Sony’s Arrogance Pays Off… For Everyone But Sony

We usually steer clear of stories like this which the whole world has already flogged to death, but it would be a shame not to jump on a bandwagon as beautiful as this.

Here are some choice comments from SCEE chief twat David Reeves being a smug cunt in the glorious MCV earlier this year, as reported by gamepro.com:

“David Reeves, the head of Sony's European PlayStation 3 launch, has gone on record in MCV as saying that 'it is my job to match [the European PS3 launch] with the U.S launch,' adding that 'I am doing my very best to make that happen.'

Reeves also takes a moment to scold analysts who speculate about a possible PS3 delay, saying 'no one really knows the facts.' Reeves goes on to say that he is 'very, very confident' about Sony's launch plans for the PS3.”

Well Dave, we’re “very, very confident” that the analysts are laughing in your cocky face, and you’ve failed to do your job.

Let’s face it, after watching Sony i) fucking up the launch of the PSP, ii) turning the PSP into a white elephant that’s been shoved aside by the Nintendo DS, and iii) replacing the PS3 controller with an old dual shock with the rumble pack replaced with a motion sensor in a panicked reactionary response to the Nintendo Wii controller, the analysts had plenty to go on.

Happy Christmas, Sony!

Future Haemorrhages Credibility

We’ve already told you about Future’s loss of readers and money. Now we’re going to tell you why.

Future is desperate to put a positive spin on readers flocking away from their magazines along with their money. In last week’s omnipotent trade-weekly MCV (happy now, Lisa?), they summoned their mouthpiece James Ashton-Tyler to take a leaf out of Sony’s book of PR arrogance. In one fell swoop, he brushed aside a suggestion that hadn’t been made in the first place that websites are killing mags all whilst sidestepping the real reason Future is haemorrhaging readers and money.

The discussion about websites taking over from the mags has been limping along for years, but has never been convincing. Although websites provide up-to-the-second news and reviews for free, the writing itself has always been questionable. Even the websites championed as spearheading the online games-info revolution attract the dregs of the industry. The unreliable Eurogamer and IGN lead the way in posting up woefully bad copy that’s uninformed, overly-indulgent or both.

Magazines have always been the place to go to read the views of the industry’s leading critics. You have to pay a few quid for the privilege, and mag lead times mean that reviews might be published a bit later than the instant-update websites, but the money and wait has always been worth it for well-written, funny, honest views to help you spend your money.

Not any more.

Despite Ashton-Tyler’s snide comments in MCV, Future is running scared of its online competition. They’re so frightened, they’ll do anything to compete. They’ll publish official magazines for unreleased consoles that their journalists haven’t played with yet. They’ll set-up “world exclusive” reviews to give the illusion of being ahead of the websites. They’re so desperate, they’ll jump into bed with publishers and lie to their readers to keep the illusion running.

The October issue of PC Gamer is in the shops on Thursday. Inside is an 8 page “world exclusive” review of Company of Heroes. Although it takes Tim Edwards a while to get going (“I could tell war stories all day, but you might want to know how CoH actually plays” says Edwards on the sixth page) but it’s an otherwise reasonable account of the game. From what we’ve played of CoH, it’s a very good game which will probably be worth its 94% when finished. The trouble is, there’s so much dishonesty and deceit around it all, they’re not even trying to hide it any more.

Page 44-45 has a two page advert for Company of Heroes featuring a quote and the score from the review which, remember, is in the same issue. The front cover is adorned with CoH worshipping. “BEST RTS SCORE EVER” lies the front cover, as later on the magazine cheerfully reminds the reader the 95% they awarded Rome: Total War in issue 141. The last time we checked, 95% is higher than 94%.

It screams dishonesty. They’re so desperate to beat the websites to a review, they’ll base the review of the game on unfinished pre-release code. The guy who reviews it will be flown around the white cliffs of Dover in a WWII plane to France, and wined and dined in a luxury hotel and casino. His fellow journalists will be sat in front of preview code to write previews whilst he’s given “world exclusive” unfinished "review" code. Future will give the advertisers the score and a quote from the review as part of the deal. A lie will be told on the front cover.

