At a time when games are growing up, when the medium is getting more sophisticated and adult, we are losing our most sophisticated and adult critics. We are losing our most articulate voices."
-- Scott Jones, 'It's Hard Out There for a Game Journalist'
[This is also why I correct people when they try to call me a 'veteran.' Doing something long enough to earn a full-time job does not a veteran make.]
33 comments:
Mr. Jones gets a prize for the most awkward use of "inchoate" I've seen in a long time. Just because you remember a word from your 10th grade vocabulary list doesn't mean you should use it without looking it up.
It felt okay to me. I guess "inchoate 20-somethings" is a fair way of saying (wo)manchildren?
Yet there are plenty of veteran games journalists that make a living saying Modern Warfare 2 has "the best graphics ever." I thought that was the problem with games journalism. Most of the people getting paid to do it are content to settle for the lowest common denominator (or at least the people paying them are).
Disclaimer -- I post quotes because I think they're worth discussing, not because I personally necessarily agree :)
if that is the case, shouldn't we take a look at why this is the case in the first place? The problem comes somewhat two-fold though. Maturity is a double-edged sword. I recall an old article written by Leigh stating that the indie music industry has such a maturity, which inhibited greater enjoyment out of the medium.
If that is the case, then how should one evaluate this issue? On one hand, having "vets" declare MW2 is "teh pwnz0rs" is bad, but on the other hand, a developmental maturity of the gaming industry, going as far as the indie music scene, would also be detrimental. Where can one actually find the happy medium?
I am surprised to find 'inchoate' does not mean 'incoherent', though both would bit the sentence.
As one of the inchoate 20-somethings (a 21 y/o games design student dabbling in games journalism in my free time) I do not hold so much pessimism as Scott. It seems to me that there are plenty of journalists, veterans, staying active and productive - their writing accidentally influencing and indeed teaching the next generation.
Also, I may be naive in thinking this, but isn't the transition of passionate gamers into areas such as PR and management a good thing for industry and customers? Both 'sides' will understand each other and working relationships should be better off for it.
Wouldn't an inchoate twenty-something be anyone nineteen or younger?
This concludes my self-indulgent grammar dickery for the day.
Moving to PR is something many journalists do because the pay is usually better(and if not better at least much more consistent) as are the hours. You use the same contacts and skills and the industry is much more secure. It does lead to a brain drain but game journalism is probably the least worrisome of the losses.
This statement makes two strong claims:
1.) Current favorite video game bloggers / tweeters are stopping their discussion.
2.) New bloggers / tweeters are joining the discussion to replace the old guard but don't have the maturity to deliver the discussions that we want.
I think that the first will be true in any medium. People get burnt out, companies die, and we mourn their passing. This is normal.
I also think that the second will happen in any medium. They will change the discussion profoundly and replace the former with a new, more free and rowdy dialect.
Overall, I think that this is a good thing, in contrast to the article's intent. This is the transition that happened from print and magazine to blogs. This is the transition that happened from comics and comic shops to web comics. Each transformation allowed some brilliant creations which would not have been possible before and eventually surpassed the heights of the creation or discussion before it. You claim that the new people coming in are immature and will represent gaming poorly. But out of their vast number, some will already be presenting well constructed opinions. Others will learn quickly by forming strong relations with their fans and getting excellent criticism.
The problem we'll be facing in the immediate future is the amateur-hobbyist combo-pack journalist who is gung-ho about what they like and nothing more. It's already surfaced in some places. Just look at N4G.
I digress.
There are so few people out there who genuinely believe in deep analysis of the medium as a form of expression. This is the pseudo-journalists' faux pas, and only the critical place any focus on it. There's little room for maturation in the industry when audiences, journalists included, are so quick to welcome bare iteration as innovation.
Sadly, as is the case in most situations, those who value thoughtful communication least speak loudest. Even worse, publishing giants welcome it due to the free exposure it grants. After all, who needs criticism when you've got free press?
Pardon the melodrama, but we now stand in a post-print world where many of our most familiar faces have crossed the frame and now reside on the other side of the proverbial fence. One by one, our articulate voices have been falling, and there are so few who are knowledgeable in the art of communication. It's made passing the mantle a very difficult task.
That all sounds very depressing.
