There’s pros and cons to that, right? You have people who are very familiar with a series, who can talk about it authoritatively. I’m sure if there was another Resident Evil game, I probably would do that, too. Then after that, because I already had pre-existing familiarity with modern Resident Evil, that meant following up from there, I did the Resident Evil 2 remake, the Resident Evil 3 remake. So I’ll give an example of how that developed: We had a situation when Resident Evil 7 came out, I believe, in 2017, where we didn’t have a lot of people who were really interested in playing a Resident Evil game, if I can be quite honest, and not because they disliked Resident Evil but because a lot of people just weren’t as familiar or comfortable with horror games. You could express interest in something, and then very often, too, it was based upon pre-existing familiarity with a series. I can’t speak authoritatively to how reviews are handed out at any other place than Kotaku. To an extent, I think Kotaku might be a little bit more unique in that aspect. SK: For Kotaku, how would reviews be determined? Was it basically you had first-not dibs, but you could choose what you’re doing and whatever you were occupied with, somebody else would take the other stuff after that? I think if I was still there, I would have had to have probably done The Last of Us or something, which would have been a lot. I was spearheading most of our Triple-A reviews. And because my job at that point had largely morphed away from reported pieces and more towards longform cultural stuff, and then also reviews. I started off as a staff writer, and then moved on to a position which was essentially a senior position, but we called it “senior writer and critic,” because, I don’t know, we could.
Heather Alexandra: Yes, about four years.
Samer Kalaf: So just to give a little background as to where your expertise is coming from: Before you were at Double Fine, you were at Kotaku for roughly four years. Our conversation is transcribed below, edited and condensed lightly for clarity. In order to get a better understanding of the issue from someone with firsthand knowledge and experience, Samer, who edited the original blog, and I spoke with Heather on a call last Thursday. In a comment under the blog, Heather raised several objections to the article’s portrayal of the games press and the role of NDAs in shaping coverage of games. Some of the most pointed and thoughtful criticism came from Heather Alexandra, a former senior writer at Kotaku (and colleague within the various companies that housed both Kotaku and Deadspin during our tenures at those publications) who now works as a content and community manager for the video game developer Double Fine. The blog angered a number of readers, including many in games journalism, who felt that I’d failed to account for the constraints and power dynamics of their industry, and in so doing had unfairly attacked powerless writers for systemic issues far beyond their control. 20, I published a blog, titled “ At Least Now You Know Which Video Game Reviewers Are Sellout Clowns,” about games journalists who’d complied with the studio CD Projekt Red’s non-disclosure agreements limiting how they could cover Cyberpunk 2077 in exchange for early access to what has turned out to be a shamefully broken product.
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