I met up with Warhammer Online’s Paul Barnett last week in London for an interview. We talked about… well, a lot of stuff. We spent three hours in a pub, drinking all the while. It’s going to be an interesting transcript. However, one of the things we touched upon was Gary Penn and his importance. And it’s got Paul writing…
“Computer games and computer game hardware had as much importance in my youth and formative years as any amount of music. The game labels, games and the people who made and reviewed them took on the same mystique, fanatic devotion; belief and philosophical answers than anything I managed to dredge out of the radio and records that where available at the time”.
He then explores what much-cited music critic Lester Bangs actually was – rather than his myth – how this applies to games, and how his very own Lester Bangs was Zzap!’s Gary Penn, now of Denki. His point being, Lester Bangs isn’t some platonic perfect state – it’s a relationship between reader and writer born at a specific space.
I think he’s got a point.
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