I’m not too much on Kamiya’s side, but I’m surely against Kotaku and
this cheap journalism trend
Take a look at another tweeting sessions becoming news, this time from 1UP
http://www.1up.com/news/resident-evil-bayonetta-creator-brush
The moment I saw Kamiya comments about Steam, I was like: “Man, I’d
hate if someone turned my comments into a piece of news without
talking with me before”. It’s just good journalism to contact the
person and ask them about their comments, providing clarification
Just see how Kotaku screwed up on this FireFly MMO report, calling it
fake without even talking with its creators
http://kotaku.com/5974538/the-planned-firefly+inspired-mmo-is-real-its-some-fans-labor-of-love
Kamiya was being rude, but if he didn’t actually read the article, it
might look like a western website saying: “Hahaha, look at those
clueless japanese developers”.
I talked with him and he answered with this
https://twitter.com/PG_kamiya/status/289332970286903296
Imagine you are walking down the road to your house, and you hear strange noises. You look up to see a couple having sex on the roof of their house. You take out your phone and start filming it just to have evidence as people would not believe you if you told them you saw your neighbors in a session of carnal congress on the rooftop.
A journalist was also nearby with a pencil and notepad. He writes down about the rooftop copulating and creates a news story of it.
If the couple suddenly got embarrassed and demanded that the journalist talk to them first before making the story, the journalist would just laugh and for good reason. What they were doing was in the public arena. The job of the journalist is to have a notepad and pencil walking about and writing about things that happen that are of interest to readers.
Many people do not understand that the Internet is a public arena. If you stupidly place all your private information on the public, you may be legally considered a public persona, and you lose certain rights that private citizens have. In other words, things can be said about a famous person (even untrue things), and the famous person cannot legally respond to it. It’s like calling a politician a poop head.
What you say on Twitter and Facebook is considered the public arena. This is why the Diablo 3 director got in trouble when he said on Facebook that that Diablo 2 guy criticism was ‘F that loser’. He may have intended that to be a private comment said to his team members. But it was heard publicly. Jay Wilson had to apologize as what he says publicly represents his company and his team.
The difference between good journalism and bad journalism is very simple. Good journalism means reporting stuff that is actually true. Bad journalism means reporting stuff that are lies. An example of bad journalism was that story, a while back, that said that Nintendo had ‘declared war on Apple’ within executive team meetings. It wasn’t true. Nintendo called the paper out on it. Paper didn’t care.
Quoting someone accurately of something said in a public arena is good journalism. Whether or not one considers the Twitter comments of a game developer to be news or not is an editorial decision about whether this is a story or not.
I would consider it BAD if Kotaku went and asked permission of Kamiya to use a PUBLIC QUOTE of his. The gaming press are not the public relations for game developers. If a game developer is saying stupid things, that is the fault of the game developer. The integrity of the press is to accurately quote (which Kotaku did).
Let’s return to the original complaint. Kotaku wrote that Kamiya was ‘clueless’ about the Internet. I have yet to hear anyone on the Internet say this is untrue. Doesn’t Kamiya’s behavior argue that he is clueless about the Internet? I was really struck when he started saying ‘foreigners’ because they aren’t foreigners. They are in their own home country. The Internet isn’t local. The Internet is international. I’m in my home country so I could not be considered ‘foreigner’ by any context. Now, if I left my country and went to Japan, THEN I would be a foreigner.
Kotaku is an English organization so they write for English readers (Kotaku’s audience is not in Japan). It is fine and proper for a paper with an English audience to write from that perspective. I would expect a Japanese website to write from a Japanese perspective.
This story is still going on. Why? I’m scanning the message forums, and my impression is that people find something unsettling, something they can’t place their finger on. They know the Kamiya’s comments aren’t good, and they have an urge to blame Kotaku for something (to the absurdity that accurately quoting what a game developer says in a public arena is bad). And then, bizarrely, talk of ‘racism’ whiffs through the lines of the message forum like bad gas.
Kamiya doesn’t surprise me. He is actually acting very typical of what I’ve come to see of that part of the world. It is definitely a cultural issue.
North America and South America are immigrant areas of the world. Your nationality is where you are born. If you were born in America (and mostly lived there), your nationality is ‘American’. Same in Mexico, Canada, and as I can tell within the South American countries.
But not Asia.
Two Chinese people having a baby in America would make that baby ‘American’. But two Chinese people having a baby in Russia would NOT make that baby ‘Russian’. That baby’s nationality would be ‘Chinese’ is Russia’s eyes.
There are certain Asian nations that are very difficult for Westerners to penetrate. I know people who have tried very hard to immigrate there. They aren’t allowed. “But they are so nice and polite.” Of course they are. They see you as rich tourist where they will happily take your money. But move there, get a job that could go to one of the natives, and vote within their system? No way.
It’s just a difference of the Old World and the New World.
If I was the judge, say this guy:
I would see Kotaku being piled on because they said a game developer was ‘clueless’ about the Internet (something I say everyday).
Then I would see the game developer cussing and hurling insults in Japanese.
Then I would stroke my chin and say, “That’s all there is to this? This is all what Kotaku said? That he was ‘clueless’? And then when the controversy started, they edited out the clueless and stepped forward to try to cool hostilities?”
Yes, that is what happened, the people would say.
And then I would tilt my head and say, “And the game developer kept cussing, hurling insults, and essentially continued being hostile?”
Yes, that cannot be denied, would be the answer.
“This is a pretty good example of ‘The Woman Doth Protest Too Much’. It seems like being seen as ‘clueless’ about the Internet pressed his buttons.”
But what about the people trolling Kamiya’s twitter?
“It sounds like they are trying to push Kamiya’s buttons as well.”
I think it is funny. And I think the people who are uncomfortable with the encounter, who are confusingly trying to pin the tail of racist on Kotaku, are getting a clue of how they truly think over in Japan. It confuses them because it is contrary to what they have been taught and the images they have seen. Since they don’t want to process what the contradiction means, they are trying to imagine that Kotaku was mean spirited or did something wrong to provoke such hostility.