Anyway.
It leaves me wondering how long journalists, whether they be pseudo, neo, or any other prefix, and hobbyists alike will respond to future panderings and force-feedings.
I suppose that if you want to keep veterans around to further the vocabulary and the mainstreaming of games as art, the question is really how to keep the experienced game journos as game journos.
I'm under the impression from that article that there's really not money in it (outside of a lucky few), so moving on to something with salary and benefits is attractive. Nor is there too much renown.
So how then does one stay as a games journo exclusively, long-term? Hm.
I'm somewhat at a loss here, because I'm not entirely sure if I understand mr. Jones point of view.
I mean, I do understand a more professional journalism is necessary, one that really tries to explore the whole depth of what games can offer. But, at the same time, I don't believe that this professionalism must necessarily translate to the type of seriousness we see at more traditional news. And, if I understood correctly, that's what mr. Jones believes in. I could be wrong though.
Also, I don't think that the entire games medium really asks for this type of journalism. I mean, what could you possibly say that's meaningful about a game such as Gears of War? I'm not saying it's a bad game - I'm not saying it's good either - but it's definitely one that must be talked about by all game's journalists, simply because of its popularity.
How can you escape from the lowest common denominator when the game itself aims at being the lowest common denominator and nothing more?
This quote really doesn't make much sense to me. The best bloggers are more insightful and eloquent than the average established games journalist. Was Shane Bettenhausen really a more mature writer than Michael Abbot? My impression is that the staff of established publications are doing less interesting and progressive work on the whole, when compared with the games blogging community.
After reading the article, I have a better sense of where Mr. Jones is coming from. He's tired and frustrated and scared. He's lashing out at bloggers and what they represent because he sees the new wave of games journalism as a threat. I don't think that excuses him for attempting to pass off a knee-jerk reaction as fact, but it does explain his situation a bit.
There are also those of us who write with no intention of becoming a Games Journalist and attempt to make that very clear. I don't begrudge Mr. Jones his misgivings, but I think Games Journalism has bigger problems ( like Gertsmanngate ) than the enthusiast blogging community.
Sorry for the eggregious typos there. I decided I'd up my own level of discourse and make myself mildly more coherent through the art of editing comments:
I find myself more unnerved by the newcomers to the game's journalism biz than the level of discourse available in blogs. They are, after all, blogs, and the intelligence, appropriateness and quality of them is going to vary dramatically. That's what happens when you create a format where anyone can self-publish almost effort free, you get all comers. It's messy, sure, but it's not necessarily bad.
What unsettles me are professional writers who seem to write articles justifying their own hobbies rather than engaging in discussion, or playing to the worst tropes of games journalism rather than working to elevate the discussion. The 6-10 review scale and the "demagogue" style of reviews wherein reviewers issue their opinions without context or consideration of personal taste frustrate me much more than the state of the gaming blogosphere.
Basically, I'm bummed that N'Gai left the scene and that we don't have more people like Julian Murdoch, Tom Chick and Leigh preserving the discussion of games. I'm sick of reading articles on the Escapist about how game-type-X-is-a-value-saver or another Destructoid review trashing a game instead of discussing the problems with it. People getting paid to churn out things like that while people like Murdoch can't find a stable publication are more representative (to me, anyhow) of the problem with the discourse surrounding games than a group of "young turks" trying to jump into a bigger conversation about something they love. Jus' my two cents.
Okay, maybe it's just because I'm a teacher, but after reading the full article, I gotta say, Mr. Jones just sounds like he's whining ;-)
To be fair, though, he does make it sound like video game journalism is the only field to ever suffer this predicament. Case in point, one of my colleagues has been teaching English for the last couple of decades and is finally making some pretty decent pay for what is largely a thankless job. Meanwhile, a friend he went to school with, also an English student, is working for one of those websites that write student papers, making a pretty handsome living.
Granted, that's an extreme example, but my colleague still teaches, despite having what some might call an easy out. So my first reaction is to ask who Mr. Jones thinks he is? Does he think book journalists have it any easier? Film critics? Comics reviewers? Being a critic is, by and large, also a thankless job, and if these "adult" journalists are happy to move on from journalism, was their heart ever really in it?
