Slashdot Mirror

Social games aren't supposed to be *fun*.

There was a pretty good write-up on the topic more than a year ago: Who killed videogames?

It's a long read, but most of the important points are made in the first page. The rest (sadly) qualifies for TL;DR - it simply rehashes and expands on the same ideas from different angles and in more depth.

I don't think Zynga makes very good games, but the elitist snobbery of gamers against them is irritating. It's like more 'hardcore' videogamers are trying to redefine the definition of the entire media so as to exlude Zynga just because they don't like them.

I was the OP, and you couldn't be more wrong if you think I'm a hardcore gamer (I'm barely even a casual gamer (*)), so if you think my viewpoint is an expression of elitism, you're very mistaken.

The essence of it is that such "games" don't have any real or significant skill component- they're essentially designed to tickle people's response/reward circuits in such a way that they will be willing to perform a certain behaviour.

This person already got quite a good part of it- though IMHO I don't even think that a "real" game needs to *necessarily* feature new problems to be valid- it might simply get more difficult in a way that requires progressively more skill.

A "game" that is *designed* so that you don't need any real skill to progress, just the willingness to keep pushing a particular combination of buttons (or whatever) or invest time and/or money isn't a real game.

Really, if you're interested in the answer, you should take a look at this recent Slashdot discussion and read at least some of the (rather long) associated story.

(*) As in, occasionally plays Tetris or Angry Birds. Bought a Nintendo DS for its "casual" approach and still hardly use it. Never paid more than £10 for a PC game (and no, I haven't pirated a game since the Amiga days). One new controller in the past 10 years (hardly used), etc.... I'm really just not into computer games any more.

It *should* suck to work in that stupid place. If you're doing something that is a parasite on society to make a living at least at least you should have a miserable time doing it. Do something productive instead like, I dunno, deal heroin or something.

http://insertcredit.com/2011/09/22/who-killed-videogames-a-ghost-story/chapter/2/

The Useful Statistic:

A year ago, if you talked to anyone about social games, they’d inevitably throw out this popular statistic: if you divide the combined total amount of money yet made by all social games by the combined total number of people who have played any social game even once, you’d see that social games make an average of one dollar and seventy cents per person.

Of course, there are people — like me — who would never spend money on one of those games. That’s actually ninety-five-ish percent of the people.

And then there are the people — statistics show they are middle-aged women — who will gladly spend upward of $10,000 on one game in less than a year.

The average money spent on a social game by The User Who Actually Spends Money is $60. (The field of Users Who Actually Spend Money, of course, which only accounts for 10% of players, also includes the white whales who spend $10,000. This perhaps gives you an idea of the rift.)

You don't need the password to make in game purchases (in the default configuration of iOS). You need the password to install the game.

The mechanic for in-game purchases is a cynical, well engineered, well researched hook.

The OS establishes a precedent - that privileged actions like installing apps require a password - and then goes on to breach that precedent in a kids game for actions that spend real money in large gobs, with single clicks.

It's like combining a daycare centre with a nuclear launch control facility. Getting past the door guards requires a security check. But the launch control console has been cunningly disguised as Whack-A-Mole.

If you are buying an expensive mouse because it has better ergonomics than your cheap mouse and you want to reduce wrist strain ...

An alternative is to just use a nice pad for that :P
http://www.insertcredit.com/news/032004/gelmousepad.jpg

Haha disregard that, that one is just perfect. Tim's reviews of Metal Gear Solid 2 and Mother 2 blew my mind. After reading those, I gave up mainstream game media altogether.

In this corner of the net a lot of people have been experimenting with alternative game review forms for a long time. Some fun sites for starters are:

• selectbutton forums
• insertcredit news, of which I'm a humble very occasional contributor
• gamer's quarter magazine, which I reviewed in a vaguely gamer's quarter style here
• actionbutton reviews

Like what you see? Are you into literary criticism? Do you spend more time talking about videogames than playing them? Join us in the pretentious side! We got doujin games! Pongism is the truth!

Haha disregard that, that one is just perfect. Tim's reviews of Metal Gear Solid 2 and Mother 2 blew my mind. After reading those, I gave up mainstream game media altogether.

In this corner of the net a lot of people have been experimenting with alternative game review forms for a long time. Some fun sites for starters are:

• selectbutton forums
• insertcredit news, of which I'm a humble very occasional contributor
• gamer's quarter magazine, which I reviewed in a vaguely gamer's quarter style here
• actionbutton reviews

Like what you see? Are you into literary criticism? Do you spend more time talking about videogames than playing them? Join us in the pretentious side! We got doujin games! Pongism is the truth!

