Kieron Gillen, a UK games journo, has penned a stirring manifesto for games writers calling on them to reinvent the form the way that rock-and-roll writers reinvented moribund music writing with a new gonzo style a few decades back.
However, once I thought the initial burst of energy was well spent and
a fair chunk of the better writers absorbed into the gaming press in
one form or another, State produced something that managed to embody
everything I'd want the New Games Journalism to be. It's by a gentleman
who works under the name of Always Black, and is entitled "Bow, Nigger".It's a memorable piece of writing in at least a dozen ways, but is
firstly notable for reading like games journalism without being
anything like a piece of any games writing you've ever read. It's going
to lead to a lot of copyist features, the huge majority will vary
between average and utterly rubbish. Which is fine. Innovation tends to
do that. How many uninspired Hunter S. Thompson riffs have we had to
sit and shudder through? What, hopefully, we'll also get are the pieces
that Hunter's verve and vision inspired without being simple plagiarism."Bow, Nigger"
lies outside the main thrust of "serious" games journalism: that is,
the analytic tradition. A bad games journalist would write in imprecise
generalities, talking about something's "gameplay" and urging you to
"try before you buy" or similar page-filling rubbish. A good one would
look at the game, take it apart, try and understand how it works and
inform the reader of their findings.
(Thanks, Jim!)
