A few months back, I met up with EA Mythic’s vocal Creative Director in a bar near London Liverpool Street Station. We ordered drinks. We set the tape rolling. After three hours, I stopped the dictaphone and we stumbled off. We’d covered a lot of ground – pretty much everything away from Warhammer itself, which was out of bounds for the usual PR-reasons. Since the full transcript would run to tens of thousands of words, I’m going to break it down to individual segments which I’ll lob up every week or two. And it’s just as well, as much of what Paul says is going to lead to debate and each topic should be taken apart individually.
The first one’s about Games Journalism, how it should work, how it worked for him, how journalists minds get broken, the problems of journos turning devs, where it’s gone wrong and how RPS has invented a time-machine (to our mild embarrassment).
I was going to save it for nearer the end – starting off on something that’s a little naval gazing is a little off. But we’ll get to the more incendiary stuff soon enough, and doing it chronologically so the descent into booze becomes obvious strikes me as a worthwhile idea.
It was also unlike an interview I’ve ever done. In that it wasn’t often an interview at all. Paul arrived with a decorated sheet of paper packed with things he wanted to rant about, and we pretty much worked through them. It was more of an audience, Paul doing his demagoguery to a single listener, with a more serious bent than he generally gets a chance to show.
As Paul put it as I pressed record: “Use it as you see fit. Most of it can be thrown in the bin as ranting and gibberish.”
Let’s use it like this:
Paul Barnett: A thought dawned on me about why I was excited about coming to speak to you. And then it dawned on me that somehow or another you created a time machine.
KG: Right.
Barnett: I didn’t realise you’d done that until I was trying to explain to my son about where I was going. “I’m off to London. I’m going to speak to a man” “What’s it about?” “Well, he has this website and I want to go and talk to him…” And I realise that somehow or another, you turned into Zzap 64.
When I was kid, I was obsessed about reading about Crash and Zzap. Obviously the Golden period, as far as I was concerned. I used to read about them meeting people in pub and talking to people who did things and thinking… that’s what I want to do for a living. And then I realised… I’m doing that for a living. But I’m not actually going to pubs. I don’t get to meet these people. And one of the great difficulties with modern media coverage is that there’s no equivalent of Zzap or Crash. It doesn’t exist any more. And that could just be because I’m completely broken – that I just don’t understand that the media is the same as before and I’m just weak and stupid… but in my mind it’s because there’s an energy and vibrancy of the age of the people buying the games and the age of the people reporting on the game and the wisdom of the owners [of the magazines] in letting them indulge in that juvenile area. [Ultimately] you were either Spectrum or Commodore 64. I was one, and then I moved to the other.
KG: You crossed the floor.
Barnett: I don’t believe in God. So instead what I have to have is religious transformation – and mine is usually between platforms. That’s when you have that moment of clarity. That’s when you move to a new religion. But you also have a particular favour [writer]. And mine was always Gary Penn. Not particularly the man but rather the ideology he had at the time. He was the only reviewer I read an awful lot and years after someone asked me about it. I said that I used to read an awful lot of Gary Penn’s stuff.
KG: [At which point, for our non-English readers, a little background. ZZap64 and Crash were the undisputed champions of games writings for the early period of the British press, generally falling in a tad more serious than most of its competitors while still being personality lead and all that stuff. Penn was, basically, the best writer of the period and who has real influence on the actual route games journalism took. He later went into Development. He's at Denki now, and won the Games Media Legend award in the UK last year.]
Barnett: I sat down and I spent six months – not in one session. I slept and ate between that – but I had a big long chew over it. And wondered why I liked Gary Penn, particularly because in the later years they got rubbish and he went off and did all sorts of Crazy things. And I realised that I loved a particularly period when he was writing. Lo and behold, about six months later, I was in England and I picked up a copy of Edge [British Videogames Bible]. And he used to write in the back. And I read this article which was so sad. It was a one page thing. I think it may have been the last thing he wrote for Edge. It’s just so incredibly sad. Because he mapped out his experience – the 20 years of his life. As idealistic, young-gun ready to tear it up reporter all the way through to man who realises you need a pension fund and how do you live with life. And he documented the rise and fall. It struck me that what he’d fallen foul is nothing more than humanity – personal truth developed through wisdom ultimately leads you to unsettling views.
