Overthrow the "Doritocracy"?

Caution: Increased use of "Quotation Marks". Read at your "own risk".


Today I saw this article on Gaming Blend, which referenced this article from Gamasutra, offering Indie Devs tips and tricks towards getting their games noticed and covered in online media such as review sites, blogs, etc. The Gamasutra article was innocuous in itself, it gathered information from small sites and big ones alike, and was seemingly helpful in it's message, but somebody at Gaming Blend seemed to think it wasn't so.

As you can see in the article, he went on a generic tirade of criticisms of mainstream games, along with a reference to last year's "Doritosgate" debacle with a claim that the "Doritocracy" run games media.
Look at that sentence and tell me that this isn't the stupidest thing you've read today.

"Doritosgate" opened a lot of people's eyes in terms of the privileges that some of the games media get for being involved, and there was huge amounts of talk surrounding issues like ethics in terms of reviewing something that PR companies have given you a bunch of free stuff for. It's a tired subject which all got worked out last year, and many big sites now have ethics policies in terms of letting PR pay for travel, giving goodies and such other benefits that can affect the score of a game.

Think about the average "indie" release, and think about the audience that sites like IGN and Kotaku commands. Think about the type of games they play, then come back to me and tell me whether IGN coverage on a indie game is much use. Of course all coverage is good coverage, even if the only reason people are talking about your indie game is because yolo#420blaze in the comments section says "it's for fags", and TroLLWR3K3R agrees. But think of the audiences that the sites cater to. Of course, big fat AAA games are going to be sponsored by stuff, and those things will be advertised in tandem with the games ect. it's how advertising works, and it's not going away any time soon, so why not live with it?

If some "college dude" is browsing IGN and he sees a review of, for example, Dungeons of Dredmore, what will he do? will he go and drop the price of several nights out with his friends for a PC and the game? Or will he simply click away and forget? It's like Mr Gaming Blend there forgot the entire point of the Gamasutra article in an effort to seem edgy by piling a lot of problems on this ludicrous "Doritocracy" term he's invented.

I just want to let it be known that there are lots of sites which will cover your game, if you've done a good job of getting the word out, they'll come to you, if not, feel free to go talk to them. it is true that editors have a lot of emails each day, but as long as you've got something good, something unique, there's no reason why they should ever pass you up. Games media has never been run by the flipping "Doritocracy", perhaps they coexist, collaborate occasionally, don't tar the hundreds of sites, and games journalists that do not do this with the same cheese dust covered brush.