Sundays are for lying, working on my tan and hacking through big ol’ Russian novels. Or so I hope. But Tuesday nights are for rushing around, desperately trying to pack, write a script and generally tie up all my business… including doing the Sunday Papers five days in advance. Let’s hope no major stories break between now and Sunday, eh? So, as always, here’s some interesting reading gathered from across (er) the last two days which I show to you, while trying to resist linking to a late-nineties zinekid micro-classic which re-impinged on my consciousness when panickedly running around yesterday.
- Mindless Ones are primarily a smart and funny comics blog, but they went deep down the hole marked gaming nostalgia this week with a post on the glory of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks. Plenty of memories to be prompted, but great for focing on exactly how evocative those covers were. Go see.
- There’s a never ending string of articles about what’s wrong about the games press and how people should fix it – enough that I’ve been wanting for a few years to write an article giving 10 reasons why games writing now is better than ever. Leigh Alexander goes for something I think is much more fresh – as in, looking at what’s wrong with Games PR and how they should all ditch the predictable script in favour of genuine transparency.
- I haven’t mentioned the Escapist for a while, but a couple of features caught my eye in this week’s update. Firstly, one about part of a university design course where – basically – they send the pupils outside to play in the sun and transfer the lessons there into games. Secondly, one about the educational uses of not explicitly educational games. You suspect a lot of gamers didn’t even realise the Hittites existed until Age of Empires.
- Game Set Watch has given regular commenter Phill “Poisoned Sponge” Cameron a regular column about the relationship between the personal computer and gaming. YOU CAN GAME ON THE HOME COMPUTER, SEZ I. First one is about the PC as a platform for Indie games and its general splendidosity.
- Something makes me think I’ve linked to this before, but I can’t find reference to it. Let’s say I haven’t. Here’s Edge on the making of Elite. It’s an increasingly odd one, Elite. It’s worrying how many US journalists really haven’t a clue about it, which says much about the duopoly of Japan/US over games recieved history.
- Lewis pointed us in the direction of this lament for the young games journalist thinking of a career. Hmm.
- Actually, here’s something actually by Lewis. He reviews Deus Ex. Man, talk about slow reviewing.
- Oh, here’s something about as un-games as it gets, though in this week with what happened in California, I feel fine with it. Andrew Wheeler on why homosexuals should be banned from writing songs due to it devaluing hymns.
- Music For Girls by Baxendale. Odd one, Baxendale. Entered my consciousness when a tape from them arrived on my doorstep back when I was a zinekid – and being the sort of hyper-obscure less-than-100-copies-zine I was, I was bewildered how on earth they knew who I was. But still – wafer-thin production, wafer-thin voice, literate/narrative/argumentative/awesomeness. If I said it’s Ste Curran’s theme tune, I suspect he’d probably attack me.
Failed.
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Or you might end up with a hundred unread blogs full of angry gibber about how this or that is bollocks and how bloohoo-game-x-isn’t-actually-what-I-expected-it-to-be.
Leigh’s point takes into account that the industry needs a credible press. She’s saying the marketeers need to realise we can all see through their bullshit, and that press people swallowing it isn’t healthy for anyone. Discussion and transparency actually gets them a lot more traction in the long run.
The companies that have competent, presentable spokesmen already know this stuff. The trick for the bullshitters will be to hire articulate, engaged company frontmen, who can talk intelligently about the game, and understand the creative process. Producers are increasingly taking that role on, and I think it’ll be prove to be massively popular over time.
Additionally: there’s an extent to which we do have to give developers the benefit of the doubt before their game is released. Immediately chiming in with “your game is NOTHING compared with X!” isn’t really fair, even though it might be fun and turn out to be correct.
Nice articles linked there. DX review was nice although I don’t think it will get me playing again (game never catched on with me, same with SS2/BS).
Those game PR complaints… fully agree there, everyone is starved for more information and most community managers/PR people around don’t seem to fully utilise all the tools available to them but on the other hand you can’t give away everything, games media need multiple previews/blog posts of a single game and fans still need to be surprised somehow at the end of the hype. Developers making more comments is an increasing and good trend though, whether it’s on community forums or official blogs. Only problem there is that it doesn’t get communicated with the press every time so certain details might go unnoticed.
Maybe this article could have been added as well. Mostly a business interview with Chris Taylor about staying alive as an independent developer. Space Siege doesn’t even get a mention though, wonder why? :) Also, I fully expect RPS to get some nasty insider details on SupCom 2, the PC RTS audience demands it.
Re: Wheeler. If he can get a simple majority of Californians behind it, he can get it banned. Thanks California Supreme Court!
Bought trials 2 and the other one and gave up before finishing the tutorial. Horrible game.
@Jim: I think a mistake people have typically made with respect to many things Internet is to believe that because the average site/blog quality and impact is low, the aggregate effect of all those sites/blogs would be negligible.
Again, your average political blog is as terrible as you would expect, but somehow their existence has managed to have an observable effect on what the public at large is aware of.