KG: I’m often unsettled.
Barnett: But personal truth through dogma – or broadcasting, someone delivering you a personal truth you just take on board allows you to be elated and happy. The actual curse he suffered from was going on a personal journey of enlightenment which involved him actually experiencing it, and then realising that if you do that you come out the other side incredibly disenchanted and unhappy, disenfranchised. And what I thought it was, was an incredible metaphor for almost every computer person I met. Even people who are just players – they start off with that idle wonder, and end up with everything not being any good, and everything being better in the good old days. So the bit I’m interested in is that when he still have the fire and the light….
So I tried to write about the bit of him I really liked. Why did I like him? And I liked him for a couple of reasons. In particular, he was the first reviewer I read who offered viable alternatives or options on a game. He’s say things like… “I’ve played this game, and they do this mechanic in this way. Which is interesting, but may have been better if they tried this way or that way”. And he clearly had a lot of information, and he used to critique. What struck me is reviewing games has slipped from a critique and instead had transmuted into… “I’m very good in comedy. Actually I hate being in the computer game industry and should be a film script writer. Allow me to put my script writing credentials on the page”…. to… “a very subtle injoke, and unless you’ve been following the industry very closely you won’t realise how ironic I am”… into “an alleycat piss-fest. Allow me to show how upset I can be with this thing”… or it turns into an elaborate sketch, so you get things like it being written into a strange language or written as if they’re a private eye, and just drive you mad… or if you’ve got reviewers who’s boiled it down to “There’s no point in reading this. You’re not going to listen to it. You’re just going to skip ahead to the score. And the score is 68% and now I’m going to fill it with rubbish, because I loathe the very people I’m writing for”.. but what Penn used to do, or used to do for a period, was critique.
Like a good movie reviewer. He’d state references and resources and give you opinions and in th end you became clear it was an opinion.. and it had provoked you to think. And that was interesting, because what came to it was an understanding of a judgement criteria. And the more you read, the more you understood his judgement criteria. And when he said “I don’t like this” you actually had a pretty good understanding of whether you’d agree or disagree with whether you’d think it was a good game or a bad game. And I was looking at the modern media… and we just don’t have those things any more. And then we have Rock Paper Shotgun… which is that thing. It actually is free from all the stuff that causes problems. It is like Zzap 64. And I am in a pub. And I am talking to you. And you’re sort of like Gary Penn. And so it is like a Time Machine that’s transformed me back to my childhood.
KG: I remember reading his review of Civilization circa Amiga Power. And he critqued it quite hard. Yes, he gave it an 80, but he had real problems with it. He didn’t like that it was a recapitulation of history. You couldn’t do things like… “What would the world be like without religion?” Civ stated history was a single route. This was a review before it as an accepted modern classic. And I always liked that review, because even though I disagreed with it – I’m a big Civ fan – I could respect that review. He clearly engaged.
Barnett: I was musing back, and in my opinion, the first time I became aware that he was going through the cycle of change was his review of the UK version of Aliens. The Electronic Arts version was the mini-game thing.
KG: Yeah, the awful mini-game thing.
I remember him critiquing it, and he objected to the robot having the same sort of endurance problems a human has and he saw it as a move away from the purity of the source material.
KG: Heh.
Barnett: And the thing he did with Edge – which I can’t find a copy of online – he talked about going through these stages. I think he should write a book about it. Because it’s pretty much the stages of life. He talked about idealism. He talked about being able to just detect a good game. Then he talked about frustration, seeing games which are missing opportunities. Then it’s like a crackhead… searching for that elusive hit again. And then realising that those peaks would come further and further apart. And then realising there was an art form – a purity. An automatic mistake people go into where they say – I’m looking for great games. I’m looking for greatness. And they’re actually looking for games which are going to stand on the shoulders of giants. Which is really tough. Really tough for you to be impressed. First time you see something, you’re going to be really impressed. Second time you’re hardly impressed at all, even if it’s an improvement.
