By Kieron Gillen on June 14th, 2009 at 1:40 pm.
Sundays are for sitting and compiling a list of interesting gaming reading from across the week, and finding myself remembering that the chatter by games journalists about a fall in standards is just ludicrous. We’d have been lucky to get pieces as splendid and varied as the ones gathered here in a whole year in the early nineties, let alone in a single fucking week. Wouldn’t it be good if someone would admit that games writing has never, ever been better than it is right here, right now? Wouldn’t it? WOULDN’T IT? AS IF A FUCKING TYPO IN A GAMESPOT PREVIEW MATTERS AT ALL IN THE LARGER SCALE OF CUNTING THINGS AND… oh, I better not include a link to a pop song.
- I suspect I shouldn’t have kept this for the Sunday Papers. Roburky has been writing an alternately hilarious and genuinely heart-breaking diary of playing as a homeless single-parent family in the Sims 3. If you haven’t picked up on it from any of the places its been linked to, you should go catch up now. It’s almost certainly going to end up the premier piece of popular games reportage of the year.
- I always like seeing people write seriously about games which often are dismissed without thought. Take Riven, for example – there’s a reason why it appealed to so many people, and an eye-rolling dismissal doesn’t serve anyone. In which case, I loved this piece over on general culture blog One-hundred Sounds on the appeal and beauty of Riven. Strong.
- For those who’ve been digging my writing about board games, you should bookmark Downtime Town. It’s Rab from Consolevania’s new board-games review site, with a mixture of video diaries and articles. Especially good is his contrarian defence of Monopoly. Also strong.
- I don’t link to Richard Cobbett’s stuff enough. He’s one of the unsung stars of British Videogame Magazine Journalism – I swear, there was a year on PC Gamer just after issue 100 when his mad energy was the only thing which gave the magazine a pulse. He’s blogged for years, but has his own site now, Narrative Flood. Here’s him writing in his characteristic mix of wit, seriousness and scarily complete knowledge of every videogame ever about the classic “Hot Girls In Games Problem”. That he can make such a hoary old topic like that sing is a credit to his ability.
- A very different kind of adventures with the Sims 3. The illustrious Seanbaby indulges in his sadistic streak. Which is less of a streak, more of a whole body covering. The screenshots are things of mad beauty.
- Gamasutra on the actual finances of free-to-play MMOs. Best of all, Daniel James of Puzzle Pirates puts numbers on the table. Key quotes: “MMO Puzzle Pirates takes in approximately $50 each month from each paying user (ARPPU) for a total of $230,000 a month, all resulting from microtransactions” and “that the average revenue per user (ARPU) is between one and two dollars a month, but only about 10% of his player base has ever paid him anything. As a result, he says, approximately 5,000 gamers are generating the $230,000 in revenue he sees each month.”
- More numbers. What Eve Can Teach Us About The Global Financial Crisis. Well, goons are heavily involved in both.
- Jim’s continuing Ragdoll Metaphysics on artificial people being the new games.
- Lewis Denby takes a shot at my Stealth Girlfriending Crown in his first column for Game Set Watch. Oh – and GTA and Red Faction travel-journalism-memory-esque-ness too.
- Tom Armitage writes smartly about how he wishes in the online world there were less Hicks and More Hudsons, and extolling the joys of making dangerous mistakes in the company of friends. Sadly, I’m Burke.
- Actually, as a side point, in the Mapping-RPS-Onto-Fictional-Groups game episode of Aliens, we decided that if RPS were the Aliens cast Jim would be Hicks, I’d be Hudson, Alec would be Vasquez, and Walker would be Newt. Oh – and Quinns would be Wierzbowski and Stone would be Bishop. And to avoid this being a re-tread of the last time I did this gag, LewieP SavvyGamer would be Burke – because he’s always fucking each other over for a god-damn percentage. Except – er – in a nice way. Natch.
- Remember the Nameless Mod? Sure you do. Here’s their postmortem of their epic Deus Ex Mod achievement.
- Oh God, have a couple of comics around which I’m going to mention. First issue of my three-issue Marvel Mini came out this week. It’s called BETA RAY BILL: GODHUNTER and is about a horse-faced alien with the powers of a Norse God hunting down Galactus, the eater of worlds. It’s totally cosmic and there’s eight page preview here. And in the week coming, Issue 3 of my indie-Baby Phonogram. There’s a five-page preview here and the cover looks like this.
- Tom Ewing’s writing opens up with Chumbawamba/Credit to the Nation’s Enough Is Enough and goes forth to writes smartly about the European Election results which kept most of RPS gnashing our teeth impotently for most of the week.
Failed.
14/06/2009 at 13:51 James T says:
Neoliberalism — it works perfectly if you’re in a videogame!
14/06/2009 at 14:18 BigJonno says:
The state of videogame journalism today makes me wish I’d actually seriously considered at as a career when I was still at school. Unfortunately, I hadn’t realised how much I enjoyed writing back then, despite my prodigious forum output, and now I’m left trying to break into the industry at 26 with a wife and child, no relevant qualifications and surrounded by talented writers.
14/06/2009 at 14:27 The_B says:
Calm down Gillen. There must be some sort of 90′s pop group making a comeback to calm you down.
Oh. Aqua? Oh yes. Oh yes. OH FUCKING HELL.
14/06/2009 at 14:53 The Fanciest of Pants says:
Solid week of reading! Thanks Kieron.
14/06/2009 at 14:54 LewieP says:
Yep, I’m happy with being Burke.
14/06/2009 at 14:56 butler` says:
btw where is all the chatter about a fall in standards? i think i missed that one
14/06/2009 at 14:57 Dominic White says:
That Nameless Mod post-mortem is interesting. Pretty sad on the last page, though, as it seems that for all the technical problems they dodged and sidestepped over the years, they didn’t budget for Angry Internet Men.
I guess I can echo what they say there – for every one person on forums/comment threads who said they’d try the mod, there were nine who would go into a screeching tirade about how horrible TNM was without even having touched it.
Poor bastards.
14/06/2009 at 14:57 Kieron Gillen says:
Butler: Well, it’s not just games journalists, but it’s more annoying when they do it too.
