Last week, David Jaffe, Game Director on excellent PS2 hack-'em-up, God of War, blogged about the state of videogame journalism. Specifically, he complained about games magazines that refer to the videogame industry as 'our industry' - not out of elitism ("It's not like I'm trying to close the doors to others and say: NO! YOU CAN'T PLAY IN OUR LITTLE CLUB!"), but out of a belief that these publications should analyse and comment on the industry from an objective standpoint:
"I want game journalism- at least 50% of it- to be more like music or film journalism of old. I want it to challenge us and tear our shit apart and analyze it and- when we do a good job- champion it and bring the message to the masses."
The piece has inspired plenty of comment - mostly because it taps into some pretty fundamental questions about videogame writing: how close should journalists be to the videogame publishers that provide review code and access to developers (quite important elements of most videogame mags), and do a majority of readers actually want investigative journalism, rather than upbeat, easily digestible previews and reviews?
I blogged about this in some depth several months ago, and stand by what I wrote back then - magazines merely respond to the desires of their readership. Jaffe namechecks the pioneering film writing of the seventies, and the power held by critics like Pauline Kael, but the heavily politicised climate of that era cannot be replicated now, as he himself concedes while berating the current movie magazines.
Empire readers are more interested in Top 50 features and blockbuster previews than in-depth exposes on the inner workings of the movie industry. NME has turned into an indie Smash Hits - a saturated technicolour comic book of gooey fan-dom. Meanwhile, in line with the status quo, games players are often just looking for screenshots of forthcoming mega-sequels. Is it the journalist's responsibility to turn that around? I mean, we're talking about games here, not the oft-quoted example of Watergate. No one's lives are going to be blown apart by revelations concerning a major videogame publisher...
...Okay, Jaffe isn't asking for the videogame equivalent of Supersize Me or No Logo, he's just asking for mature, considered and stimulating analysis of videogames. But the general trend in consumer magazine publishing is away from wordy features and toward sound bites and photo journalism. It has been for a long time.
As for games writers talking about 'our industry' - that's just a relic of the days when the industry really was something of a boy's club, a derided community looking to create a unified voice. It is a mainstream business now, and I'd be surprised if any games writers under the age of 25 are using the phrase.
Here's the thing. There is a minority of videogame players who care about the industry, who want to see it brought to task for its failings - of which there are many (as with all other entertainment industries). The rest want to know whether they should buy the latest Grand Theft Auto or not. And in the background are the powerful publishers with an agenda of their own.
Mainstream games journalism operates somewhere in the middle, attempting to appease all three. In order for change, if change is indeed required, somebody has to be omitted from the equation.
Who will it be?