And then you go through that terrible period where you just going… it’s all about that. And then you become convinced – and this has happened to almost all reviewers I’ve ever known – that your first best destiny is to make games. And that leads you down a terrible path. Unless you actually were destined to make games, in which case you probably wouldn’t be reviewing them… but it can be done. He ended off going into the industry horribly enough and witnessing what it’s like.
Carrie Gouskos works for EA mythic. She used to work for Gamespot. She did a lot of in front of the camera reviews. I met her when she worked for Gamespot and she was basically doing an interview for our game… and it’s been illuminating watching her come into the fold, and watching her go through that terrible journey where she is working 100s of hours – just like everyone on our project – and then magazine people, people in the media who – in one sentence – encapsulate everything you’ve done in a year in “Yeah, it’s alright”. And that crestfallen moment. It goes like that. You move into games development and then you become aware of this dark underbelly you didn’t realise existed… and then ultimately you realise it’s about moving units and the rest of it.
I thought it was interesting to see Penn was writing about it. You want to stay in early Zzap 64 territory and the glory days of Crash… and stay there. And that’s where Rock Paper Shotgun needs to stay, and it’ll be relevant forever.
KG: I expect we’ll kill each other with knives. I dunno. I quite like the idea of being the Clash. Having a few years and then falling out. We’re quite argumentative fuckers and it’s a miracle we get along at all.
Barnett: Someone will offer you money. That’ll be the end of you. What’ll happen is you’ll find a voice, you’ll find a rhythm, you’ll find some way of connecting with things… and before you know it, someone will go, “We should buy it and own it” and then one of the two natural cycles will happen. You’ll end up rejecting collapsing and exploding, or you’ll take the money and leave, feeding on yourself and it’ll all become a horror-show.
Next time on Barnett On we’ll discuss why he didn’t go to GDC.
Related Stories:
Brog/AbyssUK: You kind of implies you know which game designers were games journalists before swapping sides, man. Penn’s record isn’t bad – he was at DMA. You like the Cradle or Fort Frolic? Jordan Thomas was a journo. Life of a Party in Thief 2 or the Dark Brotherhood quests in Oblivion? Emil Pagliarulo was a journo. Over in the UK, Jon Smith of Lego Star Wars fame comes to mind.
There’s bigger issues about “being” a game designer – and we actually get to them in a later part, where Paul actually manages to change my opinion on something I previously believed quite strongly.
Terry: I was a YS guy too. Crash had its golden age before I started reading games mags. When I joined, YS was hot as it got.
Strelok: Looking further than Wenders, the whole French New Wave was absolutely preciptated by the critics of Cahiers du cinéma becoming directors.
Tom Camfield: I suspect Paul had stopped following Penn’s writing as closely circa AP. We were mainly talking about Penn’s time on ZZAP.
Brog: Re: “WoW but better”. Most MMO designers we’ve ever talked to have never played Eve Online. If one did seriously, then I suspect more interesting ideas would go into their game too. It’s why I have a little trouble with the “Knowing less is good” position.
Kestrel: This was the first 13 minutes of the interview. It’s lunchtime. I think we’re both doing it on an empty stomach.
KG
In every artistic medium there’s an interesting disjunction between creators and critics. One is generally always pursuing the other, but this rule practically inverted at varying points of their career – an artist would wish to woo a critic for attention and acclaim early in their career and a critic will always be looking for access to established stars.
Bartlett argues what made Gary Penn’s writing so good was that he engaged with the game, his writings were a critique. I’ve never knowingly read any of Gary Penn’s work, but I do agree that most video-gaming journalism are not critiques. Now I’ve not gone to the bother of looking up the definitions or differences between the two, but most writing about games today (in the press at least) would be most accurately defined as a review, and not a critique.
This I assume is for a multitude of reasons such as reviews are just more informative to the reader, and help formulate their opinion on whether to play or not to play.
Whereas some of the best “critiques” I’ve ever read still leave me wondering whether the game in question is one that I would love or lambast. And therein lies the brilliance of proper critiques; because real critiques take the piece (game, film, book) as it is (though obviously individual elements are deconstructed – they are generally accepted as part of the piece for better or for worse), critiques are thus able to shy away from making the qualitative judgements a review must. In my opinion this leads to a more holistic approach to games writing and engenders far better discussion and debate (in the pub at least).