SKU is a common retail term (meaning stock keeping unit). My high school job was in retail and I have no qualms in calling products, SKU, or anyone else for that matter. It's a totally appropriate term.

How to Be a Game Journalist
by Logic

Don't be like those hacks at Insert Credit, such as Tim Rogers.

This is the only thing I know:
http://www.insertcredit.com/archives/001350.html
Only time will tell if and how they will work together with Capcom in the future.

Insert Credit mentions that Clover talent may have been breaking off from Capcom to do their own thing (with the closing down story being an attempt to save face). Just an interesting angle to note when thinking about this topic.

Tetris (GBA) [...] They also require very little effort to enjoy and don't require you to mash buttons for the sake of mashing buttons.

O RLY? The Tetris brand game for Game Boy Advance was Tetris Worlds, the first to use the so-called Super Rotation System that allows such wonderful cattle manure as infinite spin and T-spin triples. No wonder reviewers called it broken. Worse than that, the GBA version of TW had noticeable lag from when the player pressed a button to when the game reacted. Tetris DS is no different, except at least the lag is gone.

Or are you talking about homebrew?

Those little indy puzzle games don't replace boxed games, they supplement them.

Except after reading about the broken mess that is modern Tetris (try ridin' spinners), wouldn't a lot of people prefer, say, Lockjaw?

Kind of like Geometry Wars for the Xbox360, or Nintendo's Virtual console.

Except Microsoft gets a cut of every game sold through Xbox Live Arcade, and likewise Nintendo with Virtual Console.

I think the "critiquing" part is usually reserved for fanboyish ranting pretending to be more "insightful" then a review.

It seems to me that lately those crying about wanting more "critiques" tend to be the fanboys upset that THEIR quirky, obscure game like Katama doesn't get a 100%, 5/5 etc from all reviewers, gets sold out, and become a huge success. And I wouldn't quite trust them in telling me the truth about things such as controls, or not to sugarcoat the games flaws....

Sorry, but if the kind of crap like what Tim Rogers posts is considered "critiquing," I will take the other review formats instead. At least with reviews I can easily find out stuff that I might not like or not like about a game, without having to read long winded junk like the linked example(and there are a lot more of them here).

I think the "critiquing" part is usually reserved for fanboyish ranting pretending to be more "insightful" then a review.

It seems to me that lately those crying about wanting more "critiques" tend to be the fanboys upset that THEIR quirky, obscure game like Katama doesn't get a 100%, 5/5 etc from all reviewers, gets sold out, and become a huge success. And I wouldn't quite trust them in telling me the truth about things such as controls, or not to sugarcoat the games flaws....

Sorry, but if the kind of crap like what Tim Rogers posts is considered "critiquing," I will take the other review formats instead. At least with reviews I can easily find out stuff that I might not like or not like about a game, without having to read long winded junk like the linked example(and there are a lot more of them here).

That's actually closer to the original idea in the insertcredit.com thread from which the linked article evolved.

[image alt:puzzloop zuma]
[image alt:Puzzloop versus Zuma]

OZA: My lawyers in Japan are supposed to be on this. Progress is slow because if we do court battle in US, we would be at a disadvantage. You know the Americans and their mentality. We will be up against American jurors. You know how biased they are towards Oriental companies. Popcap games' lawyer replied my mail and the one from my lawywers' office. In essence, they don't give a shit. I think they knew what they were doing from the start and they are bad businessmen. You know that to think of a game and to actually make it takes a lot of energy and money. Ripping off someonelse's idea is bad; they don't belong in the game business. In a few months, you will see what I am doing. I am not a lawyer so we will do battle in a different court. Did you know that Popcap also has a ripoff of Puzzle Bubble?

CHZ: (Not to mention Magical Drop - and presumably the 'different court' is the release of Shokan Puzz Loop for DS.) Source

It's already done the worst it can do, by succeeding and giving people the bright idea that it's doing something right, so it should be replicated. And even honored. When it actually kind of sucks, when it comes down to it. This just ain't no way to make a videogame. It's a confused, blobby mess that I see stifling progress and distracting the distractable for a few more years.

All of this was pointed out years ago by some places. Funny how time makes the obvious... obvious?