KG
14/06/2009 at 15:00 Lambchops says:
That Alice and Kev thing almost makes me want to buy the Sims.
14/06/2009 at 15:05 Brother None says:
Whut?
Wouldn’t that just be because you didn’t have as many pieces published in games journalism in a year in the early 90s as you do now in a week, on the infinite rows of blogs and amateur gaming websites?
An increase of quality by offering more quantity and allowing you to pick out the seeds is not the same as an increase in quality as a principle, which is what rising or falling standards is all about.
Honestly, if the current state is the gaming industry at its best…that’s kind of sad.
14/06/2009 at 15:16 FunkyLlama says:
Cigol: ‘I have a four letter word for him; [Cigol, this is a family blog - RPS]‘
Kieron: ‘AS IF A FUCKING TYPO IN A GAMESPOT PREVIEW MATTERS AT ALL IN THE LARGER SCALE OF CUNTING THINGS’
Ehm… nevermind.
14/06/2009 at 15:21 Kieron Gillen says:
None: Yeah, so what? The amount of writing being done is one reason why it *is* a golden age. Even if a decline of standards generally is true, if there’s enough of quality to consume, the rest doesn’t matter.
I don’t accept that. The standard quality of games journalism hasn’t budged an inch.
EDIT: FunkyLlama: There’s a difference between someone calling someone a cunt and using the word cunt. Insults are our beef.
Really? We don’t use it often.
KG
14/06/2009 at 15:28 The_B says:
@BrotherNone – But in the same way, the truly great ones have to be even better to be heard over the chatter. I don’t think it’s fair at all to say standards as a principle were somehow higher back then, I don’t think the initial standards have moved very far at all – and if anything, they’ve got higher because more people are talking. And as well as more people talking in exactly the same way more people are reading, and in a lot of respects the readers will sort the wheat from the chaff automatically when the truly great stuff gets highlighted at places such as this.
14/06/2009 at 15:31 Feet says:
Thanks for the Downtime Town link, I’d RSS’d his Vimeo thing last time you linked it, but this is much better way to keep in touch with board gaming and I probably would never have thought to find a site too.
14/06/2009 at 15:31 The_B says:
Bah, I meant to say “As well as more people talking more people are reading in the same way” rather than the way the sentence came out there – but I can’t seem to edit for some reason.
14/06/2009 at 15:38 Seniath says:
I watched Aliens last night.
At the cinema.
It was aces.
14/06/2009 at 15:43 butler` says:
I’d agree with B and say it’s about the same now as it was then proportionately.
There’s certainly more crap thanks to the Internet (see: Andrew Keen’s The Cult of the Amateur), but that’s because there’s simply more of everything.
14/06/2009 at 15:57 MrBejeebus says:
highlight for me was the homeless Sims blog
14/06/2009 at 16:05 SuperNashwan says:
Richard Cobbett is awesome, the second Rightest games journalist ever after John Walker. Deadly with a pun too.
14/06/2009 at 16:06 Jonas says:
Robin is a genius.
14/06/2009 at 16:26 Lacobus says:
Am I being a spaz or am i missing out on the pop song link?
Highlight of my Sunday.
14/06/2009 at 16:33 Brother None says:
I’m not saying it matters from a selective consumer viewpoint, I’m saying that it’s weird to claim progress based simply on higher output. That’s putting the cart in front of the horse.
It’s odd to measure quality of journalism only by the best articles, which is essentially what you’re doing in that claim. Not only is it selective bias, it’s also ignoring the fact that most gamers do not read superior articles, but instead the sludge that is common game journalism.
And note I don’t actually think game journalism has declined. I think it’s always been pretty shabby, and it’s still pretty shabby now.
14/06/2009 at 16:37 FunkyLlama says:
Kieron: I wholeheartedly object to your classification of Cliff Bleszinski as a person.
14/06/2009 at 16:40 Gap Gen says:
I think that one of the biggest improvements of recent years is the quality and quantity of online writing, like the re-ascension of bedroom programming and indie games. PC Gamer went through a phase where they actually re-published a number of articles originally found online (one about girls & gaming comes to mind).
The question is, like the rest of journalism, whether print journalism can keep up with online writing at the highest level, and whether or not online writing can sustain itself financially.
And yes, Richard Cobbett is rather good. His review comparing a game to “french-kissing a llama” is one that sticks in my mind.
14/06/2009 at 16:51 Weylund says:
Seanbaby’s article had me laughing so hard that I had to stop reading it several times because my throat started to hurt. My two-year-old was standing next to me, looking concerned, asking “Daddy? What doing?”
I could only croak out, “Daddy’s reading, honey. Daddy’s… reading.”
14/06/2009 at 17:01 Jim Rossignol says:
Brother None:
More good stuff is more good stuff. Assuming the same ratio of good to shit, a greater quantity of stuff means there’s more quality stuff. And lo, there’s loads of good stuff to link to, every week.
That’s irrelevant. The selective bias here is the point: we’re selecting stuff we think is good.
Agreed, there’s loads of terrible shit. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a golden age. There were vast numbers of terrible novels published in the 1960s, and yet it was a peak time for the medium’s creativity and quality because a few of them were brilliant.
14/06/2009 at 17:03 LewieP says:
It’s also fairly easy to stop reading/playing/listening/watching something if it is shit.
14/06/2009 at 17:04 Henrik J says:
Godhunter was pretty cool, there is nothing better than a good Beta Ray Bill comic :)
14/06/2009 at 17:12 Lady Bobz says:
Another good reason why you shouldn’t censor other people.
14/06/2009 at 17:12 Flint says:
Major props for linking to Enough Is Enough. Oh Chumbawamba and your discography full of great stuff, fated to be ignored forever thanks to the damn Tubthumping.
Also to keep this vaguely games-on-topic, that Sims 3 experiment is a brilliant read. It indeed does get a bit unfairly swept under among all these other links.
14/06/2009 at 17:16 blah says:
If games “journalism” has never been at a higher level of quality than now doesn’t that go to show just how mediocre and uncritical it is? Just saying.
