Get outta here, you greasy game journalist!

Frustration is a natural byproduct of a modern life — for a lot of us human existence in the 21st century is just an endless, stressful race to the top, and we’re bound to slip over the edge into complete batshit insanity once in a while. With so much going on, we’d go nuts even if we didn’t interact with the other lovely humans inhabiting the planet, but when someone else’s negligence, failure or general idiocy is the cause of your batshit insanity… well… things tend to get a bit heated. One of the first lessons we learn in business, though, is to not let one’s emotions take control; frustrated as you may be, you should be taking time to think about the long-term implications of any outburst. “Will this come back to bite me in the ass?” should be the first question out of your mouth… and if you’re asking yourself that question, you should probably sit on the email, phone call or bar-of-soap-in-a-tube-sock beatings.

So allow me to digress for a moment. Video game PR is a rare breed — up there with the film industry — in that PR reps largely control the media landscape. That’s no secret, of course; most reviews are based on game copies provided by publishers, preview opportunities are usually a valuable commodity exchanged for some sort of premium placement and are often subject to embargoes that help coverage fall in line with marketing efforts, and countless sites just re-post press releases verbatim. This is a gross generalization, I realize, as there are a lot of great sites and journalists out there that go the extra mile to generate original content that wasn’t pushed by a PR rep — coincidentally a lot of these guys came from a traditional journalism background. But largely it’s the publishers that determine where and when their games get coverage, and in almost all cases the coverage is closely controlled to be positive.

The seedy underbelly of the games industry exposes itself. When a journalist goes rebels and does something as recklessly disrespectful and anti-gaming as write a negative article about a game or publisher, a lot of PR reps and executives forget that golden rule and do something so unimaginably dumb in times of duress that I just can’t wrap my batshit insane head around it: they put that journalist on their blacklist. This list may not actually exist as such — I’d love to meet a PR rep ballsy enough to have a Games_PR_Blacklist.xls file on his or her desktop — but at the very least it’s a big mental note that said journalist is to never, ever (EVER) be treated like a real human being so long as he lives. Forget about review copies, forget about invites to the E3 demo, forget about the lavish press tour and accompanying open bar.

While not always the case, most blacklisting is decreed from high up in the corporate structure, not from the PR team. After all, it’s the PR team’s job to get as much coverage as possible — big, positive coverage, of course — while ensuring that journalists love them and their company/client. When your intimidating, power-tripping, fancy-car-driving boss comes running into your office yelling, “How the fuck did you let this happen?! You’ll pay for this!” after a not-so-flattering review, it might seem like an affront to common sense to look him in the eye and say, “you know, I worked really hard on this campaign, really respect my relationship with this journalist and feel he makes some good points about our shitty game, so please stay out of my business.” That’s really what the reaction should be, though.

It shouldn’t be a yes-sir-I-shall-do-my-job kind of thing — you, the PR rep, want this journalist to cover your games in the future, right? What if you leave the company? What if your boss gets fired and new management has a good relationship with that writer? Forever you’ll be the jackass PR rep that had to repeatedly respond to the journalist with something like, “we don’t have any review code available” or “your invite must have been lost in the mail.” A PR professional’s most valuable asset is the contact list (a nice rack doesn’t hurt, as evidenced by yours truly)… or rather the relationships with the people on that contact list, and that fact should always be in the back of your mind. Always.

Sure, it’d be nice if we could live in China — they have a national journalist blacklist… we wouldn’t have to do the dirty work ourselves, and the journalists could be mad at someone else when they’re denied a coverage opportunity. But if there’s anything to be learned from China (or Iran or any other communications-controlling nation) it’s that if there’s a message that needs to get out there, it’ll get out. Social media — rise of Facebook and Twitter, yadda yadda — has connected people in such a way that any sort of negative story will spread just as quickly or faster than a positive one. Blacklist a journalist — or better yet, an entire website (I’d link to examples, but I do have to make a living by pitching publishers) — and word is likely to get out. A writer will put up a blog post, he’ll link it on Twitter and within a day you’re on the front page at Kotaku and Joystiq and Rock, Paper, Shotgun and GameSetWatch and Fidgit and EVERYWHERE.

So blacklisting was a good idea, right? The PR rep sacrifices a relationship with a journalist; the PR rep hates his boss a bit more; the publisher no longer gets coverage on a major website; and potentially, if that journalist is just batshit insane enough, the blacklisting actually becomes a negative PR story of its own, far worse than a 6.5 out of 10 review of a game that was supposed to get 8s.

