I really enjoy looking back at old games magazines and, to a somewhat lesser extent, websites. Magazines in particular I have a lot of nostalgia for, because they're a part of everyday life that just doesn't really exist any more; browsing the latest argument on Twitter on your phone while dropping a deuce isn't quite the same as flipping through a glossy magazine for so long you get toilet-seat imprint on your bum cheeks.
One thing I find interesting is how much games writing has improved over the years. Looking back at some of these particularly old magazines, I'm kind of astonished by the general level of the writing therein — and the fact that I used to idolise the people who wrote these articles as something to aspire to.
I won't name names or be too mean, because I suspect a lot of the issues with early writing about computers in general — games in particular — was because the medium was still in its formative years, and people weren't quite sure how to write about them. It's interesting to see how different publications took different approaches — one back in the Atari ST era, for example, made the main body of its article pretty much a paraphrasing of the game manual (right down to including weirdly specific information about key commands) while another from the same period was probably overly critical, rarely rating anything over about 70% or so and picking holes in the strangest of things.
It's improved since the advent of the Internet and gaming websites too, though… in some areas, anyway. When I research games from the PS1-PS2 era and look back at articles written at the time, I'm often a bit disappointed to come across hastily written reviews that demonstrate very little apparent familiarity with the game in question — even from writers who, I know, were lauded as being the best in the business at the time. This side of things, regrettably, is still a reality of modern commercial games journalism, primarily due to the daily churn and the tight timeframes involved with everything — but there are plenty of people out there who have figured out how to analyse and discuss gaming in much more depth than we were ever able to in the past. These people are mostly enthusiast writers, but there are a few at smaller, profit-making sites who are able to make this work.
I hope it doesn't sound too arrogant of me to say that I'm very happy with what I do, because when I look at some of my own work, I can definitely feel satisfied and confident that, in technical and analytical terms, I feel like I've surpassed the people I idolised as a child. It's just a shame there's not really any money — or indeed jobs that aren't already doled out incestuously to members of the in-crowd clique, of course — in commercial games writing any more, huh?
Oh well. I intend to keep on keeping on for as long as I'm able to, so I thank you, very deeply, for your continued support.
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