14/06/2009 at 17:28 invisiblejesus says:
@Brother None:
“Not only is it selective bias, it’s also ignoring the fact that most gamers do not read superior articles, but instead the sludge that is common game journalism.”
What leads you to believe this? What is your evidence? It seems to me to be a pretty questionable claim, certainly moreso than Kieron’s claims about games journalism. I can look over various sites and see some great work done, and even look at some mainstream sites and see a reasonable amount of relatively competent work done. I can’t click on a site and see how many people are exclusively reading crappy journalism.
14/06/2009 at 17:32 James T says:
Heh, quite.
“I’ve seen the Gush up close… and it’s not pretty…”
14/06/2009 at 18:05 Bhazor says:
The Kev and Alice… thing (what is the short name for second hand emergent video game story third person commentaries?) has just convinced me to drop 35 notes on the game. Why didn’t anyone tell me you could chose insanity and inappropriateness as character traits??? Who’d a thunk Sims 3 would be such a hot bed for sex offenders and child abuse?
That DowntimeTown show is brilliant and it’s great to see the same weird editing jokes as Consolevania. But I’m already missing Ryan.
14/06/2009 at 18:31 Funky Badger says:
invisiblejesus: IGN makes more money than RPS. Well, one assumes…
14/06/2009 at 18:36 Jim Rossignol says:
IGN also has loads of downloads, hints and cheats, and other stuff that drives traffic.
14/06/2009 at 18:42 Vanguard says:
And who is Ripley? Leigh?
14/06/2009 at 19:04 The_B says:
Alec’s cat. ¬_¬
14/06/2009 at 19:45 Chris Evans says:
I personally think games journalism is doing really well right now, maybe it is just that I am starting to read a wider array of sites, but I think it is good.
14/06/2009 at 19:46 Justin says:
Hey, Kieron – how do I get ahold of Phonogram? Any comic that uses ‘Stirnerian’ as a descriptive term must be interesting enough to buy.
30 seconds of browsing phonogramcomic.com didn’t lead me to a link that appeared to give me a way to part with my cash. (you may want to change that.)
14/06/2009 at 20:01 Polysynchronicity says:
In my younger days I positively loved the Myst series.
The original wasn’t nearly as polished as any of its successors, but it had kind of an appeal all its own. The lack of polish and consistency gave it a very surreal feel. It’s also almost pure gameplay – there’s some brief video clips that provide a reason for you to complete the game, but outside of that the only other really explicit story element – the journals – seems more like an optional addition rather than part of the game itself.
Riven is probably the best one story-wise, although I can confess I always found its puzzles too difficult. Much of what could be said about it has already been mentioned in the article.
Myst III was always my favorite – not really for the story, which was poor, but for its puzzles and atmosphere. The three worlds (not counting the “hub” or atrocious ending worlds) each had a very distinct yet consistent atmosphere, often with a central puzzle which you could see but didn’t really interact with until you had solved the rest. The puzzles themselves were also very well-integrated into each area – they made sense in context, unlike a lot of of the puzzles in Myst (why was there an organ in that rocketship, anyway?)
Uru was pretty cool in terms of gameplay and had some fantastic atmosphere, but the story had descended into New Age realms that I wasn’t really comfortable with.
Myst 4, again good gameplay, decent atmosphere in some places (I loved the one world whose name I forget – the one with the floating rocks) – but the story was even worse.
Myst 5… well. We don’t talk about Myst 5.
14/06/2009 at 21:07 The_B says:
@Justin – The best way is probably to ask your local comic book store for series 2 – as it’s a comic it works on the weird comic book thing in that most places will only stock what people order in.
However, the anthology of the first series of Phonogram in paperback is available on Amazon
14/06/2009 at 21:25 Paul S says:
@Justin: Diamond (UK, at least) are showing stock of the first two issues as available as of last week. But hey, it’s Diamond, so…
14/06/2009 at 21:55 Justin says:
Added to my list.
Amazon works as well as or better than my local comics store, unfortunately.
14/06/2009 at 22:48 Jamie McKelvie says:
Justin – You can buy the first trade off Amazon, or in bookstores. The individual comics, you have to get in a comic shop, same with any comic. Once the series is done it’ll be collected in another book.
14/06/2009 at 23:05 Neil says:
I thought “one’s” was pretty funny, considering that one of the biggest complaints I have about games journalism is the shoddy grammar/editing.
14/06/2009 at 23:09 Jim Rossignol says:
Yeah, that’s really its biggest problem.
14/06/2009 at 23:16 Lewis says:
I would – and have done – slightly disagree with Kieron about the quality of games writing (in short: it’s improving, but there’s work to be done), but clearly grammar and editing is nowhere close to being a huge problem. The odd error makes no difference whatsoever as long as the message is clearly communicated.
15/06/2009 at 00:15 Funky Badger says:
Mainstream journalism of games (and most other specialist subjects) is so asinine to be painful. The Guardian, for example, is absolutely dreadful – no insight, and precious little – if any – love for the subject.
Suppose the answer is for the audience to support the specialists when and where they can find them.
15/06/2009 at 00:21 The_B says:
I blame edukayshun.
15/06/2009 at 00:26 Kadayi says:
Enough with the games journalism navel gazing, and more with the games journalism I say. Also my advice keep the ‘cunting’ for lunchtime at the pub and off the front page. Yes its big, yes its clever and yes we all do it (esp behind the wheel of a car), but its disappointing to see it gradually becoming the new ‘fuck’ through over exposure.
15/06/2009 at 00:43 Gap Gen says:
I subscribe to The Economist, because it offers insight and breadth with depth that is pretty rare in news journalism, I find. It’s a weekly, which gives it time to digest and analyse the week’s news, rather than blurting everything out without any context or description. The balance between objective reporting and analysis is a difficult one, but The Economist’s style means that it can give the appearance of doing both. Which is what I want when reading the news – merely reporting the events as they are without analysis doesn’t give as good an idea of what’s happening.
