Merry Christmas From GMX Media!

We love this time of year, especially when firms take the time and trouble to send out messages of Christmas cheer and goodwill. One of our readers received this “Christmas card” from GMX Media and was instantly filled with seasonal spirit.

“Wow, really nice of GMX to send out a Christmas card and not, for example, a blatant advert with the words season's greetings tacked on.”


Christmas in the GMX household must be great.

“But daddy – I wanted an Xbox360 for Christmas”

“You’ll take this leaflet about our shit games and bloody well like it. And make sure you show all your friends at school. And their parents”


At least the e-mail provided an address to complain to if the contents of it were spam. Seeing as an advert posing as a Christmas card is obviously spam, we’ll be e-mailing steven@gmxmedia.net to tell him, and urge you to as well.


Happy Christmas, readers!

The RAM Raider Christmas Quiz (part 1)

Whilst we tot up the votes for the RR Awards 2005, we’ll hand the torch over to our talented PR friend (a very rare thing) David McCain for a Christmas Quiz. The questions are in the style of Popbitch, so post your answers in the comments section and bask in the top prize, which is being the envy of your friends.


“1) Which dubiously attractive PR girl is notorious for getting so horny after a night on the coke that she will fuck almost anyone though she prefers going down on guys?

2) Which widely liked PR Manager (another very rare thing – RR) sent out review disks containing not review code but copies of the 'MILF Hunter' movies he'd downloaded the previous night?

3) Which PR impresario has such a habit that he’s no longer allowed to speak to journalists on the phone after lunch?”


Sorry if you’re not a PR or a journo and can’t take part, but it’ll be just as much fun to watch the guessing. More questions soon, and look out for the first of the RR Awards to be awarded shortly.

FIFA 06: EA Don’t Want You To Know It’s Shit

Sharp-eyed readers recently noticed that http://www.eurogamer.net/ were forced to pull their review of FIFA 06: Road to FIFA World Cup for Xbox360 because it was embargoed until the 2nd December. As the game is going to be released on the 2nd December, and EG gave it an impressive 2/10, it would be easy to assume that EA would rather you all bought it before reading bad things about it.

If you’re thinking of buying it, it’s only fair you read EG’s review first, so here it is. (We’ll remove it as soon as EG put it back up on their site)

(2/12/05 EDIT: EG has put the review back up now the embargo has passed - http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=61919)

Campbell Defends Games Journalism

After our response to Matt Martin’s hopelessly misjudged article harping on about how “lucky” games journalists are was printed in MCV last week, it was brought to the attention of the nation’s official top games journalist. He was just as outraged as we were by the article, and his excellent response has been printed in this week’s issue.

The god of games journalism shared our sentiments when it came to what journalists are meant to do, namely report the truth without being swayed by PR perks/bribery. The response is also somehow even more venomous than our own. Here are some extracts:


“You’re not a “games journalist”, Matt, nor any other kind of journalist. If you need something to put under “Occupation” on your passport next time you’re off on some freebie junket, call yourself what you are. You’re a PR Auxiliary, or maybe a Marketing Assistant, perhaps a Junior Advertising Executive. You’re not in the business of investigation and communication, which is what journalists do. You’re a salesman. Actually, not even that.

You’re in a job and you have a duty to do it properly, and that means ignoring all the free holidays and shiny presents you’ve been given by companies whose only purpose in doing so is to try to distort your coverage in their favour. (If they just wanted you to see the game, after all, they could send you a disc in the post.)

There are a few people working in video games who do still practice real journalism. It’s quite offensive and arrogant for you to debase their work by pretending your airheaded cheerleading puts you in the same line of business… don’t get ideas above your station, eh?”


http://worldofstuart.excellentcontent.com/mcvr.jpg for the whole thing.

That Stuart can lay down his views in such an entertaining and overtly insulting way is exactly why this site considers him to be the nation’s number one journo, and he wasn’t even hiding behind anonymity like we do (although he probably got his £25). We feel obliged to acknowledge MCV for having the guts to print two scathing rebukes of Matt Martin two issues running, though, and would like to see what Mr. Martin has to say.

Stuart – we’re returning the compliment with interest when we say that was superb. The RAM Raider salutes you.

