After looking at Kieron Gillan’s blog, I must say I didn’t even have a clue what he was talking about half the time with them big and fancy words he kept using, but tried to make best since out of it. First of all I think game reviewers in general face the issue of getting across more than “Is a game good or not?” for example In one part of his blog I think he tries to say how anyone could go out there and be a journalist and say yes this is good and this is bad etc which it what journalism used to be like? Instead of it being as simple as that there needs to be more to it, so now-a-days we have sort of break open a game, split it into millions of tiny pieces and analyse it bit by bit individually. I think he was getting across was that anyone could come straight out of college and just start saying what in their opinion is good and crap about a game forgetting everything they have learned through education. This could lead to controversy by giving false reviews. Not everyone is going to like a certain type of game but at the end of the day those that do like it and want to buy the next big release do matter and it all about getting the honest truth across for those that want to buy the next big game. In example the people paying the wages of the journalists for example newspapers or magazines companies etc are basically paying them to analyse a game in full depth and sell that to the reader. Another problem they face with this is that they can write whatever they want and they could be the best journalist in the world but as soon as the reader finally buys the game presses start on the controller, the talk of what they have heard shuts up and the real experience begins of what they think about it. Personally for myself I’ve seen people saying what utter crap a certain game is but personally playing the game can be a different matter and some games I’ve played in the past I’ve quite liked despite what others think.
Another problem what they face is how they personally feel about a game, for example if a journalist is asked to review a specific type of game they aren’t too keen on then the review isn’t going to be worth reading. I don’t personally know how the journalism industry works but if they do split it up into types of genres they work on then would get a lot more accurate response, but even so maybe a problem is they sometimes need more opinions on aspects a game holds.
One final thing is that he internet is now providing a lot better and easier way of getting game reviews, those that write out what they think about something and publish it in a paper won’t be seen by the entire world, that’s why I think more journalists are working for online sites on the internet because it’s just faster. I mean with the internet you can read up and get an overall rating quickly of a game, including more access to images and even videos, where as a magazine is just something to read on the go or for those without internet. A magazine you would have to keep paying out for each month or week when if you have internet its right there and free and most gamers are more likely to have internet cause games are mostly played at home anyway. It’s kind of getting off topic but I personally think that the internet is now taking over the world, no magazine will ever beat the internet from now on, no matter how good the reviews are written. I remember buying a game last year and the guy behind the till asked me if I wanted the official guide for it. I said “No I’ve got the internet.” He then replied with “Well the problem is you’re not going to have it there right in front of you while playing.” In which I thought “What exactly is stopping playing the game and having my laptop right next to me? That’s what I usually do.!” With the internet you’ve got the source of all human knowledge at your fingertips! No guide is going to be better than that!
Reviews give honest people’s opinions and are ranked of how good they are, I mean there’s no denying that now-a-days video game companies are all competing against each other to make ‘the best’. It’s just adding competition out of everything, when really if they all worked to together and put their ideas together they’d always be making the best. I guess it’s just how the business world works and in this case the journalists are sort of saying “yes this is good and this is not” and giving each game a ranking of what they feel is appropriate. They way they rank a game (in my mind) is how something in the real world is compared to the game itself. It’s basically a comparison in today’s world of how realistic they match up, for example a real world sports game would be rank of the level of how realistic, where as a fantasy such as Mario would be ranked on how unrealistic it is? But above all I don’t think the reviews are worth anything, to me it’s all about putting the controller in your hand and experiencing the game play. Like Keiron said when that happens you forget all the reviews you read, images and videos you’ve seen and finally see what it’s like first hand, only then you can truly know if it lives up to your expectations or not, which is true, I’m sure everyone has played a bad game in the past and got rid of it or played a good game and kept it or vice versa. In all they can write about anything and give it a 10/10 but when you play it yourself you might value it as a 0/10.
