Slashdot Mirror
On Videogame Journalism
Michael_Blessed writes "The most incisive critique of games journalism currently out there. I would say that as I participated, but there's some real illuminating stuff in there. And it's all true - I should know, being a games 'journalist' myself." It's a whole long series - read all 11 parts.
No.
This is Slashdot, most people have trouble reading more than the headline.
"The most incisive critique of games journalism currently out there. I would say that as I participated, but there's some real illuminating stuff in there. And it's all true - I should know, being a games 'journalist' myself."
Well then, this is my critique of a game journalist: Always preview before submitting. Sentence structure is important.
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball(TM)
old man murray, while probably not being so much of a video game journal itself, was much more of a meta-video game journal, in pointing out the whoring practices of most of the press out there as well as everything that is wrong in the video game software industry. their benchmark "time to crate" (the time it takes from when you start a first person shooter to when you see the first crate or barrel) is still a good indicator of at what point the developers ran out of ideas.
sadly, these days it is just an archive of old articles. still pretty funny, though. you gotta love a site so dedicated to taunting john romero.
To paraphrase Frank Zappa:
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Game journalism is people who cant write, interviewing people who cant talk, for an audience that cant read.
(He was talking about rock journalism but I think it applies here)
There's no "game journalism" as I see it. Just text ads. I'm more likely to cruise various posting forums to see what the peanut gallery thinks about a game I'm interested in than to read a "professional review" from
And even then I tend to disagree with what's said most of the time. In fact, I think Metal Gear Solid, Halo, GTA3 and other popular titles are boring, yet I played Jak and Daxter for 8 hours solid until I'd 100% finished it. It entertained me, Halo didnt.
So my answer? They're fucking games, just go play what you like and have fun and quit worrying about what other people think, only candy asses do that.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Regarding game reviews:
Objectivity has got to go, for one thing. Anyone who says that the personal experience of interacting with a game can be discussed objectively - well they're just flat out wrong to even try. Experience colors everything we write, being humans and all. What we have to do is weigh our desire to share our opinion, the one we're sure is right, against the fact that no two persons will experience something in the same way.
WHAT!?! I don't care if this guy thinks games are evolving into an artform. That's almost meaningless in a game review. I buy a game for entertainment, and could care less if the creators think they are the next Piccaso.
Objectivity is essential in a game review. I want to know if a game crashes, if the AI is a pushover, if the interface is garbage, etc. While there's some subjectivity in those things, a crash is still a crash.
Sure, you need to subjective material in a game review. However, calling for the complete loss of objectivity in a review is just plain idiotic!
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
Great set of articles. I've only recently come to looking at InsertCredit and Video-Fenky for insight into the Japan gaming world from an American prospective, but they've already both become a daily routine for me.
These articles (especially Tim Rogers longer one) really do bring to light an aspect of gaming journalism that I've recently started searching for. I get four game magazines and have a subscription to a website's "premium" service as well. They all seem to say the same things in regards to reviewing games, but then the scores usually vary quite a bit. I'm not saying that all scores should be uniform, but quite the opposite, the writer's personal experience of the game should become a more integral part of the review.
This is something that I've found in InsertCredit's different features and have really enjoyed their viewpoints and style. This is something that I would like to see implemented more in the journalism regarding the industry. This shouldn't be in place of some standard technical, "objective" reviews, which still have their place, but sort of an aside for those of us looking for something more.
Please -- no more lectures on journalism. And stop confusing nostalgia for games from your formative years with Socratic ideals of gamehood.
I don't want this to just be a flame, so here's some constructive criticism:
Damn. I guess that was a flame after all.
Furthermore, it reads like an inside joke and in my opinion is much more likely to alienate journalists than give them a reason to think.
I tried, but didn't gain anything from the article but a distaste for the author. Maybe it's just me.
Most people who haven't read the story will probably see your comment as flamebait, but as someone who tried to read the article I wish I could mod your comment "+10 bang on".
:puke:
As an example of this guy's excellence in journalism, let me quote you some text he wrote regarding the topic of "Role Playing":
This is not to say that people, individually, are not intelligent. They are, for the most part. I don't know that I've met many who are truly apathetic, either. It's just that we're all abused.
We're all hurt children. We don't know who to believe, so we grasp for the most comforting, available parents we've got. We are raised not to believe in our own judgement, and to defer to Nabisco. To Tom Brokaw. To the Government. To Science. To God. To the experts.
Life is above us. We don't know any better.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
It takes
11 parts
because of all the
space between the
one line
paragraphs.