Official Xbox360 Magazine Does “It” Again

We had it all planned out. We were going to post a huge critique of issue 2 of Official Xbox 360 Magazine. We were going to scream from the tops of our lungs about how painfully obvious it is that their “world exclusive review” of Perfect Dark Zero was written after playing unfinished code. We were going to crow about how the writer hasn’t even been identified, with a crap cartoon image and the name “Justin Thyme” being substituted for his real details because of the wrongdoing. We were even going to ask how Future can justify asking £6 for a magazine that still has a DVD full of video clips instead of playable demos hidden inside the ridiculous box.

But we’re not going to do that.

Instead, we’re going to ask the brilliantly talented team behind the magazine (Cutlack! He writes the funny bits of UK:R!) to please put a stop to this nonsense. Let’s have no more “exclusives” derived from unfinished code written by journalists unable to even put their name to them. Tell your bosses at your next meeting that you want honesty in your magazine.

Is that too much to ask?

RAM Raider Makes Print Debut

We're going to pretend to be a workblog for once. After some courting by industry rag MCV, we decided to fire off a response to an article they printed about how being a games journalist is the best thing ever. They printed it on page 61 of the 18/11/05 issue:


“Another week, another ill-judged, misinformed and overly-aggressive editorial. In the last issue of MCV (11/11), Matt Martin took it upon himself to declare that games journalists have "one of the best jobs in the world", and forcibly poured scorn upon those of us who have dared to complain about the games industry. Well excuse me Mr. Martin, but you can take your "put up or shut up" attitude and stick it up your arse.

In case Mr. Martin has forgotten, games journalists are part of the national press. The press are there for a specific reason – to tell it how it is. We witness incompetence and poor practice flying at us from all angles, and it's our duty as the press to report this to the consumers. Of course the job is better than scraping grease from biscuit-making machinery, but I bet when Martin did that for a living he wasn't leaping out of bed every morning praising the heavens that he wasn't a one-legged leper with AIDS. Everything's relative.

Ignoring Martin's point about the "hundreds of talented kids out there who would kill" to be in our position (purely because they don't exist – ask any magazine editor how many legible applications he receives in a year and you'll receive a single-figure answer), scolding us for not appreciating the "perks" is yet another flaw in the argument. Does he really think PR trips are laid on as a massive favour for the journalists? They're there solely to convince us to portray their forthcoming games in as favourable a light as possible – glorified advertising at best, borderline bribery at worst. [The second half of that sentence was edited out]

But we should of course all follow Martin's advice immediately, and leave the games industry. After all, why bother standing up and speaking out against everything that's rotten and joyless about the games industry when we could just take the coward's way out? Oh, that's right – because it's our jobs to tell the truth.

We're moaning about the games industry because we care about it. We've seen how great it can be, and it can be saved if only more people would make a stand against charmless asinine journalism promoting poor industry decisions. Martin demands that we should "rekindle the passion", but if there's anyone more passionate about games than the journalists who are prepared to openly debate the games industry, warts and all, regardless of what the PR and publishing overlords dictate, then they've done an excellent job of flying under the radar.

How about this for a counter-proposal – end the sterility coursing through the veins of modern games journalism and rekindle the fun and honesty, or piss off.

RAM Raider”


MCV’s reply was “It’s great to see such passion, but surely the “coward’s way out” is criticising from behind the safety of a pseudonym…?”

The answer to that is simple and obvious. We’ve all seen what happens to journalists who actually do their jobs and tell the truth instead of toeing the corporate line so, to quote from a comment we left on some guy’s blog a couple of weeks ago, “honesty is the bastion of the exiled and the anonymous”.

We’re not ready to be exiled from the industry yet, so we’ll stick with anonymity for now.

“Celebrity” Reaction: Dave Perry

Dave was the last of our nation’s “celebrity” journalists to give us a response to his Top 10 entry (the shameful four who ignored us are Curran, Cutlack, Diamond and Krotoski – if anyone wants to send in responses on their behalf, good or bad, we’ll post the best as punishment). On a more positive note, Dave’s response was very good.


“There's no disgrace in coming second to Mr Campbell, who is certainly one of my own favourite games writers of all-time. I'd like to thank everyone who voted for me... and so on, and so on, and everybody who has enjoyed my mags or watched the TV shows I've appeared on through the years!”

We couldn’t agree more – coming second to Campbell is nothing to be ashamed of. Dave answered his personal question next.


“As for the question as to whether I have any plans to return to the industry... the answer is a simple one... yes I do.

