Teh Gamez

I just saw this article, as linked through kotaku.com about game journalism:

http://www.industrygamers.com/news/xbox-360-power-not-yet-tapped-out-says-gears-designer/

It made me think about the old gaming magazines I use to read, and how they’re now basically extinct. A game magazine is essentially 100% ads, as even the articles are ads in and of themselves. The only magazines with any exclusives were the “official” magazines, like PSM, which people would frequently only buy because of the demo disc included with the mag. With there being three main competing gaming system, and two subsets of gaming handhelds at any time over the past couple of decades, it’s unlikely that any reader would prefer a “blanket” approach that covers games cross-system. If you only have a Playstation, why would you care what’s on Xbox, aside from morbid curiosity? That’s why each system had at least one main magazine devoted to it, and it was usually wholly endorsed by the company that produces those games. Any reviews inside the magazine were therefore suspect. Most trended towards how awesome the game in question was, and how you should buy it, with money. This sort of thing happens every day, in nearly every magazine. Fashion magazines aren’t going to crap all over fashion. Incidentally: print is dead.

In the modern age of video game reviews, the review is expected to be out long before the game. If you don’t have the exclusive from the latest convention or behind-the-scenes press-release for a game that won’t be released in months, if not years, then you’re left in the dust. If you’re an independent writer, and don’t have access to these scoops, there’s really no point in even trying. A single screenshot of an unreleased game can attract more attention than a 10,000 word essay on the game itself, once it’s been on the shelf. To be truly successful, you’d have to have access to every beta out there, and have played through every round. In the end, that wouldn’t even matter, because there’s only a handful of games every year out of hundreds that anyone in the world really cares about. Same with movies: no one really cares about the independent pic that got rave reviews at Sundance: they want the next Michael Bay blockbuster. These are from companies that have their own corps of PR people, who are doing your work for you. All you can really do is analyze it and regurgitate what they feed you.

Why? Because billions of dollars are on the line. Even though scoops are the lifeblood of the game journalist’s trade, if they were to publish anything without the prior consent of these companies, they’d find themselves on the wrong end of a lawsuit. To get these scoops, they have to agree to terms and conditions both spoken, written, and eluded at. You can’t look at a major project and tell people it’s nothing but another piece-of-shit FPS trying to compete with COD, because you’ll be blacklisted or worse.

The article above talks a lot about a code of conduct, which mainly entails not giving bad press to bad games. Reviews for games are mainly pointless. You can’t rate them on a scale. A person can play a .99 cent game on their iPhone for 24 hours, but it doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a “good” game, if you’re using the old scale of rating that includes graphics, controls, playability, etc.. Add those up and what’s really a five star game becomes a one star bomb. It’s like judging the work of Shakespeare on his penmanship, or Michael Bay’s “talent” for his use of explosives. Angry Birds is an absolute phenomenon right now. Is it a masterpiece? No. Is it terrible? No. Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum, there’s games on consoles trying to be fluid works of art with their graphics. They’re also terrible, terrible games. Final Fantasy XIII comes to mind. Does it look good? Yes. Does it play well? No. How do you rate it? And likewise, how are you not suppose to shit on it? Look at how long Duke Nukem Forever took to come out, and then look at how disappointing that game was. Is a game reviewer not allowed to crap on that? I say you should be able to smell his tears through the words.

I’ve gravitated to game sites like kotaku.com and penny-arcade.com, which aren’t necessarily review sites, but someone they’ve given me more insight into games on the market than any other source. They do it without rating the game, either. The just slap up some impressions on press-releases, and that’s it. Done. Money’s already in the bank.

That’s why to me, game journalism is a dead form of commercial art. There’s no want or need for it. I occasionally will see a review piece in the provincial paper, and it’s written about entirely random games no one could care about. I’m left with no desire to explore the game further. Meanwhile, a movie review on the next page may make me want to see a movie. How does that work? Why is one form of journalism more engaging than the other, when the two mediums are so closely related? It’s because games are meant to be experienced. You can either write a review, or write a guide with tips’n’tricks.