A few notable notes that I missed in the recent link flush:
Coming Clean (Gamespot) No less than the executive editor of Gamespot writes an editorial on giving more disclosure about the time a reviewer spent on each game he reviews. I'm not sure this is such a good idea as a blanket policy -- if writing in the specific amount of time spent adds to the review, fine; otherwise the reader just has to trust that the reviewer has played the game sufficiently. Then again, I'm not entirely sure why Greg is whining about it in an editorial and not doing something about it. He's the freakin' executive editor! If he think's it's a good idea, he should just add it to Gamespot's review policy already.
Gamermom Found this one on Game Girl Advance -- a mom writing about her son's love for videogames. This is the kind of thing I meant when I talked about game writing by non-hardcore gamers. I particularly like her thoughts on the Halo 2 Energy Sword:
I carry one of these in the back of my Camry now. ... I use it at the supermarket when some idiot tries to cut ahead of me in line, or god forbid, has 13 items in her basket at the 12-items-or-less line.
GameCore Mailbag Blast-O-Rama (CBS Gamecore) Kotaku and Joystiq have the heads up on a horrendous CBS News article that accidentally got posted before being edited. The google cache seems to have erased the now-deleted mistake, which is a shame, because it's a really hillarious read in its entirety. The blogs are pretty hard on the guys, but as someone who takes extremely sloppy notes before producing a readable article, I feel for them. First drafts tend to be full of errors and bad grammar, but it's the final product that matters. In this case, they were accidentally one and the same.
Defunct Games - Stumbled across this site while surfing around one night, and I ended up just reading for hours. This site's take on the games of yesteryear has a pretty unique style, but it's the video game journalism stuff that really got my interest. I'm still working my way through their 29 magazines of Christmas feature, which includes some excellent reviews of game magazines great and small. I talked to the guy who runs it on IM, and he really seems to know his stuff. Go visit!
Monday, February 21, 2005
Link Flush
It's been a busy month for writing about videogame journalism. I've wanted to write something more substantial about most of these, but the queue is getting much too large. Here's a brain dump of my link list, with a few words about each
Do Game Reviews Have To Be Puerile? (Kotaku) No, they don't. There's definitely a place for more abstract, experiential pieces about games like this this one. But they're definitely not for everybody, or for every publication. I did a review of Space Channel 5: Special Edition for Gamecritics.com that was heavy on pop-journalism criticism and low on gameplay details. Not everyone was happy. If you're audience is interested in these types of pieces, more power to you. If they are looking for a straight review, these kind of horizon-expanding writing should be used sparingly.
Mao and the New Games Journalism (game girl advance) When I first read that Maoist newspaper MIM was getting into game reviews, I thought it was a joke. No such luck. GGA asks whether game reviews with a political point of view are such a bad thing. We've already got Christ Centered Game Reviews that examine the moral issues involved in some of today's hottest games. Imagine a review of WarioWare from a right wing think tank. A review of Blinx: The Time Sweeper from an animal rights group. Would these reviews provide a more palatable venue for propaganda or a more interesting perspective on games? My guess is the former more than the latter, but I'd love to find out.
But Seriously, Folks and No, Seriously (IGDA) Matt Sakey is not very happy about the state of the specialist press. Matt's basic point isn't too new -- games journalism is too juvenile and focuses on pretty graphics rather than artistic expression -- but he goes from there to argue bad games journalism is actually leading to bad games. Game developers aren't going to change what they're doing as long as the video game press tells them what they're doing is perfectly fine. A wider variety of perspectives in the game writing world could easily lead to a wider variety of perspectives in the game development world.
Jack Thompson is a douche bag (Keep Your Killing Clean) Amen to that. This guy is the worst kind of press whore, seeking out only self-serving, softball press appearances and refusing to talk to any video game journalist who might want to cover both sides, or even just the side that isn't his. I think he's doing more harm than good to his image, here.
GameDrool - I've fallen in love with this "Game Journalist's Diary" from a GamePro writer who seems to really love his job. The site gained a lot of links for a look at an angry Trip Hawkins letter but there have also been interesting posts about development systems and aggressive PR people. My only wish: more updates!
Chris "CJ" Johnston's blog - Speaking of game journalist blogs that aren't updated enough, Chris Johnston was an editor at EGM until relatively recently. His posts about the insider baseball in the EGM office are a great window in for a wannabe like me, and his general thoughts on video games are interesting too.
PSM sucks (render) I'm surprised at how bad PSM is, considering it has some of the same people that were on Game Players magazine in it's heyday. And I loved Game Players! Then again, I was 13 when Game Players was in its heyday. Did Game Players actually suck? This requires more investigation.
