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Editorial Entertainment Games

New Games Journalism 342

Posted by Zonk from the different-approaches-keep-things-fresh dept.
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?"
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New Games Journalism More

New Games Journalism

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  • This isn't journalism. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 10, 2004 @03:33PM (#11054392)
    It's blogging.
    • Yeah... everytime I hear about 'new journalism' its always blogging.

      We have to remember that, sure, it may be viewed as journalism, but what it shouldn't be viewed as is 'news' nor 'fact.'

    • What isn't journalism? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by addie ( 470476 ) on Friday December 10, 2004 @04:24PM (#11054919)
      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.
      • The difference is quite distinct, or rather it should be - but often isnt.

        Journalism should always be completely objective, while a blog is nearly always subjective. This doesnt have to mean being "down" on blogging, the same applies to an editorial or (especially) a column article, which is often not-dissimilar to a blog in actual content. The primary difference tends to be that a column, and especially an editorial, almost always has some reasonable justification why the author's voice should be widely

        • Re:What isn't journalism? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Enry ( 630 )
          Journalism should always be completely objective

          What I think you mean to say is:

          Journalism should always try to be as objective as possible.

          Being objective makes you more credible. More credible = more reliable = more viewers = more money.

          Too bad these days scandal/sex/war/terror = more money.
          • I remember the day when we would argue that journalism has an inherent responsibility to the public discourse. This is the reason we need objectivity - the press has so much power that to be otherwise would be an abuse of the press' position. It's an old-fashioned position to take, but a good one.

            This is the difference, to me. When I read something totally offensive in a blog, something damaging to the subject, something so opinionated as to be fictional, I think, fine. That's your opinion and you're e
        • If you want real objectivity, go read a lab report.

          Journalism conveys not only the raw facts, but the experience of being there, and the opinions of those on the scene. Some journalists try to stick to the facts, but the reality is that "fact based" reporting can be turned into the most subjective and biased thing you can possibly read, simply by the way that certain facts can be emphasisized or de-emphasized. As the old saying goes, "Lies, damned lies, and statistics!" If you think journalism is objective

      • Re:What isn't journalism? (Score:2, Insightful)

        by pla ( 258480 )
        Journalism entails the publishing of facts and opinions to a wide audience. Blogging does the same thing.

        Er, no.

        SOME blogging - A very tiny minority, counts as "news" (Darh Jamail, for example). A bit more common (but still rare, in the grand scheme of things), due mostly to physical location or just plain luck, count as "almost news" (Raed/Salam Pax, for example - Not really news, but his location made even his daily observations relevant to the rest of the world).

        But the vast majority of it? Abso

        • Re:What isn't journalism? (Score:5, Funny)

          by Capt'n Hector ( 650760 ) on Friday December 10, 2004 @07:20PM (#11056596)
          "Score:-1, Insightful"

          I can only say, "WTF"? How does an insightful comment get a -1?

          Heh. If I took this seriously, I might feel somewhat concerned by the logic behind that.

          Overall, though, I find it more *amusing* that one person's "insightful" equals another's "flamebait" or "troll". I can understand reduntant, or overrated, but flamebait and troll seem mutually exclusive from any positive mods whatsoever.

          Strange world we live in. Well... No, just strange people in it. ;-)

          -- pla's Slashdot Journal

          Oh, the irony.

    • Re:This isn't journalism. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by zaren ( 204877 ) <fishrocket@gmail.com> on Friday December 10, 2004 @04:26PM (#11054943) Journal
      The "Bow, Nigger" piece may just be a blog, but it's a much better written piece than the vast majority of the blogs I've seen. It may be a bit light on the actual details of the game, but it told me a lot more than any commercial or screen shots on a web site have shown me. It showed a bit of not only the mechanics of the game, but the culture of the world it's created. I found it very insightful, and made me a bit more interested in playing the game.
      • What it showed me is that "Wankers play JKII online", "Macroing is rewarded" and "There is no reason not to cheat".

