The (shabby state of video game journalism
Bill Gallagher
Issue date: 9/24/07 Section: Life & Leisure
- Page 1 of 2 next >
The Digital Entertainment Industry, despite being in existence for over three decades, still has a great deal of trouble presenting video and computer games as a mature medium.
It's not that the games have not matured; in the past decades, we have progressed from eight-bit quarter eaters, concerned only with getting players to the right side of the screen to the hyper realistic, nearly cinematic, tales of moral confusion, war, crime and mortality.
Yet games and gamers are still relegated to the realm of sub-culture and hobby and critics within legitimized industries (like Robert Ebert) snub their noses at the mere notion that games that games could be anything else.
The image that outsiders have of gamers and games is largely thanks to how we are presented by our own press, a small enclave of gamers who decided to devote their lives to writing about and reviewing games.
The problem, however, is that video game journalists have proven to be some of most immature and unethical writers within the whole of journalism. Possibly because of the youth of their audience, their own youth, or both, but video game journalists have adopted internet forum etiquette.
This, of course, leads to two prevailing styles of writing within the community: stubborn, caustic and sarcastic or pandering and ecstatic. If a game is liked it is all to often upgraded to the dubious rank of "awesome" with disliked games being described with the overused term "crap" with no shades of distinction between.
The fact that it is normal for video game journalists to attend all-expenses-paid junkets provided by video game publishers to write previews takes away a great deal of credibility from them. Such practices are seen as controversial within the film press, but they seem rather normal to video game journalists. In fact, critical game previews are few and far between with most either neglecting to point the negatives out or simply hyping the title before it is released. Worst of all are some game news websites, like IGN, that will occasionally feature articles sponsored by publishers for the sole purpose of hyping their games.
It's not that the games have not matured; in the past decades, we have progressed from eight-bit quarter eaters, concerned only with getting players to the right side of the screen to the hyper realistic, nearly cinematic, tales of moral confusion, war, crime and mortality.
Yet games and gamers are still relegated to the realm of sub-culture and hobby and critics within legitimized industries (like Robert Ebert) snub their noses at the mere notion that games that games could be anything else.
The image that outsiders have of gamers and games is largely thanks to how we are presented by our own press, a small enclave of gamers who decided to devote their lives to writing about and reviewing games.
The problem, however, is that video game journalists have proven to be some of most immature and unethical writers within the whole of journalism. Possibly because of the youth of their audience, their own youth, or both, but video game journalists have adopted internet forum etiquette.
This, of course, leads to two prevailing styles of writing within the community: stubborn, caustic and sarcastic or pandering and ecstatic. If a game is liked it is all to often upgraded to the dubious rank of "awesome" with disliked games being described with the overused term "crap" with no shades of distinction between.
The fact that it is normal for video game journalists to attend all-expenses-paid junkets provided by video game publishers to write previews takes away a great deal of credibility from them. Such practices are seen as controversial within the film press, but they seem rather normal to video game journalists. In fact, critical game previews are few and far between with most either neglecting to point the negatives out or simply hyping the title before it is released. Worst of all are some game news websites, like IGN, that will occasionally feature articles sponsored by publishers for the sole purpose of hyping their games.
Be the first to comment on this story