Pretentious Games Journalism (And Something About MCV)

There’s an excellent piece that’s gone up on Robson’s site nicely explaining why mirthless cunts like N’Gai Croal can fuck off. If you’re still unclear about the difference between Old and New Games Journalism, then you’re probably one of those wilfully ignorant self-deluding cockwits who’ll tell anyone that listens that NGJ is nothing to do with the ramblings of the pseuds, because you are one and you’re too embarrassed to admit it. If you’re not a pseud but genuinely don’t know what makes good games writing, then read Robson’s summary.

Also for today, here’s an email we received from an Anonymous Knight who’s got a thing or two to say about the way MCV chooses who gets positive coverage. Enjoy:

Dear RAM Raider,

Over the last few weeks I have become increasingly angry as I turn the pages of MCV and I have finally broken and can keep quiet no longer.

The dirty dish rag of a magazine has run several pieces recently like “30 under 30” and “Industry Dream Teams”. Each one is populated by a denizen of grinning golums who believe that firstly they have some influence over the world around them and secondly that anyone cares. Do none of these children realise that it is their brands and products that are successful and not them? As brand or account manager on “Call of Singstar 09” please don't confuse (convince) yourself that you have anything to do with its creation and or popularity. Anyway that's not my gripe so I will continue after the jump.

Why do these media sluts get to go into the magazines pages? Well, it is certainly not by virtue of their professionalism. As an example one of those so called “Fantasy Team” members (who was an average telesales executive at the time) once offered out carnal favours to anyone prepared to give her career a boot up. She now lives with her current boss.

No, the reason they are all there is simple: Stuart. Either he likes you or your company is prepared to pay him “advertising” money. In return for a large sum of money on an annual basis Mr D will not only refrain from giving you bad press but he will ensure your employees are held up as paragons of the business world. All dressed up as the legitimate business of advertising. This is a joke as an ad in MCV must have about as much impact on your target market as a fart in hurricane. I will call it by its real name for once; protection money.

I know for a fact that one very large publisher was having a sticky time with SD as they had stopped “advertising” a couple of years back. As a result MCV never published positive stories about them and also would go out of its way to slag them off in print and in person. Recently a marketing man was dispatched from the publisher to enquire of Stuart “how much will it cost to stop slagging us off?”. The answer, “£XXX,000 PA”. They negotiated him down to around £XXX,000 and the deal was done. This is why the company’s ads can now be seen all over MCV on a weekly basis and its employees faces regularly grin out at us whilst we go for our Friday morning dumps.

My word that feels better.

Regards,

Anon.

In Defence Of Old Games Journalism

Dave McCarthy (Taurus from the Triforce) interviewed Gillen a couple of weeks ago about NGJ for MCV. McCarthy was irreverent, but Gillen in between his pretend (we think) pretentiousness threw in a few snipes at OGJ including “there were only three things you could write about games: a review, a preview or a tips guide” and “The best Games Journalism now is better than it’s ever been. We probably should be grateful.” It angered Dave Perry who vented on the Triforum and mentioned his viewpoint in a letter to MCV last week, but the main defence of OGJ was left to us. So here it is, how they printed it:


“Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. That describes Kieron Gillen’s take on NGJ and his opinion in last week’s article by cheeky Garry Bushell impersonator Dave McCarthy (‘Games Journalism RIP?’, MCV 8/9). I’ve not got much space, so I’ll keep this brief.

On Gillen’s Definition: For someone who sneers at NGJ’s detractors for not having read his ridiculous article about it, he needs to get his opinions straight. One minute it’s ‘travel journalism to imaginary places’ (puke), the next it’s ‘anecdote based writing’. Make up your mind, because the difference is quite important, you know.

On NGJ: Why does it exist? Gillen thinks there’s an audience for subjective journalism. You know, like when one of those terrified kids sat there during Bad Influence droning in a monotone, “I like playing Altered Beast because I like playing it.”

Sure, it sums up what that reviewer’s feeling. But isn’s [NOTE TO MCV’S SUB-ED: READ THIS] games journalism there to tell gamers what they might like to buy? And doesn’t that mean you have to be just a tiny bit objective?

