Comments on: Barnett: “Gary Penn was my Lester Bangs”

By: Zach Marx

Zach Marx — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 03:23:57 +0000

Kieron-

You’ve been inspirational to me in making me want to write games journalism, but I’d have to say that the man I’d call my ‘Lester Bangs’ is someone I thanked you for introducing me to when I met you at San Diego Comiccon:

Tim Rogers.

By: The_B

The_B — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 17:44:17 +0000

Hmmm, I forsee one of two things happening:

Either the end of the world comes, and we see a four way fight to the death between the RPS team.

Or:

Kieron breaks away from RPS, and goes off on a moderaterly successful solo career, while Alec John and Jim carry on RPS without him quietly, until a few years later when suddenly RPS explodes into something humongous, and Gillen quietly creeps back into the band…err website…

This analogy may or may not be based on Take That/Robbie Williams.

By: Kieron Gillen

Kieron Gillen — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 17:27:12 +0000

You know, I honestly didn’t actually write that article for this.

No, really.

Shucks.

By: Miles

Miles — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 17:20:31 +0000

I would say mine was Kieron but… well, on a blog he writes for? I don’t know, there’s such a thing as too much ego stroking.

By: Seniath

Seniath — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 23:22:39 +0000

Sad to say, well, you lot really. PCG kept me fed on gaming goodness during the dark days of 56k and geocities. And now you continue to keep me informed and entertained.

A few PCG Podcasts ago, Tom Francis mentioned being treated like an internet celebrity due to his status as a reviewer, and I kinda look at it like that. I respect you lot much more than people with “real” fame *cough*wino*cough*.

I guess, however, if I had to pick one of you, it’d be Kieron. Like Paul S, I’m a self-confessed KG fanboy. I still remember getting into bitter arguments with my friends over that Hitman review.

By: Kieron Gillen

Kieron Gillen — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 22:55:49 +0000

Alec: I suspect that the sort of encouragement between peers when they riff off each other in a mix of co-operation and competition is a different thing altogether. PCG was by far at its best when there was those sort of spirit of quiet competition, for example.

Not that I’m ever jealous of anything you or Walker have ever written. Oh, no. No, sirree.

By: Alec Meer

Alec Meer — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 19:10:24 +0000

Kieron will be too modest/embarrassed
Hang on – is there another Kieron I don’t know about?

I don’t have a Bangs-of-games myself. Couldn’t afford games mags when young (and couldn’t afford games mags and music papers when slightly older; games mags lost) so barely knew any writers’ names, let alone formed strong attachments to ‘em. I rather fear this blind spot has had some interesting/unfortunate effects on my own games writing.

Perhaps, actually, RPS is the closest I have to a Bangs. All three of the others regularly muster insight and turns of phrase I’m bitterly jealous of. But don’t tell them that.

By: John Walker

John Walker — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 18:22:53 +0000

I think Kieron will be too modest/embarrassed to respond to that question.

Also, I think that if someone starts to think about themselves that way, they’re pretty much done as a creative mind. Fear, mild self-loathing and occasional quiet compliments are the necessary fuel.

By: Will Tomas

Will Tomas — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 02:23:26 +0000

I personally think the reason KG’s writing resonated with me was that he wrote about the mental experience going on while you were playing videogames, rather than simply dealing with the games in isolation (i.e. reviewing games only in the context of other games). Context is all, and he put games in the context of our mental interaction with them as much about how they “mechanistically” operated. How we felt about them could be written about too.

But I’d be interested to know how Kieron sees his own writing and whether as arguably the most influential games journalist of the last however-many-years he feels us calling him the computer games version of Lester Bangs is in any way appropriate?

By: Nick R

Nick R — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 19:43:32 +0000

Does Steven Poole count?

Also: Ed Lomas (C&VG and Official Dreamcast mag), Violet Berlin, and the Edge hive-mind entity.

By: Paul S

Paul S — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 15:30:32 +0000

Kieron Gillen, again. This is all getting a bit sycophantic really. Oh well.

But PCG in general, around the first Quake issue. I mean, I’d read it off and on in the Johnathan Davies years, but that’s when I graduated from Amstrad Action (oh, the nostalgia) up to full time PCG reader. I remember loads of KG’s early reviews (the Thief one in particular, and H&D – later, Deus Ex), and they kind of coalesced a lot of my own feelings about gaming at an important period of my life – 14ish, I believe. Just when I was ready for a long haired, made up Belle & Sebastian fan to get me thinking properly.

Another Gillen legacy. B&S, and, indirectly, vaguely pretentious self-examination and critical thought. Yikes.

Gosh. I’m a bit of a Gillen fanboy, really. How embarrassing.

By: Paul Barnett

Paul Barnett — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 10:42:58 +0000

Your quite right, I switched to a C64 when my Speccy broke and that moved me to Zap!64, first games bought being Bruce lee and beach head. And my all time fave game Paradriod. I’ll make an edit on the blog to fix it.