Hardcore (gewgaw) Sometimes I think video game journalists are too close to their industry. I'd love to see some game reviews from people who are experienced with games, but haven't spent their entire lives doing nothing but playing. Mix in some real world life experience with those game reviews and let's see what comes up.
Do Game Reviews Have To Be Puerile? (Kotaku) No, they don't. There's definitely a place for more abstract, experiential pieces about games like this this one. But they're definitely not for everybody, or for every publication. I did a review of Space Channel 5: Special Edition for Gamecritics.com that was heavy on pop-journalism criticism and low on gameplay details. Not everyone was happy. If you're audience is interested in these types of pieces, more power to you. If they are looking for a straight review, these kind of horizon-expanding writing should be used sparingly.
Mao and the New Games Journalism (game girl advance) When I first read that Maoist newspaper MIM was getting into game reviews, I thought it was a joke. No such luck. GGA asks whether game reviews with a political point of view are such a bad thing. We've already got Christ Centered Game Reviews that examine the moral issues involved in some of today's hottest games. Imagine a review of WarioWare from a right wing think tank. A review of Blinx: The Time Sweeper from an animal rights group. Would these reviews provide a more palatable venue for propaganda or a more interesting perspective on games? My guess is the former more than the latter, but I'd love to find out.
But Seriously, Folks and No, Seriously (IGDA) Matt Sakey is not very happy about the state of the specialist press. Matt's basic point isn't too new -- games journalism is too juvenile and focuses on pretty graphics rather than artistic expression -- but he goes from there to argue bad games journalism is actually leading to bad games. Game developers aren't going to change what they're doing as long as the video game press tells them what they're doing is perfectly fine. A wider variety of perspectives in the game writing world could easily lead to a wider variety of perspectives in the game development world.
Jack Thompson is a douche bag (Keep Your Killing Clean) Amen to that. This guy is the worst kind of press whore, seeking out only self-serving, softball press appearances and refusing to talk to any video game journalist who might want to cover both sides, or even just the side that isn't his. I think he's doing more harm than good to his image, here.
GameDrool - I've fallen in love with this "Game Journalist's Diary" from a GamePro writer who seems to really love his job. The site gained a lot of links for a look at an angry Trip Hawkins letter but there have also been interesting posts about development systems and aggressive PR people. My only wish: more updates!
Chris "CJ" Johnston's blog - Speaking of game journalist blogs that aren't updated enough, Chris Johnston was an editor at EGM until relatively recently. His posts about the insider baseball in the EGM office are a great window in for a wannabe like me, and his general thoughts on video games are interesting too.
PSM sucks (render) I'm surprised at how bad PSM is, considering it has some of the same people that were on Game Players magazine in it's heyday. And I loved Game Players! Then again, I was 13 when Game Players was in its heyday. Did Game Players actually suck? This requires more investigation.
Hardcore (gewgaw) Sometimes I think video game journalists are too close to their industry. I'd love to see some game reviews from people who are experienced with games, but haven't spent their entire lives doing nothing but playing. Mix in some real world life experience with those game reviews and let's see what comes up.
G4 Makes Me Cry
As I write my next post for this very blog, G4 is on in the background. A (vaguely interesting) special about a Madden football tournament has just transitioned into a piece about the "lingerie bowl," a bunch of girls in bras and panties playing full contact football. Real life football... not video game football. This piece has been going on for about five minutes now. Every few seconds, I have to check the corner of the screen for a Spike TV logo. No such luck.
This is G4... Video Game (and Scantily Clad Women's Sports) Television.
This is G4... Video Game (and Scantily Clad Women's Sports) Television.
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
Objectivity Means Saying My Side Is Right!
Benny Torres is not the only one who had a problem with EGM's recent coverage of the brewing portable wars in their February 2005 issue. Nintendo Now recently weighed in on the issue and, not too surprisingly, also found the coverage to be less than favorable for the DS.
Many of these same points were already addressed on this blog EGM's Editor-in-chief Dan "Shoe" Hsu. The article does bring up some fresh points:
Games like Pokemon Dash, Super Princess Peach, Frogger, and Atari Classics made it on the list while better looking, true sure-fire hits that highlight the DS’s capabilities such as Rayman DS, Metroid Prime: Hunters, Dynasty Warriors, Another Code, and Super Mario Bros. DS were strangely absent.
But, to be fair, Nintendo itself didn't mention any of those "sure-fire hits" titles in a recent press release:
Publishers have more than 120 games planned for Nintendo DS. Key titles due in 2005 include Need for Speed Underground™ 2 from Electronic Arts, WarioWare™: Touched!, Pokémon® Dash and Yoshi Touch & Go™ from Nintendo and Retro Atari Classics™ from Atari.