But it’s not what most readers look for when buying a game and reasonably so, yet most mainstream press is being driven by the bottom line.
That and also a meaningful critique takes time to form. They can’t be written in the wake of a piece’s release.
Which is why I love Edge’s Time Extended section, and this sites Retrospectives. They’re great -and real critiques.
Kieron: Like I said, I’m just raising a contentious position without completely believing it myself. What I actually believe is something like:
- Knowing more is good, but can make it more difficult to be original. Often when I read a novel (or play a game), I get a strong desire to write a novel (game) myself; when I examine the feeling I realise that what I want is to write exactly the novel (game) that I just read (played). It is sometimes difficult to shake off this influence and create something of my own. (I’m writing an RTS, and it has become much better since I shook off the desire to make it just like Starcraft only better. Wait a few months and you’ll see.)
- Great works of art are made by giants standing on the shoulders of other giants. To master a form of expression it is necessary to critically examine the works of others and learn from them. So journalists do have an advantage here.
- Things made by people who are on the fringes and not heavily influenced by the mainstream are often quite interesting but can have serious flaws (for example, the horrible horrible UI in dwarf fortress and armaggeddon empires). If these people paid more attention to the mainstream they would fix these problems but they might lose the unique perspective which makes their creations so interesting.
Perhaps knowing everything is best (so you can see the whole picture, and learn from others), but it is better to know nothing than just a few things (with just a few influences, they show too much). With the MMO example, perhaps designers would produce more interesting games if they’d played Eve as well as WoW, but I think they’d also produce more interesting games if they hadn’t ever played WoW either. I expect I could design a better MMO than pretty much anything out there today, having never played WoW, Eve, or any other graphical MMO (not that I’m going to try to).
Better to bought out than neutered and then skewered for good measure, as happened to the greatest games magazine there ever was: Digitiser. It taught me everything I need to know about games, and I can’t remember ever reading an article about games on its pages.
Strange that you didn’t mention it, since Biffo was miles ahead of everything else.
two asides:
The Oblivion example (I suppose you could use WoW, but who plays that?) shows what’s going on: games are at the point where not only artists, but level designers are needed in huge numbers. It used to be that three blokes who met at the pub could put out a top-notch game, but now much of the revenue is captured by titles with a solid code base and tons of content. Oblivion’s Dark Brotherhood quests are good, but whoever did the Daedric quest where you have to go into a peaceful village run by two families and start a lethal clan war — that person is a genius I’d be happy to burn an anacolouthon on.
Also, I love to remind folks that anti-games-as-art film critic Roger Ebert used to write Hollywood scripts, and every serious student of the art remembers him fondly for his contribution to late-60s, early-70s boobfest exploitation pics.
“not even a Bentley!”
“What would the world be like religion”
Without?
I’m always somewhat concerned about interviews where the interviewer has 3 times the text of the interviewee. However, in this case I could care less about what the latter has to say, while the former was semi-interesting, so that’s ok.
@Xander77
…could care less…
AND NOW YOU MUST DIE.
http://verboten.org.uk
I think it’s difficult to look at journalists turning into developers. Both are very wide terms at the moment – game designers barely exist nowadays, and most journalists are still entering games journalism via hugely oblique routes. There’s a whole muddle of skills out there, so naturally some will go into programming, say, and do fine because they previously were programmers. Others, and Penny Arcade probably springs to mind here but that’s a bad example because they weren’t developers per se, may get involved out of a sense of experience rather than skill.
That was excellent, though. His comments about journalists and pubs were touching, really. I like to think that games journalism – and gaming itself – hasn’t had the last of its romantic eras.
FCK! This is an amazing article!! We’re touching teh fundamental core of why we DO things: because we burn for something and want to make an impact… later we may allow to dim ourselves down. I say may because it is often seen, but it’s not soem law of nature.
I recall beginning to read Gamespot’s reviews 3 years ago, and being thrilled that someone took games so serious. Today, my respect for their reviews and previews are gone – i now look to RPS (which ive just found) or from computerandvideogames (will porters fallout preview is the best ive ever read)
It’s so wonderful to hear Paul Barnett explain the enthusiasm that i adore him for, hear where he found his and how we all in the end are mere human beings.