Spirit Tea with a hand reaching out to accept cash against a beige background
Another day, yet another dramatisation in gaming on social media. A lot of the drama in video games is very inside baseball; it’s interesting to people like me, but not to me personally, as I try to maintain some semblance of a life away from the never-ending conversation.
I don’t write about all the little details that aren’t worth writing about because of this, but this most recent one about the independent game Spirittea has raised a significant question in the gaming media:
who pays for what they say, and why?
First, let’s analyse what transpired. No More Robots’ company director, Mike Rose, broke down the launch of Spirittea, the company’s newest game, over a series of tweets on Twitter.
A large portion of it focused on the more mundane business aspects, like how the company got a Game Pass agreement, how it struggled on Steam but did well on Switch,
and how much money was made at launch for the game. Rose’s talk about YouTubers, tucked in the middle, was what lit the powder keg.
I wholeheartedly agree with Rose’s viewpoint in the quote above. In my opinion, content producers shouldn’t accept payment in exchange for covering games. accepting payment for blatantly obvious sponsored content or real
Indeed. However, I think that the attitude of “give me money and I will play your game” is detrimental to the industry. It’s also against the law if disclosed improperly, which is often the case. I know that’s not how everyone feels, and we’ll get into that later, but it’s important to note that Rose’s behaviour didn’t exactly make him likeable.
Rose deserves the criticism he is receiving for this attitude, in part. In a board meeting, you might bring up a few small streamers as an example of inadequate coverage, but you don’t do it in front of the streamers who helped you get support. It’s not just rude or cruel; it also significantly lowers Spirittea’s chances of receiving additional attention and ends up being an albatross for No More Robots’ upcoming game. That isn’t the primary reason Rose is being criticised, though.
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Additionally, there is the questionably ethical argument that content producers ought to be compensated for their labour. I have never received payment from the businesses, publishers, or film studios that we write about, nor have any of my colleagues.
Although it is impossible for us to be completely objective—some staff members love Zelda, while I have never played any of the games—our opinions on Zelda games are influenced by our past experiences, not money.
I am aware that creating content is not a highly compensated profession, even with Rose’s shared videos receiving 40,000 views. If you can make it to the top, it has a long, long on-ramp of very little earnings that suddenly turns into a rocket blast into another stratosphere.
However, if you are accepting payment to claim that games are fantastic without being clear about it, regardless of whether you are a cosy little farming game streamer or a toxic shooter broski, you are aggravating this space.
Numerous public relations personnel have stood up for content creators, arguing that these paid partnerships are essential to small game success. To be honest, I don’t give a damn about any game’s success, and Rose’s main argument was that Spirittea succeeded without it.
I’m sure that paying others to rave about your product encourages sales. I’m not so sure that we should support a culture where the only means of surviving is to accept payments and provide your audience with nothing but marketing.
Therefore, if the general public considers statements like “I wish Taylor Swift had released more music” and “I’m not enjoying the opening” to be reviews, then “I love Spirittea, everyone should check it out” must also qualify.
Furthermore, even though the Metacritic score is unaffected, content creators’ statements qualify as paid reviews if they are compensated for them.
A more reasonable explanation for game scores trending high than a large Sony bribe is that the majority of websites use a system to assign reviews based on which staff members are interested in the game prior to its release.
The market for content creators is here to stay, and I know a lot of amazing people who can produce both excellent game coverage and thought-provoking, hard-hitting interviews without charging a dime.
Not all content producers receive compensation, and many of them basically concur with Rose’s argument—even if it is delivered in an awkward way. However, it’s important to keep in mind