As for games journalism, I think it is fair to compare the best out there – after all, when quality become difficult to find you know a medium is in trouble. That’s part of the message of the final season of The Wire – cutting costs can lead to a death-spiral of lower quality and so fewer sales. I’ve stopped reading PC Gamer – it’s something I keep dipping back into, but I’ve moved on a bit. I do want to reward good journalism, and it’d be a shame if online games journalism didn’t get the financial support it clearly deserves.
15/06/2009 at 03:00 Mad Doc MacRae says:
To quote Hudson…
Fucking A!
15/06/2009 at 04:08 The Fanciest of Pants says:
“one of the biggest complaints I have about games journalism is the shoddy grammar/editing.”
Jim: “Yeah, that’s really its biggest problem.
Oh god, I roared. Well played sir.
15/06/2009 at 05:55 Neil says:
“Yeah, that’s really its biggest problem.”
One of the biggest, like I said (somewhere in your translation from English to English that subtle difference seems to have been lost) . Mechanically poor writing plagues games journalism far more than it does other entertainment journalism, largely because its writers have no writing background or training.
In other words, much of games journalism comes off as amateur because it’s written by amateur writers. Grammatical and organizational flaws are hallmarks of that amateurism. Writing that wouldn’t pass muster in a freshman English class certainly has no place being passed off as professional, yet the industry’s biggest web publications hire editors who not only let this dreck slip through but write it themselves.
It’s like wearing a suit and tie to an interview. No one is going to take you seriously if you show up in a mustard-stained Scorpions T-shirt that you’ve had since the concert in ’87. Sure, you might have bigger qualification problems, but that one’s going to turn people off long before they can find out about the other issues.
15/06/2009 at 08:24 Kieron Gillen says:
Neil: The sort of people who think the main quality of good writing is good spelling and grammar will get the sort of writing they deserve.
KG
15/06/2009 at 08:51 MD says:
I don’t think Neil is suggesting that spelling and grammar are the main elements of great writing, but that when messed up badly enough they can ruin a piece, preventing it from succeeding regardless of the underlying content’s quality. We all have our limits, but obviously they differ a great deal from person to person — some people will be up in arms about a single minor technical fault, while others can put up with almost anything decipherable. There’s always a point at which errors and clumsiness start to significantly detract from a piece, though, and I think a lot of the disputes that seem to be between grammar purists and those with an anything-goes attitude are simply a matter of these different thresholds colliding.
15/06/2009 at 08:53 Kieron Gillen says:
I know what Neil’s suggesting. I also know what thinking like him is going to get.
KG
15/06/2009 at 09:02 Gap Gen says:
Spelling (and typos in general) is maybe unrelated, but is good grammar on a basic level linked to one’s ability to structure a bigger piece well, or are the two unrelated as well? I agree that good grammar doesn’t automatically mean you’ll be able to write beautiful English, but isn’t understanding how language fits together a vital part of good writing, like how understanding how strong bricks are being vital to being a good architect?
15/06/2009 at 09:19 MD says:
Of course it’s a dangerous attitude if taken too far, but it sounds like he simply wants higher editorial standards on major games publications. The only obvious result of this would be more readable articles, and I don’t agree that it would inevitably carry disastrous side-effects. Whether this is the ‘main problem’ with games journalism is of course debatable, and based on my relatively limited games-related reading I would actually disagree. But I don’t see the necessary link between employing better-qualified and slightly stricter editors, and stifling originality and the expression of interesting ideas (which I’m assuming is roughly what you were implying would happen if people like Neil had their way).
15/06/2009 at 09:27 Gap Gen says:
I don’t think good grammar is an impediment to good style. Language is pretty flexible. My point was asking whether or not good grammar, i.e. being able to write on a basic level, is an essential part of being able to write good paragraphs or even good articles. I accept that typos, which is basically the same as bad spelling, don’t count.
15/06/2009 at 09:30 Jim Rossignol says:
It’s not a *necessary* link, but I still see a link, and that’s probably because I’ve been doing this for far too long.
Better-qualified does not always mean better journalism, but it does usually mean “more expensive” and “more cautious”. When games journalism takes professionalism as its central concern it rapidly – often, if not always – becomes boring.
I say that from a perspective of a decade of working with many different writers, editors, and publishers. Often the messiest and least professional are also the most insightful and most interesting. They simply generate the most interesting descriptions – and that’s why I read games journalism. For interesting descriptions of games, analysis I hadn’t made, or angles on things that are fresh and imaginative. And those descriptions are often badly punctuated. It’d be great if that wasn’t the case, and everyone was super-literate, but it’s simply not.
I’d take one messily edited Eurogamer review by one of their best writers over a hundred dry, by-the-numbers review from a grammatically perfect US magazine.
15/06/2009 at 09:40 MD says:
Sorry, my previous comment was meant as a response to Kieron. Should have quoted, or started with an ‘@KG:’.
@Gap Gen: On your orignal question, (“Is good grammar on a basic level linked to one’s ability to structure a bigger piece well, or are the two unrelated?”) I’d be interested to hear the opinion of, say, a professional editor: someone with access to first-hand data on the link between fundamental writing skill in a mechanical sense, and the overall quality of a manuscript.
I have heard tales of sloppy and error-ridden prose being beaten into shape by quality editors, and emerging as absolute gold. I wonder how much this is simply due to the quality of the core (the ideas the writer is ultimately trying to express), and which other factors come into play. Maybe the best editors are able to take ideas + (flawed yet interesting) style, and fix the mistakes while retaining the personality.
15/06/2009 at 09:51 Jim Rossignol says:
Absolutely. Of course, and they are golden. Which means that by and large gaming publications cannot afford to hire these editors.
15/06/2009 at 09:52 MD says:
@ Jim: Fair point, and I have noticed that in practice the most interesting writing is often flawed in a technical sense. I guess I was just pointing out that adventurous, insightful writing can in most cases be cleaned up a bit and still retain the qualities that make it great, while giving the reader a slightly easier time of reading it. Given a choice between ‘interesting’ and ‘technically perfect’ I would of course choose the former without hesitation; I’d just prefer to see the two co-existing. But I’m probably a bit naive about how these things play out in practice.
