Usually, our research on the connections between games and journalism focuses on digital media objects such as games and infographics
that we think present, model, or teach journalistic endeavor. There are probably
a few people who visit the site expecting there to be commentary on
gaming news, but usually this falls outside our interests and goals;
however, we are interested in the ways that journalists of all colors
can learn from games and procedural literacy. We simply do not have
many concrete examples of this process at work. The past week, though,
has provided us with one such learning experience.Visceral Games, a subsidiary of Electronic Arts, is currently hard at work on a game inspired by Dante Alighieri's Inferno. The videogame itself does not seem to be a procedural translation of the source work in any meaningful way, instead falling back on a tried-and-true ludic method of engaging with famous literature through hacking-and-slashing. This is a shame, because there is reason to believe there are employees at the Redwood branch office of Electronic Arts who are committed to crafting truly innovative games. For some strange reason, these gifted game designers aren't necessarily working on a development team but in EA's marketing and publicity department.
There appears to be nothing special about Visceral's Dante's Inferno; as a result of this, the company's publicists have been forced to feel the "crunch" mentality that many game developers know so well. Because they know that there's little deserving of praise about their upcoming game, they have lifted the tired umbrella truism that "any news is good news." First they staged a fake "conservative Christian" protest at the Electronic Entertainment Expo. Either this didn't cause enough of a stir in their rudimentary consumer surveying apparatus, or they realized that mocking social conservatives would effectively cut half of their potential fanbase.
Their second answer to the problem of marketing utter mediocrity was to mix a lowest-common-denominator appeal with a series of pithy references to Alighieri's source material. At Comic Con they launched the first of their "Seven Deadly Sins" themed stunts. Instead of playing the religion card here, they set out to alienate a group of people that their twenty years of inept market research has shown don't really matter when it comes to selling videogames: females. This promotion, tediously named "Sin to Win" and announced on a poster adorned with prominently-displayed female secondary sexual anatomy, asked convention-goers to get their picture taken with the most attractive "booth babe" they could find. This was supposed to "playfully" represent the sin of Lust, if you couldn't tell.
The resulting fiasco can only be fully understood if you know the troubled history of the use of booth babes at fan culture conventions, and you can find a comprehensive rundown of the controversy and its implications at the Iris Gaming Network. Sin to Win represents a key moment in this campaign, because it marks a turning point where a number of enthusiast gaming press outlets decided to modify their typically accepting and egalitarian attitude toward publicity efforts.
There are at least two reasons that gaming news sites will print most every press release that a publisher sends them. First, they operate under a fiscal model that equates advertising value with page views instead of writerly craft. A number of people interested in more complex analyses of videogames fault commercial blogs for this, but we can't ignore the facts that consumers really do want to see previews of upcoming games and that these bloggers both are good at their jobs and need to put food on the table. Many games really do deserve all the hype they can get, and we want to reward developers for their hard work. The second reason is just as important: these writers firmly believe that a journalist's duty is to present the news and that press releases are part of the news ecology.
The distinction that the gaming press is only beginning to understand is that tangible events and issues are news a priori--that is, by simply happening they demand reportage--while a publicity effort is news a posteriori--it only becomes the news once one reports it.
After Sin to Win, a number of gaming sites decided to stop covering the game's pre-release information. If you search the archives of sites such as MTV Multiplayer and Fidgit, you won't find much information about Dante's Inferno. On the other hand, sites with a sufficiently large and willing editorial staff decided to begin gently condemning the game and its marketing efforts. Readers of Joystiq already expect its editorial staff to pepper press releases with a pinch of snark--in fact, they promise to do so on their "about" page. Kotaku, on the other hand, has been known to host lengthy editorials on social issues such as race and gender in videogames. The coverage of Sin to Win at these sites was overwhelmingly jaundiced, and [EDIT: see reply to Crecente] there was hardly a peep from anyone when EA sent out severed-arm cakes for a "Gluttony" promotion (we don't know who other than Joystiq received one of these).
