Game Journalists Uninteresting Vultures?

Next Generation has commentary on an article penned by David Jaffe, creator of God of War. In the article Jaffe charges folks in the game journalism business with being uninteresting hangers-on. He implores journalists to consider themselves journalists first and "part of the games industry" a distant second. The Next-Gen article has some interesting insights on the topic. From the article: "... intimacy with the game industry is a positive, rather than a negative, so long as the line that divides the journalist's function from the game-maker's is understood. The game-maker, in turn, relies heavily on journalism, en masse, on which to base creative decisions. Did every game maker play the last Tomb Raider game? Doubtful. But they all know they don't want to make a game like it. The press feeds the imagination of the creator through a system of warnings and prompts, which are then interpreted and transformed into progress."

Comments

The Escapist

[Allen Varney]

Best possible time to plug The Escapist magazine. Yeah, I know, you hate the layout -- but (I speak here as a writer for the site) its journalism stands comparison with "real" magazines.

True

[Bogtha]

I was just reading a game review, and I'd barely got a couple of paragraphs in before thinking that it was so poorly written that I'd have been embarrassed to write it way back when I was thirteen, let alone as a grown adult. From what I can tell, this is the norm rather than the exception, which is why I tend to stay away from game "journalism" these days.