"Journalists" take themselves too seriously as far as their writing skills. By far, most magazines and newspapers are written at a 5th grade comprehension level. If they werent, the target audience would be too narrow. The exception is usually highly specialized stuff like medical journals written for doctors.
Game journalism has to be even lower than that, since 5th graders make up a part of the target audience. So they're written at an even lower level. My 2nd grader reads game magazines.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
What I managed to get out of the first two pages (which wasen't easy, this guy apparently hasen't heard about paragraphs) was that there is a need for more+better video game Journalism. But I really have to question this, I don't know about others but when new games come out all I'm really interested in are the technical details; Look? Cost? Run? Let me figure out if it's fun. But then again the same thing could be said about about movie reviews couldn't they? I'm not interested in someone else's opinion on their level of enjoyment gleaned from a title or how this game might or might not impact society or how it might alter our culture. To be honest I find that most reviews are fairly pointless.
He then talks about the current situation of game Journalism, which basically boils down to reviews (and not so much comment). To me, reviewers have no choice but to compare their own (jaded?) experience towards game reviews and will lean harder on games that might well be fun for you and me.
I guess it will always boil down to what my personal preferences are, not what some "journalist" thinks.
I'd also like to point out that the author of this feature tries to validate himself as an authority on gaming by telling us how many games he has in comparison to his pissing-contest-winning music collection. How does this make the reader respect the opinion of the author exactly?
crazy dynamite monkey
What the articles are about is not about gaming journalism. Oh, they talk about games and writing and things that "real journalists" take for granted, like "fact checking" and "verifying information with sources" and the like.
What the articles are about is an awakening. Some people will say "What's the big deal - they're only games, why all the interest in how games are discussed?"
It's because I believe games are starting to reach a certain cusp. It's barely there, and underneath the rush to make the next Murder Death Killer and Massive Movie Franchise Game Version and Hey Kids, Here's a Bright Light - there are stirrings of something different happening.
Some games are getting shorter, like "Silent Hill 3", and some developers are starting to use words like "mood", "emotion", "art". We have people like an interview with series producer, Keisuke Kikuchi for Fatal Frame 2 have this moment in an interview:
Why are game developers talking about beauty? Everybody knows that games are just for teenage kids and immature grownups who just want to get their kicks and watch big breasted girls bouncing about!
The articles at insertcredit.com are talking about a new need that is going unfilled - the need to have games thought about, talked about, researched about, and written about in an intelligent way. Still funny at times, not at others, but they're talking about a desire to have games written about with the same care and attention as a movie, a painting, as an NPR show talking music CDs and the trends and how one piece of music gets its inspiration from something else.
Games are becoming art. Oh, not yet - I'd say we're still 20 years away before the industry settles down. Like movies, there will always be the big budget big explosion big breasted girl games that appeal to a lot of people. But there will be more games like "Ico" that are just beautiful and haunting. Or games that that will do for interactive entertainment what "Saving Private Ryan" or "Momento" or "Gone with the Wind" has done in movies, or "War of the Worlds" for radio.
We're still on the cusp of this idea. But I think insertcredit's articles today are a part of that idea that were moving from "games are just fun!" to "games should be taken a little more seriously and a little more professionaly."
Eh - or I could be totally missing the point. But that's just my opinion on the matter.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
The number of "Flamebait" and "Offtopic" replies to this story should clearly show how the public at large - even game players - have a hard time really accepting that game journalism is an important part of the media stream. Personal experience has definitely shown this to be the case, despite the explosive rise of the video game industry (which is rumored to overtake the movie industry in yearly profits). You can't slight people for this; the game journalism scene has a long way to go still.
This causes me to think: If the public doesn't take game journalism seriously, how seriously do you think the journalists themselves can take it? Having spent the last five years working as a game reviewer and editor, I find the biggest problem I have with the reporters who work under me is that they themselves don't totally believe the work is "legit". As a result, game reporters don't believe in the worth of their own professionalism and, therefore, most of my hardest struggles in these past five years has been to raise the bar so that people do, in fact, take us as seriously as any other news outlet.
The good news is that it is, in fact, getting better...
www.macgamer.com
Games are ever becoming a more powerful cultural weapon. The idea began when discussing Blessed Magazine's ideas about alternative game journalism. Why not introduce genre into game journalism? Can you imagine I-novel game journalism? Gonzo journalism? It doesn't exist in 95% of game writing on the internet. But you deserve it, because you care about games.
Life is above us. We've even lower standards. You can call it art, if you like. "Art" is merely what happens when the listener starts to apply that entertainment to his own life.