It’s been going on for years. The RAM Raider has written reviews for magazines from disks with “preview code” written on them. The RAM Raider has written reviews for magazines from code that’s less than 75% finished. It’s becoming more of an open secret now, and the readers are realising.

This is why magazines are dying. They’re dishonouring themselves by reviewing unfinished code and making advertising-for-coverage deals. They’re cheapening the quality of an excellent game by reviewing it through dishonesty.

That’s why Future is haemorrhaging readers. That’s why Future is haemorrhaging money. If its morals and honesty are haemorrhaged too, more readers will realise they’re being lied to.

Would you rather read a “world exclusive” review of unfinished code in conjunction with advertisers, or a later review of finished code that’s independent and uncensored?

Dave Perry & The Death Of Celebrity

Top 10 Celebrity Games Journalist Dave Perry wrote an article in industry arse-rag MCV recently about the lack of proper gaming celebrities on TV. We agree with quite a lot of it, especially the bits that agree with what we’ve said, not to mention the list of celebrities we’ve championed in our Top 10 and also-ran list. We don’t agree with the second half of the article though.

Perry talks about the wealth of talent in the games industry who could step into the role of a TV celebrity. We’ve met and/or know plenty of games journalists. The ones who can string together great articles that are informative and funny (as the OGJ code demands) would never make it when away from their desks. The ones who aren’t informative and funny should fuck off and work in PR.

The ones who have tried – step forward Triforce guy Ste Curran and his brave attempt at games radio One Life Left – are undoubtedly talented writers, but do struggle outside of the comfort zone of the written page or webspace. The World of Stuart forum recently criticised Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe for being like watching someone reading out their weekly column into an autocue.

Dave mentions Dominik Diamond as someone who’s transcended the games arena. It’s true that at the time, Diamond did a reasonable job of presenting GamesMaster. The thing to remember is that he wasn’t a games journalist before landing the job, and he’s never been able to cut it as a games journalist since. The proof of that is in his embarrassingly unfunny column for kids’ comic PC Zone that’s now been axed, but Diamond at least bowed out with his dignity by taking the piss out of his crucifixion disaster and admitting how much the readers hated his monthly deposit in his final article.

Perry also thinks that there are no games celebrities because the viewers keep slagging off the limp excuses masquerading as games TV that sometimes pop up instead of supporting them. The fundamental problem with that argument is that viewers slag off shows like Bits and Games Network’s crap because they’re utter shit scraped from the crack of a PR’s arse.

The reason that there aren’t any proper games celebrities is partly down to the paucity of genuinely talented games writers, and the undeniable truth that television (and podcasting and all that shit) are totally different mediums. The solution is simple – bring back the tried and tested talent from the past. Get Perry and Diamond onto a show together, have Jaz Rignall lurking around talking about new games in the background, and bring in some underrated talent like the wonderful Chris Long. Make decent TV shows with decent presenters, and the majority will watch and support them. We’re only here to criticise shit.

NGJ In A Single Quote

You should know now that we hate New Games Journalism. We’ve spent many posts trying to explain exactly what it is we loathe about this pretentious form of masturbation dressed up as journalism, an excuse for the writer to talk about themselves instead of telling the reader about the game, but we’ve found something that does the job much better than we can.

We were watching a film today about a journalist who likes to write about herself in her articles, just like the NGJ elitorati. When she met the subject of her latest article for the first time, he pulled her up on her love of talking about herself and, accidentally, brilliantly summed up everything that’s so wrong about NGJ from the reader’s point of view:


“Whenever I read one of these interviews where the writer says, ‘This is how I felt the morning I woke up to meet the pope. This is how I felt when the pope greeted me and how the pope reminded me so much of my very best friend Mike’, I always think ‘Who the fuck is Mike?’. So who are you?”


This is the best passage from a film we’ve ever heard.