Actually, it was Aonuma who was primarily in charge of the game (he's also the guy behind Majora's Mask), and as Mr. Rossel-Waugh says, if it was one of Miyamoto's pet projects, perhaps it would have been pushed back as long as necessary.

Tim Rogers, from Insert Credit. Tycho I'll agree with, for the newsposts more than the comic itself, and the rest of them I don't really recognize (I tend not to pay attention to credits within actual magazines), but the fact that they left out Tim pretty much means they lose by default.

Read his 7-page piece on Mario 3, and then maybe look up his review of Soul Calibur 2 on the same site, and tell me I'm wrong.

Tim Rogers, from Insert Credit. Tycho I'll agree with, for the newsposts more than the comic itself, and the rest of them I don't really recognize (I tend not to pay attention to credits within actual magazines), but the fact that they left out Tim pretty much means they lose by default.

Read his 7-page piece on Mario 3, and then maybe look up his review of Soul Calibur 2 on the same site, and tell me I'm wrong.

I'd drill Mahoro any time

My favorite Tim Rogers piece was in - on-topicly enough - Journalism: the Videogame.

Though, the only bad thing about that is how he babbles about how his Animal Crossing review was sooooo cool compared to that other writing. That article actually reminded me a lot about Doug the Eagle's anti-walkthroughs and silliness.

My favorite Tim Rogers piece was in - on-topicly enough - Journalism: the Videogame.

Though, the only bad thing about that is how he babbles about how his Animal Crossing review was sooooo cool compared to that other writing. That article actually reminded me a lot about Doug the Eagle's anti-walkthroughs and silliness.

For one, the article single-handedly convinced me to play through MGS2 in its entirety, looking at what I originally considered to be a hopelessly mangled story from a fresh perspective, and it instantly went from being one of my least favorite games to my second favorite game of all time (right behind the absolutely uparalleled ICO).

Second, the article introduced me to Tim Rogers, who has quickly become my favorite online writer. Rogers is definitely the love-him-or-hate-him type--your opinion will have a lot to do with your tastes in postmodern art, and even more to do with your tolerance for complete and unabashed pretentiousness. I liked him well enough before I found his (now-defunct) LiveJournal, but when I read this entry I gained a whole new level of respect for him and his writing. If you haven't read anything by Tim Rogers I suggest you check out the above two links, as well as live from seoul: tim rogers' 2003 insertcredit fukubukuro, in particular this one entry that, like all the other links in this post, ranks up there as one of my favorite articles of all time.

Worth noting--Tim Rogers's favorite online publisher, insertcredit.com, says the following about his methods: "If you're going for the Tim style, be sure to fabricate some element of your piece. It doesn't matter how small; the desire is merely to see how many emails you can get. Constant self-reference and inside joking is the way to play here. Drop as many names as possible. Make supplemental videos with lots of screaming and bizarre word pairings. Devise new names for all of your friends, and tell the world about it!"

For one, the article single-handedly convinced me to play through MGS2 in its entirety, looking at what I originally considered to be a hopelessly mangled story from a fresh perspective, and it instantly went from being one of my least favorite games to my second favorite game of all time (right behind the absolutely uparalleled ICO).

Second, the article introduced me to Tim Rogers, who has quickly become my favorite online writer. Rogers is definitely the love-him-or-hate-him type--your opinion will have a lot to do with your tastes in postmodern art, and even more to do with your tolerance for complete and unabashed pretentiousness. I liked him well enough before I found his (now-defunct) LiveJournal, but when I read this entry I gained a whole new level of respect for him and his writing. If you haven't read anything by Tim Rogers I suggest you check out the above two links, as well as live from seoul: tim rogers' 2003 insertcredit fukubukuro, in particular this one entry that, like all the other links in this post, ranks up there as one of my favorite articles of all time.

Worth noting--Tim Rogers's favorite online publisher, insertcredit.com, says the following about his methods: "If you're going for the Tim style, be sure to fabricate some element of your piece. It doesn't matter how small; the desire is merely to see how many emails you can get. Constant self-reference and inside joking is the way to play here. Drop as many names as possible. Make supplemental videos with lots of screaming and bizarre word pairings. Devise new names for all of your friends, and tell the world about it!"

For one, the article single-handedly convinced me to play through MGS2 in its entirety, looking at what I originally considered to be a hopelessly mangled story from a fresh perspective, and it instantly went from being one of my least favorite games to my second favorite game of all time (right behind the absolutely uparalleled ICO).