15/06/2009 at 09:58 MD says:
Haha, the lack of an edit function is killing me. My previous commment was actually a response to Jim’s previous comment, while the one before that was a response to Gap Gen despite appearing directly below one of Jim’s commments. This one is a response to Jim’s most recent comment, after which I will have a little lie down and stop cluttering this thread!
But yeah: unfortunately I’m sure you’re right, and it is unrealistic to expect top-notch editing without settling for bland writing. Oh well! Luckily I find that even the ‘flawed’ interesting articles are usually readable enough that it’s really not a big problem.
15/06/2009 at 10:12 Gap Gen says:
It’s a shame that grammatical accuracy isn’t an ubiquitous phenomenon – one of the bigger failings of the English lessons I had in school, I think. I learned more technical grammar from learning other languages than I did in English.
15/06/2009 at 10:45 Kadayi says:
MD “Haha, the lack of an edit function is killing me”
Login via the forums and you’ll be able to edit your posts.
As regards the subject of creativity Vs standards. I’m afraid I’d have to say that I come down on the side of the ability to if not initially operate to a standard during the creative process, at least subscribe to it afterwards (it’s not exactly hard to self edit/proof your own work is it?). Mechanistic as they may seem, the very act of applying a standard demonstrates a personal commitment. 45 years on the medium is still the message, and more than ever the quality of the medium is what distinguishes it from the rest. EDGE magazines critical success (both with the public and the industry) has been as much about its high end presentation style, and anonymous reviewing system as it has about its writing.
15/06/2009 at 10:53 Jim Rossignol says:
Kadayi:
That’s the worst thing about Edge, for me. I like to know who is writing.
GapGen: Yes, I think the UK is particularly bad at teaching us the technical aspects of writing. The mid 20th century’s liberal teaching techniques went a bit far, and it damaged not just grammatical prowess, but other stuff, such as symbolic memory. (Educated people in the 19th century were demonstrably better at memorising large pieces of text, which was probably down to the reinforcement of rote learning at school.)
I moved between schools a great deal when I was young, and it wasn’t until I was fourteen that someone made the effort to try and systematically teach me how to punctuate properly. And they didn’t do a great job, obviously.
15/06/2009 at 10:59 Kieron Gillen says:
Edge maintains its quality despite its anonymous reviewing system, not because of it.
KG
15/06/2009 at 11:21 Kadayi says:
@ Jim
By having an anonymous reviews system they eliminate any reader preconceptions regarding how the review has been made, based upon the reviewers previous track record. I certainly don’t agree with every EDGE review, but the lack of a name/personality to the reviews implies a rigourous group standard is in effect. If EDGE is giving a 9 or 10 to a game, there’s an assumption underlying it that more than one person is involved in making that critical judgement call, and that is why people regard it so highly.
“Edge maintains its quality despite its anonymous reviewing system, not because of it.”
Any proof to that blanket statement?
15/06/2009 at 11:31 Kieron Gillen says:
The reason why people regard Edge so highly is because its got nice paper-stock. It’s a mirror of gamer and the industry’s own self-regard. That the industry supports a magazine like edge makes it feel better about itself.
By removing the writer’s byline they remove the writer’s need to give a toss because they’d be held responsible. The only reason it works is because writers care enough that they’re writing for Edge that it over-rules basic stuff like that.
(When I wrote for Edge, I shrugged off editing which I’d have raised hell for on any other magazine because – hey! – not going to come back on me)
Everything you say is an impression they’d give. Practically speaking, it’s not true. Of all the reviews in an issue of Edge, the vast majority will only have a single person playing it. Yes, they’ll talk over a mark – but all magazines talk over marks.
As you note, it’s an impression readers like to believe. They’re willing to overlook that the mag feels like it has MPD most of the time to continue that belief.
KG
15/06/2009 at 11:33 Gap Gen says:
What is the logic behind removing the byline? I mentioned the Economist already, which also has excellent standards and yet has no byline either.
15/06/2009 at 12:14 Kadayi says:
@Kieron
Surely you should know its not so much what you say, but how you say it that counts at the end of the day (that’s communication 101). Regardless of the practicalities of the operation, clearly those on board subscribe to the approach.
I notice you state that you used to review for EDGE, any particular reason why you’ve stopped reviewing for them? Money not good enough or did they stop asking? Because I’m wondering if not giving a stuff because your name wasn’t on it had something to do with it at the end of the day.
If you’re at a point where your professional standard isn’t your default personal standard them I’d say its time to find a new career, and one you can enthuse in. Maybe take a leaf out of Charlie Brooker.
15/06/2009 at 12:35 BigJonno says:
At the end of the day, a review is an opinion piece. For it to be of real value as a buying guide, the reader has to be able to gauge the similarity of the reviewer’s opinion to their own. By removing the byline, the reader can’t identify with specific reviewers and can’t decide on the relevence of the review.
It’s what makes something like Penny Arcade a valuable information source to me. I’ve been reading the strip and the accompanying commentary for years. When Tycho recommends a game, I know if our tastes match up on that genre or not and whether to look the game up or ignore it.
15/06/2009 at 12:48 Kieron Gillen says:
Kad:At the moment, I don’t work for any games magazines. I haven’t time. Only ever worked for Edge sporadically, for many reasons.
Partially, I like my byline. In the end, your byline is all you have. Anything else is just servicing a corporate trademark. My ideas are my ideas. They’re not Edge’s. In other industries, there’s been enormous efforts to get a byline – when I talked about losing a byline for a project in comics I got snarled at by older people in a “Don’t you know what people had to do to get you that right” way. Giving up your byline makes you a slave, and shouldn’t be done lightly.
I suspect one of the many reasons why I never got offered much Edge work anyway is a tendency to say things like that.
More generally, you don’t believe in accountability. That’s an interesting idea.
KG
15/06/2009 at 13:05 Howard says:
Regarding the Edge debacle: I have to side with Kieron here. Not to give you and Lil’ Jim a big head but the reason I stopped reason PCG was becasue you guys stopped writing there and one of the reason I cancelled my Edge sub was because Kieron (and other writers of his calibre) stopped writing there (I know you never announced when you were there or when you stopped, but it was apparent, trust me).
