James, you're one of the good guys. Let's see how many years it takes for you to turn ;)

In all seriousness, though, this is something me and Leigh Alexander have both written about over at Gamasutra recently. Leigh's spot on: we need to get rid of the negativity between press and PR. She thinks PR needs to take the lead and allow devs to directly address the press and engage in open communication. I waver more towards thinking us press-folk just need to stop regurgitating press releases and showing PR they *can't* do that. Either way, you're right, it's a shame there's a gap that needs to be bridged.

@Lewis - The PR industry in gaming wouldn't fucking exist if that gap got bridged. It would immediately serve no purpose. There would be a community manager, maybe a few marketing people to direct emails and inquiries and do stuff for ads, but for the most part, the industry would be 5% the size it currently is. In other words, monkeys will fly from my dick and assault reindeer before those gaps are bridged.

@James - it's not a trust issue. The core design around which gaming sites are setup is fundamentally flawed to the point that we've basically enabled the sector of gaming in question to be the driving force they are between access and continued success as websites and magazines. It's the pink elephant in the room no one wants to talk about because they're afraid to lose those sweet, sweet ad-based moneyhats.

I could elaborate but talking about PR riles me up. Mostly because good games speak for themselves and in no situation has a PR person ever to have been given credit for the success or failure of a game. Marketing folks perhaps (the people that put the ads, tv commercials and exclusive coverage together - MAYBE), but even then it's a stretch. Gaming is social by nature and merely by people communicating to eachother on the internet, well, in short - PR people have the easiest job in the industry. Sorry if that's offensive, but you know, someones got to have the easiest job. :awesome:

Q1: Yes, it would really help. I prefer press releases with alot of images or presskits with the latest trailers.

Q2: Some of the press releases are too formal. I prefer a happy press release in normal words.

Q3: Sometimes it's needed to have a press release, but most of the time we get information while we already know and posted it on our website. I only use the press releases with the latest trailers, devs diary and the quotes.

I have to agree with Eric in regards to press and gaming. Some of the press people in the gaming world are amazing, but the majority of them aren't always the easiest to work with. However, I have to say they have a tough job. With the advent of Wordpress, Joomla and any other quick and easy CMS, average gamer Joe thinks he's good enough to work in the gaming press and asks Nintendo for the latest Zelda and about every other AAA game but forgets about Barbie's Pony Ride and then attacks the PR rep and we wonder why there's a gap?

The very infrastructure of PR in gaming feels entirely different than with other industries, but equally it's how well you keep your contacts and how you look after your character and reputation that makes things easier.

Everyone having a quick and easy CMS only makes it easier. In fact, I'd wager that PR people could just post a thread on Neogaf instead of sending out PR and it would be everywhere on the net within 5 minutes. Shit, they might as well use Twitter. Seriously, their job is only getting easier. As for amazing PR people - who? I want to get in touch with them. Nice PR people? Yes. PR people that are fun to drink with? Yes. But Amazing? I dunno. What does amazing mean? They write good press releases? They create more buzz than the normal PR person?

Let's be serious. Games create buzz. You could have a gibbering retard writing the press releases for Modern Warfare 2 or Halo: Reach or whatthefuckever huge game coming out and the information would still spread like wildfire. I bet you could even send out PR with typos and journos would FIX them before posting the release and never complain.

Anyone gotten the Guitar Hero PR from Red Octane. All they do is copy and paste the title GUITAR HERO® into the subject line so it reads GUITAR HEROR because Thunderbird and such doesn't translate Ascii in that particular box. I've yet to see anyone post PR about GUITAR HEROR despite it being hilarious.

An amazing PR rep is someone who can not only do their job, but does their job brilliantly and I can name two straight away Simon Callaghan, Kevin Eva of Sega Europe and Gareth Williams of BHPR. They all create a buzz around the game and the press release that's not just the standard look at our new game. They're all prompt and go out of their way to assist you when you need questions answered, outside of gaming there are two others I could mention but that's something else.

I disagree with that statement that their jobs are easier owing to this influx of half done sites. Their message is easier to convey in a literal sense (as in, here's a press release - do as you will) but in terms of managing their portfolio's of contacts, deciding who's worth getting a review game, keeping track of who's got what, who's who and the sheer volume of the sites and games that the major players have to deal with isn't something that I envy.

I disagree about BHPR simply because their emails are trash. I don't want to have to click a link to go to a site to get emails and an image. How dismally lazy.

As for Sega, well, heh. I'll concede that I don't know because I've yet to actively pursue a single person there since they'd have to release a game I wanted to cover for me to even chase after such a thing.

As for the rest, we'll just leave it at "I disagree with what you said." All you've described is people who DO their jobs versus people who don't. If simply doing their job (writing press releases, managing contacts, and following who got review copies) makes them great, well - yea, that's another topic for another time which I'll aptly name "Why can't PR just do their job half the time?" As for creating Buzz, generally that's due to the game trailers being good, the developers saying cool shit, and marketing people making sure top notch art is released. In fact, I'd say PR has very, very little to do with that. Unless we're clumping marketing and PR together - which I don't do when it comes to communicating with gaming journos.

BHPR's press linkage stuff might be mildly irritating, but they are some of the most friendly, helpful and generally nice folk working in PR, from my experience. Koch, Paradox, 505... all lovely too.

We really need a preview button, I have a feeling I'll mess up 'quote', so I'll just copy and paste:

Eric: The moment anything gets posted in one single place, it's posted everywhere on the web. It's part of the reason that exclusives for the gaming press don't really matter in the big scheme of things either. I don't really see the Press Release paradigm shifting towards going away anytime soon, but hey, might as well limit PR to 140 characters.

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Okay, what about for someone like me? I work for a studio that first moved into offices at the start of this month. If I posted a tweet trying to summarise our games' release - from a developer I doubt anyone could've heard of, I don't think anyone would read it and say "ah, I'll try and find her email address to get a review copy", or do an interview, or write a preview, or anything.

I have absolutely no idea how much I'll hear back from a press release or a single tweet, perhaps I will try both and see which generates the most results!

Edit: I hear what you're saying though, it's primarily the game itself, with trailers, footage and images that will generate the most interest. But someone needs a way to share it with the press before it spreads everywhere.

Let's be honest, new companies might actually have to be more targeted with press. But if you sent it to Kotaku, told them it was exclusive to them, and it was actually something cool, they'd post it (since, well, they'll post nearly anything). And after that, it's pretty much everywhere.

For PR, the whole busted relationship with journos just makes the job even EASIER. Sites need as many hits as they can get because they've driven themselves into a corner of monetizing on ad dollars instead of being more creative. So it's always in your best interest to target wherever people are going. A twitter for a brand new company with a new game and nearly no followers is largely pointless. But figuring that out doesn't really make the job "hard."