EA targeted these sites in particular for their "Avarice" stunt last week, and this is where the recent intersection of journalism and games that we're interested in occurred. The managing editors of Kotaku and Joystiq, along with the community manager of GamePro and an editor at Destructoid, received a package in the mail from EA containing a lacquered coffer and a custom-printed check for $200. A note inside the box presented the editors with a "dilemma": cash the check and give in to greed, or throw it away and be guilty of prodigality (wastefulness). Like many "choice points" in videogames that attempt to emulate moral decision-making, the "right" answer here was immediately apparent because one of the options is absurd. A check represents the potential for a transfer of funds, not the funds themselves; therefore, throwing a check in the trash isn't wasteful in any meaningful way.
Brimming with pride for their moral integrity and cleverness, the editors cut the not-so-Gordian knot with zest. Brian Crecente of Kotaku recorded himself burning the check in a fire pit outside his home, then posted the video, pictures of the promotional material, and a jab at the marketers. Chris Grant of Joystiq and Andy Burt of GamePro took similar pictures of their boxes before writing articles boasting that they had cashed their checks and donated the money to charity. These decisions are all to be commended, because it isn't often that the enthusiast press turns down swag--as in the field of journalistic film criticism, it is not considered an affront to objectivity and integrity to accept promotional materials when one covers the games industry.
But the fact of the matter is that the superficial binary choice posed by EA, between avarice and prodigality, was in fact a straw man for a deeper dilemma. EA didn't care what the journalists did with the check, so long as they wrote about it: a post with nearly 100,000 views (the count on Kotaku as of this writing) is worth far more than $200. Unlike a banner ad, an article contains meta-data that can be accessed by search engines. Every time some poor kid with a paper on Dante's Inferno (the book) due tomorrow Googles out of desperation, they'll see these articles right alongside relevant resources. Assuming these writers knew that for marketers any news is good news, and considering the fact that a number of the sites that received the checks had been critical of the marketing campaign since Sin to Win, we see that a second dilemma arises: to publish or not to publish.
EA considered something that most game designers don't when crafting ludic moral calculi: game theory. Specifically, this is a modification of the prisoner's dilemma replacing punishment with page views. This is how the prisoner's dilemma works:
1) two prisoners are held separately for questioning
2) if both prisoners remain quiet, they both receive a minimal sentence
3) if one prisoner betrays the other, she goes free & the other serves a maximum sentence
4) if both prisoners betray each other, both receive half the maximum sentence
Actors within a dilemma or game are considered to be in Nash equilibrium if we assume that they will act rationally based on their best approximation of the decisions of all other actors. Thus, rational self-interest demands that both prisoners betray each other, because both actors assume that the other will betray them in order to either go free or avoid the maximum sentence. This is a Pareto-suboptimal solution; from our point of view it appears non-rational, because the obvious answer is for both to remain silent.
Assuming the editors of Kotaku, Joystiq, and GamePro knew what the going rate for an advertisement was on their site, that they were critical of the marketing campaign, and that EA wanted them to publish the story of what they did with the check, the optimal solution would be for none of them to print the story. Crecente could have taken a personal zen moment out of his workday to burn the check and tell nobody of his righteous act, while Grant and Burt could have silently donated their checks to charity and considered it their monthly tithe. But if one site decided to print the story while the others abstained, then the betrayer would reap all the page views during the time the others scrambled to take pictures of their lacquered boxes and craft a 200-word piece. Or, in the event that they still decided against rewarding EA with tens of thousands of page views, they'd lose all the potential hits and their chance to show off how ingeniously they'd solved the "avarice or prodigality" straw man.