        That made me even less interested in playing it than I was before.

        • Perhaps. But that may be more information than most reviews give. Instead of a bland piece about the game as a piece of software, you get something about the game experience in total here: what it actually feels like to play it (for this person, at this time.) That's far more information than I usually get.

          And the fact that, at the end, he won over that race-baiting creep, made it very satisfying.

  • Wow. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Telastyn ( 206146 ) on Friday December 10, 2004 @03:43PM (#11054490)
    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.

    • Re:Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Attaturk ( 695988 ) on Friday December 10, 2004 @04:09PM (#11054733) Homepage

      I think the Penny Arcade Vs. 'establishment' games media argument has striking parallels with the Jon Stewart's Daily Show Vs. 'real' news networks argument.

      Penny Arcade [penny-arcade.com] has people light-heartedly talking about the way it is, not simply regurgitating obvious nonsense just like the games companies and corporations would like.

      The Daily Show [comedycentral.com] has people light-heartedly talking about the way it is, not simply regurgitating spin and propaganda just like the administration and its supporters would like.

      I think the positive upshot of that is that the great unwashed, the mainstream public, the consumers, whatever you want to call them, seem to be finally wising up. If you publish or broadcast nonsense, spin, marketing drivel or a barrel load of cliché then it's pretty obvious that your audience is starting to leave you in favour of something more intimately connected with truth and public opinion.
      • I think it's not so much that these guys are talking about "the way it is", as the biases are very obvious in both contexts - on both the Daily Show, and Penny Arcade, you know where the authors are coming from and so you can take that point of mental origin into account when reading what they have to say.

        With a supposed "unbiased" source of news or game reviews, it's harder to know which way the books have been cooked, so to speak - and thus the information you derive from that source can be off because y
  • 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.
    • Excellent post, I can't understand the large amount of negativity towards these two articles, they are very well written and truly give you a different perspective on the game that one cannot find in any game magazine.

  • There are millions (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Jakhel ( 808204 ) on Friday December 10, 2004 @04:00PM (#11054660)
    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.

  • A word in the story really offends me... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Eric(b0mb)Dennis ( 629047 ) on Friday December 10, 2004 @04:01PM (#11054665)
    I consider myself to be one of the few real Jedi's on this earth, and using of such a sacred word in such a joking manner offends me greatly.

    I will inform the proper authorities promptly
  • The "New Games Journalism" is ... blogs?

  • The formula gaming review (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fahrvergnugen ( 228539 ) <fahrvNO@SPAMhotmail.com> on Friday December 10, 2004 @04:09PM (#11054735) Homepage

    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 [gamespy.com] 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

    • Well, gamespy was the only site I could find that gave Jak 2 a negative review. I wish to God I had listened to the lone dissenting voice in that case. I got about 55% through the game, and just walked away from it. I realized that some programmer or another over at Naughty Dog HATES the customers, and put in some of the most vindictive restart points in the history of platformers. Sending me back 20 minutes in the game isn't a fun challenge, folks. It's annoying. And don't get me started on having to slog
    • The glaringly obvious difference between film/music/art and games is fairly obvious - games are interactive. With a movie, a song, or a piece of art, everyone has the same basic material to work with when it comes to interpreting it. Anyone who has seen the movie knows the scene you are referring to when you start discussing it. Compare this to computer games: Unless the game is totally linear, players may encounter the scene in a different order. They can probably also skip scenes of the game. If the game

  • If you're so smart... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by AnotherBlackHat ( 265897 ) on Friday December 10, 2004 @04:14PM (#11054785) Homepage
    <devil's advocate>
    Money men didn't get to be money men by making stupid decisions.

    If they think that "the quality of writers simply doesn't affect a games magazine sales" maybe it's because the quality of writers simply doesn't affect a games magazine sales.
    </devil's advocate>

    -- should you believe authority without question?

