Quality Game Writing of 2004

Ludonauts.com has a short piece where several intelligent observers in the field of game writing give their picks for the best game writing of 2004. The authors offer links to several quality works, including the now infamous EA Spouse blog, and the always quality Game Over column at CNN. They also refer to the trend towards the New Games Journalism, covered previously on Slashdot.

InsertCredit...

[Anonymous Coward]

Insert Credit [insertcredit.com] - some of the most engaging games writing on the web. Rather than these dry, cut and paste reviews that most mainstream game rags use, they actually capture the FEELING of playing a game. Frequently, their reviews have made me interested in actually tracking down and playing the game at hand. (An excellent, long Earthbound review at Large Prime Numbers [largeprimenumbers.com] by InsertCredit's Tim Rogers, makes me want to go and pick up this 10 year old game... their review for Rez did the same, too).

Unfortunately, the best US magazine, Next Generation, went under years ago and all we have to look forward to is SeanBaby bashing more games for 5 year old girls in EGM or PSM's yearly game character swimsuit issue. I heard Edge in the UK was a good mag, though.

Re:InsertCredit...

[JimmehAH]

I'm so used to reading spam that I read that first link as 'Instant Credit' and nearly skipped over the whole comment.

Edge is a good magazine; if a little dry. The UK version of PC Gamer is pretty good. They have some very interesting articles and retellings of game experiences in there most months.

Re:InsertCredit...

[Mitaphane]

If I remember correctly the guys that use to make the UK version of Next Generation ended up becoming Edge Magazine [edge-online.co.uk]. I'm not totally sure though, my memory is a bit hazy. But yeah, Next Generation was by far the best video gaming magazine the industry has seen. It's too bad the Imagine Media guys were a bunch idiots [fatbabies.com].

Tim Rogers

[PhosterPharms]

Amen AC, I love Tim Rogers' writing. If you like his reviews, you should read some of his stuff on Tokyopia. This story [tokyopia.com] [tokyopia.com] is one of the best stories I have read, ever. I actually tracked down his e-mail address and wrote him a letter after I read it the first time, I liked it so much. There's a whole series, and they are definitely worth checking out, though I feel this is the strongest. Apparrently they're all from a book that he has written but can't get published... He seems like a gre

No offense, but...

[SirBruce]

Personally, I think there is a lot more writing out there than these guys read, so I hardly take their opinion very seriously. However, "Bow, Nigger" was certainly one of the best pieces I read last year.

Bruce

Re:No offense, but...

[Wanj00n]

It's true, there are a lot of great pieces of game writing out there that didn't get mentioned. Most of the contributors are designers, though (and often with an interest in academic stuff, whether it's game studies or cog sci), and so many of the choices reflect design interests.

crapola: theory and form

[violently_ill]

mark my words: this is the first step in the postmodernist takeover of games as a medium. all the signs are there: the name-dropping of intellectual frauds like Lacan, the emphasis on "critical analysis", the dreamy-eyed romantic vocabulary. the very same people who have polluted roughly 90% of humanities departments across the US (higher in europe) will start writing books with titles like "new games journalism: theory and application", "post-meta-neo-experiential game design", and "on the emancipation of