David B Nieborg

Maxwell Foxman

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Proceedings of 1st International Joint Conference of DiGRA and FDG 
© 2016 Authors. Personal and educational classroom use of this paper is allowed, commercial use requires 
specific permission from the author.  
The Mainstreaming of US Games Journalism 
David B. Nieborg 
University of Amsterdam 
Turfdraagsterpad 9 
1012 XT Amsterdam, NL 
David@gamespace.nl 
Maxwell Foxman 
Columbia University 
116th St & Broadway 
New York, NY 10027, USA 
mhf2012@columbia.edu 
Keywords 
journalism studies, games journalism, mainstreaming, games coverage, games industry 
EXTENDED ABSTRACT 
While a decade ago coverage of video games in the mainstream press was hardly 
guaranteed, it is difficult today to find a major daily or lifestyle magazine in the United 
States—from USA Today to The New Yorker—that is not taking games seriously. And yet 
this “mainstreaming” of games coverage has hardly come easily. Aside from the struggles 
of game critics themselves, who have acutely pointed to their tenuous and dependent 
relationship on the industry (Nieborg & Sihvonen, 2009), perhaps the most notable 
portrayal of game culture over the past years has been the Gamergate scandal—one of the 
most vitriolic chapters in games journalism (Mortensen, 2016). As a consequence, the 
mainstreaming of games journalism has given rise to critical questions concerning the 
role of the reporter. What is his/her relationship to the games industry? And, how is 
she/he shaped by the traditional practices of the press? 
Our paper is part of an ongoing investigation into contemporary modes of games 
journalism and seeks to answer these questions through an exploratory study of 
mainstream US games journalists’ coverage of both their beat and the wider industry. The 
paper draws on valuable work about the ever-changing role of arts and entertainment 
critics (e.g. Frey 2015). It also expands on previous analyses that uncovered a network of 
structural ambivalences among games critics in the enthusiast press (Foxman & Nieborg, 
2016), driven in part by its dependency on, yet in a combative relationship with, the 
industry. In this paper we argue that mainstream writers also wrestle with the ingrained 
contradictions—or “constitutive ambivalences” (Kirkpatrick 2013)—that accompany 
wider game culture. Kirkpatrick argues that these tensions—games being considered both 
harmless and pleasurable, and detrimental and addictive—are manifold and pervasive in 
shaping the “gaming imaginary.” In earlier work, we found that the games press’ 
professional identity and practices have been shaped by this persistent ambiguity. Yet, 
because of strong differences in ideological, stylistic and practical traditions, we 
hypothesize that US mainstream journalists have to confront the tensions among gamers, 
the industry and press differently in their reporting. 
 
 – 2 – 
 
First, we will ground our analysis in literature on the evolving popular coverage of digital 
games. For example, in his study of US magazine coverage of games from 1970 to 2000, 
Williams (2003, 543) documents a contradictory set of utopian and dystopian frames, 
arguing that games subsequently “passed through marked phases of vilification followed 
by partial redemption.” While this and similar studies are informative in highlighting a 
persistent ambivalence over the role of games in society, they provide a less clear vision 
of how the professional practices of traditional journalists affect their coverage of games 
and relationship to the industry. Therefore, the second part of our paper will examine how 
mainstream games reporters are contending with their unique role as advocates and 
watchdogs for the medium.  
 
What complicates our investigation is that while enthusiast writers have an extended 
tradition of meta-criticism and self-reflection in their publications, this seems mostly 
absent in mainstream reporting. As a consequence, we will probe the professional 
practices of contemporary conventional coverage by surveying the work itself. In 
particular, our study targets “journalistic” rather than “critical” coverage of the games 
industry and culture—centering on articles produced in mainstream US outlets from 2014 
through 2015, covering the rise of the Gamergate movement and the development of the 
Oculus Rift virtual reality display. We will analyze these events through a discourse 
analysis of articles from the most popular US online newspaper publications, recognizing 
the press as an institution that produces “specific kinds of images of… gaming” (Wirman, 
2016); we will supplement our qualitative findings with a quantitative content analysis of 
the same publications. These texts, which result from the occupational tasks of reporters, 
contain “standard elements” (Kovach & Rosenstiel 2011) of journalistic practice and 
provide insight into the mainstream perspective of the industry and game culture.  
 
Particularly as the games industry diversifies its business models and becomes more 
global in scale, scope and influence, game culture is already part of ordinary life.  
Understanding how journalists meet the challenge of conveying its importance to the 
wider public is now more warranted than ever before. 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
Foxman, Maxwell & David B. Nieborg. 2016. Between a Rock and a Hard Place: 
Games Coverage and its Network of Ambivalences. Journal of Games 
Criticism. 1(3). http://gamescriticism.org/articles/foxmannieborg-3-1. 
Frey, Mattias. 2015. The Permanent Crisis of Film Criticism: The Anxiety of 
Authority. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. 
Kirkpatrick, Graeme. 2013. Computer Games and the Social Imaginary. Malden, 
MA.: Polity Press. 
Kovach, Bill, and Tom Rosenstiel. 2001. The Elements of Journalism: What 
Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect. New York: Crown. 
Mortensen, Torill E. 2016. “Anger, Fear, and Games: the Long Event of 
#GamerGate.” Games and Culture, 1–20. doi:10.1177/1555412016640408. 
Nieborg, David B, and Tanja Sihvonen. 2009. “The New Gatekeepers: The 
Occupational Ideology of Game Journalism.” Paper presented at DiGRA 2009 – 
Breaking New Ground, Brunel University, London, UK. 
Williams, Dmitri. 2003. “The Video Game Lightning Rod.” Information, 
Communication & Society 6 (4): 523–50. 
Wirman, Hanna. 2016. “Sinological-Orientalism in Western News Media: Caricatures 
of Games Culture and Business.” Games and Culture 11 (3): 298–315. 


The Mainstreaming of US Games Journalism

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The Mainstreaming of US Games Journalism

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