The prisoner's dilemma only works if the actors can't communicate with each other in order to decide on a cooperative solution. EA hedged their bets, assuming that these men wouldn't talk to each other about their opinions on the publicity stunt and whether it should go to print. In the future, I think the general managers of the major enthusiast gaming press hubs should consider cooperatively embargoing a malicious marketing campaign. This wouldn't be collusion, nor would it be an affront to the principle of "making the significant relevant and interesting" (an element of journalism according to Kovach and Rosenstiel), because press releases aren't news a priori--they do not demand reporting simply for the sake of having happened. At the very least, these editors should be in open communication with each other about such matters. Because if Dante's Inferno sells well, as we can predict it will from the number of comments on these articles that the journalist should have "taken the money anyway," then we're going to see much worse than Sin to Win in the future.
We can also learn a game design lesson from this. Instead of making your moral calculus obvious to the player, disguise it with the procession of binary straw men that other videogames have led her to expect from you.
Their second answer to the problem of marketing utter mediocrity was to mix a lowest-common-denominator appeal with a series of pithy references to Alighieri's source material. At Comic Con they launched the first of their "Seven Deadly Sins" themed stunts. Instead of playing the religion card here, they set out to alienate a group of people that their twenty years of inept market research has shown don't really matter when it comes to selling videogames: females. This promotion, tediously named "Sin to Win" and announced on a poster adorned with prominently-displayed female secondary sexual anatomy, asked convention-goers to get their picture taken with the most attractive "booth babe" they could find. This was supposed to "playfully" represent the sin of Lust, if you couldn't tell.
The resulting fiasco can only be fully understood if you know the troubled history of the use of booth babes at fan culture conventions, and you can find a comprehensive rundown of the controversy and its implications at the Iris Gaming Network. Sin to Win represents a key moment in this campaign, because it marks a turning point where a number of enthusiast gaming press outlets decided to modify their typically accepting and egalitarian attitude toward publicity efforts.
There are at least two reasons that gaming news sites will print most every press release that a publisher sends them. First, they operate under a fiscal model that equates advertising value with page views instead of writerly craft. A number of people interested in more complex analyses of videogames fault commercial blogs for this, but we can't ignore the facts that consumers really do want to see previews of upcoming games and that these bloggers both are good at their jobs and need to put food on the table. Many games really do deserve all the hype they can get, and we want to reward developers for their hard work. The second reason is just as important: these writers firmly believe that a journalist's duty is to present the news and that press releases are part of the news ecology.
The distinction that the gaming press is only beginning to understand is that tangible events and issues are news a priori--that is, by simply happening they demand reportage--while a publicity effort is news a posteriori--it only becomes the news once one reports it.
After Sin to Win, a number of gaming sites decided to stop covering the game's pre-release information. If you search the archives of sites such as MTV Multiplayer and Fidgit, you won't find much information about Dante's Inferno. On the other hand, sites with a sufficiently large and willing editorial staff decided to begin gently condemning the game and its marketing efforts. Readers of Joystiq already expect its editorial staff to pepper press releases with a pinch of snark--in fact, they promise to do so on their "about" page. Kotaku, on the other hand, has been known to host lengthy editorials on social issues such as race and gender in videogames. The coverage of Sin to Win at these sites was overwhelmingly jaundiced, and [EDIT: see reply to Crecente] there was hardly a peep from anyone when EA sent out severed-arm cakes for a "Gluttony" promotion (we don't know who other than Joystiq received one of these).
EA targeted these sites in particular for their "Avarice" stunt last week, and this is where the recent intersection of journalism and games that we're interested in occurred. The managing editors of Kotaku and Joystiq, along with the community manager of GamePro and an editor at Destructoid, received a package in the mail from EA containing a lacquered coffer and a custom-printed check for $200. A note inside the box presented the editors with a "dilemma": cash the check and give in to greed, or throw it away and be guilty of prodigality (wastefulness). Like many "choice points" in videogames that attempt to emulate moral decision-making, the "right" answer here was immediately apparent because one of the options is absurd. A check represents the potential for a transfer of funds, not the funds themselves; therefore, throwing a check in the trash isn't wasteful in any meaningful way.