I’ve had to blacklist people in an agency capacity — it’s been a couple of years, but it’s happened. I fought it, trying valiantly to convey the notion that the writer really made valid points (sometimes you guys really don’t help with this, by the way — play the damn game!). Conveniently, it’s usually been at the request/demand of a single client, so I’ve been able to maintain my relationships with other products… it’s a nice little loophole that’s kept me from looking like an asshole and gaining more enemies than I really need. I’m sure I’ll have to refuse review copies at some point in the future because my client/employer doesn’t like a journalist or website… but damn, I’m scared of things coming back to bite me in the ass. Wired’s Chris Anderson famously hit back at inept PR reps by creating a blacklist of his own, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we’re just building up slowly to some sort of armageddon for games-industry PR pros, when journalists just band together and say, “we’re running the show now” and create some sprawling online PR-rep blacklist. They’ll block our email addresses, screen our calls and throw out our party invites. They’ll dictate the coverage, they’ll write negative previews before a game ships, they won’t post shitty screenshots and lame hype trailers. And the PR professionals of the world will sit there, scratching our heads, wondering how journalists could have become so frustrated with us.

Yes, please.

Ah, the economy. Obama was supposed to fix it, but amazingly, even Superpresident himself can’t halt a global economic freefall in 100 days. Too bad, for a sound and stable economy would have made last Wednesday a little more enjoyable for me… or maybe a bit less chaotic. You see, the state of the economy is to blame for some layoffs we had to make at CD Projekt RED — we didn’t have to fire hundreds or thousands of people like a lot of other companies did, but nevertheless we were affected. Those layoffs spawned at least one disgruntled employee who felt the need to reach out to media to expose what was/is a very fragile situation in the development of The Witcher: Rise of the White Wolf.

On Tuesday I started getting emails about it: “I heard the game was cancelled; any comment?” The source of the rumor was a reputable Polish website, once again proving that no matter where news happens, it will eventually find its way to the masses; good job, Internet. As a communicator, this is a pretty crummy situation. I knew in general terms what was happening behind the scenes — namely that development had been suspended because we weren’t confident that the game could be delivered on time at the level of quality we require. But making a statement to that effect takes a lot of planning — you have to consider legal situations (i.e. we’re just the developer and can’t make any sort of announcement without the publisher’s consent), timing, exact phrasing, etc.

So normally all of this stuff should be settled through proper business channels, and we were content to let that happen. We had to pull out one of my least favorite tactics in the Grand Ol’ Book of PR Tactics — the “no comment” — but within a few days the story would surely become less newsworthy, allowing us to craft a proper statement. Then on Wednesday morning, our development partner actually issued a press release and conducted interviews laying blame for the situation on us.

Weeeeeeeeeee! is the sound that spewed from my mouth and every other orifice — some sort of gaseous escape caused by sudden panic and my insides going, “ah shit, man.” I’m not sure why it happened, but nevertheless the headlines of “Witcher not seeing consoles because CD Projekt can’t pay developers” weren’t sitting well with any of us. I had to keep offering up “no comment” responses to the accusations, even as the full extent of the development situation became clearer to me. Compound my inability to make a statement with the fact that discussions about the situation were taking place halfway around the world in Poland, where the rest of CD Projekt is based… and, well, I wasn’t having a great day.

This is one of the greatest dilemmas in a PR rep’s day — you have journalists, many of whom are friends, asking you to respond to rather unsavory accusations, and you can’t give them a straight answer. Then the stories — rightfully so — turn to “Company will not deny the rumors, leading us to believe they’re true.” And now, as a PR rep, you’re in a position you don’t want to be in: other people are controlling your messaging for you. It sucks to watch people drag your name through the mud… even consumers who see only one side of the story start to change their opinions of your company. And even if you have a chance to eventually address the rumors formally, a number of those consumers are bound to miss the news update, and their opinion of your organization may have been negatively affected forever.

Case in point: we still haven’t made a formal statement about the situation. CD Projekt’s Joint CEO, Michal Kicinski, posted a response in the comment section one of the original stories, and a number of sites went back and adjusted their posts to reflect our side of things. But not all of them. I’m sure there are still a lot of journos out there that haven’t seen his comment, and those journalists’ readers, by extension, still have a very one-sided view of the situation.

Crisis communication isn’t fun. What it does, though, is give us a quick kick in the ass and test our ability to keep cool. It would be so easy to just blast an email to my media contacts or put up a post on a forum explaining the whole situation. But that would be stupid, right?

Surprisingly, not an acceptable qualification for video game PR work.

Before we all get too deep into the details and theories of PR and marketing, I wanted to thank Tom for setting all this up.  He’s got a nice group of PR, marketing and media people involved here – many of whom I’ve worked with before in some capacity – so I /clap for him for doing this and thank him for including me.

