Betting it's not him but his publisher. There is a massive industry dedicated to this sort of guerrilla marketing these days. If a company of a certain size is putting out a press release they will coordinate to have seemingly-unrelated articles show up in various news sources (think New Yorker but also, like, ArsTechnica, or even the HN frontpage.) Even though the articles aren't technically ads, they get the name out there so it's on people's minds, making them more susceptible to hearing about/engaging with the news.

I've seen this happen internally at my last employer, but have the impression that it's standard operating procedure in corporate marketing these days. It is quite gross and I'd like to see it banned wholesale (or at least the relationship should be mandatorily disclosed). But... we would need to believe as a country in regulating ourselves to do that.

The idea that arts criticism is somehow 'guerilla marketing' is such a deeply cynical, HN brain take. Of course the people who make things want to get the word out about what they're doing. But The New Yorker doesn't collude with PR agencies to promote things. It's news when people make new things; that's literally the whole idea in coverage of the arts. Is it really your position that when a movie, game or book is reviewed in The New Yorker it's because some PR person told them to? Chris Bryd is a well-respected games journalist, not some industry shill. He's probably wanted to write about this topic for years, and the forthcoming game is part of what makes the profile newsworthy right now.

Anyway if you believe arts criticism is 'quite gross' and want it banned, what does that world look like? Should people who make things not be allowed to tell publications about it? Will there be a cone of silence around new games?

You misunderstand. I'm not being cynical: it really actually does work this way. I'm describing a thing that I have seen happen from the inside.

Paul Graham wrote about it here: https://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

I get your view, read the essay years ago and we agree on the facts. I'm a journalist who gets 5-10 PR junk PR pitches a day. I don’t pitch stories from PR hacks--I pitch and write about the stuff I think is interesting and important. If I got an awesome pitch from a PR person tomorrow about something like that, why wouldn't I pursue the story?

I fully acknowledge the PR industry exists but to suggest that coverage of a beloved indie game creator by one of my industry's most respected reporters is somehow paid off or inauthentic because PR exists is such a leap. As I said earlier he's probably been trying to write about the Stanley Parable for years.

I also have firsthand experience of people I know at startups believing that their PR firm 'bought' them coverage. But if you read Paul's essay again he's careful to acknowledge that the service good PR firms are able to provide is that they can connect with journalists for stories not because of some shady undisclosed loyalty but because the PR people bring them interesting topics.

That's just how the news works dude. You can just call them and say "hey I have something for you to write about". If it's interesting and/or you already have a relationship, which their publisher likely does, it's pretty easy to get an article written.

Sure? I don't have to like it.

You don't like that people are telling "the news" that there's something new? The world is your oyster.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say they dislike the manufactured hype.

What here is manufactured?

Nah, I dislike the thing I was talking about. You are choosing to misunderstand me, but I have no idea why.

You said you don't like it when things are marketed/written about. Why? That's the point of "news".

The new yorker wasn't tricked into marketing his game, they make marketing articles like this all the time. I feel like 9 times out of 10 when I see an article on HN it's some barely disguised ad for a book masked as a human interest story. (PG has a blog post about this.)

It's fascinating to see how far the pendulum has swung since those days. Maybe there is no place for honest writing anymore, as he described it, in the blogs of that era, which suffered the same issues of PR and monetization.

> At the other extreme are publications like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Their reporters do go out and find their own stories, at least some of the time. They'll listen to PR firms, but briefly and skeptically. We managed to get press hits in almost every publication we wanted, but we never managed to crack the print edition of the Times.

I wonder if this holds true.

It is true, but sometimes in an evil way; the NYT literally has a policy that all stories about tech companies must be negative, and the politics section presents everything as the fault of whoever the editors are personally mad at that day. But the details are correct.

I somehow doubt that this is read as much as it is posted on HN.

Most of the book criticism they do summarizes to the point where I don’t feel the need to buy anything so I’m not sure it’s personally working as an ad for me.

Some people want the gory details. Every non-fiction book can be summarized as (wo)man v something, but in doing so, you lose the plot. So while you may be satisfied with the summary (and you're not alone!), knowing that it's out there is more important for people to buy than the summarization.

It's so New Yorker. They're partial to angst-heavy stories.

If "retired fighter with a tea shop" interests you, try the "Legends and Lattes" stories.