Now, I grant, I'm sure there are some with circumstances that might require an increase in pay that their current jobs couldn't afford. But really, if they'd attained the kind of notoriety that afforded them these kind of offers, could they really have been in such dire straights?
Maybe I'm being overly critical myself of his concerns, but I also don't really think his worries are founded. With the direction games studies are going, it won't be long before some of these "inchoate" (which is vocab. dropping if I ever saw it--that's the kind of stuff I call my "inchoate" students on) gamers have PhD's and have taken the "serious" discussion "away" from the journalists :-/
We were all once (or still are) young and naive, yet these days nobody gives kids a chances. Every job description requires "years of experience", so how does someone with no experience even get started?
The same applies for journalism, you don't magically become a journalist, you grow over time. If nobody give constructive criticism to these would-be journos, how are they to improve?
Even the most illustrious vets of any given field were at one stage amateurs, so its a bit rude to stand at the top and say everyone else is crap.
Sure, it's depressing, but it isn't unique to the 'games industry' (there has to be a less overused term - any volunteers?). Investigative journalism is dying, masthead subscription and sales rates are down across the board, and yet we have the arrogance to think we're unique?
Even though demographics are shifting towards older gamers, we can't confuse the trend with the composition. When you add them up, there's far more kids out there playing games than there are adults and, in the main, they don't have the context, the concentration, or even many times the comprehension to understand or appreciate *why* the 'the graphics are great!' style of review is almost always nothing more than PR spin.
The problem is that the market, quite simply, isn't big enough to sustain a disparate group of high-quality writers spread out across a multitude of sites *or* better overall quality of writing in print. On the blogosphere, it's too hard to find them, it's too hard to keep track of everyone, and, with some notable exceptions that prove the rule, it's too hard to have concentrated conversation on specific issues. Simply getting across the community and knowing who's who takes more effort than your average first job! For every blogger who makes it big, there's 100 sitting in the wings with the potential to be writing high-quality stuff who will never gain an audience and never develop.
Print examples do exist elsewhere that focus on maintaining a high level of critical thinking, editorial, and true journalism, but look at them - there's The Economist, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, even arguably Rolling Stone at times. These aren't small markets; they're cultural and intellectual icons.
Game journalists start writing because they like games. They keep writing because they want to make a difference. Eventually, they leave because they're still poor but have lost their idealism or because they believe they can make a bigger difference by creating, distributing, or promoting a game. We don't have our cultural icon, we don't have a platform to foster idealism, and, to be frank, I can't see how we can possibly get one in print with the way print's going in general.
The future is blogs, but that isn't necessarily a good thing - monetising a blog is hard. So, most likely the influence of the industry voice will continue to grow as the high-quality writers continue migrate to developers / publishers while the overall standard of volunteer, passionate bloggers stays the same; high quality and there, but drowned out by the noise.
Not gonna lie...I feel kinda cheated. I've been writing and talking about games for over a decade. Written for publications, but now its en vogue. Feels like high school...and everybody is listening to the band you were listening to two years ago.
I guess this is were that 'growing up' thing comes into play.
Here is where natural selection kicks in.
There will be only... few.
to be honest i don't see a huge difference between the average blogger and the average "game journalist"... and i strongly question the assertion that "games are growing up" and "the medium is getting more sophisticated and adult".
I do kind of agree with him. For instance after Keiron Gillen's brilliant review of The Path for Eurogamer it makes me a little sad that the Eurogamer review of Fatale presumably won't be by Gillen because he's given it up games journalism as his day job. I certainly don't expect to find an amateur who could do a hard job like reviewing this next Tale of Tales "game" as well as Gillen did with the last.
On the other hand some of us deeply rubbish amateurs do serve a purpose. We may be comparatively rubbish but we're also quick and nimble and play the games we want to play rather than the games the websites and magazines pay us to play. The current indie revolution makes this kind of reporting necessary because the websites and magazines don't seem to be able to keep up with the pace of indie publishing. For instance when 'Foreign Legion' appeared on Steam I couldn't find a review of it anywhere so I bought it, played it and shoved my amateur review of it up on my website and linked to it on the Steam forums. The surprising thing to me was that a week later it still seemed to be the only review on the internet. Now you could argue my review wasn't any good (although I'm pleased to say nobody has) but the fact would remain it was the best review available of a game that was topping the steam sales charts for a few days there.