Second, the article introduced me to Tim Rogers, who has quickly become my favorite online writer. Rogers is definitely the love-him-or-hate-him type--your opinion will have a lot to do with your tastes in postmodern art, and even more to do with your tolerance for complete and unabashed pretentiousness. I liked him well enough before I found his (now-defunct) LiveJournal, but when I read this entry I gained a whole new level of respect for him and his writing. If you haven't read anything by Tim Rogers I suggest you check out the above two links, as well as live from seoul: tim rogers' 2003 insertcredit fukubukuro, in particular this one entry that, like all the other links in this post, ranks up there as one of my favorite articles of all time.

Worth noting--Tim Rogers's favorite online publisher, insertcredit.com, says the following about his methods: "If you're going for the Tim style, be sure to fabricate some element of your piece. It doesn't matter how small; the desire is merely to see how many emails you can get. Constant self-reference and inside joking is the way to play here. Drop as many names as possible. Make supplemental videos with lots of screaming and bizarre word pairings. Devise new names for all of your friends, and tell the world about it!"

I personally think this review of Katamari Damacy over at insert credit is one of the best reviews of a video game I've ever seen. It really cuts to the heart of what games are all about and why this silly little game is so fun. Made more of an impression on me than most of the reviews linked from this article. I ran into it by accident on Google one day, and now I read the site pretty regularly. Was very impressed.

A Rape in Cyberspace

Possessing Barbie

Dreaming in an empty room: a defense of Metal Gear Solid 2

Shoot Club: Saving Private Donny

ZangbandTK: Confessions of a Dungeon Hack

The Great Scam

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Going Planetside

Red Eye #114

Insert Credit - some of the most engaging games writing on the web. Rather than these dry, cut and paste reviews that most mainstream game rags use, they actually capture the FEELING of playing a game. Frequently, their reviews have made me interested in actually tracking down and playing the game at hand. (An excellent, long Earthbound review at Large Prime Numbers by InsertCredit's Tim Rogers, makes me want to go and pick up this 10 year old game... their review for Rez did the same, too).

Unfortunately, the best US magazine, Next Generation, went under years ago and all we have to look forward to is SeanBaby bashing more games for 5 year old girls in EGM or PSM's yearly game character swimsuit issue. I heard Edge in the UK was a good mag, though.

Hm.. I'm not sure what would be causing it to crash, but you might try asking at the Insert Credit forums. A few people there also had some problems that seem to have been solved by changing their graphics drivers or disabling hardware acceleration on their sound card.

I can't believe no one's mentioned Insert Credit's lengthy series of articles on the state of game journalism yet. Pretty much any point being made in the parent story or the comments here were already made by it. Like the site itself, it may overreach at times, but it's certainly refreshing compared to the norm...

i must say that i agree with you. and!!! you should read This. it's good. i wrote it.

You really feel the game reading this one.

It was there last year too, but the only news I ever hear about it are lawsuits and money problems, no release date.

The guys at Insertcredit.com has the low down on the Battery life. Actual playtesting, no bullshit. "We charged up the battery and slammed the hell out of Ridge Racers with medium screen brightness (too bright hurts your eyes anyway) all over Shinjuku and it took -- I shit you not -- SIX HOURS AND THREE MINUTES for the battery to die. No joke. Put that on your weblogs. " The retching sound you hear in the background are the Nintendo execs choking on their sushi.

Yep, Insert Credit pretty much rules. And while we are at it, let's not forget their own commentary on the state of videogame journalism. Very insightful.

Insert Credit is one game site I hit up consistently. They frequently look at Japanese releases and what's going to be coming here stateside. Katamari Damacy is one of those bizarre, fiendishly successful titles which showed up on IC's radar first in the Western gaming-news scene.

The other site that really interests me is Tetsuya Mizuguchi's personal blog. It is like a glimpse into the life and mind of a game designer -- not just any designer mind you but the genius behind Rez. So hearing what he has to say on games and the Japanese techno-culture is interesting if only for the context it lends.

I personally loved the puzzles best in Sands of Time, and was relatively bored/tired of the button mashing battles. I knew one person who just played the puzzles, and gave the controller to someone else when enemies appeared.

The fact that they're pushing the gorier battles means to me that they're leaving behind what made the last game so much fun. So I'm probably going to pass on this one.