It's the same as with anything in life.
When we review, we review games as product. Videogames are objects. Journalism is meant to inspire free thought. I've a question to ask. It seems this pisses some people off. Online gaming media, at that. The idea behind art is to allow people more flexibility in their thought. The study of art is the study of life. People are intelligent. People care. They've just been abused, and neglected by the media bombardment of our post-modern world. Ask questions. The goal for game journalism should be to point readers toward the truths that matter in life.
I might owe my entire career in video game journalism to Paul Magliulo. This small-time operation died out when I started to write video game reviews for the sixth-grade newspaper.
By the time I reached eighth grade, Arnie Katz had pretty much succeeded at fostering a video game fanzine culture and, reading Fandom Central in the then-new Electronic Games magazine, I thought, you know, I could do this. Arnie reviewed it in Electronic Games. Okay, I'm joking around - video game journalism is not really crap. I find varying degrees of merit in dozens of video game-related websites and print magazines. 1. You call Shigeru Miyamoto anything other than Shigeru Miyamoto. Details are sparse at the moment, but if other games in the ______ series are any indication, this game will feature ______.
I've read some Wind Waker reviews in which the game is referred to as Zelda 9 or, for extra pretentiousness, Zelda IX. What the hell game is that?
Transitioning between gameplay and graphics is not - unless you're a bad video game reviewer, in which case you just write "For a game with such good graphics, the gameplay is lacking."
People reading your writing might be doing it to glean information on a game that they're thinking about buying. Well, you're not going to if...
Some people are correct to think this, and some people are dead wrong. See if they laugh. Let's say you're writing a review of a piece of shit game - a veritable humor goldmine if ever there was one:
So consider, then, Kohler's Hierarchy of Video Game Reviewing Skills, from bottom to top:
/ TEACH! \
/ ORIGINAL STYLE \
/ BASIC WRITING SKILLS \
I visit gaming sites primarily to be enraged.
There is value, when disparate individuals share experiences. I don't need any Maxim-esque man talk, I'm there to talk games when I visit these sites - they don't need to make gaming seem cool because it already is cool.
What needs changing about game journalism? Pick up an issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly, Game Informer, PSM, GMR, GamePro, Official Xbox Magazine, Videogame Underground, Official PlayStation Magazine, or GameNOW (or, if you prefer, visit IGN.com, Gamers.com, Gamespot, Gaming Age, or any of a thousand fansites and you won't find gaming journalism anywhere.
Roughly, there are three categories: hard journalism, academically-oriented criticism, and consumer-oriented reviews.
"All game writing is based on the same template. What makes that not journalism?"
At this point, even Auto-Summarize was bored.
Since print media is a non-interactive experience, and the author will be writing for many readers, the answer to the question is more than yes or no. However, it is still possible to describe a subjective experience in a way that will inform me what my experience is likely to be.
The author of this article appears to think that game criticism should be deeper; it should tie together ideas from all over the cultural spectrum the way that movie, music, or literature reviews can...
The only problem with this idea is that this is not yet how video games are developed. Movies have been around for almost 100 years, and have been gone through many periods of experimentation and cycles of influence. Literature and music have been around for thousands of years, and are universal, and touch almost every person in every culture, from world leaders to the poorest peasants.
The reason video game criticism is not yet up to par with the criticism for the other media is that video games are not as advanced as these other forms of expression. 15 years ago, the idea of reading into the cultural implications of first generation Nintendo games would have been laughable (challenge: write a serious Ebert-style critique of Space Invaders).
Video games are primarily pop-culture at this point, made by large production houses for the purpose of making money. When indie games start reaching the relative level of influence of indie music, cinema, and literature, when the mainstream of video game culture is informed by the cutting-edge lunatic/geniuses of 10-20 years past, then the level of critcism will rise to match the artistic quality of the games.
Until then, just tell me how good the graphics and sound are, how much fun it is, and if its worth my $50 and time,
Wtf ??? and more:
And that's just from the first page. Has there ever been a bigger bag of long-winded self-aggrandizing tripe than has been produced by these guys ? Not since Jon Katz, I'd wager. If we ever needed proof the editors here don't read the articles posted to... THIS IS IT !!!
Something which most people seem to miss, is this important fact:
There are 11 chapters because there are 11 writers!
If you don't like the author of the first chapter, don't let that prevent you from reading what the others say. The 'quality' of the articles varies greatly.
If nothing else, read chapter 7 by Jane Pinckard. I found that one to be relatively different than the rest, and actually easily readable.