Had a really hard time with that one too, because it also had one of those “you’ve found several numbers during your journey, now try ordering them and go the paragraph” endings. Thing is, if you missed a number somewhere, you were fucked.
My favourite FF book must’ve been City of Thieves.. ah, Blacksand..
See also this blog – Fighting Dantasy – where a guy called Dan is reading FF books and writing about them.
Hurrah! Nice to see that the Edge reprint has kept the original mistakes.
I remember basing most of my geography bee in elementary school off of my experience playing civilization 1 :)
That Andrew Wheeler piece was brilliantly funny! Too bad most people didn’t get the joke.
Leigh Alexander’s commentary was interesting. I do agree with her, and I’d want to see the actual development of a game, get to know the people working on it, instead of reading the standard press releases. But I’m afraid that the people who see it the same way (most likely the majority of RPS readers) aren’t actually the main target audience. Sure, we are the enthusiasts, but there’s way more gamers out there who don’t read previews and interviews, don’t know about a title two years before its release, but rather just walk into the store and choose a game after consulting the sales clerk. For them there’s all those big words, and so on…
I’m just going to go ahead and assume Nezz’s comment is also satire. In a sane world, a word like “sodomitical” could only be parody.
Especially because the accepted term is “sodomological.”
The Game Set Watch thing was on Gamasutra earlier in the week too. Is it really saying anything other than “Indie Games Exist!”? It strikes me as a somewhat redundant message to present to a developer/enthusiast audience.
Robin: I didn’t spot it at Gamasutra, actually – it does strike me as an odd one to cross-post there. GSW has a slightly different audience, though, coming at games from a more societal approach. I think it’s a good introduction to his column, and I look forward to reading more of them.
Meanwhile, I continue to try think of a name for my own fotnightly column over there, which commences soon, kids!
The Final Fantasy covers really were brilliant, as good as the contents themselves. Wouldn’t mind making a collage of them, if I’ve got any left in my book shelf.
Great piece of nostalgia.
Videogame PR and news explained far better and earlier here.
http://insomnia.ac/commentary/the_videogame_news_racket/
Sounds like Morpheus is talking. The conspiracy is real!
The study of sodomy?
Excellent link, SheC, (except where he gets all self-regarding about how “this will blow your mind!”, but still, excellent.)
Only it’s not good at all, is it? It’s immature, overly general, insubstantiated nonsense that tarrs everyone in the press with the same ugly brush. It also, on a basic level, simply regularly lies.
I agree that there is a problem with the current state of reporting within the videogame press. Absolutely. I think it has to acknowledge a real responsibility towards its readership first and foremost, and learn not to play up to the demands of publisher PR. It should certainly be more independent and analytical. But to accuse it – yet again – of corruption is terribly offensive to the people who dedicate their professional lives to this sort of stuff. And to attack reporters on a personal level, which the article does, is the worst possible reporting you can get.
It’s right about having game pages up even if there’s very little information available on the game, I’ll give it that much. I hardly think that’s the biggest problem, though.
EDIT: That guy’s most recent post refers to people who don’t like scores on reviews as “pseudo-intellectuals or artfags.” That’s the level we’re dealing with. Versus Leigh Alexander, one of the most highly respected – for a reason – videogame reporters in the world. Come on.
Oh look, an “is it”…
He has some awful, infantile rhetorical habits, but he’s right. “Accusing it yet again of corruption”? He’s aptly describing the funding model of corporate gaming sites and the shallowness of Kotaku-scale blogs. It’s systemic corruption — it’s market failure, it’s system failure. There’s no “envelopes of cash are being exchanged under a table” here. (And the article’s not reportage. And “the worst possible reporting” is… well, the worst possible reporting is what he’s writing about, not what he’s written).
It accuses the press of corruption in a more systemic sense, like you said, but the implications are still there. “The press only care about readership figures and will do anything to increase them” is the basic argument, and it’s not one I like at all.
And yeah, probably, what he’s writing about is pretty awful reporting. But he’s assuming that’s widespread, general practice, which from my experience it really, really is not. Even if it was, his infantile, personally-abusive manner immediately turns me against him. Not fond at all.
solipsistnation: Wow, I’d forgotten all about keyboard overlays. How come they don’t make those any more? I suppose because keyboards aren’t standardised any more.
Also, auto-docking is cheating! Real players do it manually.
Leigh hit the nail on the head for me. Marketing/PR seem to think they know what’s best, but that usually just means they know what will sell a game regardless of its credibility. Reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Marge sells real estate:
Marge: “It’s awfully small.”
Lionel Hutz: “I’d say its awfully cosy.”
M: “That’s dilapidated.”
LH: “Rustic.”
M: “That house is on fire!”
LH: “Motivated seller!”
The Escapist articles were really good and show just how useful games can be. Why I’d never have passed my History GCSE without Red Alert.
Congratulations to Poisoned Sponge with the column. Hail to the indies, baby!
Does AP-style mean Associated Press or Amiga Power? :P
For those who were wondering: I was planning on reading The Idiot or (Ukranian, admitedly) Master & Margurita. I ended up reading Simons/Burn’s The Corner.
KG