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SXSW panel: Power-Ups & Press: How the Game Media Impacts the Gaming Industry
Time: 12:30 p.m. Tuesday
Speakers: Carly Kocurek (University of Texas at Austin), Chris Kohler (Wired.com), Karen Chu (PlayFirst Inc.), Matt Chandronait (Area 5 Media LLC), Philip Kollar, (Game Informer Magazine )
The Gist: Just like games themselves, coverage of video games and the gaming industry is evolving at a rapid pace with podcasts and video emerging as more common features to give fans more information and perspective on new releases, issues in the gaming world and morw. That development also offers more openness in the process, giving editors and writers a face and making them more of a conversationalist with readers/viewers and less of an all-knowing voice of authority. Also, mainstream media outlets (NewsWeek, USA Today) have moved into the field as gaming has become a larger cultural and economic force.
Quotes: From Chandronait: “The (gaming media) system has been manipulated by developers where everything is staggered in how it’s covered to produce the best results for a release. You can’t talk about the product without talking about the entire thing, and if we don’t we’ll never be able to move beyond a glorified Consumer Reports.”
Takeaways: The panel as a whole seemed to view the gaming media as healthy and useful, but said there are issues such as providing more enterprising coverage, writing about social issues (gender, race, etc.) and finding more ways to interact with users that have to be addressed in the near future to stay relevant.
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