Part of the problem here is that the EGM feature isn't an unbiased news article -- it's more of an extended preview section for portable games. While there are a lot of facts presented, a lot of opinions also seep in, and those opinions do favor the PSP. Part of this is likely because of previously discussed preview bias, part of this is becasue the EGM staff probably thinks the PSP is better.
There's no problem with this, except that some readers obviously don't understand that this is an opinion feature. The way the article is cast in the magazine, this is understandable. It's not labeled as a review or preview and it's not in the "press start" news section (which also has its share of opinion... a topic for another time), instead it is placed in the cover feature slot where straight news and opinion-based pieces are known to show up. Readers expecting a totally unbiased, purely factual look at the competing systems will not get what they expect.
Is this fair to EGM. Maybe -- they make minimal effort to make it explicit to readers that the feature is editorial preview. Maybe not -- anyone who reads EGM should know that the magazine is pretty much one big editorial anyway. The seperation of editorial and hard news content has been discussed on this blog before, and I'm not going to rehash my points, but I will say that a clearer demarcation here could have saved EGM a lot of headaches.
I'll end this post the same way NNow ended theirs, and I'll note that I usually don't look for unbiased commentary from sites with company or system names in their title. (not to make a blanket statement about such sites, but their titles do start them off with one objectivity strike against them):
For now, gamers looking for the truth about Nintendo products can count on dependable and objective online media outlets such as Nintendo Now, Planet GameCube, and N-Sider. Obviously you won’t find one in the magazine world... yet.
Many of these same points were already addressed on this blog EGM's Editor-in-chief Dan "Shoe" Hsu. The article does bring up some fresh points:
Games like Pokemon Dash, Super Princess Peach, Frogger, and Atari Classics made it on the list while better looking, true sure-fire hits that highlight the DS’s capabilities such as Rayman DS, Metroid Prime: Hunters, Dynasty Warriors, Another Code, and Super Mario Bros. DS were strangely absent.
But, to be fair, Nintendo itself didn't mention any of those "sure-fire hits" titles in a recent press release:
Publishers have more than 120 games planned for Nintendo DS. Key titles due in 2005 include Need for Speed Underground™ 2 from Electronic Arts, WarioWare™: Touched!, Pokémon® Dash and Yoshi Touch & Go™ from Nintendo and Retro Atari Classics™ from Atari.
Part of the problem here is that the EGM feature isn't an unbiased news article -- it's more of an extended preview section for portable games. While there are a lot of facts presented, a lot of opinions also seep in, and those opinions do favor the PSP. Part of this is likely because of previously discussed preview bias, part of this is becasue the EGM staff probably thinks the PSP is better.
There's no problem with this, except that some readers obviously don't understand that this is an opinion feature. The way the article is cast in the magazine, this is understandable. It's not labeled as a review or preview and it's not in the "press start" news section (which also has its share of opinion... a topic for another time), instead it is placed in the cover feature slot where straight news and opinion-based pieces are known to show up. Readers expecting a totally unbiased, purely factual look at the competing systems will not get what they expect.
Is this fair to EGM. Maybe -- they make minimal effort to make it explicit to readers that the feature is editorial preview. Maybe not -- anyone who reads EGM should know that the magazine is pretty much one big editorial anyway. The seperation of editorial and hard news content has been discussed on this blog before, and I'm not going to rehash my points, but I will say that a clearer demarcation here could have saved EGM a lot of headaches.
I'll end this post the same way NNow ended theirs, and I'll note that I usually don't look for unbiased commentary from sites with company or system names in their title. (not to make a blanket statement about such sites, but their titles do start them off with one objectivity strike against them):
For now, gamers looking for the truth about Nintendo products can count on dependable and objective online media outlets such as Nintendo Now, Planet GameCube, and N-Sider. Obviously you won’t find one in the magazine world... yet.
Is All Copy Editing In Vein?
See if you can pick out the error in the first sentence of this press release from the IEMA (emphasis helpfully added):
The newly proposed violent video game legislation in California smacks of me-too politics in a vein effort for local politicians to garner some perceived moral high ground when clearly there is none to be had.
Apparently, the politicians are trying to draw blood from a stone. But the heart of the matter here is that a simple typo can do a whole load of damage to your credibility. Such a mistake makes it hard to pump up your supporters, which hampers the free flow of ideas you're looking for with a press release. And that's the tooth.
Whoops... guess that last one doens't quite fit. Oh well.