To add to your comment, though, I think something I read at Insert Credit put what seems to be the main difference so eloquently:

In Sands of Time, the Prince spends almost the entire game fretting about a servant girl he could just order to do whatever he said. After all, he's a prince.

In The Warrior Within, he calls a woman a bitch.

That's... not entirely true, I don't think. Just look at the reviews that the NES classic series for the GBA are getting- the only two games that 1up gave 8.0+ reviews to are Super Mario Bros. and Zelda, and SMB only because of its historical significance.

I think that the entire thing with nostalgia is that people tend to remember the good more than the bad. When I think of the SNES era (I was a little too young for the NES era), I think of Secret of Mana and FF3/6 before I think of festering piles of crap like Drakkhen.

And as the NES classic series and other re-releases have proved, even the best games from back then may or may not stand up to the test of time when compared to their sequels. Though as the article I just linked says, those games, despite their relative shittiness today, were required stepping stones for the developers to get to making the great games of today.

In reality, the shitty games of today are probably just as un-fun as the shitty games of yesteryear, and the shit:not shit ratio has probably remained roughly constant as well.

"recruiting more women coders, artists and level designers"

Too bad it seems that nobody knows how to teach it.

Too bad it seems that nobody knows how to teach it.

Designers wanted to know: how did ICO become great? Perhaps there was a secret method or ingredient they could tap, to transform their rough creations into timeless masterpieces.

To the frustration of many, however, it seems that ICO was always great; from the beginning of its development process, to the end.

This is not the impression I got from 1up's coverage of the same lecture. The impression I got was that, from an aesthetic standpoint at least, Ico was a disaster narrowly averted.

For one, Ico used to be a PS1 game. Can you imagine Ico on the PS1, with its nasty 1994-era affine polygon rasterizer, and without the gorgeous lighting system that the PS2 enabled? Admittedly, "don't make PS1 games" isn't very helpful advice for today's designers, but considering the importance of aesthetics on Ico's impact, I would not have considered a PS1 version of Ico "great."

Also, consider the following elements, which 1up describes as having been part of Ico at some point in the past: Yorda with horns, pigtails, in a purple dress, and speaking a language you understand. Ico battling human soldiers, with a health-meter. Cut-scenes involving attack robots. (!?) Fumito Ueda and Kenji Kaido clearly made the right decision in removing these from the mix.

This is a trend that I've been observing for the last 18 months or so, and I really have to give Penny Arcade kudos for bringing it to a point:

Most gamers, overall, don't trust review sites.

And why should we? We read the same hype for a game coming out in six months from a magazine or one of the new giant conglomerates of GameSpy IGN Gamespot (former Gamespot and Gamecenter) and Daily Radar (the latter which has mercifully passed on). "This game will be the greatest! Look at the graphics! Reasons to bash this other console or game before it's released!"

And when the game comes out, some reviewers will stick to their guns calling it great, some will trash it and we'll never talk about ti again, because the "Next Great Game!" is about to be released.

We've come to see it's all just marketing. It's not that it wasn't before, but back when Voodoo Extreme first popped up, it was just Billy "Wicked" Wilson talking about going to Kung Fu and what was happening in the gaming world.

Then IGN bought it, and what is it now? I haven't even looked at it for probably years now.

It's not that marketing and commercialism is bad, but after awhile it's like having nothing but Ding Dongs to eat. You start to hunger for something more. You start to wonder if your next meal will be different or more of the same.

Tycho and Gabe mentioned this when they bashed reviewers. Not just for "I like this game it's cool and you suck", but for pointing out how innaccurate their reviewers were, as if maybe - just maybe! - the game hadn't truly been played. That some "reporter" had spent an hour with the game, decided they didn't like it, and that was it.

So who do we trust? And that's probably the reason why, as Mr. Gillon pointed out, we're looking not for reviews and articles, but people. People who are like us, or even not like us - but we get to know their opinions and viewpoints so we feel like we can trust them. When Tycho says he likes a game, we know his stances on RPGs or card games or whatever, and can judge based on that.

When Timothy Long of Insert Credit talks about a how he got Astroboy off of a former bunny girl, how he's playing the game is as important as the game review itself. We know him, and while we might not always agree, at least we know why he feels that way about the game.

I read "Bow, Nigger" as referrenced by Mr. Gillon, and thought it was one of the best damn articles I've read this year - and it made me want to go play "Jedi Knight II". It's been sitting on a shelf at home, waiting for me, but now I understand how it can be played.

