Gamasutra Podcast Quizzes MTV News' Totilo

Gamasutra is proud to present the latest Gamasutra Podcast, part of our regular weekly GDC Radio podcasts, which include both the Tom Kim-presented Gamasutra Podcast show, alongside the best lectures, tutorials, and roundtables from this and previous years' Game Developers Conferences. For today's show, we talk with Stephen Totilo, reporter for MTV News. Stephen is perhaps the only full-time reporter hired by a mainstream news outlet to cover games exclusively. He covers online, on-air, and broadband offerings with MTV News, as well as posting his own Player Two blog at stephentotilo.com. Newsweek General Editor N'Gai Croal calls him, "the best cultural correspondent covering games." Given Stephen's strong convictions about bringing in more enterprise and initiative into gaming news, his stories consistently define a unique perspective within the games press. We address the ongoing debate about the role of formal schooling and training in journalism, how to bring more relevance to entertainment media coverage, the power of effective reporting and the true values of journalism, the proper separation between games journalism and game development, and the need to address the curiosity and concerns about game-related cultural experiences. Stephen also talks about his editorial freedom covering gaming news outside of the traditional enthusiast press. We talk about the recent departure of more seasoned and talented games journalists from the field directly into game development or the game industry overall, and some of the possible factors behind this flight. Stephen brings up the need to feature more people in game reporting, and some of the obstacles that might apply specifically to the gaming press to cover that kind of story. And the balance between that sort of coverage and the typical reportage seen in the games press. He proposes some access to alternate coverage that he would like to see from game developers and publishers regarding more interesting ways to talk about their products to the gaming press. And how they could perhaps leverage their fans' deeper curiosity about the process and the people involved with making games to get beyond canned statements and product points. We discuss how games coverage might differ from traditional news reporting, specifically with regard to blogging and non-traditional first person writing. And lastly, we talk about what might hold games back from being a truly mainstream entertainment and how games might become more accessible to a larger audience. You can now download the Gamasutra Podcast: Interview with Stephen Totilo (.MP3, 59 minutes, 27 MB). In addition, you can subscribe to the GDC Radio podcasts by clicking this link for iTunes. You can manually subscribe to our feed in your favorite RSS reader that supports enclosures by using this URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/GDCRadio.