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New Games Journalism
Kotaku has a piece up today mentioning a style of video game editorializing called The New Games Journalism. This piece links to several others. State Wiki has a piece from early this year on what New Games Journalism is, and an examination of its goals. An example of the style is available on the Eve Online site in the PC Gamer article All About Eve. (large pdf) A seminal work referenced when discussing the style is Bow, Nigger, a sharply written and gripping piece about a duel in Jedi Outcast. From the editorial: "For one thing, my screen name has nothing to do with my ethnicity and for another, it's only a game and the fascist doing the typing is probably hundreds of miles away and far beyond anything you could call an actual influence on my life. But still... It's not very nice is it?"
A Consumers Reports/Union for gamers. It would take no advertising money, and be funded only by subscribers. Yes, it would cost a little more, but you'd be sure the reviews weren't bought and paid for by the gaming companies.
It's blogging.
When someone calls me a nazi, a dumb pollock (sp?), or an Indian (hint: Native Americans are not from India, idiots.) I do not get offended. Because they're words.
[Insert something about twigs and rocks]
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori
did you?
Because this doesn't seem like it responds in any coherent way to the linked piece except that it does involve some sort of word.
I'm honored that a professional games journalist would take so much time and effort to write a formal essay which states the obvious fact that something like Penny Arcade casually talking about the games they play is far far more useful to me a consumer than slock ign/gamespy/gamespot reviews.
I never would've figured that out.
And of the Eve piece (just finished reading it) is that unlike normal "reviews", you don't wade through "here's how you play, blah, blah, blah, and then you click this".
The author in both pieces inserts just enough information so you get the ghist, and you understand why it's so enjoyable. I read "Bow Nigger" some time ago and nearly fell out of my chair with enjoyment. After reading several reviews of "Jedi Knight II", this was the first piece that made me want to go play it - right now.
Not every game review should be like this - but I'd rather read 100 "Bow Nigger" tales than yet another "Halo 2 rocks because it's pretty!" Tell us why you loved it - and don't bog me down in the details, tell me why you liked it. What part? What scene in the game? Was there a moment that made you go "woah", or was it just the constant puzzle of trying to find the best place to stay alive with the adrenaline pounding in your ears?
Anyway. Just my $0.02.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
of these assholes in the online gaming world who think that it is cool or funny to call someone a nigger. I'm willing to bet that the majority of these dumbasses are little kids who wouldn't dare say the word in public, or to a black person's face for that matter. In fact, I would bet that you can't get in 1 hour of gaming in any FPS without hearing some kid, who sounds like they haven't even reached puberty yet, saying "hang all niggers, lynch them blah blah blah". It really fucks up the gaming experience.
The percieved anonymity of the internet has allowed cowards and ignorant fucks all over the world to show their true colors. The worst part about it is that your kids, and possibly even your coworkers, are probably some of them! Good to know that we've made such great strides towards eliminating social inequality.
am i the only one here who feels it's horribly inappropriate for the editors to allow the words "Bow, n*****" to be underlined and highlighted in the top article of the front page of slashdot?
I honestly can't believe I'm looking at this
I've been wondering lately about the state of gaming journalism. As an art form, videogames have only existed for twenty-five years or so, and really it's hard to call anything before the 8-bit era art (there are arguments that could be made about that, whatever doubts I may have as to their veracity, butthey are beside the point I look to make here). Yet for some reason, this is still the best gaming journalism can do, and its best, it must be said, is really, really pathetic.
Compare gaming criticism to music criticism, or better still to film criticism, and you'll see how badly, glaringly we lack. (I say we because I am including myself in the community ostensibly serviced by these publications) While there are magazines and sites such as Harry Knowles' and Entertainment Weekly in the film world who are just as sensationalistic and producer-fellating as anything in the gaming world, there are also thoughtful, interesting critics such as Roger Ebert, Paul Tatara, or David Denby, who bring a level of depth and insight into the collaborative artwork they contemplate.
Meanwhile, the best reviews available for gaming are arguably a paragraph-long offhanded comment in the latest Penny Arcade newspost. Film and Gaming are both business-driven, collaborative art forms that engage more than one of the audience's senses, generate emotional responses, and entertain for long stretches of time. Given these parallels, why is gaming criticism in a rut?
My first partial answer to that question lies in the multi-part review system. If you've read the gaming press, you know the drill. First up is a blurb of hype from the press packet, then comes a bit of discussion on the plot and the game's development process. Then the graphics are reviewed, and perhaps a score is given on graphics. Then the audio is reviewed, and this is scored as well. Next the controls, and finally the gameplay mechanics. Then it's all summarized in a paragraph or two at the end, and an overall score or grade is given to the entire product. This is the review we've been reading for years, just the way we're used to.
This review sucks.
I believe that gaming as an art form has moved beyond the point where it's appropriate to consider a game on its different components separately, and that we've been beyond the era when this would be considered appropriate since the 16-bit era, the launch of the original Playstation at the latest. For those of you keeping score at home, the Playstation turned nine this year. Yet in those nine years, the best gaming criticism can come up with is still the useless crap one can read at IGN.
1995 also marked the birth of one of the great experiments in gaming journalism, the US release of Next Generation magazine. Originally just an overseas port of stories found in the UK magazine Edge, Next Generation took on a life of its own and tried to ride the line between industry hype (the infamous Blasto cover, the year-early favorable Daikatana review) and honest, serious thought given to gaming as hobby and art. It was one of the first attempts to write about gaming from the same place that Rolling Stone in its heyday wrote about music. At its best, it even approached respectability. It was even one of the first magazines with serious on-line content.
