Game Journalism in the naughties...

“I’ve heard like rumors of games journalism, pre Gamergate, before everyone was online and we had easy access to each other. I’ve heard a lot of stories that networking was done in strip clubs and stuff.

“Is that actually real? Did that actually happen?”

This was the wonderful question posed by to (former IGN EIC) Hilary Goldstein by (indie game designer) Sophie Artemigi when we gathered to record a pilot of [forthcoming games industry podcast]. Things got dark quick...

“I’ve had people say, ‘Oh, you should try to go on a trip to Japan to see one of [Developer]’s games because he’ll take you out and buy you hookers.’” Hilary responded. But he was just warming up.

“Midway’s gone, so I can talk about Midway. We were at that Midway event, which they always did an event in Vegas - I went to Vegas and New York so many times for free - and they gave people poker chips and I was like, ‘I don’t think you’re allowed to buy the journalists…’ and they’re like ‘Whatever!’ There was drugs and there was… it was ‘Whatever!’”

The full weight of having all these experiences paid for didn’t hit Hilary until after he had transitioned from being a courted games journalist to an insider on the marketing team for some of the biggest game publishers in the world.

“I’ll say the worst thing in my life is when I left journalism and I paid to go on a trip to New York. It was the first time I’ve been to New York and actually spent my own money on it.

“I didn’t realize how expensive New York was. It was soooooooooooooo expensive. I was like ‘Oh, let’s go to Peter Luger!’ which is this famous steak joint. And my eyes watered when I saw the bill. I was like, ‘I can’t expense this?’ It was heartbreaking.”

It wasn’t all drugs and sex workers, sometimes PR events were motivated by flush expense account and a desire to just have some fun.

“Ubisoft made like a Lost game. And I remember the publicist asked ‘What should we do? You’re a big fan of Lost, right?’

“And I answered, ‘Well obviously we should all go to Hawaii! And meet the cast! And go to the set!’ And they were like, ‘Yeah, let’s do it!’

“And then there was a writers strike, so we didn’t get to actually do it. But that’s the kind of stuff where it’s literally a publicist is like, ‘I got a bunch of money… the banks are always open… what can I do?’

Yeah… it was totally unhinged like in the early two thousands.”

And from there our conversation took an even darker turn, which I might share over the next week or two.

Sophie and Hilary were so fun to hang out with, I can’t wait to unleash our weekly news show on y’all…