On Gillen’s Opinion: Gillen not only thinks there’s a market for this crap, but that it’s overtaken Old Games Journalism in terms of quality. Of course, Jaz Rignall, Stuart Campbell, Gary Penn and Dave Perry only used to be able to write reviews, previews and tips guides back then.

Now we can discuss the existential ramifications of post-feministic perspectives on the use of the silencer in Counter-Strike as a symbol of phallic rape. Wow, I’m so grateful games journalism is so bloody great now.

New Games Journalism is the mother of all misnomers. It’s not ‘new’. And it’s got more to do with the faceless boring writer than the ‘games’. Writing ‘my monitor and me: a pretentious autobiographical account’ will never qualify as journalism.

You want to know what NGJ really is? Old Writer Narcissism.

RAM Raider
ramraider.blogspot.com”

Sod New Games Journalism - What's Wrong With Old Games Journalism?

The RAM Raider is sure he's not the only one that’s absolutely sick of this whole bucket of fuck-all that’s calling itself New Games Journalism. The fuss is centred around an entry in the blog of ex-PC Gamer staff writer Kieron Gillen, who now makes a living freelancing for PC Gamer, PC Format and, erm, Eurogamer.net. There are two things in particular that irk about the whole situation – one is that the original piece was originally written over a year ago and was only recently dug up in a Guardian blog, the other is that there’s sod-all to it, other than being overly wordy.

The principle is that an NGJ article should centre around the writer and his experience. Taken at face value, this sounds quite sensible. Unfortunately, applied to an industry full of giant egos, this has resulted in a breed of articles that are more about the writer telling the world about himself.

Gillen himself is playing it pretty cool, claiming that the whole NGJ manifesto thing has been blown out of proportion. While he does tend to take himself a little too seriously (a quick look at his blog will confirm that one), Gillen’s not a bad guy when you meet him in the flesh, and it’s a shame to see his name brought to prominence with an issue that we can already see the community lashing out at.

A perfect example of so-called NGJ at its worst is PC Gamer’s Extra Life section. Usually consisting of a miserable mixture of pointless “this is me playing a game” bits and ten page articles on specific game levels (ten fucking pages – I don’t know whether to laugh or cry), the only entertainment that can possibly be derived from it is from attempting to find something interesting to read amongst it all. How fucking pointless can you get?

Applying NGJ to reviews is an even bigger nightmare, positively inviting the egos with typewriters to wank themselves silly while forgetting what the main purposes of these articles actually are. You basically need three things for a successful review: i) to describe the game (and you’d be surprised at the amount of reviews out there that don’t), ii) to describe what it’s like to play, and iii) to bolt those two ingredients together in an entertaining fashion.

Crash and Zzap are legendary thanks to their abilities to hit the exact balance in getting their views across while making the reader feel included, and this tradition was later mastered by Amiga Power. When they fired off a concept review, it not only worked, but the industry took notice. In a good way.

NGJ is little more than an excuse for the writer to talk about themselves first, and let everything and everyone else be damned. There are so many reviewers who talk constantly about their own sad lives, but this is completely the wrong track – you have to be talking about yourself as the reader, who is the potential player of the game. This applies equally to feature pieces and opinion articles – if you write about yourself, you’ll alienate your readers and end up as one of the bunch of self-deluded pricks who waffle on about fuck-all in shite like Edge.

Perhaps the worst thing about the whole sorry debacle is that the world’s gaming press is having a good laugh at the expense of us – the British gaming press – for being deluded enough to believe that NGJ was some revolutionary concept in the art of writing. The real guilty party is The Guardian’s blog for publishing their pretentious and pathetic list of NGJ crap in the first place.

As for Gillen, he’s probably getting the rawest deal in that he’s getting quite heavily slagged off by anyone with enough common sense to see that NGJ is complete nonsense, but let’s not forget that he, like practically every journalist, is a different person in his writing than he is in real life. The RAM Raider is sure Gillen’s unphased by the whole situation anyway – after all, it’s better to be a laughing stock than ignored. And we should know.

In the name of all that is good, let’s all just stick with old games journalism from now on. Clever. Witty. Incisive. Funny. Informative. And, crucially, not pretending to be something that it isn’t.