Apart from interacting with members and fans over at my website, I have deliberately stayed away from gaming on a professional level for the past five years or so. I think everybody needed a rest from me, and I needed a rest from 'having' to play games, rather than playing them because I wanted to. During my time away I've been able to play just for fun again and it has been good for me and for my love of gaming. Now I feel ready to immerse myself in the industry again and hopefully put a bit of 'colour' back into its cheeks. Older, wiser... just as big headed. Should be interesting.”

Dave makes a good point there. Not many people realise how different the experience of playing games as a job is compared with playing for fun. We’d definitely agree that it’s time he made a comeback too, before all those half-arsed “mainstream” journalists and company bitches make us forget what gaming’s really all about.


“Thanks for the praise. You're all very brave. Ram Raider Rules!”

Aww, thanks Dave. The RAM Raider salutes you.


(PS – Thanks to Board of Biffo’s Ming for the picture of Dave making his presence felt)

The Top 10 “Celebrity” Games Journalists In Full

1 – Stuart Campbell
The greatest games journalist ever, shunned by the industry he loves

2 – Dave Perry
The guy with the bandanna who’s not such a twat after all (maybe)

3 – Gary Cutlack aka Cmdr Zorg
The UK:Resistance bloke who’s funnier on the internet

4 – Kieron Gillen
Brilliant writer hobbled by NGJ

5/6/7 – The Triforce
Simon Byron, Ste Curran and the other one, trying to have fun

8 – Dominik Diamond
Ex-GamesMaster, ex-likeable guy

9 – Paul Rose aka Mr. Biffo
Creator of Digitiser whose talents have been recognised elsewhere

10 – Aleks Krotoski
American bird from Bits who writes boring stuff for the boring Guardian GamesBlog


Two has-beens, one never-was, a quitter, a legend, some guys we probably should have included as one place instead of three, a screenwriter, and one of the busiest games journalists around (not in that order). We tried to mix the old with the new, taking into consideration the longevity of the old-guard’s reputations and relevance against more recent names.

No other industry can claim to have journalists who are as well known as its creators. Can you name ten “celebrity” TV critics, or ten “celebrity” music critics? Games journos don’t have the gloss they once did any more, and we’ve got the internet to thank for that. Whether that’s a good thing or not is up to you, but we think it’s a shame.

Look out for our next update, where we’ll be naming the “also-ran” list of names for the Official Top 10, and why they didn’t make it, and naming who would have been included if we had made The TriForce take up just one place (which, with hindsight, was probably down to laziness on our part). We’ll also be asking all of the Official Top 10 “Celebrity” Games Journalists for their comments.

We bet Krotoski will ignore us, though.

Future issue 130 page press release for £6

…and it’s called Xbox360 The Official Xbox Magazine.

It’s only natural that in the wake of a new console, a skipload of new magazines are going to pop up to cover its launch. It’s also natural that the world-domineering Future Publishing has secured the official Xbox360 licence.

Being on the shelves in mid-September, nearly three months before the console is out, thousands of eager readers must have snapped up the first issue to read some decent journalistic coverage of the Xbox360 and its games. After all, surely the staff of the official magazine has access to Bill’s new console?

Future’s favourite trick of hiding a dodgy issue inside a sealed box has been wheeled out, and opening it up after shelling out six quid will tell you why. A thin and miserable varnished Microsoft advertorial with a DVD full of tech movies running off a PC is rattling around inside.

A regurgitation of the spec sheets makes up some of the mag, masquerading as journalism. We lost count of how many times the proclamation “The graphics rock!” was bolted onto the end of a nonsense-sentence about the tech specs. And would it really have been too much to ask for someone to check the totally wrong page numbers in the A-Z game index?

Even the mighty Cutlack (UK:Resistance, we salute you) fails to save the coverage of the games, which is a dismal selection of rewritten press information and glossy screenshots that we’d bet our tattered careers on baring no resemblance to the final products.

Yes, citizens, again you’re being sold a lie. Despite the promise of “exclusive playtests” in the mag, and the promise “we play the best console launch lineup ever seen” on the cover, at the time of writing the magazine the staff hadn’t gone near a finished console, but were still ordered by their paymasters to get a rewritten press release out onto the shelves.

For six fucking quid.

PC Zone transformation into PC Gamer complete

As the RAM Raider predicted, PC Zone has become PC Gamer. Months of sneering at PC Gamer’s irrelevant Extra Life section has given way to the birth of PC Zone’s Freeplay, which is an exact copy. You might almost think they’re being written by the same people.

The RAM Raider knows this isn’t true, but it might be happening sooner than you think. Recent ABC figures have shown massive drops in circulations that Future suits have desperately tried to justify with the excuse that summer has unexpectedly happened. Losing nearly ten thousand readers each, Future knows that the only way forward is to merge them.