I’ll spare you the details of my bio in this post – you can read all about me on my company site HERE or by clicking on my name on the right side of this page… suffice to say, I’m not only brilliant, I’m also incredibly good looking.

I’d like to start off by jumping a bit deeper into an “overview” topic that sprang out of my Twitter update yesterday:

“Being successful in video game PR is about being REALLY into PR, not video games; loving games is what turns the job into a career.”

Because of the writing that I do both on my personal blog (prflak.wordpress.com) and on the official Maverick PR site (mavpr.com) [beware of that shameless plug], I get a pretty solid stream of email from aspiring video game PR professionals from around the world who are interested in learning more about how the industry works and what you need to do to be successful.  It’s a real pleasure to share my advice and thoughts with them and I was really thinking of them when I made that Twitter update as a reminder as they move forward.

Given the list of contributors on this site, I’m pretty sure we have experienced very similar reactions from strangers when we inevitably tell them what we do for work.  Let me demonstrate with a short scene:

ME: Me?  Oh, I do PR for video games.

THEM: PR?

ME: Ya, you know… Public Relations.  Essentially… I… promote video games.

THEM: Oh, awesome!  So you get to play all the games before they come out and, like, make the game?

ME: No, no.  I work to get press to write things about the games. Hopefully nice things.  I call and email people. I visit offices and events and show off games before they come out.  Then, press write about the game.

THEM: Oh… that’s cool… Huh… it must be awesome to get paid to play games all day long!

Yikes, I guess it's too soon to make Vick dog jokes?

This happens on an almost weekly basis.  People have about as much understanding of “PR for Video Games” as Michael Vick has an understanding of “Human Decency.”  Oh snap! I went there!

Part of me wants to think that it’s willing misunderstanding; that people hear “games” and just want to think “fun.”  And our work, for the most part, is fun, but if someone told me they did PR for the Celtics, I wouldn’t say “Wow! It must be awesome to shoot around with Paul and KG before every game!!”

Most of the people who email me for advice are legitimate PR/marketing students who just want to work with products that interest them.   And that’s an important goal for any career – work with something that interests you.  But I do occasionally get emails from people just looking to “get into video games” because they love Halo or they’re a really active forum leader or they have a Guild and they’re thinking “Wait a minute, I can talk about games… maybe I can just get into PR and play games all day and eventually become a designer!”

To these people, my Twitter update was a wake up call — video games is a business like any other.

You need to work hard, produce results and excel at your craft.

You need to execute against a plan and fulfill measurable objectives.

You need to work within a budget and utilize creativity in ways that provide a tangible return on your investment of time and resources.

You need to strategically plan information reveals, exclusives, previews, reviews, features and more with multiple press segments and niche vertical publications over the course of 8-18 months and then fulfill that plan while updating it nearly weekly along the way.

Oh, and by the way… the game needs to perform strongly on Trax and Metrics AND reach sell-through targets set by sales and executives.

That’s about as far from sitting in a room playing video games all day as you can get.  One of the first things out my mouth to kids who ask about how to get into the industry is: Go to college.  Get good grades.  Be the best student in your class.  Take an internship in consumer products.  Then think about getting into the VG industry by entering your chosen field.

But don’t get me wrong — as I’ve said before, in this industry, playing video games – both the one you’re working on and competitive titles – is critical to becoming a true success.  Here’s what I said in a previous blog post on MavPR.com:

I know, there are PR people out there who say “I’m a PR person first, not a developer.  Show me a product and I can promote it; I don’t need to be able to actually play it.”  To that, I politely say BULLSHIT.

If you aren’t playing the game as well as competitive titles, you are not going to be a great video game PR person.  I wouldn’t hire you… in fact, I would fire you.  You’re doing just enough to complete the job rather than trying to excel.

My general rule of thumb is… if I’m on a PR trip and my producer becomes ill, am I confident that I can demo the game myself and be effective? Can I execute the key moves, finish the entire level without dying (without cheats), and talk at length about game details and competitive advantages? If the answer is yes, you’re on top of things, if you aren’t sure – you aren’t playing enough.

The bottom line is this:  if you don’t play your own game then you’re more full of shit than PR people are generally accused of.  And yes – I’m looking at YOU… oh, you know it, don’t you?

So remember – be a MARKETER or PUBLIC RELATIONS PROFESSIONAL first.  Be prepared to constantly learn from others, tweak the way you plan and execute, and refine your abilities.

The fact that you are working on video games should not be the end goal, it should be the supportive inspiration that helps to drive you to become the best PR or Marketing person you can be.

If anyone has any thoughts or stories of applicants, share ‘em here.  I know there are funny ones out there.

- PR_Flak