Video game journalism is sort of a weird beast.
A lot of other media have respected journalists that cover them almost exclusively. Literature, for instance, or even movies – and I’m not talking about things like Access Hollywood and such, but even those serve to disseminate information about the industry to the casual moviegoer. In terms of videogame journalism, there are a number of print magazines, virtually none of which are worth mentioning. From Electronic Gaming Monthly (which is probably the best of them), to nonsensical garbage like Game Informer, the internet has made the print magazines obsolete.
That’s not a bad thing in itself, necessarily, but what we’ve basically got is a choice between Gamespot, and IGN. There are smaller sites, sure, like Gamers.com, and even things you can classify as competitors, like Gamespy. But the two hulking gorillas of the internet game journalism industry are without question Gamespot and IGN. Therein lies the problem, perhaps.
To get it out of the way, there are only a handful of videogame journalists I have any respect for. Steven Kent, Wagner James Au, James Mielke, Joe Fielder, and Greg Kasavin. No one else really springs to mind. Three of those, as far as I’m aware, are Gamespot columnists, or alumni. Steven Kent writes for MSNBC, and WJA periodically contributes to Salon.com, among other things.
The rest of the industry? Amateurs, at best. Take a site like Teamxbox.com – it’s a rare day that there aren’t spelling mistakes on the front page. One of their more prolific reviewers, who goes by the name of UltimaAMD, gives us this gem:
“Hong Kong action movies, they are some of the best martial arts films ever made even the ones made twenty years ago.”
While UltimaAMD’s grammar skills are remarkably bad, it’s unfortunately characteristic of his competition, as well. And even if most reviewers can get around spelling mistakes, or horrific grammar, many simply don’t write like professionals. Far too often, someone gets really excited about a game, and forgets how to approach it with a critical eye. Take a game like Azurik: The Rise of Perathia. A horrible game by virtually any standard, most reviewers spent so much time mocking the blue-ness of the main character, they forgot to mention the things that actually make it horrible, like the muddy graphics, the linear, and completely mindless puzzles, or the floaty and unresponsive control.
The problem appears to be that msot game reviewers simply aren’t writers. They appear, by and large, to be high school kids writing about game. And whether that’s IGN’s inane sexual innuendo, in regards to DOA: Xtreme Beach Volleyball, “We get all up in Tecmo’s fantasy sports sim and come away satisfied,” to their promotional “You can’t spell Ignorant Slut without IGN,” the writing affects the perception of the media that they’re writing about. If this is the best the game industry can come up with, we’re screwed. Few and far between are well-researched, thorough *journalism*, like Gamespot’s Daikatana development diary, or Steven Kent’s The First Quarter (now titled The Ultimate History of Videogames).
Sure, videogames are still in their relative infancy. The narrative styles, controls, and technology are still rapidly developing, and that development definitely stifles the mainstream acceptance of the medium as a whole. But until the industry asserts that it *needs* better journalistic coverage – that sophomoric “humor” or just plain crap writing aren’t *good enough*, then we’ll be stuck with the trash we have now. Gamespot aspires to be better, and for that, I keep my Gamespot Complete subscription…