We’re going to get a book running on who’s going to lose their jobs, and even worse, who’s going to be pushed off to the editorial Siberia that is the pathetic CVG.com website. Place your bets.

Future Publishing quiz – falling circulations

This Saturday sees yet another instalment of the fucking awful “Test the Nation” programme fronted by Anne “I can’t lower my eyebrows” Robinson and Phillip “How the fuck has nobody discovered I’m gay yet?” Schofield. Just in case there’s a question on monopolising cunts, here’s a question on Future Publishing to practice on:

You’re spending potfuls of cash on buying out magazines, increasing the wages of the suits who hang around upstairs in Bath, and losing your magazine readership. What do you do?

a) Stop fucking around and plough some of that cash back into the magazines so the journos can put together excellent coverage for the readers;

b) Keep things steady, and hope the magazine teams can turn around their fortunes through their continuing hard work;

c) Acknowledge the fact that 75% of your revenue comes from the readers, so fuck them over by raising the cover price of several mags; and while you’re at it fuck the poor overworked journos by significantly reducing their budgets, forcing them to cut back on spending to cover game previews (why bother when they can just use gamespot.com instead?) and become even more overworked by having to write more for the same shit pay (leading to Headhunter: Redemption situations all over again); while sending your head cunt Greg Ingham to appear in MVC and say how great the management are.

The answer will be in the next update. As if you need it…

Future looking for new mugs

After a spell of losing staff faster than their credibility, Future are advertising for “four experienced gamers” to join their London office as trainees. Promising opportunities to work on the woeful Official Xbox Magazine and PSW, the RAM Raider was especially interested in Future’s requirements.

- An exhaustive knowledge of videogames and a passion for playing them (well, it was only a matter of time before Future realised their writers need to actually be gamers)

- A creative mind itching to express itself in print in an entertaining and original way (so they’re not looking for writers for Edge then)

- A bright, outgoing personality who can get along with anyone (in other words, can bend over and take it up the arse from the PR people so they can exchange high scores for advertising)

- A desire to learn and succeed (presumably to succeed at being a low paid skivvy that writes shit about games they’ve barely played)

Better still is what they’re not interested in:

- The size, shape or colour of your academic record (we’ll give them that – you’re either a decent writer or you’re shit, so well done Future)

- Why “old games are better than new ones, actually” (so anyone that actually has experience of old games – yet again, Future fail to grasp the importance of being involved in the industry from the golden era)

- Post-Freudian rationalisation of the Mario/Wario relationship dynamic in Super-Famicom releases ’91 to ’94 (so they’re definitely not looking for writers for Edge)

Judging by the number of comments attached to the post, it looks like loads of naïve forumites are seriously considering applying. The RAM Raider implores you not to, for the sake of your own sanity and well being. Working at the stinking London office doing shitty menial tasks that nobody else wants for a disgustingly low wage is not what you want to do in life.

You might love gaming, but Future only love their wallets.

Pointless press release of the week goes to…

…Official PlayStation 2 Magazine, who have… (drum roll)… got some previews and reviews in their latest issue. Well fucking done guys. With OPS2 counting amongst the lamest of the dismal PS2 mags doing the rounds, the RAM Raider can see why Future need to push out a press release to announce the amazing fact that they've done their jobs for once.

It’s even accompanied by an official statement by editor Stephen “I hate my track suit wearing readers” Pierce:

"The force is strong with this issue, making it the best OPS2 ever (customary shit press release gag over with early – well done). We have the amazing Star Wars blow-out, which couldn't be better timed to build up excitement for the movie (can’t resist letting slip the real reason for securing those ‘exclusives’, can you Steve) – as well as loads more (yes – Reviews! Previews! Hearty congratulations). We have the biggest selection of first-look exclusives ever assembled in one magazine (we’re assuming you have the facts to back that up, Steve?), and have covered the titles gamers really want to get their hands on (good tactic – a lesser editor would just pick a load of shite that nobody gives a fuck about). With the essential covermounted DVD, this illustrates why OPS2 is by far the best videogame magazine you can buy."

Well, the RAM Raider's convinced.

PC Zone To Become The New PC Gamer?

The RAM Raider has heard a rumour that the reason Jamie Sefton has been installed as acting editor of PC Zone magazine over at Future Publishing’s London office is that editor Dave Woods is working fulltime on a total redesign of the magazine, presumably in an effort to halt its declining sales.

