Dennis' in-depth profile of Gerard Williams (aka The HipHopGamer) is the sort of intrepid journalism you'd more likely find in the New Yorker. Lucky for us, Dennis favors Bitmob.
I first met Gerard Williams in April of this year, the Thursday before PAX East began. I was attending the PlayStation Move event at the Colonnade Hotel in Boston and wanted to get some opinions from the crowd. I had no idea who this person was next to me with the wrestling belt and the sideways baseball cap. I assumed he was just one of the many eccentrics/lunatics I was bound to run into during the weekend’s celebration of “all things geek.” Williams was excited, exuberant, and a lot of fun to talk to, both then and when we met later during the Expo.
I bumped into him again at E3 in June. He instantly remembered me, offering a sincere handshake and a back-pound. Later, I spotted him in the Sony pavilion, up on the raised area where Sony reps were holding press appointments. I had just seen Invizimals for the PSP and recommended that he go check it out. The last thing I saw as I descended the stairs was Williams and his crew standing around the Invizimals demo, talking to the Sony rep with big smiles on their faces and gesticulating excitedly.
Williams’s enthusiasm is extremely catchy if you’re open to it. I spoke with Gamasutra’s news editor, Leigh Alexander, about Williams as she is one of his most vocal supporters in the industry. “I always look forward to seeing Gerard at events,” Alexander said, “bringing his big personality, constant enthusiasm and warm attitude; it always helps remind me of how much I really love this business.”
Not everyone shares those sentiments. I also spoke with Matthew Hawkins, a semi-regular contributor to EGM, Gamasutra, and GameSetWatch. "When it comes to professionalism, and not just as it relates to the world of video-game journalism, nothing says 'I'm here to gather information on upcoming games and interact with those in [the] gaming industry, to either ask questions or provide commentary' to me than running around a press event screaming from the top of your lungs and while wearing a wrestling belt," Wagner told me sarcastically. "Though it's often said that everyone needs a gimmick, so be it."
Williams is a lifelong New Yorker, born and raised in Brooklyn and currently residing in Queens. His mother left him at age 2, and Williams grew up with his father, brother, sister, and grandmother. He graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in 2000 and enrolled in computer science classes at New York Technical College, hoping to become a game designer. He says he carried a 4.0 GPA for a year but had to leave school in order to get a job and bring in funds for the household. A temp agency placed him in the offices of Universal Music Group/Island Def Jam, where he currently works as a mailroom supervisor in their Times Square offices.
“HipHopGamer was really supposed to be two people, HipHopGamers, me and my friend Julio,” Williams said. “When he came to the house, we just had the PlayStation Eye camera. I set it up, we had our little table, I pushed play, and we started talking about games. This was December 2007. On that video I got about 560 hits.”
Williams could be considered the point man for the democratization of video-game media. He says that his website HipHopGamerShow currently receives between six to eight million hits a month.“When you look at Joystiq or Destructoid and their numbers, it’s huge; but just because you got numbers doesn’t make something correct, or right,” Williams said. “Their site is bigger than [indie sites] – but their thoughts and opinions isn’t.”
Videogame journalists have some...interesting...tales to tell about Williams' antics at press and industry events. I asked Williams about a story I heard regarding his shouting someone down at Sony's E3 conference this year..
“We getting’ a 3D demonstration on this big-ass screen of Killzone 3," he told me. "I lose my mind, right? Everybody’s loud, everybody’s clapping, we having a good time. This Russian dude leans back, and he says ‘My God, would you shut the fuck up?’ He told me that. So, when he told me that, in my mind, I was like, ‘He said that to me?’ I was like, ‘Look you bitch ass nigger, say that shit again. I will fuck you up.' ”
“Have you ever been asked politely to keep it down and then kept it down?” I asked him.
“If you ask me politely to keep it down, hell yeah I’ll keep it down, because you showed me respect,” he said.
I’ve heard professional journalists say that they want PR reps to make sure their interview times don’t butt up against Williams’ because he’s “loud and disruptive.” Williams eagerly talked to me about exuberantly greeting industry figures he knows at trade events, but couldn't remember ever interrupting a professional interview.
"I'm actually not entirely sold of his idea that he is unaware of how polarizing and distracting his behavior is, and that perhaps it might be part of some ruse," Matthew Hawkins said. "I'm certainly not the only one who has been tempted to tell the guy to pipe down at press events but didn't want to be suckered into some stupid battle of the egos for the grand stage of the Internet. HipHopGamer vs. [insert name of your outlet]. The fact that he's attempted to 'call out' other outlets is further proof of such nonsense that most of us just don't have time for."
Threats of violence in the face of rudeness clearly isn’t acceptable, and interrupting interviews is also extremely disrespectful to anyone working a show if it's true, but Leigh Alexander finds some of these complaints about Williams problematic. “I hear a lot about how people want him to behave 'more professionally',” she said. “But I think a lot of opinions on Gerard's work fail to embrace the fact that we work in an entertainment business in which we're fortunate to have a rich cast of characters. If you go to, say, the Oscars, you're equally likely to find a business news reporter there as you are to find a gossip columnist or rogue blogger asking offbeat questions of the red carpeters, and neither one necessarily has any less right to be there than the other.”
Williams loves to boast about his relationships in the video-game industry. “I know a lot of people,” he told me. “Shit, I could call [developer] David Jaffe on my phone right now! I could call him whenever I want. And they pick up. We talk. [GameTrailers host] Geoff Keighley, that’s my dude. I spoke to him yesterday. [Analyst] Michael Pachter, that’s my boy right there. We did a killer Pach Attack at PAX.”
Perhaps Williams’ access arouses the ire of some journalists because he’s an unwelcome reminder that we’re part of an enthusiast press whose primary job at expos and press events, for better or worse, is to get the information out to the consumers. Williams does this for an audience that otherwise would go without attention. “His personal brand is quite a bit different than the games press might be used to, but I think it's important to remember that there's no arbitrary ideal to which we all need to constantly adhere,” Alexander said. “Gerard's not a news reporter, he's a culturalist and an entertainer. Further, he serves a largely different audience than we do and acts as an important ambassador for his fans.”
Dennis Scimeca is a freelance writer from Boston, MA. He has written for The Escapist and @Gamer magazine, is currently penning a feature for Gamasutra, and maintains a blog at punchingsnakes.com. Follow him on Twitter: @DennisScimeca. First Person is his weekly column on Bitmob concerned with meta questions around the video-game industry and the journalism that covers it.