Brimming with pride for their moral integrity and cleverness, the editors cut the not-so-Gordian knot with zest. Brian Crecente of Kotaku recorded himself burning the check in a fire pit outside his home, then posted the video, pictures of the promotional material, and a jab at the marketers. Chris Grant of Joystiq and Andy Burt of GamePro took similar pictures of their boxes before writing articles boasting that they had cashed their checks and donated the money to charity. These decisions are all to be commended, because it isn't often that the enthusiast press turns down swag--as in the field of journalistic film criticism, it is not considered an affront to objectivity and integrity to accept promotional materials when one covers the games industry.
But the fact of the matter is that the superficial binary choice posed by EA, between avarice and prodigality, was in fact a straw man for a deeper dilemma. EA didn't care what the journalists did with the check, so long as they wrote about it: a post with nearly 100,000 views (the count on Kotaku as of this writing) is worth far more than $200. Unlike a banner ad, an article contains meta-data that can be accessed by search engines. Every time some poor kid with a paper on Dante's Inferno (the book) due tomorrow Googles out of desperation, they'll see these articles right alongside relevant resources. Assuming these writers knew that for marketers any news is good news, and considering the fact that a number of the sites that received the checks had been critical of the marketing campaign since Sin to Win, we see that a second dilemma arises: to publish or not to publish.
EA considered something that most game designers don't when crafting ludic moral calculi: game theory. Specifically, this is a modification of the prisoner's dilemma replacing punishment with page views. This is how the prisoner's dilemma works:
1) two prisoners are held separately for questioning
2) if both prisoners remain quiet, they both receive a minimal sentence
3) if one prisoner betrays the other, she goes free & the other serves a maximum sentence
4) if both prisoners betray each other, both receive half the maximum sentence
Actors within a dilemma or game are considered to be in Nash equilibrium if we assume that they will act rationally based on their best approximation of the decisions of all other actors. Thus, rational self-interest demands that both prisoners betray each other, because both actors assume that the other will betray them in order to either go free or avoid the maximum sentence. This is a Pareto-suboptimal solution; from our point of view it appears non-rational, because the obvious answer is for both to remain silent.
Assuming the editors of Kotaku, Joystiq, and GamePro knew what the going rate for an advertisement was on their site, that they were critical of the marketing campaign, and that EA wanted them to publish the story of what they did with the check, the optimal solution would be for none of them to print the story. Crecente could have taken a personal zen moment out of his workday to burn the check and tell nobody of his righteous act, while Grant and Burt could have silently donated their checks to charity and considered it their monthly tithe. But if one site decided to print the story while the others abstained, then the betrayer would reap all the page views during the time the others scrambled to take pictures of their lacquered boxes and craft a 200-word piece. Or, in the event that they still decided against rewarding EA with tens of thousands of page views, they'd lose all the potential hits and their chance to show off how ingeniously they'd solved the "avarice or prodigality" straw man.
The prisoner's dilemma only works if the actors can't communicate with each other in order to decide on a cooperative solution. EA hedged their bets, assuming that these men wouldn't talk to each other about their opinions on the publicity stunt and whether it should go to print. In the future, I think the general managers of the major enthusiast gaming press hubs should consider cooperatively embargoing a malicious marketing campaign. This wouldn't be collusion, nor would it be an affront to the principle of "making the significant relevant and interesting" (an element of journalism according to Kovach and Rosenstiel), because press releases aren't news a priori--they do not demand reporting simply for the sake of having happened. At the very least, these editors should be in open communication with each other about such matters. Because if Dante's Inferno sells well, as we can predict it will from the number of comments on these articles that the journalist should have "taken the money anyway," then we're going to see much worse than Sin to Win in the future.
We can also learn a game design lesson from this. Instead of making your moral calculus obvious to the player, disguise it with the procession of binary straw men that other videogames have led her to expect from you.