Having a recognisable author whose opions, beliefs and history as a gamer and journalist I am fully versed in is paramount when choosing a reviewer to listen to. While I did not always agree with the two of them (see Jim’s Morrowind review or Kierons (in)famous DX2 review) I knew where I bloody stood with them and could extrapolate how I would feel about a game from THEIR review.
It has to be said though, Edge has many problems. A couple of months before that huge redesign they had a couple of years back the wheels had clearly already come off the wagon. The lack of accountability regarding the reviews lead people to write more and more artsy bullshit rather than actually reviewing the game in a competent manner. Edge had always been a little more style than substance but they soon left any traces of substance behind and now exist purely on their own hype.
15/06/2009 at 13:10 Kieron Gillen says:
I’ll admit, I haven’t read Edge properly in quite a while. I do think the current team are genuinely talented bunch.
KG
15/06/2009 at 13:41 Kadayi says:
“More generally, you don’t believe in accountability. That’s an interesting idea.”
I’m pretty sure I didn’t say that. What I do believe though is that your harshest judge should always be yourself, which makes the issue of whether a piece has a byline or not an irrelevance when it comes to the quality of a review/article. If you aren’t, then there’s a problem.
I hear what your saying and certainly I’m not an advocate for a byline free gaming press (knowing your reviewers tastes helps you understand their perspective). However I do think that for EDGE, given their generally tight review format, the angle of anonymity works.
15/06/2009 at 14:33 Gap Gen says:
I think that excellent editorial can make up for the lack of byline – even if the punters don’t know who wrote an article, the editor does, and can refuse a writer new commissions as a result. It’s not ideal, but like Kieron said it can work despite the lack of bylines (so I suspect that a correlation between quality and lack of bylines is co-incidental, or for some other reason than accountability).
15/06/2009 at 16:50 Jim Rossignol says:
Kadayi: You’ve misunderstood what Gillen wrote, which was “I shrugged off editing which I’d have raised hell for on any other magazine.” What he’s referring to was Edge’s editing, not his own work. The point being, why would you bother to contest editorial changes by a magazine to your work, or care if they were wrong, if there’s no byline? You’re only invested *if there is a byline*.
15/06/2009 at 16:54 Jazmeister says:
I sell Edge at my gas station and usually have a flip through if I’ve got a minute. It’s ok! No byline is weird, though, and sort of strips away the self-marketing aspect of freelancing so you’re almost ghost-writing.
Cobbett. Periodically, someone will offer up vast praise to Richard Cobbett, totally out of the blue. Craig Pearson tweeted something a while back, and… yeah. It’s entirely warranted, of course, but still – mind control?
15/06/2009 at 17:19 James T says:
As well as an apt description of Edge, this an excellent allegorical takedown of the supposed “New Games Journalism”. Nice one!
15/06/2009 at 17:43 Jim Rossignol says:
James T: What do you mean?
15/06/2009 at 17:56 Jazmeister says:
May I just say that I think NGJ is all over the place? It’s just hiding in plain sight as regular games journalism? Alice and Kev is a great example of writing that conveys the experience excellently without so much as mentioning a genre, giving a score, or rating the graphics then adding to the score for sound and length to get the total score. Or did I not understand the NGJ thing?
15/06/2009 at 18:03 Kieron Gillen says:
Jaz: No, you totally get it. Don’t mention the war.
(It may annoy people that we won)
KG
15/06/2009 at 18:34 Gap Gen says:
NGJ is presumably older than the manifesto, though? I remember a PC Gamer from the 90s where a review of an excellent tank/helicopter game whose name I forget* was part-told in first person, narrating a battle between him and another journalist. In any case, my view of the history of games journalism is pretty limited.
* It played different classical music for each vehicle, including Mars and Flight of the Bumblebee – any idea what it was?
15/06/2009 at 18:35 Gap Gen says:
Aha. It was Return Fire.
15/06/2009 at 19:19 Kadayi says:
@Jim
Having testicles in your pants, and a sense of self worth perhaps? If the quality of a job only matters to you if your names on it, you need to radically reassess your line of work.
15/06/2009 at 19:36 James T says:
Jim: The “paper stock” of “NGJ” is breathless elevation of… waffle; the idea that it’s some sort of “movement” indulges the self-regard of gamers by trying to wring phony profundity out of… not very much at all, and make it seem like a trivial pastime is more meaningful (and, oh boy, ARTY!!! At long last, playing Metal Gear Solid makes me posh and clever!) than it is. That a game can be immersive and exciting, or that people can become emotionally invested in it is not news, and writing about it from the perspective of the space marine stuck on Phobos or the cyborg trying to get his girlfriend back or the guy piloting the chopper or whatever doesn’t provide any more penetrating an insight into the game than a flat-out “Old Games Journalism” review which says, “Oo, the weapon-breaking feature DOES make conflict scarier than it was in Doom! Good one, Looking Glass!”, or “The game DID make me want to see what happened next, because the writing did not insult my intelligence” — in fact, if anything it’s just going to stifle a frank appraisal of a game, unless reviewer X wants to break up his tall tale with:
Aw man, that monologue totally broke my article-immersion! (Good thing I don’t go to articles for immersion…)
All this pointless ornamentation may provide an insight into the reviewer (deliberately or otherwise), but that’s not journalism, that’s masturbation. I think it’s symptomatic of writers aiming for Lester Bangs (I notice he gets namedropped alot, or used to) and hitting… Pitchfork. Not because said writers are bad at writing per se, just that they’re trying to turn very little into a whole lot (Was it someone here who cried over Audiosurf? Oh I did laugh!) You can perhaps do that successfully by including a hell of a lot of context and fresh insight into what makes this ephemeral thing punch above its textual weight (and that’d be “journalism”, wouldn’t it?), but just coming up with some emotive first-person bollocks won’t do that job.
15/06/2009 at 19:49 Dreamhacker says:
This NGJ fellow should start a political party so we can vote him into the European Union Parliament next election!