Back in the glory days of Your Sinclair, Zzap! and, later, Amiga Power, the games industry was full of writers with character. If you were dedicated, (and most games mag readers were back then, as casual gamers were unheard of) you could often tell who was the author of a review without checking the name at the end. Stuart Campbell, Jaz Rignall, Dave Perry, Matt Bielby, and countless others we could mention, all had a style so unique they couldn’t disguise their identities if they tried. This was great because they all had their own favourite genres, and different ideas about what made a game worth playing. Perry loved his 2D beat-em-ups, and Campbell would rip the beating heart from anything that was slightly less than perfect. The reader could relate to the writers. They could tell who liked the kind of games they liked, and follow their opinions.

In short, reviewers could get away with and had every right to refer to each other in their reviews. Now, this does not work.

Several mags and websites are guilty of self-reference to the point of self-worship. Lines like “Craig’s moaning as usual” or “Neville’s up to his usual tricks” might be highly amusing to anyone who knows who Craig or Neville are and what they’re like, but in reality a huge percentage of the readers haven’t got a fucking clue. We don’t like picking on people (actually, that’s a lie) but the unreliable Eurogamer is a perfect example, with its stack of reviewers constantly name-checking each other. It reads like a giant in-joke and alienates anyone who isn’t a games writer, or a reader so infatuated with games reviewers that they practically stalk them. In other words, over 99% of the readers are being made to feel left out by this needless and pathetic mutual backslapping by games journos.

There’s a place for this kind of thing – blogs. Reviews are for talking about gameplay and cracking a few funnies along the way, not for using as an excuse to inflict a page of someone’s tragic autobiography onto readers who just want to know what a game’s like and be entertained.

To go back to that most excellent of quotes, the message is simple. Games reviewers need to stop talking about themselves and their “very best friend Mike”. The majority of games reviewers aren’t interesting or high-profile enough for most readers to know who the fuck they are, never mind their very best friend Mike. We know who they are, and who their very best friend Mike is, and it bores the tits off of us, so we pity the poor readers who have to wade through this drivel without that knowledge.

Film reviewers don’t talk about themselves and their friends. TV reviewers don’t talk about themselves and their friends. Tech reviewers don’t talk about themselves and their friends. Newspaper reporters don’t talk about themselves and their friends. Games reviewers need to stop talking about themselves and their friends because they’re just not interesting enough. Make yourselves interesting, and maybe you’ll get away with it again. That’s too tall an order though, and we all know it.

“I always think ‘Who the fuck is Mike?’. So who are you?”

Quote Of The Week

“Gay men are more tech savy with a higher penetration”

Courtesy of Sony UK Product Manager Liam Quigley in last week’s MCV. Liam, you’re a comedy genius.

How To Be A Games Journalist - In 10 Easy Steps

For someone that likes games, writing about them for money sounds like a dream job. If you’ve learnt anything from this site, you’ll know it’s not. Everyone who wants to be a games journalist has heard this warning but still wants to do it anyway, as they assume they won’t become as cynical as the scores of journalists giving the warnings. If that sounds like you, here’s the RAM Raider’s definitive guide to becoming a games journalist.

Read Stuart Campbell’s guide

Stuart Campbell wrote his “So you want to be a videogames journalist?” guide for Digitiser over 8 years ago, before he was exiled, but it’s still essential reading. The gist is you need to do loads of reading of good and bad writing. He also predicted games magazines would be better in five years from when he wrote that article. We’re still waiting.

Don’t bother with journalistic qualifications / training

A common question with an easy answer is whether it's worth spending time doing a writing course or degree in journalism. Don’t bother. Honestly – you’re either a good writer or you’re not. If you’re not, getting qualifications in journalism isn’t going to make any difference – you might end up being slightly less shit, but you’ll still be shit. Magazines never look at what qualifications you’ve got, only at whether the stuff you’re writing makes sense and is entertaining. Practice writing – write sample reviews, copy the styles of writers you like, and eventually you’ll find your way. Editors receive loads of begging letters wanting jobs, but most of them are dire – if you can write, you’ll be noticed.

