After the Natal reveal, I worked myself in a state of righteous journalism indignation that lasted for about 12 hours. Then, I attended Microsoft's E3 press conference the following day and saw exactly what Microsoft was thinking when it threw that Natal event. Hundreds of people filled every available seat at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles, and nearly every single one clapped like a madman whenever a producer came on stage to introduce their product. Even the products that didn't seem very interesting got resounding applause -- and when they announced at the end of the event that each attendee would be getting a free New Xbox 360 unit, that clapping erupted into a standing ovation.

I think we can blame Apple for some of this cultish blur of journalism and fanboy in the video games industry. Apple presents itself to tech journalists not as a tech company with a product, but as a rock star at a concert. It was one of the first tech companies to live stream its press events and if you've ever seen one of those, you've witnessed the "All Hail Steve Jobs" passion that pours out of the crowd ostensibly all made up of journalists and analysts. The fervor at those events goes beyond clapping at a show -- it's practically dancing topless at Woodstock.

The video games industry takes a lot of leads from the tech industry and I think we've seen some of the Steve Jobs cult mentality form around certain developers and publishers. You could even argue that Nintendo surpasses Apple in cultivating passion for its products, if like me, you've been to one of its press events where it didn't have anything more remarkable to show than a DSiXL in the color of dried blood and still clapped 'til your hands hurt.

Video game press events are turning into a circus and that's bad news for the industry. Not only am I stuck waiting for my fellow journos to sit down and shut up so the next "act" can come on, but developers are getting warped feedback on their games from the one source in the world they should be able to trust -- the journalists.

For the games industry, this is a self-destructive cycle that begins when journalists behave like an audience because they're filling the dual role of professional and fan. Because journalists behave that way, developers treat them that way at press events with bigger and bigger spectacles each year. The developers pander to us so much that they train us to clap even when we don't like the game we just saw. And by clapping when we don't like something and then returning to our desks to write scathing previews of whatever the developers just showed us, we're being dishonest -- the exact opposite of what a journalist should be.