IGN "Journalist" is Married to Nintendo PR Vice President
One of the reasons I started a blog was to talk about the videogame press so even though I don't have a whole lot of interest in this story at the moment (Christmas and all), I feel I need to mention it. So what's the deal? The deal is that IGN's Matt Casamassina is married to the vice president of Nintendo's public relations firm. Some say this is old news even though I just found out about it, but old or not it's still shady.
The fact that gamers say they knew and didn't care is the real story in my opinion. Unless you're completely ignorant about the subject of ethics, full disclosure, conflict of interest and journalistic integrity you know their relationship wouldn't sit well with any real news organization, but many gamers seem to know and still do not care. It's like gamers (sad gamers), have turned these guys into celebrities that they worship and can do no wrong.
The second comment on the site who posted about this is literally "who cares". It's sad, really sad. You would think that people, of any age, would take the integrity of publications that they depend on to buy expensive games seriously. If I'm spending $50 on a product I sure as hell am going to make sure the opinion I'm getting can be trusted - especially when it's supposed to be a professional, unbiased experienced opinion.
But Like I've said many times gamers just don't give a shit, and that's one of the reasons why I didn't even feel like writing about this. I am thoroughly convinced that a videogame press persona like Matt could announce, with much fanfare, that they are getting paid by publishers to write positive reviews and few, if any, would bat an eye. In fact I'm sure his loyal followers (those sad gamers again), would defend him.
This disgusting apathy is why the videogame press makes no attempt to clean up their act, and just thumb their nose at us when shady crap like this comes up.