Don’t bother learning about games

In the land of make-believe, game reviewers know their subject inside out (just like the magazines always claim their writers do) and can write brilliantly. In the real world, only being able to write is important. Seriously – the people we know in the industry who know fuck all about games is astonishing. Ask many staff writers of prominent mags what they think of some major releases, and they’ll look at you blankly or mutter something about “not having time to play those yet”. The knowledge you already have from playing games is enough. Anything else can be easily picked up through web research (Gamespot.com is your friend). You’re not entering a twilight zone where everyone knows everything about games – chances are they know less than you.

Expect shit pay

Nobody writes about games to get rich. When you start as a staff writer, you’ll be paid around £10,000 to £12,000 a year for a lot of hours and have to contend with living in an expensive city. A lot of staffers supplement their pay by freelancing on the side, but that’s extra work on top of what you’ll be landed with already. You can forget about going purely freelance for several years at least, and then only if you’re lucky.

Remove the word “morals” from your vocabulary

This is so you don’t get pissed off with being lied to, and having to lie to your readers. Everyone lies in the industry – you’ll be lied to daily by PR scum, who are all mentally incapable of forming a sentence without including some bullshit. You’ll also have to lie to your readers by writing previews of games you’ve not played (Gamespot.com is still your friend) or writing reviews based on unfinished code. If you’re really good at lying, you’ll be offered a place at Official Xbox 360 Magazine. The advertisers tell the publishers what to do, and they tell you what to do, so if you can’t lie, you won’t get any work.

Join the old-boy’s network

You’re not in unless you’re in. To be really in, you have to be in a gang. The way the magazine industry is run at the moment means to really get ahead, you’ll have to apply for membership of the Bath Elitorati or the London Cronies Network. Which one you go for depends where you live or where you’re willing to move to, but the Bath Elitorati consists of Edge, GamesMaster, PC Gamer, some PS2 mags, Gillen, and alumni Campbell, and the London Cronies Network comprises the Xbox magazines, some more PS2 mags, PC Zone, and UK:R lad Cutlack. If you have a choice, go for the Bath Elitorati. Joining an old-boy’s network is as simple as getting staff work on a games mag and forcing yourself to socialise with the other writers. Once you’re in, you’ll be used when freelance work is being handed out. If not, it doesn’t matter how good your writing is – old boys come first.

Expect your gaming hobby to die

Writing about games changes the way you play them. At first, for a long time, you’ll be getting all the shit to plough through. You’ll also be subjected to unrealistic deadlines forcing you to cut corners, and the rate at which new games will be fired at you means you’ll have little time to devote to games you'd choose to play. Playing games before they’re released sounds great but the novelty wears thin quickly, especially when you have to go to a PR office and try to look interested as a husk lies about it in your ear or patronises you as you manage to shoot a barn door. Press trips aren’t free holidays, and press events are mostly shit.

Start an anonymous blog

After you’ve spent precious years of your life ruining your hobby for not much money, you’ll be due a mental breakdown. Venting in an anonymous blog is the perfect way to waste work-time as publicly as possible, and is the best massively-multiplayer online text adventure you’ll ever play.

- Sit at desk (enter)
- Check coast is clear (enter)
- Load Blogger (enter)
- Type “WELL-KNOWN ED models himself on Dr. Fox” (enter)
- Wait one hour (enter)
- Listen (enter) (Hear someone saying “he says WELL-KNOWN ED looks like Dr. Fox” whilst tittering)
- Wait (enter) (Receive e-mail from WELL-KNOWN ED blowing it out of proportion)
- Receive ten points

It beats the fuck out of In Memoriam.

Build a time machine

Ask anyone who was writing about games about 15-20 years ago what it was like, and you’ll see a happy look wash over them. It was joy. Games were better. Times were simpler. The whole thing was less corporate, and you could get away with writing copy that was funny and THE TRUTH. Those days have long gone, so the only way you’ll get paid to write about games without selling your soul is to climb into a Delorean and hit 88.