  • A Quote (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CrazyWingman ( 683127 ) on Friday December 10, 2004 @04:16PM (#11054803) Journal

    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.

    • Re:A Quote (Score:2, Interesting)

      by tyrantnine ( 768028 )
      Well, to continue the tangent...

      I agree that programming is absolutely not for dummies. However you make a serious error equating programming with a job in industry. Many people interested in computers, or even computer science, are not interested in programming nor are they cut out for it.

      Some time back I went to a company reception that preceded on-campus interviews for a software engineering job. It was amazing to me how many questions directed at the recruiter could be summarized as "how fast can

      • Ah ha! You are absolutely correct. I did, in fact, make the stupid jump from IT to CS. I can't believe I did it either, because I spend so much time trying to convince people they are different. It's so annoying when people can't understand why even though you know a million things about balanced trees, sorting, bit order, and power consumption; you still have no idea where the font setting for Outlook Express is. :P Thank you for setting my words straight.

        I do want to emphasize the problem with prog

    • You have no choice to [survive] make your time!
    • "Go figure out what you like doing, and do it."

      Could you expand on this. Because I can't, believe I never will. It seems people either know or they don't.

  • There's "game journalism"? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Friday December 10, 2004 @04:19PM (#11054845) Homepage
    When "Lucky, the magazine about shopping" first came out, the comment was "You mean there are magazines that aren't about shopping?" Game magazines started at that level and went down from there.

    At the bottom is GameSpy, which is now a malware distributor. [pestpatrol.com]

    "Next Generation" was worth reading, in its day.

    • Please. Gamespy Arcade itself displays ads when you use it, and it does not force your computer to visit ad websites or send personal information against your will or without your knowledge. You can also pay for the software, which allows you to disable the ads completely.

      You might not like Gamespy, but there's no need to overreact.
      • If Pest Patrol thinks it's bad, I'm not going to argue with them.

        From the GameSpy EULA:

        • "B). IGN/GameSpy Advertising. The IGN/GameSpy Sites and Services rely on advertisers to help fund the services that we offer to our members. In order to continue our service, you agree that the IGN/GameSpy Sites and Services may display advertisements and promotions of all kinds in and with the services."

        • Our Sites and Services provide you with opportunities to link to, or otherwise use, sites and services offered th

  • Insert Credit and Mizuguchi.biz (Score:3, Informative)

    by BitwizeGHC ( 145393 ) on Friday December 10, 2004 @05:03PM (#11055426) Homepage
    Insert Credit [insertcredit.com] is one game site I hit up consistently. They frequently look at Japanese releases and what's going to be coming here stateside. Katamari Damacy is one of those bizarre, fiendishly successful titles which showed up on IC's radar first in the Western gaming-news scene.

    The other site that really interests me is Tetsuya Mizuguchi's [mizuguchi.biz] personal blog. It is like a glimpse into the life and mind of a game designer -- not just any designer mind you but the genius behind Rez. So hearing what he has to say on games and the Japanese techno-culture is interesting if only for the context it lends.
  • >The second traditional reason is that they're mostly - and
    >there's exceptions, clearly - hugely better written.

    Did anyone else find this sentence hilarious? This guy's writing is terrible. If I were editing I'd delete half his sentences as utterly useless and have to clean up shitty sentences like the one quoted above. "mostly...hugely," my god. It's clear he is used to writing as much as possible no matter how bad it makes his writing. Makes sense for someone involved in journalism, I suppose.

  • British games magazines (Score:3, Interesting)

    by BenjyD ( 316700 ) on Saturday December 11, 2004 @05:35AM (#11059123)
    You have to remember that this guy is writing in the context of the British games magazine market. The style of writing in many of the magazines is a cross between Viz, FHM and the Sun ('Adult' cartoons with fart and dick jokes, Playboy with more articles and tabloid crap for non-Brits).
    Given that background, I can see why he would want to spark a revolution in games writing.

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