The newly proposed violent video game legislation in California smacks of me-too politics in a vein effort for local politicians to garner some perceived moral high ground when clearly there is none to be had.
Apparently, the politicians are trying to draw blood from a stone. But the heart of the matter here is that a simple typo can do a whole load of damage to your credibility. Such a mistake makes it hard to pump up your supporters, which hampers the free flow of ideas you're looking for with a press release. And that's the tooth.
Whoops... guess that last one doens't quite fit. Oh well.
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
VGO Editor Says Ballmer Headlines are "AMAZING!"
Some more headlines following on the recently highlighted one.
Template: Headline (My comment) -Source
Ballmer: Xbox 2 'Amazing' (In other news, "Bush: Evil 'Bad'") -Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Ballmer: "Xbox 2 is going to OWN Sony" (Or Microsoft is going to buy them) -Xbox365
Ballmer *hearts* the new Xbox (I *heart* Huckabees) -Prodigious Gaming
“Xbox 2 is an Amazing Innovation” – Steve Ballmer (I could have sworn Nintendo Preisdent Satoru Iwata said that first) TeamXbox
Ballmer: Xbox 'can take Sony' (...Out to dinner!) -CNet
Steve Ballmer Talks Xbox 2 (Wins the "straightforward" award) -Xbox Advanced
Xbox 2 expected to challenge Sony and Nintendo (Wins the "No duh!" award, despite tough competition) -GameShout
Ballmer 'bigs-up' Xbox 2 ('Bigs-up'?) -Ferrago
Microsoft CEO Pledges Xbox 2 Innovation, Makes Next-Gen Warcry (Spong shows some remarkable restraint) -Spong
Last, and definitely least: Xbox2 Blows Sony!!! (No comment) -Total Video Games
Template: Headline (My comment) -Source
Ballmer: Xbox 2 'Amazing' (In other news, "Bush: Evil 'Bad'") -Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Ballmer: "Xbox 2 is going to OWN Sony" (Or Microsoft is going to buy them) -Xbox365
Ballmer *hearts* the new Xbox (I *heart* Huckabees) -Prodigious Gaming
“Xbox 2 is an Amazing Innovation” – Steve Ballmer (I could have sworn Nintendo Preisdent Satoru Iwata said that first) TeamXbox
Ballmer: Xbox 'can take Sony' (...Out to dinner!) -CNet
Steve Ballmer Talks Xbox 2 (Wins the "straightforward" award) -Xbox Advanced
Xbox 2 expected to challenge Sony and Nintendo (Wins the "No duh!" award, despite tough competition) -GameShout
Ballmer 'bigs-up' Xbox 2 ('Bigs-up'?) -Ferrago
Microsoft CEO Pledges Xbox 2 Innovation, Makes Next-Gen Warcry (Spong shows some remarkable restraint) -Spong
Last, and definitely least: Xbox2 Blows Sony!!! (No comment) -Total Video Games
Monday, February 14, 2005
EGM Liveblogging
Didn't get enough of liveblogging when I tore apart the Spike TV Video Game Awards? Luckily for you, Amit at These Damned Machines Are Killing Me (which I just discovered and am absolutely enjoying) have applied the form to video game magazines. He makes some good points about how EGM sometimes dances right to the edge of the interesting issues, then ignores them.
The best part of the article is when they get quotes from people in Japan who bought the PSP, and one gamer said "It's a sexy new gadget, like my iPod. And PSP doesn't feel like just a game machine." That's a pretty interesting statement. I'd like to read more about that.
...
Anyways, blah-blah-Godfather-blowjob-EA-rumored most expensive game ever. Really? How much? What are the most expensive games? Man, that would be an interesting article. I've always wondered how many titles a game has to sell in relation to it's budget to be profitable.
Also check out Part 1 of the series.
By the by, if you think you are writing interesting stuff about video games, including a link to the Ombudsman on your site is a great way to get my notice. E-mail works too. I'm just saying, is all.
The best part of the article is when they get quotes from people in Japan who bought the PSP, and one gamer said "It's a sexy new gadget, like my iPod. And PSP doesn't feel like just a game machine." That's a pretty interesting statement. I'd like to read more about that.
...
Anyways, blah-blah-Godfather-blowjob-EA-rumored most expensive game ever. Really? How much? What are the most expensive games? Man, that would be an interesting article. I've always wondered how many titles a game has to sell in relation to it's budget to be profitable.
Also check out Part 1 of the series.
By the by, if you think you are writing interesting stuff about video games, including a link to the Ombudsman on your site is a great way to get my notice. E-mail works too. I'm just saying, is all.
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