The first person to suggest that somehow I'm helping the publicity campaign with this article owes me $200. This is a dilemma, because the potential comment is just so smart.
I don't see how your writing about it is any different than anyone else writing about it. So hit up EA for your check. :D
If your argument is that game writers should only cover the actual game. That they should never write posts purely for the amusement value, then this article has some point. (Though I think bringing up the ad rate issue just muddies the waters. Everything could be broken down to ad rates from stories announcing a world war to the assassination of JFK)
But as with newspapers, magazines and television, websites dedicated to covering a niche cover all aspects of it, including the trivial.
Of course we could have decided not to write about the check. But why would we? We write about all sorts of silly marketing stunts from brass knuckles to gun lighters to cakes.
How was this different?
Replace $200 check with concert tickets to The Who and tell me if your story changes?
Couple of final factual issues:
Kotaku never received a severed arm cake. We would have absolutely posted it had we.
I did call the number on the check and had a conversation with EA's accounting department. I suspect way more than three checks were sent out based on what I was told.
As I noted in the post, the included note said that any decision would have repercussions. Not posting about my decision to not cash the check (and burning it to prove I wouldn't) may have been a problem down the line if, say, EA decided to post a list of all of the people they sent the check to.
Brian, or Mr. Crecente, thank you for stopping by to help us see this in a more even light. I fixed the wording of the clause about the severed-arm cake to reflect the fact that to my knowledge only Joystiq may have received one.
My writing about it is different because this is meant to implore you to *stop writing about it from now on. A preventative measure, so to speak. Also, this website receives maybe one hundred hits on a good day. My argument isn't that game writers should only cover the actual game; as I said, people work hard on games and deserve all the hype they can get. I'm not mad at you for receiving swag on a regular basis (I cover that as well), nor do I think you should abstain from posting about it if you want.
This article is about the Dante's Inferno marketing effort and any other malicious campaign that follows on its heels in the future, not about business-as-usual. I'm asking you to consider a special case wherein a publicity department is clearly acting out of turn (I'm referring primarily to Sin to Win). The line about how EA was hedging its bets on you not calling anybody wasn't about you not calling their accounting department, but on you not calling the other bloggers directly. That said, I find your final defense completely understandable, and I admit that I probably wouldn't know what to do in that situation; however, there are other ways (such as telling the rest of your staff, or a number of non-Kotaku employees who would keep it quiet, or writing a post and timestamping it without publishing it).
Oh, and the only other site besides these three that I could find a mention of the $200 check on was Destructoid. But they hadn't decided at the time of this writing what to do with the check. Unlike Kotaku and Joystiq, I'm not familiar with their opinions or work ethic, so I didn't comment. They were a fourth site that had been critical of Sin to Win, further suggesting a correlation there.
Simon's opinion notwithstanding, what fascinates me is the entire situation of the promotion, and the way it creates immense moral ambiguity on every level. It's very hard to say what's "right" or "wrong" in this situation, but it is quite easy to tease out complex trade-offs. If only games with "moral simulations" could do such a thing.
It's interesting that Crecente took your article to mean that people should *only* ever report on the game itself, no previews/press stuff/anything else (as you pointed out to him, he was wrong in that interpretation).
As Ian points out, this is a strange, divisive, and complicated little drama EA has helped enact. I wonder who else got those checks, and I wonder what EA plans on doing to "judge" them for their lack of response to the checks.
In fact, the really interesting thing here would be to contact the other check recipients (assuming there are many more) and ask them not what they did with the check, but why they chose not to report on it. Maybe more of them are taking your "boycot the malicious marketing campaign" course of action than we might suspect. I doubt many of them communicated with each other, but it would also be interesting to see who *did*.
And also, nice article.
A really interesting article, and very clearly in a different moral category to publish this one. Your piece teases out the complex reasoning and shows exactly why it is so unethical to publish, despite the rewards to the ego and revenue stream.
