's files, and legally acquired BIOS files from a Switch console, (Both difficult files for a simple casual reader to acquire. Pirated files could be found much easier.) the sign-off of the article literally thanks god for pirates.
And in typical Kotaku fashion, the company took no direct responsibility for the obvious rake-step moment. The original article was headed by an eye-wateringly pathetic intro telling theoretical Nintendo Lawyers to simply not read the article in the most "I watched Avengers and I just love that flippant dialogue!" way imaginable. And when the unthinkable happened and Nintendo Lawyers actually did read the article, entitled after one of their games on a page read by millions who were literally instructed on illegal ways to play this recently released game, (and even mentioning how this method is a preferable way to play old Metroid games over giving Nintendo the money. I'm not saying their wrong in that regard, but damn.) Kotaku had the brass iron balls to turn around and apologise if anyone got the wrong impression about what the article was really promoting. Lying through a Great Wall of China size set of dentures, it would seem. And Nintendo bought none of it.
Which brings us to today. Early impressions for the new Zelda game have already landed on every outlet that had the brains not to try and cross an increadibly and legendarily litigious game developer whilst Kotaku sulk in the corner still taking no responsibility for their own actions. By the very act of bemoaning the ban, they simply call back to memory all the reasons why those pissed-off developers shouldn't trust them, and along the way whilst other developers should probably be wary of the stream-of-conscious rant-blog-of-a-website. Making mistakes is one thing. Making multiple mistakes is a few more things. Crossing your arms and blaming the world for misunderstanding your unrepentant and indignant self is just bordering on asinine. A perfect tagline for Kotaku if ever I've heard one.
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