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Best Game Writers 2005 Recognized
GameDaily.biz has given the nod to some of the best game writers in the business for this year. From Seanbaby to Jerry Holkins, the best wordsmiths got some recognition. From the article: "Game Informer Crew - Yes, this is a cop out, but the GI staff received so many votes as a group (especially from game developers) that they earned a spot on this list. It seems a bit of a shame that they have to work so anonymously. If they are doing such a great job, the writers deserve some of the credit on an individual basis. Next year, no more group votes."
One of my favorite gaming writers is Stephen Tolito (sp?). He's a freelance writer, but you can find his stuff all over the place. He used to have the regular column "Cubism" over on IGN. I think I saw him writing an article for Wired or something recently...
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
First of all, I think the article ought to mention Greg Kasavin (chief editor of Gamespot) -- personally, I like his work much more than Tor Thurston, and his (admittedly long reviews) have convinced me to buy more games than any other reviewer (Doom 3, Guild Wars). At the very least, I trust Greg Kasavin more than any other game writer out there, just based on his experience in the industry.
Additionally, I don't see why Scott Kurz is listed as a 'game writer' -- he doesn't explicitly discuss games (per se), but rather the culture that surrounds them. For instance, I would consider Roger Ebert a film writer since he writes about film, not about people who like film. Morover, Scott Kurz really doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same paragraph as Penny Arcade's Tycho -- his writing style is atrocious, his 'storyline' has no plot, and he personally backstabs fellow webcomic artists when he feels like it (read post at the bottom of page)
Game Informer magazine reviews are pretty good. I just don't think they are honest enough at times. Gamespot is much more harsh in reviews. Though they have the luxury of writing 10pg reviews, something magazines can't do. But give credit to GI for the laughable sex innuendo hidden messages.
'Matt Casamassina IGN Casamassina deserves a spot on this list if only for his ability to manage a surprisingly massive, usually angry and always poor-spelling audience of Nintendo fans. Plus, he does this on a system where big games are few and far between...' Wow, I can't believe that in a paragraph designed to award Casamassina an honor they managed to insult both what he writes about and who he writes it for. Was there really any need to do that? Especially since the insults they used where representative of brash stereotypes, something which has no place in a site for 'game industry *professionals*'.
This looks like a list of magazine, website, and TV writers. Where is the awards list for game script writers?
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
I have always been a fan of Eugenia Loli-Queru's gaming articles. While she no longer writes about such subjects, she was always able to give a very interesting female pespective on gaming. Indeed, in an industry nearly dominated by men, her voice was an interesting one amongst them all.
http://www.osnews.com/editor.php?editors_id=1
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
jeremy parish is by far my favorite game journalist/blogger, web or otherwise. when i was younger, seanbaby was it, but maturity and irony have forced my preferences in another direction (even though i can still appreciate a good lambasting in the end of good ol' egm)
- colin
The reason Game Informer got so many votes from developers is because they inflate their scores on a ridiculous level. A mediocre game will get an 8 with GI, great (but not the best) games will almost always get a 9.75 or 10. Their scale is essentially from 7 to 10, which doesn't really allow me to trust them. Don't get me wrong, I love reading GI, they're funny guys, I just won't go out and buy a game just because it got a 9 from them.
WHO NEEDS SHIFT WHEN YOU HAVE CAPSLOCK/ DAMN1
The title is very misleading. I thought it meant script writers... I was really hoping to see Kojima on that list.
Rather than rewarding these baffoons for their writing abilities, why not bash them for their inability to call a bad game what it is: a bad game. How many times have we been subjected to EGM editors posting glowing reviews of games that are, to be perfectly honest, anything but entertaining?
Penny Arcade, along with the Gamespot writers seem a little more objective than the others, but even they are occasionally subject to the plague that haunts all game reviews: fanboi extremus.
After all, these were the people who endlessly extolled the virtues of both Halo and Half Life, spouting 10s as if they were breathing air, and yet after playing those games it was blatantly apparent they were neither revolutionary nor timeless.
I want home honesty, dammit! Screw them and their payola.
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.
On the whole I'm not very impressed with the quality of games journalism as compared with literary, cinema or musical writing. In the article the main quality of a good review appears to be wacky humour and then something about quality of information as regards being consumer reviews. I have nothing against consumer reviewing but there does still seem to be a lack of insightful (rather than merely informative) commentary that locates games within their proper context as for example newspaper book reviewers do. I guess Edge do that to some extent but its very rare outside that. I believe computer gaming now has a sufficient history, culture and widespread knowledge of technique to support such writing, one just wonders when it will arrive en mass. Certainly Edge do the type of thing I'm talking about and in particular I've seen good writing in the 'retro' gaming arena. This sounds a bit baa-humbug I know and I'm not really asking for pretentious academic chin rubbing as much as I'd like to know where a game fits in within the pantheon (and not just within the market) and not merely that its good/bad, but some ideas on why its good/bad and how that relates to the way in which it was implemented. I don't mean to slag off any of the nominated people, its just a general observation on the state of games writing at the moment.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76