I never heard of New Game Journalism until now, but after reading what it is, I’ve seen how it’s a clever idea. I think now-a-days games are becoming more and more realistic and by relating everything to the real world is probably the way forward. Before games had all these new fancy graphics etc is was more or less the case of writing what a game does and what it doesn’t do to depict what makes it a great game. Now it’s a little more complicated than that now, we’re living in an age where the computing power is getting better and better with each passing month making it possible to create bigger and better things and from videos and theory’s I’ve seen and read about, we’re getting to point where technology is starting to take over and everything is done by machine. I think it’s good how we are now relating things to real life experiences compared to the computer game world. It sort of allows us to keep track of how we are actually getting better, is everything ‘perfect’ to how it is in reality within the gaming world? I think one good quality of NGJ is how we can be more critical and accurate about things, constantly comparing things to one another eventually solving problems and questions in the gaming world. All the questions haven’t been answered in the gaming world which makes it interesting to study, where as all the questions in film or music etc have more or less all been answered to the point where it’s boring (If I say so myself). It can be scary to think about what we may achieve in the future but NGJ puts everything under the microscope and can try to unlock the answers. I still think reviews are pointless but maybe they are a way of having a better understanding and contributing towards things in the future. What I’m trying to say is that gaming is primarily based on technology and that we’re going further and further down the route of making them as real as possible so maybe constantly analysing the technology against the real world is the best thing to do to unlock all these answers we haven’t found yet? More qualities that it has, is that it focuses on the gamers themselves instead of just the games by being more personal about it which makes it somewhat more entertaining.
One thing in gaming everyone mostly does is that they look at a game as whole rather than breaking apart everything bit by bit. There’s games journalism and reviews and apart from that I could only find the story line scripts for games which depending on the type of game people may not take that into account that much, they’ll just want to shoot the heads off aliens and get to the last level as quick as possible as best they can by looking at the bigger picture. When I think of something I never sort put it together as the big picture because in that sense there’s not that much you can say about a game and then people will disagree with you and controversy is caused when you say something is just good or not good. I like to look at things more subjectively like many of the reviewers do now-a-days, they take all the parts of the game and then analyse each one and sort of try to say what parts abut it you may find good and what may not be so good. It’s hard to describe aspects of different games because we all like different things. By breaking a game a part I could say what I personally like about it but that will vary from one person to the next, to keep on top of this I like to say everything from both points of views then there’s no argument and I’m not being one sided. It might be being too technical about things but at the same time always think that the whole mind map about a game is a better way of putting it together by adding every idea you can think of into it rather than always going for the bigger but more simpler picture where there isn’t as much. I think most people prefer the bigger picture because they just want to sit back and play a game because they think it’s awesome, when behind the scenes there’s a lot more to it that should be put into consideration cause it’s the smaller parts that all fit together to make a game. You can look at a game and not think much of it until you actually play it from there on you can start asking questions of it, were as I like to seek the more complicated questions that haven’t been thought of and answer them myself, this way I can know just about everything rather than the basics and it feels like I’ve accomplished a lot more but you’ve got to have the time to do it, it’s almost as if being a gamer is like being a reviewer in some ways, you try to split everything apart and answer all the questions you can find instead of just looking at something and saying “yes that’s good and that’s not” cause anyone could do that getting both points of view opens more to talk about and that way you gain more knowledge and further more a better opinion or why something could or could not be good for you! The New Games Journalism basically tells you why something is or isn’t good for you as a fan of various games titles or people interested in different types of genres in which it does by relating it to experience therefore giving it a more accurate approach. You can see how NGJ is a better and cleverer way of reviewing games but I still think that playing first hand is overall better than reading.
Game reviewers sort of put pressure on the gaming market for different companies to sell their games, but I think the press maybe actually helping the companies make their games better by criticising them so they can improve next time around, it’s a cycle of previewing then trying and then reviewing each time, kind of like trial and error almost for the industries, the people writing about it have to know just as much, if not MORE than the people actually working to complete the final finished game to come out and say what they think of it and to rank it on sort of table they’ve devised themselves. I think it’s crazy but it just shows how they are now thinking beyond just the limits of the game itself but the player playing the game is taken into account along with the feelings you get when you experience the game play compared to something in reality by bringing it to life a bit more which is more entertaining. It’s funny because as companies battle to sell their games, the media is battling to sell their best reviews.
I don’t know if what I’ve said makes any sense but that’s just the way I see the link between Games companies and the media.