PC Zone still has a fearsomely loyal fanbase from its heyday, which is sadly long gone. For a long time now, it’s not so much been a magazine with attitude as a games comic, but will this be rectified?

Dave Woods has always been a vocal critic of PC Gamer’s stupid and largely pointless Extra Life section, but is ironically planning a section called “Freeplay” that’ll basically emulate Gamer’s pages of glorified look-at-me filling. Only time will tell whether the Zone team can prevent Freeplay from turning into yet another desperate source of irrelevant commentary – has nobody learnt anything from the NGJ debacle?

Deadlines & How Long Reviewers Spend Playing Games – The Truth

The RAM Raider spotted a discussion on a fansite writers' forum recently about deadlines. The comment “I think 2 days is a bit short notice” particularly caught my attention. After all, we’re talking about an unpaid writer coming up with shit about a game, for free, that nobody will read.

These people have no idea. As a professional games journalist, two days is a bloody luxury. The RAM Raider has often been landed with reviews from magazines with a day to turn around up to 1000 words, plus screenshots, plus captions, plus boxouts. The record has to be 22 hours from one of the major PC mags – that’s to play a game, and write up the review plus bullshit extras.

Remember the Headhunter: Redemption debacle, where that poor guy from Official Xbox Magazine had his name dragged through the mud by the game’s developers who revealed on the magazine’s forums (which were naturally deleted by Future, but there’s more here) that he’d simply regurgitated facts about the game from an old press release, revealing that he hadn’t played it properly? Despite Future’s desperate attempts to deny the accusations, the RAM Raider has learned from one his colleagues on the mag that he actually had barely played the game at all, as he was completely snowed under with a load of games and not enough time to review them.

How much time is spent playing a game for a review isn’t always down to the deadline though. As a general rule, the less space a review takes up, the less time the reviewer will spend on it. If it’s half a page in a magazine, the reviewer can expect £40-50 at the most, and less than half of that for a quarter of a page. For that kind of money, it’s just not worth spending hours on a game, so more often than not, a review will be knocked out after a couple hours of play at best.

So, the next time you’re reading a review section introduction with the lofty promise of a magazine’s reviewers playing games right through to the finish, you can now confidently think to yourself, “bollocks”. Yes, dear reader, quite often the review of a game you’ll be thinking of spending £40 on in a magazine that cost you a fiver will have been cobbled together by some poor/lazy guy who’s played it for a couple of hours.

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.

Future Publishing's "Secret" New Logo

MCV have scored a couple of brownie points by openly defying Future Publishing’s request to keep their crap new logo secret until they’re ready to launch it themselves on 1st June. Of course, MCV would never have had the guts to publish the logo had Spong.com not beaten them to it, but were at least gracious enough to point out that 69% of Future’s staff agreed that the logo was awful.

Still, if Future Publishing wants it keeping under wraps, that’s a good enough reason to post it here.

Future Publishing – Interfering & Monopolising

MCV (the gaming industry’s trade mag) is becoming less and less relevant to the industry. The editorial does little more than state the obvious at the best of times, while letting soulless suits masturbate their companies across their pages.

A series of editorials from Future Publishing mag journalists turned into an embarrassing set of mishaps, kicked off by Official UK PlayStation Magazine editor Stephen Pierce slagging off his entire readership. This was followed up nicely by PSM2 Magazine’s Andrew Kelly short-sightedly, and unnecessarily aggressively, writing off the retro market and anyone who has an interest in it (in other words, anyone who’s played games for more than five minutes, thus making them more qualified to comment on games than Andrew Kelly).

The odd interesting interaction between industry knowns (and unknowns) does occasionally pop up though. Recently, Eurogamer.net editor Kristan Reed had a moan in MCV’s less than hallowed pages about Future Publishing effectively monopolising the games magazine market. Racing to slip on his company-bitch suit, PC Zone editor Dave Woods was quick to respond in a letter published the following week entitled, “We’re still fiercely independent at Future.”

After accusing Kristan Reed of behaving unprofessionally, Woods announces, “There hasn’t been a single attempt to interfere in the editorial side of the magazine.”

Considering this was published shortly after Future Publishing had ordered the author of the magazine’s monthly column on games emulation, Stuart Campbell, to no longer be used because of a disagreement that took place in the past over payment, the RAM Raider can only assume that Woods must have been suffering from some sort of temporary amnesia. Either that, or he was acting on orders from above.