Don’t work as a games writer

You’ve not got a Delorean, so forget it. Get out whilst you're still young. You can get free games without selling your soul to “the man” and spoiling your hobby by downloading them. If you think the world of gaming is great, carry on letting ignorance be bliss. Most of all, make something of your life. Leave a legacy, or make loads of money, or do anything that makes you happy. Writing about videogames isn’t where it’s at. Not any more.

If you’re going for it though, good luck! And don't say we didn't warn you...

Introversion’s New Clothes

There’s been some buzz recently about Brit developer Introversion winning three prizes at the IGF awards. We read about their success on Gillen’s site and tried to comment on it, but he’s installed some new spam filter that’s so effective it’s stopped twats like us from posting. He said he’d put our comment up then fell unconscious into his nightly drug-induced Oblivion haze and forgot, so here it is:

“What's ironic is that they won an award for a game that needed to be 'fucked with' by publishers. Uplink was a better game that didn't stink of self-indulgence. Defcon looks promising though - be nice if they finish it before releasing it.

'Being likeable is over-rated.'

Good quote Gillen - I'll drink to that.”

First of all, we’ll get the nicey-nicey bit out of the way – we’re genuinely pleased that Introversion has been given some awards, as the guys in the team deserve them for their past achievements. Now for the bit we’re going to be lynched for: Darwinia didn’t deserve those prizes.

The three awards they won were for technical excellence, innovation in visual art, and the “Grand Prize”. Darwinia isn’t a technically excellent game. It doesn’t run as smoothly as games that look much better, and the gesture system was so ridiculous they virtually admitted it was ludicrous and unnecessary by adding in an alternative system in a patch. There’s no AI there either – Lemmings let you set waypoints, and that was 15 years ago.

Ironically, the unreliable Eurogamer’s review of Uplink (where a mysteriously unnamed reviewer gave it an undeservedly low score of 7/10) is more appropriate to Darwinia:

“Sadly graphical glitches, [and] a slightly awkward interface… lets it down somewhat, but it's still well worth a look if you fancy something completely different.”

We’re not arguing with the “innovation in visual design” award, as its style is original and arresting, but the “Grand Prize”? Really? We’ve played better independently developed games over the last year, and so has everyone else.

We don’t mean to sit here tearing into Darwinia. Games that are poorly executed and aren’t properly tested are released all the time. What we’re really getting at is we find it ironic that, despite Introversion’s speech at the awards, they were in desperate need of a publisher “fucking up” Darwinia, assuming by “fucking up” they meant “play-testing and ironing out obvious design flaws before release.”

But why are so many industry names and figures spreading their ejaculate all over Darwinia when it’s not very good? When Uplink was first released, it was ignored by most of the industry.

Uplink is a classic game, but with the exception of PC Gamer’s early review thanks to Gillen noticing its brilliance, it won no awards, and barely registered on most of the industry’s radar. It was left to the gamers and consumers to discover and support. Now it’s too late to sing the praises of Uplink, the industry has entered into a “guilt” phase of trumpeting Introversion as the saviours of gaming. Projecting the success of Uplink onto the inferior Darwinia, and defending any misguided views with the response that Introversion are British independent developers and therefore “cool,” (so that means any shortcomings in their game is excusable, natch) or it’s been designed for higher beings to understand, the industry has shown itself as being about four years out of touch. Worse, it patronises Introversion and cheapens their success.

We’re looking forward to seeing Defcon, as Uplink is proof that Introversion can make good games. If it’s bad though, we hope the industry has the guts to judge it objectively and say so.

Another Awful Review, And A Press Release

Our readers have been on top form this week, alerting us to two points of ridicule. The first follows last week’s report on PC Gamer’s wank-stained review of Oblivion. Tom Francis’ hopeless attempt at padding / NGJ / whatever-excuse-him-and-his-mates-are-using can’t even claim to be original, as a hawk-eyed reader spotted the unreliable Eurogamer.net had beaten him to it with its review of Animal Crossing: Wild World.