Alternatively websites like RPS can use us amateurs to fill in some of the blanks in their coverage. For instance to quote their post yesterday on Lucidity "Meanwhile, if you’ve picked it up on impulse, let us know your opinion below." and three or four of us dutifully did so meaning that their readers didn't have to go elsewhere to get a few quick opinions of it. What's more we all kind of agreed on the main points that were good and bad about it so I don't think any of us were that far from the truth.
I find that anyone telling anyone else to "grow up" has the effect of precluding the kind of cogent conversation that Mr Jones seems to be, er, Jonesing for.
Which is it to be?
i write when i find some adult games that i love... does it?
I guess I too am one of those "inchoate 20-somethings" (although I'm not exactly sure how to be sure of the "inchoate" part). As such, my opinion probably doesn't count for much, but I tend to agree with Travis:
'Yet there are plenty of veteran games journalists that make a living saying Modern Warfare 2 has "the best graphics ever." I thought that was the problem with games journalism. Most of the people getting paid to do it are content to settle for the lowest common denominator (or at least the people paying them are).'
"Games journalism" is nowhere near where I'd like it to be, and the "veterans" are at least half the problem, to my mind. Just my 2c.
Just from reading the above quote it gives the impression of sour grapes more than anything else. If you read the full article, though, it's not that simple.
Really, it's a lamentation of the publishing industry's health in general, more than it is about video games. In essence, why pay for someone's opinion when you can get it, for free and, sometimes, in a more articulate form? How do you compete with free?
http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,638172,00.html
What makes matters worse is that games journalism, specifically, doesn't have the respect of that lent to journalists critquing other mediums. Hence, before games journalism has even had a chance to really mature into something, along with the games industry itself, it's unintentionally being set back by a technological turn of events, i.e. the Internet and proliferation of self-publishing platforms.
He doesn't want to stop bloggers from blogging. He's upset about a set of circumstances that are pushing the best writers out of games criticism and into the seedier, corporate side of the industry. And, at the moment, the games journalism biz isn't strong enough to hold out against that kind of creative brain drain.
Isn't this a problem endemic to the entire industry? We are enthusiasts before professionals, after all. Aren't we?
@bowlbyspeaks - you compete with free by offering a good or service that people want badly enough to pay for it. In the case of opinions, this opinion will hopefully save them time or money. (or make them money for some financial advice) In terms of video games, people want good advice on which ones to play and which ones to avoid in order to save time and money.
Everybody has opinions and a lot of them are free. What people are finding out is that a lot of the free opinions on blogs are just as good as those in the professional magazines. There will probably still be a market for opinions on obscure or bad games because they don't get a ton of people blogging about them. Also, opinions from unique perspectives might still be in demand, such as the academic opinions of The Brainy Gamer - http://www.brainygamer.com/
or the intensely analytic opinions of KirbyKid -
http://critical-gaming.squarespace.com/blog
In this case, people who like their opinions might be willing to pay for more of the same because they can't get enough of them.
"Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken"
-Tyler Durden
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His comment is ironic though, because game journalists tend to be the worst kind of journalists of all. They have the poorest writing talent, some of the worst ethics, and probably the least mature of the lot. Game journalism truly is in a shocking state, and it's nothing to defend in its current form. If anything, it needs fresh blood to fix it. This comment is just encouraging keeping the old idiots in so it can further stagnate.
"We need adults filling these roles, not inchoate 20-somethings anxious to declare that Modern Warfare 2 has 'the best graphics ever.'"
But that's what "videogame journalism" is, and always has been. That's pretty much the problem, isn't it?
I still think the best games writing came from VG&CE, all those years ago. They weren't always the most skilled gamers, but they were the best writers, and they were always inspiring.
I can't see why blogs would be seen as a threat to "games journalism," whatever that is. The reality is that the internet is with us, and anyone can become a writer. Can anyone become a great writer? Probably not. But that is true of any profession in life.
I'd personally like to see "games journalism" evolve from what it is now, which is public relations hype. You are not in the business of selling other companies' products. You should not be breathlessly hyping the next toy that is coming down the pike. Let's focus a little more on the present, or the past.
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