Assorted Silliness

1. Learn to write better.
2. Be more original.
3. Don’t let PR people dictate content.
4. Actually play or critically analyze games being reviewed.
5. Challenge conventions.
6. Step up the quality control.

You will note that I have summarized his (needlessly) two page article into 28 words. I can do it even better, though. Check this out:

1. Increase professionalism.
2. Display journalistic integrity.

So Buffa spends like 30 paragraphs saying what he could have said in five words. But I digress because people in glass houses, you know?

Anyway, the point here is that he’s stating the obvious like it was some grand revelation when it should be… well, obvious. More professionalism? Gee, you sure that will really work? But again, the problem is that the audience isn’t impressed by professionalism: Gamers don’t care about that, generally speaking. I wonder after reading this who Buffa is trying to impress—the audience or other journalists. Does he wish he could sit in on White House press conferences and ask hard-hitting questions of President Bush about whether he likes the DS Nintendo sent to him and be taken seriously? Because honestly if he’s looking to make his current profession more impressive on the ol’ resume for his “serious journalism” gambit a few years down the road then he’s going to be sorely disappointed.

But on the other hand I do agree that games journalism is lacking in originality and the PR issue is legit. Of course as in my summary this is easily rectified by applying some journalistic integrity (which is why this really comes down to a management/hiring issue and not some inherent problem with people who want to write about video games). Still, let’s assume that the only people who want to cover videogames are those to whom journalistic integrity is a really long word they don’t want to bother looking up. The root problem here? Buffa is reading the wrong publications and going into them with the wrong expectations.

Sad that it may be, big gaming rags like EGM, GameSpot and GamePro are full of yes-men (not all contributors are, but each seems to have some) who succumb to the PR machine. If you want some proof, take a look at the game scores: A game has to practically rend your hardware in half or reduce it to a smoldering hunk of charcoal in order to get a 50% score on the scale. A game that is half as good as the maximum should be a mediocre game in a reasonable scale system, but game publications would rather give scores like 7.9 for mediocre games because it sounds better that way and they don’t have to explain to irate PR reps why they trashed a game with a lousy score. Granted 7.9 is a lousy score and the review text itself may indicate the game is best used post-bowel movement to clean one’s backside, but at least they can say “Hey, it still got a 79% out of 100, right?”

The solution is not to whine and moan about how broken those publications are but to either not read them or to learn some critical thinking skills and accept that reviews should come from trusted sources, not just anyone with a half-dozen spare decimal places and a copy of Microsoft Word. And of course when it comes to reviews you have to acknowledge that they are at best one man’s opinion and at worst they are one man’s misinformed opinion. What score someone gives a game is mostly irrelevant if a second individual holds a different perspective. If you really want to know if a game is likely to appeal to you the only reliable methods are something like MetaCritic or reading reviews from someone you know has similar taste as you.

I’d agree that more “features” should have original premises except that coming from a guy who’s writing Yet Another Article On Why Game Journalism is Poop, it just doesn’t really resonate that well.

Well, I Asked For It

So the Sharks finally traded Nils Ekman. About time! I’ve been asking for this for… uh… wait. What? They got what for him?

A second round draft pick from the Penguins.

Next year.

Well, that was worth it.

Anyway, the Sharks farm system has been firing out a lot of pretty good prospects lately so hopefully that was the strategy. Meanwhile they lost Scott Thornton and Alyn McCauley (no great loss on either front) but looted bottom dweller Chicago Blackhawks for Mark Bell and Curtis Brown, both acceptable acquisitions. Hopefully Bell will deepen the attack from the Sharks top line next year (he’s reportedly going to play LW on the Thornton-Cheechoo line) where Ekman could not and I’d not mind seeing Brown on a grinder line with Nieminen.

You know how I know when I’m ready for hockey to start again? I’m no longer so bitter with the end of the Sharks season that I refuse to check the news to see what they’re up to in the offseason.

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