Written by some guy called Mathew Kumar, (if this was Harry Hill’s TV Burp, the audience would be unfunnily shouting out “who?” – he's a freelancer for places like InsertCredit) the 2344 word review is peppered with exactly the same brand of jizz. Here’s the intro:

“The first thing I remember is waking up in the back of a warm taxi cab, speeding through the driving rain. The driver, a frog, introduces himself as the Kapp'n, and asks me a variety of questions to find out who I am - secretly it helps me ascertain that very thing myself. It turns out my name is Mathew. I'm heading to the town of NewGenki, a small town populated by animals, and I have no money to pay the fare.”

No Mathew, you’re having a bad trip.

Over a third of the text is taken up by this meaningless drivel, making it a 1500 word review (complete with typos – well done EG’s sub-eds) padded to the ends of the earth. Check this out for a finale:

“In the middle of the night I awaken, and look over at her, sleeping peacefully in her little bed fit for one. Some nights I could just watch her sleep. I put on my goggles, an awesome purchase from the Mabel sisters that makes me look super cool, even with a bee sting, and walk out into the empty streets, heading for the museum's observatory. The lyrics of Aerogramme's 'In Gratitude' run through my head - "I wanted to show you the stars... I wanted to show you the stars.”

I inscribe her name into the heavens and send her a letter, those lyrics the only content.”

Man alive, we couldn’t make this shit up.

And now back to the world of PR, courtesy of another reader who sent us a press release from RR favourite Crazy Frazer Nash. Headed “Teenage Goth-Metal girl designs extreme metal racing video game based in Hell”, the release is a load of empty platitudes about a racing game nobody has heard of, or ever will. Cue Frazer:

“Frazer Nash of Frazer Nash Communications describes how his daughter created the game during work experience at developer, DDI: “Sky, then just 15, was given a huge responsibility to design her own (tongue in cheek) game. By the end of the first week, she had created a Gothic-looking game, complete with drafted levels and an awesome soundtrack. 12 months on and with professional development courtesy of Sam King and Mike Rooker (art), Mark Gemmell (production), Karl White and Julian Salter (Programming) at DDI. (Looks like you forgot to finish your sentence there, Frazer - RR) Aimed to appeal to Goth / Rock music fans the world over, Metro 3D have created EARACHE EXTREME METAL RACING - a monster of a game.””

Stop the presses – it’s a racing game set to rock music. With bands like Linea 77 and, umm, Akercocke, a new dawn for gaming has been heralded. And you heard it here first.

Anatomy Of A Poor Review

When a big release comes along, Future decides which of its mags will get the exclusive. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is one of the biggest releases this year, so they gave it to their best selling PC games mag, PC Gamer. But after allocating EIGHT pages for the review, reviewer Tom Francis has managed to fuck it up. Considering he had EIGHT pages to fill, you can’t blame the guy for having trouble finding stuff to waffle on about, but resorting to padding it with NGJ is inexcusable.

The shit starts on the second page of writing where the review suddenly stops, and Francis starts blathering on like he’s a character in the game:

“I dismount a good distance from the entrance and creep the rest of the way. Stealth, my friends. The cave floor’s wet inside, but a master like me is still near-silent when – aaaarrghh!”

We were wondering whether that last bit was where the sub-editor had committed suicide, but it goes on. And on. And on, taking up three-quarters of the page. Then another “story” begins on the next page taking up half the page, until by the end you’ve been subjected to four of them.

What’s worse than taking up a third of the review with that shit is the justification he gives for it:

“It would be more informative – and more importantly, fun for me – to recount some of my adventures…”

There you go folks – it’s there in black and white. It’s much more important for a review to be fun for the reviewer to indulge himself with writing tedious bollocks than it is to be informative.

