Games Journalists Could Learn A Lesson From IGN’s The Last Guardian Report

EGMR writes: "I’m sure you’re a PlayStation or Team Ico fan your depression might have reached somewhere near maximum when IGN appeared to confirm that The Last Guardian had been cancelled. IGN allegedly got this from one of its credible sources who had inside information at Sony. After the initial blow-up of this story, Sony’s Scott Rohde quickly moved to tweet that the news was false, which made the initial sad tears turn to angry tears directed at IGN – and rightfully so. This prompted IGN to issue a public apology for what had transpired. While we can all anxiously move on and wait for some kind of announcement from Sony, I feel that I’d like to talk about a few things relating to the issue and explain why I believe IGN were out of line, and talk about the implications of what happened."

[NYC_Gamer]

journalism is broken because many sites only care about being first to break news/site traffic...IGN being one of the biggest sites around have the option to get in direct contact with publishers and etc to confirm info...It's sad when being first becomes more important than reporting 100% facts.

[djplonker]

Ign usually take atleast 2 days to report something I have read on n4g!

the cod ghosts resolution rumour was one of those I can remember it took atleast 3 days from n4g reporting to ign making an artical!

[gamerfan0909]

They reached out to sony for confirmation and sony didn't answer. They ran the story and then retracted. Nothing to see here. I'll take iGN's journalism chops over dualshockers or N4G any day of the week.

[rdgneoz3]

Then why say "officially" when it's only a rumor? Officially would mean that Sony confirmed it.

And with the N4G comment, why make an 13 days ago and then post about 10 comments a day?

[Moe-Gunz]

Say what you want about Dualshokers and N4G, but they at least mark "insider" info as "rumor or insider". They don't say "officially" which is just wrong.

[SpiralTear]

That's the problem when you're producing media through a format so instantaneously accessible like the internet. It's not like newspapers or TV where you can take some time to fact-check while printing the paper or editing the video packages. The internet's so fast, so being first is all the more important to journalism outlets.

However, I'm not necessarily happy with that mentality. I think IGN jumped that gun way too far and no apology can erase what they did.

[3-4-5]

People just want to APPEAR as though they are correct, instead of taking the time to make sure they ACTUALLY are correct.

[Ballsack]

ign are arrogant and believe their shit don't stink...and show blatant biasness at times that you are left gobsmacked

journalists just need to be real gamers not show favouritism to one particular console and be fair ...and you will be everything ign isn't

[yewles1]

Gamers could potentially learn a lesson as well, depending on how E3 turns out.

[gamerfan0909]

They had a leak and they went with it, period. I don't see anything wrong with what they did. If you find something wrong with what they did, then you find something wrong with all mainstream journalism. I find it funny N4G is posting about journalism ethics when you mods post the most flamebait, fanboy driven, non factual gaming websites journalism around. Preach to yourselves before you preach to IGN.

[Tody_ZA]

If you read the article, you'd see it was said that there was nothing wrong with posting the leak whatsoever. But saying it is "official" and The Last Guardian is "officially cancelled", based on information got from an insider/source/leak, is flat out wrong.

Have you stopped to think that if IGN has issued an official apology, then they actually did make a mistake? And they themselves admit that?

[rdgneoz3]

"I don't see anything wrong with what they did"

If they called it a rumor or said "inside source" it would have been fine, there are tons of "insider information" articles every day. However, they went and said it was "official."

[Ron_Danger]

Ummm... N4g doesn't write articles. All n4g is is a collection of USER SUBMITTED articles that each have their own comment section. Anything that is posted in n4g is here because a user posted it.

[Jamiex66]

I see both sides, the way they worded the initial headline really caused all the trouble. Simply stating it was a report, or rumour would have stopped the whole thing from being blown out of proportion.

Either way, they apologised and that should be the end of it. Everyone makes mistakes and they obviously took for credit for theirs. Power to them.

[MrDead]

Speculation, rumours and opinion pieces get hits which is all these sites care about. The truth is normally quite boring.

[Infinity_Rasta]

with 8 years running it's cloosing in on Duke Nukem for longest running "is it real?" game.

[dmonee]

F "The Last Guardian". Gamers are over this already.