Joe Danger Dev Addresses Games Media Sensationalism

In a cheekily-titled column for Edge, Hello Games’ Sean Murray (one of the guys behind PSN title Joe Danger) has addressed the problem of over-sensationalism in games reporting.

He talks a little about the Cliffski vs Mark Rein affair, relaying some positive experiences he’s had with Rein and noting that he “seems to be the only big development name who actually attends most of the talks at game convention.”

After this, he explores why his Develop Conference talk was reduced by almost every gaming site to a single XBLA “slaughterhouse” comment (which, in fact, was made during questions after Murray’s main presentation.)
“On the plus side I was suddenly being quoted lots of places, and Joe Danger sold 2.3 times more copies that day,” Murray says “On the down side it’s a soundbite that doesn’t really make much sense without the previous hour of statistics, facts and context.”

“The actual theme of my talk was that indies are totally awesome on PSN and XBLA. Which I think is really valid and interesting,” says Murray. At which point we can do a little self-congratulation and note that the IncGamers coverage was largely slanted in this fashion.

“Whenever I write anything for the press, I genuinely have to be really careful to make sure it can’t be summed up in a clickable “interesting” sentence, because if it can, then that’s all anyone will see.”