The New Games Journalism 20
aanand writes "Superstar UK games journalist Kieron Gillen (his blog seems to be down at the time of writing) has written a fascinating editorial/essay on what he calls The New Games Journalism, in which he discusses the future of printed and electronic games writing, and offers some good insights into where the next generation of writers might be headed."
Re:Printed media will exist for the few (Score:5, Insightful)
Important things to understand about the context:
i) I'm specifically talking about British games magazines. The better British games mags simply walk all over their American counterparts in terms of writing. It's arrogant, I know, but it's also true.
ii) While I'm making up this shit in reference to games mags, the general approach applies to all game writing, on magazines or not. Of course, like the original New Journalism, it becomes a lot harder to actually get good examples of it unless they get an amount of money to write the bastard things. It's time intensive in a way that most forms of writing simply aren't.
Kieron Gillen
Does it even deserve the name journalism? (Score:1, Insightful)
It's just a pale shadow of hollywood "journalism". I know you want to justify your favorite lonely pastime but face it: it doesn't deserve to be taken seriously. I'd hope for a post discussing what they might do to begin improving the sad state of things.
Tomer Gabel
Re:Does it even deserve the name journalism? (Score:2, Insightful)
That attitude is one of the reasons a lot of games journalism is shit. Of course it deserves to be taken seriously. It's just that hardly anyone seems to want to do so.
Whom do we trust? (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [insertcredit.com] talks about a how he got Astroboy [insertcredit.com] 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.