It was also, naturally, a gigantic financial failure. By the end of its run, it had been turned into candy-coated hundred pages of glossy toilet paper, no better than Game Informer. The pioneering website was replaced with the dreaded (and thankfully deceased) Daily Radar, a name still spoken in hushed voices lest the ghost of Dan Egger's career somehow rise to haunt us all.
There have been other experiments in gaming journalism (eg. the short-lived but brilliant PCXL, basically Maxim for nerds), but all have fallen by the wayside. In the end, the bullet-point categorized review stands tall above a field of fallen competition.
And as mentioned previously, it sucks. These categorized
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
You make a good point. These days, you can hardly label anyone with any word without being labelled racist. You can call them "Negroes" and get called a racist, yet they have the United Negro College Fund. You can call them "Colored People", but there's the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Even something innocuous as "Black" will get reactions from some people. Now, we're supposed to use "African-Americans", though a lot of people labelled this way have had roots in this country for far longer than most. Not to mention that "African American" treats Africa like some monolithic culture and somehow diminishes the sheer variety of cultures found there. Not to mention that many recent immigrants from Africa are annoyed by that label. So, really, it does depend on context.
If Games Journalism is just a job to you, you really shouldn't be doing it. The word should be "vocation".
This quote applies to more than just games journalism. Any of these tossers on /. who have asked, "I'm at A University studying Computer Science - will I get a job?" should be listening up.
People bitch, whine, moan, complain, etc. about how they lost their jobs at the end of the tech bubble, and about how there are no tech jobs available now. I, however, whole-heartedly support the paring down of the industry. In the late 90's, all the news could report on was how much money people were making founding dot-com companies. So, every person out there looking to make a quick buck said, "Hey - I could totally make it selling Vievelflutzers on the Internet." So, millions flocked to Universities, Community Colleges, and Barnes & Noble to get their hands on "Programming for Dummies."
Well, guess what. Programming is not for dummies. It never has been. Programming is a science and an art, and there is no way that you can do it properly without enjoying doing it. You have to enjoy spending hours racking your brain about organizing data structures, communicating with collegues about new ideas, and researching what other people have already done. It's a difficult field, and if you're just there because your buddy told you that you could make millions, you have no choice of making it.
Go figure out what you like doing, and do it. Don't try to do my job half-assed.
This isn't journalism. It's blogging.
I'm not sure I understand the point you're trying to make. Journalism entails the publishing of facts and opinions to a wide audience. Blogging does the same thing. Just because the "journalist" is trained and being paid in no way makes that piece of writing any more valuable than the amateur blogger. Writing is writing, and the source should not matter, only the quality of the content and the effect it has on the audience.
The "Bow, Nigger" article is fabulous. It does a good job of providing some insight into the game, is funny at the same time, and also tackles some of the more pressing issues in online gaming (cheating, harrassment, etc). By labelling it as "blogging" and refusing to call it "journalism" by your standards, are you trying to devalue it? Would you not go and see an indie band because they burned their CD's at home, and aren't played on the radio? Are they not still considered musicians?
I'm tired of people being so down on blogging. Writing is writing, and it makes no difference whatsoever in what forum it's being presented. Please start judging it by its quality, and not its source. That's what art is all about.
Do you think it just might be possible that one could read or write about video games for a purpose beyond simple consumer awareness?
When your local university has classes on film criticism, do you mock them because they're considering greater questions than whether or not "Blade: Trinity" is worth seeing this week at the multiplex?
Get over yourself, for a minute. As surprising as it must be, it's possible to have thoughts about the video game experience beyond "should I buy this or not?"
I never have frustrations, the reason is, to wit:
If at first I don't succeed, I quit!
Yes, it does.
For instance, at work, if some money goes missing from the drawer, I'm not the first person they suspect.
People don't lock their car doors when I walk down the sidewalk. When I drive a nice car, I don't get pulled over on suspicion of having stolen it, or on suspicion of nothing at all.
When I do get hired for a job, there's no sneaking suspcion on my or anyone else's part that the color of my skin, and not the legitimacy or quality of my experience, was the deciding factor.
Not to mention the amazing perks I'm likely to get should I find myself in the criminal justice system; for instance, a considerably lesser likelyhood of getting the death penalty, or of serving any time at all, especially for drugs.
See, that's what "white privledge" means - all those things that are so great, yet so transparent that you forget that not everyone benefits from them. These are things that you shouldn't have to be white to have, I agree. But to simply dismiss the leigions of minorities who lack these privledges every day, on the basis of some hypothetical reverse discrimination that I doubt has actually ever occured for you, isn't quite racist - it's just stupid.
I never have frustrations, the reason is, to wit:
If at first I don't succeed, I quit!
Besides being a gripping read, Bow, Nigger conveyed to me exactly the information that would help me make a good choice buying this game. Specifically, I buy a game if I think that it will have a long life on my hard drive, and that means multiplayer. Through the course of the interesting narrative, the author touched on the mechanics of the game and the quality of the effects. But, more importantly, he conveyed the intangibles that are absent in any standard game review I've seen before. After reading the story I felt a sense of how the game actually plays, as well as a sense of its online community.
I'm searching now, in another window, for a copy of JKII on ebay, since I passed over this title when it was released.
No, you can do more. You can reply with something like,
You'd be surprised how many people in a game will chime in and back you up, but who didn't bother to say anything about it. Well, okay, maybe you wouldn't be surprised, but I sometimes am.
Then frag the hell out of them.