15/06/2009 at 20:36 Gap Gen says:
Kadayi: The guy’s not batman. A reputation is pretty useful in freelance journalism.
15/06/2009 at 21:59 Kadayi says:
@Gap Gen
I think your talking at cross purposes. A reputation to get things done to the best of your ability and to give a shit about quality regardless of the audience is never a bad thing in my experience. Professional consistency is a good thing.
15/06/2009 at 22:35 Kieron Gillen says:
Kadayi: Christ, man, try reading what someone has said. Now you’ve wasted even more of my time walking you through this.
Short version, with ironic swearing and simplification: My work is fucking awesome. Sometimes editors fuck it over. If my name’s still on it, it makes me look like a dick and I shout at people. If my name’s not on it, I don’t because it’s the magazine looks like a dick. That’s their problem not my problem, so there’s less motivation to shout at people.
The job part of my job was complete when I gave them the copy and fulfilled my brief. It isn’t my magazine, after all*. The other part is having a career and a reputation. Being precious about my name has meant that – well – when something like the Darkfall thing happened, Eurogamer called me. You don’t have to agree with what I write, but you know I fucking mean it.
Caring about your copy is the job. Caring about your name is your career.
James T: You are very 2004.
KG
*I’ve a hilarious ego, but I’ve never forgot that. If someone wants to rewrite a piece I’ve written for them, great. Take my name off it and do what you want**. The magazine editor’s job is to decide what to go in their magazine, not mine.
**There’s exceptions to that one – as in ones where I’d pull a piece rather than it be used in any adulterated state*** – but for most work-a-day features or reviews, they an go knock themselves out. It’s their magazine, not mine.
***Say, the Cradle feature or something like that.
15/06/2009 at 23:01 Funky Badger says:
Interesting discussion between someone(s) who has a job in the industry and someone who thinks they know what it would be like.
16/06/2009 at 01:18 Kadayi says:
@Kieron
I have a lot of time for you K, but an occasional sense of humility wouldn’t go amiss. ‘Shouting at people’ LOL, very Prima donna.
@Funky Badger
Because the ‘elite’ world of Games Journalism is just so so different from pretty much any other creative professional career yes? You work for people, and naturally they have their own input (Creatives are like dogs in a park, everyone feels they need to mark their territory on a project), the trick is merely to play them into your game.
16/06/2009 at 01:48 Howard says:
@Kadayi
Are you just trying to provoke an argument to stroke your own ego? What Kieron and Jim are trying to argue is not only clear but is base logic.
I hope for your sake you are just flexing the old ePeen for funsies…
16/06/2009 at 02:09 Ging says:
@Kadayi not sure in this case that shouting at people for fucking up a good piece of work is about being a prima donna – it’s about wanting to ensure that the piece doesn’t damage your reputation.
As Howard has said, you do appear to be arguing for no apparent reason other than to stroke your own ego. At no point as anyone said that they’ve gone ahead and not been too bothered as to the quality of their work due to a lack of bylines, merely that they aren’t bothered if the magazine then fucks it about and makes it a poor / less quality piece. As, at that point, it’s no longer their concern as they aren’t linked to it in anyway.
16/06/2009 at 02:17 LewieP says:
Well put KG.
Also, I have to say, democratised media is the best thing to happen to games journalism since the cover disc.
16/06/2009 at 03:34 Adventurous Putty says:
Lol RPS I love you.
More pertinently: I have a slightly different perspective on the whole NGJ thing because I’m based out of the US and, really, up until about a year and a half ago I hadn’t had much experience with the whole concept of non-traditional game reviewing/interpretation or even “games-as-art”, outside of my own uneducated musings. Stateside, games journalism — even online — hasn’t really progressed past a 90s level of mechanics analysis; and, while some magazines are really good at dissecting games into the individual components that make them tick, this sort of soulless approach means that our critics laud games for complexity over substance. For instance, the silly and self-indulgent “Metal Gear” series gets free pass for its surreal postmodernism even though it’s clear that the story employs it not to express a theme or condition to the player but, rather, to attention-whore as an excuse to keep the player engaged in its absurdly long cutscenes (which are, I think, wish-fulfillment for Kojima, who wanted to be a film producer).
This is, of course, just the oft-repeated mantra that justifies NGJ, so maybe I’m just preaching to the crowd. Whatever.
So anyway, upon discovering NGJ, it’s ironic that I initially thought it was a bunch of silly, pretentious trash, a la James T. I suppose my general opinion of it was that I thought it “tried” too hard and, as a result, replaced what should have been an attempt to convey to “condition” or “feel” of playing the game itself with the author’s particular idea of what the game should have been in the first place — i.e., his/her own personal fantasies and wish-fulfillment. Really, KG, it was your work, like the Vampire: TMB review for Eurogamer, that convinced me to see the “movement” (is it really one, or just a trend as things in the industry change?) in a different light and, ultimately, led me to RPS.
So, having now wasted several minutes of your time, I have my own view on NGJ, which is as follows: it’s very simply games journalism that bends the rules of games journalism only insofar it needs to in order to appropriately convey the “feeling” or “condition” of what it feels like to play a game. Sometimes, this can be done within the context of a normal review, like the Vampires one; other times, it can be done through a more storylike approach, such as with the brilliant above-linked Sims 3 blog that, if you haven’t read already, you absolutely must. I think that the approach taken really should depend both on the style of the game being described AND the style of the author describing it, and should be written in a way that provokes discussion and, most importantly, DOESN’T MAKE ITSELF OUT TO BE NGJ. Instead, just more in-depth criticism or “war stories” (like your Planetside retrospective) — like the sort of literary criticism you’d find in “The New Yorker”, really.
Which leads me to my final point: for all the whining about how games journalism in its current state sucks and blah blah blah, at least on the other side of the pond there’s Edge, Eurogamer, and RPS. Over here, we have no print publications that analyze games in anything more than a rudimentary fashion, and our few blogs that do often have very little traction among US audiences and, really, were inspired by the very non-US sites that ARE innovating all the time, so they defeat the purpose of appealing to an American audience. This is kind of sad, really, as I know plenty of gamers who probably WOULD be thoughtful enough to get into these sorts of discussions given some knowledge of their existence — strange, really, how America, one of the hearths of video gaming subculture in general (along, of course, with Japan), is kind of in a drought for this sort of thing right now. What I would kill to have someone start a magazine version of Rock, Paper, Shotgun over here, with thoughtful commentary, culture-savvy wittiness and self-deprecation, and that cheery mix of seriousness and whimsy that makes up our shared love for the craft.