I wonder what will happen to game magazines in the long run. Readership is down, and I imagine most of them will wind up like either Nintendo Power - really just an advertisement for Nintendo, or Gamefan, a former magazine made of game lovers that crashed during the Dot-Com Bust.

Probably it will be as it always is: cycles. Something new rises up (like Mr. Gillon mentions, the alternative scene in Seattle from musicians tired of being force-fed 80's culture). It has underground movement, then one day somebody realizes you can make money off of it (see also "rap music"). It gets popular, then turned into the same marketing glitz, and then the soul is gone, and it starts up again.

Game magazines will do the same. I predict that in a few years we'll have a true "Fanzine" pop up - maybe all on the Internet, maybe sold through a few fans online, propped up with CafePress like goodies. It will grow, people will love the folks running it, and then it will get bought out and everything good about it will be gone.

And we'll start again. Like we always do. Because in the end, while we don't think we can trust people, we're always looking to reach out and form those communities to tell each other how we feel about what we enjoy.

Some will just do it better than others - and the cycle all starts again.

This is a trend that I've been observing for the last 18 months or so, and I really have to give Penny Arcade kudos for bringing it to a point:

Most gamers, overall, don't trust review sites.

And why should we? We read the same hype for a game coming out in six months from a magazine or one of the new giant conglomerates of GameSpy IGN Gamespot (former Gamespot and Gamecenter) and Daily Radar (the latter which has mercifully passed on). "This game will be the greatest! Look at the graphics! Reasons to bash this other console or game before it's released!"

And when the game comes out, some reviewers will stick to their guns calling it great, some will trash it and we'll never talk about ti again, because the "Next Great Game!" is about to be released.

We've come to see it's all just marketing. It's not that it wasn't before, but back when Voodoo Extreme first popped up, it was just Billy "Wicked" Wilson talking about going to Kung Fu and what was happening in the gaming world.

Then IGN bought it, and what is it now? I haven't even looked at it for probably years now.

It's not that marketing and commercialism is bad, but after awhile it's like having nothing but Ding Dongs to eat. You start to hunger for something more. You start to wonder if your next meal will be different or more of the same.

Tycho and Gabe mentioned this when they bashed reviewers. Not just for "I like this game it's cool and you suck", but for pointing out how innaccurate their reviewers were, as if maybe - just maybe! - the game hadn't truly been played. That some "reporter" had spent an hour with the game, decided they didn't like it, and that was it.

So who do we trust? And that's probably the reason why, as Mr. Gillon pointed out, we're looking not for reviews and articles, but people. People who are like us, or even not like us - but we get to know their opinions and viewpoints so we feel like we can trust them. When Tycho says he likes a game, we know his stances on RPGs or card games or whatever, and can judge based on that.

When Timothy Long of Insert Credit talks about a how he got Astroboy off of a former bunny girl, how he's playing the game is as important as the game review itself. We know him, and while we might not always agree, at least we know why he feels that way about the game.

I read "Bow, Nigger" as referrenced by Mr. Gillon, and thought it was one of the best damn articles I've read this year - and it made me want to go play "Jedi Knight II". It's been sitting on a shelf at home, waiting for me, but now I understand how it can be played.

I wonder what will happen to game magazines in the long run. Readership is down, and I imagine most of them will wind up like either Nintendo Power - really just an advertisement for Nintendo, or Gamefan, a former magazine made of game lovers that crashed during the Dot-Com Bust.

Probably it will be as it always is: cycles. Something new rises up (like Mr. Gillon mentions, the alternative scene in Seattle from musicians tired of being force-fed 80's culture). It has underground movement, then one day somebody realizes you can make money off of it (see also "rap music"). It gets popular, then turned into the same marketing glitz, and then the soul is gone, and it starts up again.

Game magazines will do the same. I predict that in a few years we'll have a true "Fanzine" pop up - maybe all on the Internet, maybe sold through a few fans online, propped up with CafePress like goodies. It will grow, people will love the folks running it, and then it will get bought out and everything good about it will be gone.

And we'll start again. Like we always do. Because in the end, while we don't think we can trust people, we're always looking to reach out and form those communities to tell each other how we feel about what we enjoy.

Some will just do it better than others - and the cycle all starts again.

insert credit addressed many of these same points in their feature Journalism: The Videogame.

insert credit addressed many of these same points in their feature Journalism: The Videogame.