Gamescom 2013 with the TV channel Phönix.

Every geek has painful memories of the RTL report on Gamescom 2011, in which the TV station mocked gamers in the most disgraceful and lousy way. Although two years have passed, this program has not been erased from the collective memory - even the formally correct request for an apology from RTL has not changed the fact that TV programs about Gamescom are stigmatized in a highly negative way.

The RTL fail was also the first thing I thought of when I received a call from Phönix asking if I would like to come to the trade fair as a so-called gamer girl (how I hate that term!) and talk a bit.

But well, Phönix isn't RTL, it's a GEZ-funded public broadcaster that shouldn't be interested in making me look like the last fool. So I agreed.

In the retro area, I was asked about geeksisters, Pacman and my opinion on women playing computer games, about the Oculus Rift, the virtual reality glasses, about my impressions when testing them and about World of Warcraft, where the commentator naturally focused solely on the subject of addiction - of course, that's the only thing that interests non-involved people. Too bad, because I had a lot more to say.

I have no TV experience whatsoever (I don't even own a TV^^) and I was dying of excitement, so unfortunately I couldn't gain any control over the flow of the interviews. Deer in the headlights syndrome, so to speak. Stupid for me, because once the report had been condensed to what the broadcaster wanted to convey (WoW is dangerous), there was nothing left of what I had to say except: WoW is addictive. Great. Facepalm. What I was really saying was something like this:

World of Warcraft is addictive - but that's an indicator of a good computer game. The thing is, most other games end at some point and you sit sad and disillusioned with the controller in your hand in front of the credits. Wow practically never ends, that's the good thing about it, or not. Nevertheless, most people stop playing at some point. So far, everyone I know has got fed up at some point and returned to the comparatively dull real world, even if work or studies have suffered in the meantime, it was always only temporary.

None of this was said. Instead, I was used as an "affected person" to support the general opinion that WoW was something like a drug. Of course, I didn't want that. I wanted to try out ESO anyway, but we didn't get permission to shoot.

All in all, the whole thing was lousily organized. I had sent in a list of suggested topics in advance, such as what you couldn't do and why it might be interesting for the audience, but I don't think anyone looked at it, because nobody had the slightest idea of what was being shown at the GC.

On the first day, I was transferred several times and my start of shooting was finally postponed from late morning to the evening - the trade fair closed before we could finish shooting, so I was needed on a second day. I had suggested ESO and Rayman Legends, two new games, for day two, but Rayman didn't suit the boss on duty after all (he thought it was a good idea the night before) and nobody had asked for permission to shoot ESO, so we were turned away. WoW was then basically just a stopgap solution, because they kindly let the 8(!)-strong TV team go ahead. (Btw, at least 4-5 of the 8 employees were superfluous... 2 bored assistants? DFQ? An intern who only carries the camera? A man in make-up whose services were only needed for 10 minutes at most during the whole day? There really could have been a lot of things put together... but since public television stations are not companies subject to the laws of the market economy, that's just the way it is).

Well, I can't change it now. That was my first live television experience. Next time I'll be smarter and hopefully less excited so that I can be more careful about what I should and shouldn't say :) But maybe it's simply that you can say what you want, but in the end everything is pushed and cut so that something completely different comes out than you actually wanted, so that it fits into the program :(

EDIT, 26.08.: After a phone call with the head of the service who directed the recordings, I now see things with slightly different eyes. Here you can read what he has to say about my impressions and that I was wrong in many places with my assessment.