A Different Approach to Games Journalism

I think you guys are missing the point, i don't see these as game reviews.

Every piece listed at the bottom of that NY times article was awesome, reading them made me want to play those games, something i wouldn't have considered had i not read them.

Think about that.

ugh, I can't stand Gillen. Comments like "There are a few other problems which I don't really consider problems. Speaking generally, it strikes me already that its reviews are going to be brutally mixed, though the writing will tell as much - if not more - about the limitations of the reviewer as the limitations of Darwinia." and bickering about how people 'misunderstand' games that are just unpopular really takes away some of his credibility.

I'm definitely OK with differing opinions. But when someone tells me that I'm wrong, it's bordering on pretentiousness.

Besides, all it seems to me, is that he's trying to usher in a pitchforkmedia-esque in gaming journalism. That's not cool.

What a load of BS. Just list the features and most important - SCREENSHOTS!!! LOTS OF SCREENSHOTS!!

Wow I feel so in awe to be living in this glorious time! Hundreds of years from now NGJ's and the anti-NGJ's will be featured right next to the Transcendentalists and the Anti-Transcendentalists in our great-grandchildren's lit. books. What a glorious age we are living through.

all we need is for the gaming press to get the cocks of the industry out of thier mouths

Kieron's reviews in PCG at times were very good, esoecially the DX1 and the Medieval Total War reviews, both managed to make you feel as though you were there playing the game while not falling into the fanboi trap of failing to mention any of the problems or giving a proper critical analysis.

Some of his stuff is utter crap though, such as his review of DX2 (no better than a fanboi rant) but he does admit his mistakes at least.

I think the main problem with these 'NGJs' is that they need a good professional edditor behind them to achieve their best, which is precicely what the internet game sites lack.

IMHO the biggest problem with sites like IGN and Gamespot is that they do not spend enough time playing a game before reviewing it or place enough emphasise on critical analysis of a game rather than just listing off its features (Brothers in Arms reviews have been the worst offender for this recently).

I like the Shacknews journalism method myself

http://www.ukresistance.co.uk/2005/03/new-games-journalism-our-seven-point.html

^^Very good article, read this.

I'd argue that Games "Journalism" doesn't actually exist anyway. It's hardly an industry of people out in the field, finding out facts, checking sources, and then reporting it to the public. Games "Journalists" tend to be content aggregators and middle men, passing along press releases from the industry and getting their stories from other sites who got their stories from other sites who got their stories from a foreign gaming website that made the whole thing up. Games Writers would be a more appropriate term.

I'm wondering: has any gaming website picked up on the fact that 2015 basically don't exist anymore? They were a pretty big company, made lots of games that everyone posted about, but all their employees were sent home in January because they couldn't afford to pay them. Many of them have moved on to other jobs already. Regardless, doing a search for '2015' on the Shack doesn't turn up a story on it.

Seems like this is the kind of thing a journalist might discover.

a) NGJ was never meant to be a replacement for anything.
b) NGJ isn't really a new movement and has been going on, in some form, for a long time. Gillen just coined a phrase, and raised a discussion.
c) NGJ was never meant to be specifically for the reviewing of games, but sure, it can be used for that too.
d) As far as I can tell, rambling self-indulgent wank doesn't fit the description of either NGJ OR Old Games Journalism. Old or new, bad writing is just bad writing, and not indicative of the whole.

To me, NGJ is best placed when discussing topics of gaming past. As the original "manifesto" says, coverage of a game shouldn't end with the review, and discussing our shared experiences would probably be helpful in terms of understanding what makes games fun.

Failing that, sometimes I read reviews on IGN and Gamespot and I wonder if the person writing them actually played the game. Maybe they just watched someone else play. Maybe they just copied information from a preview and stuck a score on the end. It can be hard to tell. What makes games great is more than just a list of numbers, it's not all about the technique of execution. It's about how the person experiencing it feels, the emotions, the energy, and other intangible, hard to define and wholly hypothetical denominators. OGJ can be great, but some of the time it's just shallow and lazy. If every film reviewer rated films based on how hot the characters were, film reviews would very quickly lose all merit, even if you agreed with them. There's more to gaming than the number of weapons, so why do so many reviews act otherwise?

As it is I suspect most people just go to Game Rankings and check the average score.

To be very blunt, the vast majority of game journo's are fanboys that just happened to be able to string together a few sentences. Very few have any formal training and fewer still have any sense of ethics about reporting on games and will usually just regurgitate whatever a PR person tells them so that they keep getting free trips and swag. I have a lot of respect for those that are really trying to raise the bar, but it's still very much a fanboy dominated industry.

Love all the new frontpage articles Alec, some informative stuff popping up lately.

I like Kierons writing on Eurogamer, it's different enough from a lot of the other pap you read on many gaming sites.

http://the-blogfather.blogspot.com/2005/03/new-fucking-shitty-games-shitting.html

Interesting read/blog by a Brit who's a member of the gaming press... In case you can't tell by the URL, he's not a big fan of "NGJ" :)

I like the insertcredit.com take on games journalism. Not a Tim Rogers fanboy or anything, but I appreciate tasteful madness and five paragraphs of blabber that eventually becomes a piece in the puzzle when it's done, even when it's just a little complaint about the framerate in a game

Great articles, Alec. This is good stuff.

As for NGJ, I think it might have a place alongside what we're used to seeing in gaming mags. I do not think its a suitable replacement for what we're seeing in mags right now.

What do the mags need? I don't know. What I do know is that NGJ is a nice diversion along the side of the road, but in no way a replacement for the road itself.

I read 2 gaming mags these days. Play magazine & Game Developer. Past that, I haven't bought a gaming mag in a few years, with a few exceptions just to get a demo disc. (PSM & OXM). When I do that, I might skim through the magazine once or twice but its rare that I read the entirety of any of the articles. Most of them aren't that interesting or informative.

Here's an interesting comment on it, as well as links to a couple of other articles:

http://www.gamegirladvance.com/archives/2005/03/17/in_defense_of_old_game_journalism.html

AFAIK, it's the Guardian article from a few weeks ago that brought this back up as a topic of discussion recently.