Thank you for the kindness old blog-brother. As I said, I think Fidgit and MTV Multiplayer are embargoing the game. I don't know, though, if they received a check. I don't know anybody at those blogs, or at Wired's blog, so I don't know if my inquiry emails would do much good (enthusiast bloggers ignore my emails, even when I'm really nice and don't spell anything incorrectly). But you're a freelancer at like eight million different sites, could you ask if GameTopius or GameSetWatch received one?
Thank you for the comment Marcus. While I agree that it's complex, I won't go so far as to say it's completely unethical. Rather, we can say that it is clearly not the Pareto optimal solution if we assume that these bloggers care at all about the reprehensible character of the campaign itself.
Nice article, I definitely agree that at this point the marketing of the game has outclassed the game itself. The whole thing reminds me of Matt Hazard's fake past and websites, the whole thing is starting to cross into ARG territory.
Yeah, I'll shake the bushes (or something?) and see what happens. Although, to be honest, I think they'll ignore me too, as often happens, pseudo-successful professional contact or no. Sigh.
Plus, they themselves may be unsure of how to discuss it, and whether EA is going to come back and bite them in the ass if they comment...
My friend Alex (whose site I link to mid-article) just informed me that GameSpot also received an arm cake. Does EA know that Crecente is on a diet or something? They could have sent it to Totilo; he needs a hearty meal or two.
diet! That's crazy talk. I weigh less than totilo. I'm a stick... a stick in need of an arm cake.
Did GameSpot receive a check?
Hah, yes, he does. I hadn't gotten around to checking the link, but I just did. That's quite a collection, I guess I didn't think that many people were at all pissed.
Gamespot does seem a like a large enough, badly managed enough site to mess it up somehow though.
GameSpot's internal search is almost completely broken, and Google doesn't show anything other than a forum post about you burning your check. Alex found out about the cake by listening to the GS podcast, which I think would cause me to spontaneously combust if I listened to it. I'll ask her if they mentioned it.
I've mostly only seen headshots of you, while I've seen Totilo's less-than-imposing figure in full. I'm not going to buy that you're more of a stick unless I see YouTube videos of you two weighing yourselves in a doctor's office on a proper metric scale.
Also, I'd like to reiterate what I tacitly implied in the comments: I have immense respect for Kotaku's efforts in leading other enthusiast press sites in engaging in proper editorial work. The fact that you came back with this lighthearted comment after I was so desultory in the article only confirms that you're one of the Internet's most effing charming princes.
You say that certain events are news a priori, but that a press release is news a posteriori. Do you think that details about the campaign itself, what's going on and how people are reacting to it, is news a priori?
For instance, say GM started paying people to steal classic Corvettes as a way of getting the name in papers or on the evening news. Should a reporter expose that practice even though it could be argued that doing so furthers GM's campaign?
This isn't a particularly difficult dilemma for me. Your example is a crime, and the method you suggest exploring it by would be investigative journalism. The case of the checks isn't a crime, and the coverage of it requires no investigation. I'll think of a corollary that fits this case better and then get back to you on what I think about it.
Fair enough! I think you have a less extreme example in your piece:
EA hired a bunch of actors to pretend to be conservative protesters in a bid to garner media attention. Should the scheme be reported on even if it is to some extent giving EA exactly what they wanted?
>> rational self-interest demands that both prisoners betray each other, because both actors assume that the other will betray them...
Well... not quite. The reason a rational PD player chooses to defect is not because he assumes his opponent will defect. It's because *regardless* of what his opponent chooses to do he is better off defecting. This is why the PD is so interesting. It doesn't matter what I do, you are *always* going to get a better pay-off by defecting. So how could you not? It's so simple! It's so obviously the correct choice. And so two rational geniuses, applying indisputable state-of-the-art game-theoretical decision-making techniques end up worse off than a couple of random schmucks who decide to cooperate. That's why it's a dilemma. And that's why the PD sits alongside Gödel's incompleteness, Wittgenstein's silence, Duchamp's urinal, and Heisenberg's uncertainty as one of the great artifacts of the 20th century's fascination with interesting stuff that happens at the edges of systems.