Well, that was a lengthy page of verbal masturbation and stream-of-consciousness extrapolation. Hope I didn’t bore. *crawls back into hole*
16/06/2009 at 04:05 Paul says:
@Kadiya – “I have a lot of time for you K, but an occasional sense of humility wouldn’t go amiss. ‘Shouting at people’ LOL, very Prima donna”.
Are you serious?
I just don’t know how you can hear yourself think with all the ‘wooshing’. ;)
16/06/2009 at 07:09 Jayteh says:
Thanks for all the links Kieron, I guess I was behind on my reading.
16/06/2009 at 08:34 Lewis says:
I do have to wonder how many of the “anti-NGJ” crowd actually read Kieron’s essay in full.
It’s pretty basic stuff, guys. It’s been out there for ages, there’s just an increasing trend towards it. And all it is is experiential writing about games. It’s not about verbal masturbation or ego-stroking. Just “this is what happened when I played the game.” I don’t know what’s so awful about that, particularly since KG pointed out pretty strongly (perhaps too many words into the essay for some?) that there is no way in the great world that it should replace any of what’s already out there.
Bye.
16/06/2009 at 08:39 Lewis says:
(It’s actually probably closer to traditional “reporting” than pretty much anything else games journalism has.)
16/06/2009 at 08:45 Jim Rossignol says:
James T: That’s some shitty pretentious writing being labelled NGJ. Assuming that *is* what the idea means is wrong.
16/06/2009 at 08:50 Kieron Gillen says:
Putty: Re: Doesn’t Make Itself Out To Be NGJ, see this interview that’s just popped up. And thanks.
In fact, thanks generally, peeps.
KG
16/06/2009 at 09:27 Lewis says:
I’m increasingly enjoying Ready-Up. There’s some really interesting and insightful stuff on there now and then.
(Additionally, it appears to be written by a disproportionately large number of attractive women. Just sayin’.)
16/06/2009 at 09:48 kadayi says:
@Ging, Howard, Paul
Perhaps when you get jobs you’ll find out how effective ‘shouting at people’ is in the work place is, especially at the very people who pay your wage.
16/06/2009 at 09:59 Gap Gen says:
Actually, the point “only describe what happened in the game” is an interesting one. My sister became annoyed with a review/preview of Oblivion that described what I think the writer was extrapolating from the situation, rather than what was actually in the game. But this is probably more a technical point rather than a style one.
Of course, I’m totally breaking that rule right now (me, and a sweary Charles Dickens). But then that is the role of stylistic rules.
16/06/2009 at 10:04 Kieron Gillen says:
Reader-tip Number 23865: When a section is written in a humourous style and even labeled ironic, you perhaps shouldn’t treat it as literal.
KG
16/06/2009 at 10:47 Lewis says:
I think extrapolating from a situation can be useful but you’ve to be careful when you use it. It’s all about context. As all of this is. It’s not about going off on one all the time. It’s not about changing what’s already there. It’s just a possible new way of looking at things. A possible new avenue for it to take alongside the traditional stuff. Christ, what is it, five years since Kieron wrote this? And the debate still rages on? What the hell is wrong with you people?
*calms down*
16/06/2009 at 10:49 Chris Evans says:
I can’t believe Kad is still trying to argue this. I see where KG is coming from re: byline and stuff and agree with how he handles things.
16/06/2009 at 10:51 Kadayi says:
@K
I kid, I kid ;)
Incidentally did you ever carry out that Darkfall re-review? I looked but I can’t see it…
@Evo
Argue? Having a different opinion about professional standards and handling things isn’t arguing.
16/06/2009 at 10:52 Gap Gen says:
@Lewis: And indeed, like I said, NGJ has been around for ages inside reviews and so on. The style as a whole article in itself is possibly a bit newer, but writing in first person about games is not that new. That said, like Putty says, audiences differ, and I was fortunate enough to grow up reading PC Gamer UK, which was always a little anarchic compared to magazines with more technical styles.
16/06/2009 at 12:12 Ging says:
@Kadayi Perhaps you’re taking the term “shouting” too literally?
Cheers for the personal jibe re not yet having a job by the way – grand way to show maturity and keep the discussion at least vaguely civil.
16/06/2009 at 13:12 Jonas says:
Hey Kieron, what did come of that Darkfall thing at EG? I was just over there looking for your re-review since you mentioned it, but it doesn’t seem to be up yet, are you still working on it to make sure you won’t be accused of not playing it long enough, or did Tom change his mind? :-)
16/06/2009 at 13:24 Kieron Gillen says:
Jonas: In progress.
KG
16/06/2009 at 13:35 Jonas says:
Cool, looking forward to seeing how much your review differs from Mr. Zitron’s.
16/06/2009 at 14:17 Kadayi says:
[Editing your trolling to look less unreasonable and more martyred really doesn't achieve anything. Shh. - RPS]
16/06/2009 at 14:22 Alec Meer says:
Step down now, Kadayi. Everyone else – yes, he’s behaved poorly here, but move along now. Better things to talk about.
16/06/2009 at 15:48 Gap Gen says:
RoBurky’s Sims thing is ace. It’s a really nice idea with good execution.
16/06/2009 at 19:26 Funky Badger says:
The Hive’s view on professional standards seem fairly consistent with my experiences in a different industry. e.g. I give my considered expert opinion, if the powers that be decide they want me to do something differently I point out how I disagree, get them to sign it off and once my back’s covered then I do what they asked me. As the man said, its their money, not mine.
Seems eminently sensible, what else is a professional to do?
16/06/2009 at 21:31 Funky Badger says:
Reading back now the embers have died, seems everyone was pretty much saying the same thing…