i would really like to have a conversation about embargoes and NDAs but i just think it's good to have that conversation without calling people sellout clowns. sorry i keep thinking about this and talking about this, it just all makes me very sad.

i feel like missing, crucial context here is that when kotaku practiced adversarial journalism by reporting on credible leaks, they were blacklisted by publishers. this had a chilling effect that people don't really talk about. other ppl in our field said kotaku deserved it.

more on that blacklisting--ubisoft let up on it years later: https://kotaku.com/a-price-of-games-journalism-1743526293

the cards really, REALLY are not in the hands of the outlets here. it's just as bad as music journalism has become in many ways. access is predicated on how nice you are. every publisher becomes taylor swift, inviting journalists into her inner circle as long as they're nice.

the issues, as it is in entertainment journalism across many industries, are about access. journalism that relies on access is a tightrope walk. there are ways to do it that are scummy, and ways that work to dissolve the systems of access.

we are not yet in a place where journalists across outlets have the ability to not cover one of the years biggest games. publishers have long catered to youtubers, who on the whole have a different relationship to access and publishers and even journalism than we do.

by not agreeing to an embargo or in some cases not signing an NDA, you're just going to be forgotten? the market is so saturated by previews and reviews across platforms and medias, it's not really a principled stand but saying that you can afford the financial hit.

it's really interesting to think about entertainment journalism through this lens, because i can think of many different examples of how the Gamer Mindset of embargoes etc has leaked into other forms of entertainment journalism. but who's fault is this? not the journalists???

anyway i'm kinda sorta on vacation and david is listening to union songs. bye.

okay one more thing. the leaks that kotaku reported on were: CORRECT