So, that early on the campaign I think a lot of us thought the idea of doing an ARG-like protest was a clever idea. This is why I make the point of marking Sin to Win as a lynchpin. I'm not asking people not to publish publicity stunts, but rather to blackball campaigns that have turned malicious. And once the campaign turns malicious, you should explain why before going silent. I don't think the mainstream Sin to Win coverage went far enough toward helping people make a comprehensive decision on the matter. They said, "this is despicable, and some people think it's discriminatory and harmful to the female booth attendants" with maybe a link to a smaller site explaining why.
Nobody said, "If you too think that this campaign threatened the well-being of the booth attendants not hired by EA, this here is a form you can fill out to send a complaint to the California Department of Fair Housing and Employment, which handles such cases pro bono and has jurisdiction over Comic Con." This gets me back to the GM example. I think investigative journalism is news a priori because it seeks punitive answers to a possible criminal or civil wrongdoing. This is the watchdog role of the media, basically.
I don't understand how you're always going to get a better payoff from defecting... is it because you don't know that if you both remain silent you'll receive the minimal punishment? I guess I must have misunderstood the amount of information the prisoners have. I thought it was a brilliant dilemma because, even if I'm in there with somebody I've know my entire life, I don't know if they're going to betray me or not (because people act differently under duress)... so I *have* to betray them to protect myself.
It's the specified property of the payoff grid. If I cooperate (remain silent) you get 1 year in jail for cooperating or go scott free for defecting. If I defect (squeal) you get 10 years for cooperating and 5 years for defecting. It doesn't matter what I do. It's not a matter of expecting the worst or predicting the other guy's decision or anything like that. *Regardless* of what I do you are *always* better off defecting.
Ahhh you broke through my mental barrier by putting 1/0 and 10/5 next to each other like that. Okay, awesome, thank you for the lesson! For some reason I had this utilitarianism thing in my head where they recognized that 1 year each would be less negative utils than one person serving 10, but of course it's stupid to think that somebody would be thinking like a utilitarian in that context. I know there are utilitarian modifications of equilibria, but am only familiar with Rawls' maximin. Do you have any favorites?
Also, you left out my favorite from that list of great artifacts: Quine's indeterminacy of translation
Hmm, my own understanding is that it's not the job of a reporter to decide what is or is not despicable or malicious. Their job is to report the facts of an event or the truth content of a statement, etc. If there are people who are claiming that something is despicable or malicious then they should report that, and perhaps in that context provide direction for people who feel similarly.
I'm not terribly familiar with the coverage of the Sin to Win campaign, but I thought reporting on the controversy surrounding Shadow Complex was the right track for these sorts of things. There were two sides to the issue and both were given their say.
Maybe because Sin to Win was specifically about publicity the enthusiast press decided to handle it differently. Where I think we may agree is that they handled it poorly.
Your first comment is basically the difference between a reporter and a columnist. Writers on sites like Kotaku and Joystiq straddle an uncomfortable line between the two, which is probably why the right answer here is so difficult to ascertain (and why it's so perfect for EA to play with).
"Their job is to report the facts of an event."
What I'm struggling toward is a reason I think that, ontologically, the fake protest and Sin to Win are events while the reception of the checks wasn't. I don't know what the word for it is. It's a personal moment that doesn't demand sharing (though, as Crecente said, there are practical reasons to have at least recorded whatever the recipient chose to do).
Badiou might help with this, or tell me I'm completely off. Ian?
I guess I can say this with certainty, at least: whether the people following the rules have the duty to distinguish between what's malicious or not, the rule system is broken if it allows somebody to game it so easily.