To give Francis credit, the proper OGJ review parts aren’t bad, but why give the reviewer EIGHT pages when he can’t fill them without resorting to padding? Perhaps he struggled to meet his word count because he had to drag himself to Take 2’s offices to play through their code (which went gold after the magazine had gone to print) whilst a PR husk was perched on his shoulder. He says in the review that he spent at least 30 hours playing it, but that would have meant going down there every day, 9am-5pm, for a whole week. [EDIT: OK, we've got reliable information from Gillen that he did, but our criticisms stand]

Reviewing pre-gold code in the publisher’s office isn’t good practice, but it’s not uncommon. PC Gamer’s bitch PC Zone did the same for Oblivion, and all Future’s mags do the same for big releases. Reviewers had to fly overseas to review Half-Life 2, but the reviewer-to-magazine ratio meant some of them had to write the review more than once so different versions (by the same reviewer) could appear in different mags.

We’re going to get rounded on now by PC Gamer’s brigade for daring to criticise them, but we’ve got no problem with the rest of the mag. They just fucked up their review of one of the biggest releases of the year because Future would rather send reviewers to PR offices to play pre-gold code than wait for finalised code for the reviewer to play through properly. You can judge for yourself when the mag’s in the shops on Thursday, and tell us what you think.

A Review Of A Review – NGJ ALERT

The RAM Raider jumps on the NGJ bandwagon for a review of an NGJ review.


I took a deep breath in the blistering heat. The aroma of sweat, dust and overpowering perfume filled my lungs. Approaching the desk, passport in hand and fighting my way through a crowd speaking in an unfamiliar dialect, I asked where I could find what I was looking for. The checkout assistant pointed me towards the sorry selection of games magazines, and looked baffled when spotting the passport. I ventured over to the magazines. Between Microsoft and Sony’s manifestos and collections of press releases masquerading as journalism, I dodged the comics and picked up something with a glossy cover. My journey into another world had begun.

I’ve had an extraordinary life. At any one time, there are thousands of twee anecdotes ready to be unleashed upon anyone brave enough to commission me. There’s one that immediately springs to mind when reading this review. I’m two paragraphs in, and have learnt about a free trip abroad lavished upon the author, paid for by the game’s marketers. Suddenly, the memories of these futile and pointless trips that I have been subjected to – personally, and through reading the accounts of reviewers – flood into my mind. It dawns on me that the second paragraph has finished, and nothing of any relevance to the game has been mentioned.

Where do anecdotes end, and autobiographies begin? If readers want to know about the achingly cosmopolitan lifestyle reviewers would like their readers to think they have, they would buy books (“My Life Travelling Through The Virtual World” by M.Y. Egotrip), or read their blogs. God forbid they should restrict their fictionalised lives to those mediums though – why not just serialise them in their reviews.

Reaching the end now, and I’m feeling elation. Elation that the review will be over soon, and the manager will stop looking at me in that way. Shuffling my weight to the other foot, I pick up an aside about how the reviewer has personal issues with the type of game he’s reviewing. His editor must be a genius.

Closing the magazine, a haze of mediocrity washes over my mind as I’m dragged from the shop by security. The manager reminds me that it’s not a library, and counters my protest that I’m researching NGJ with the revelation that I should fuck off to an Internet café. Of course! There’ll be plenty more there. On the way I stroll into GAME, and hiss at the zitty lowlife who thinks about telling me to buy Fifa. As I approach the game I was thinking about buying, I realise that I still know nothing about it. After three pages, and over one thousand words, I still don’t actually know what the game is about. Its genre. How to play it. Whether it’s worth buying.

I could read the back of the box or pick up an official magazine. Both results would be the same. Alternatively, I could carry on making a point to avoid NGJ, because it’s self-indulgent shit that’s subjective to the point of lunacy, boring and uninformative. A blog in disguise. This is where our journey in the games industry is going. I don’t want to know when we’re going to get there, I just know I don’t want to be there.

Never again will I write in the style of NGJ. The risk of getting fashionably emo and killing myself is too high...