Today President Barack Obama was in Poland to meet Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk. In 2011 Prime Minister Tusk gave President Obama a copy of Polish publisher CD Projekt Red’s popular game The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings to symbolize Poland’s position in the global economy. Even though the President has yet to play the game, every video game news site on the web has reported this story.
Let me explain the “news” again.
It was reported that President Obama didn’t play a game that he was given 3 years ago. That is the news…as it concerns the video game industry.
I’m sorry to be trite. It must be hard to work for popular video game sites. I would kill to work at sites like IGN, Gamespot, or Polygon, but I am not sure how rewarding writing puff articles that merely mention “video games” would be for me. I am sure that I would love the opportunity to work at these companies, but I pride myself on writing well thought out articles that appeal to me and appeal to what audience may read my stuff.
Most of the articles also mentioned that CD Projekt Red will be having it’s annual Summer Conference later this week. The company will be releasing information about the third game in the Witcher series; The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. This part of the article is informative. But, I would assume, most mainstream websites have already written that rote press release article also.
I’m sure that I am a minority. I like to get my news, not just video game news, from different sources. I get news sent to my RSS reader, so, like today, when the same story pops up 10 different times I lose a little faith in the business prospects of these companies. I am sure that each website has their own niche group that only goes to that one website. I have a friend who only goes to IGN and regurgitates everything that he reads on that website. I am so happy there are people like Leigh Alexander and Patrick Klepek who can write the articles that interest them. I am glad there are websites like Gamasutra that can write articles with more depth.
I am thankful that I learned how to think critically at a young age because it taught me how to take a puff piece and write something different.