Tag: free speech

#oneaday, Day 319: Report This Post, It Contains Opinion

There is an increasingly popular—and increasingly worrying—tendency for games journalism and writing about games (which some people are keen to point out are two different things) to be judged as “broken” or “lame”.

On paper, you can perhaps understand why this is. Gaming is one of the most popular subjects for wannabe writers to pebble-dash the Internet with, and there are so many people out there who want to do it “professionally” that a good 90% (I made that up) of gaming-focused sites out there can’t even pay their writers, however awesome they are. As such, there is a lot of crap out there, but it’s generally quite easy to spot, and there’s certainly no need for sites like this.

Fellow #oneaday-er and all-round lovely grumpy chap Ian Dransfield of Play Magazine wrote an impassioned rant on this subject. I highly recommend you go and read it. Now. Go on.

I agree with the Dransfield. No kind of journalism should be homogenised, automaton-written garbage. It should have scope for individual opinion and comment, and certain outlets should have the opportunity to develop distinctive “voices” on the matter. It’s worked for our newspapers for years, after all—for all the shit everyone gives the Daily Mail about their bizarre and often misguided opinions, at least they stick to their guns. Similarly, were the Daily Express ever to write about anything other than Princess Diana, the nation would be in uproar.

One of the things that bugs me most about today’s games journalism is the plague that is N4G. For the uninitiated, N4G is a community-driven news-aggregation service. Community members may post articles to a “pending” queue, and they then have to get ten “approvals” in order to show up in the main news feed.

Fair enough, you might say. It separates the wheat from the chaff, surely. And surely the people who have approval rights must all be published professionals, right?

Wrong. Anyone can submit any page to N4G with no requirement that the article be your own. Get three articles approved by the community (a simple case of rounding up ten Twitter/Facebook friends to help you) and voila—approval rights. This then means that your opinion has as much weight as someone who’s been doing the job for fifteen years.

This may still not sound unreasonable. So let me show you the drop-down menu of options available for “reporting” an article if you believe it to be “inappropriate”:

Yes, you have read that correctly; one of the options for reporting an article as unworthy of appearing in the N4G news feed is that it is “lame”.

N4G is seen as a primary means of promoting games-related articles, and sure enough, it does seem to generate a lot of hits for sites, so I can’t fault those people who do take advantage of it to get more readers to their sites—fair play to you. I can say with some honesty, though, that I have never used it as a place to go to find out the latest news. The whole thing is too chaotic, too run by people who write comments after reading only the headline and not the article and—ugh—it makes me mad, I tellsya. I can’t take it seriously in the slightest.

My main issue with it is one of the things Dransfield points out in his article: who are these people to say what is and is not “relevant”? What gives them the right to brand something as “lame” simply because it doesn’t have “HALO IS A REALLY COOL GUY” in the headline? What gives them the right to ignore a supposed “duplicate article” on a subject which offers some opinion or additional facts over and above what has already been written first, in haste?

Absolutely nothing. Traditional news outlets and even longer-established specialist press (such as publications for music and films) aren’t held to account in the same way. But games journalism, being a younger industry, seems to be held to entirely different standards, and judged unnecessarily harshly. There is a lot of negativity surrounding the games press, and not enough positivity. Trolling and flame wars are particularly prevalent on articles about games, and platform-specific articles seem to bring out the very worst in the community.

Here’s food for thought then: in a world where we’re so concerned about free speech a goodly proportion of the Twitter population in the UK (and beyond) is supporting the legal fees of someone they’ve never met, why are we so harsh on this particular breed of writers? Why shouldn’t they be able to write what they feel, rather than what will “get hits”?

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#oneaday, Day 298: Did You Hear The One About The [REDACTED] And The #TwitterJokeTrial?

If the name Paul Chambers doesn’t mean anything to you at the moment, then take a moment to read this summary of the day’s proceedings, courtesy of The Guardian.

The TL;DR version (God, I hate that phrase and wish it, and everyone who uses it unironically, would die in a f… would, err, live a long and happy life filled with kittens and/or puppies, whichever they preferred, really, because it’s up to them how they live their lives and I love them, whatever they decide) is this: Chambers made an (arguably) ill-advised joke on Twitter about blowing Robin Hood Airport “sky high”. It was a throwaway comment that got blown (pardon) out of all proportion and, thanks to some very, very silly people, has been treated as something roughly approaching a mid-level terrorist incident.

The conclusions of the judge today were that Chambers’ original comment was “obviously menacing” and that any “ordinary person” would “be alarmed”.

Funny, then, that Twitter itself has been full of bomb threats, incitements to violence, discussions of inflicting bodily harm on individuals, and no-one else (save Conservative councillor for Birmingham, Gareth Compton, who made some similarly ill-advised comments, got bollocked and then promptly released on bail) has been arrested for it.

The long and short of it, though, is that Chambers’ appeal was unsuccessful, meaning he is now lumbered with a mounting legal bill and fine which—bless him—Stephen Fry has offered to pay, but members of the public have been generously donating to, also. (Find out how you can help too here).

Chambers has lost his job as a result of one silly comment on Twitter that clearly wasn’t intended to be “menacing” in the slightest. What sort of incompetent terrorist hatches their plans via social media anyway? Everyone knows they still use cassettes and VHS tapes. But the fact stands; this poor chap has had his life pretty much destroyed as a result of an almost total abandonment of Common Sense.

I like to think of myself as a fairly ordinary person, and I certainly wasn’t menaced by Chambers’ tweet. I wasn’t even aware of it until this whole legal fiasco started—but I follow plenty of people who make comments which could, according to Judge Jacqueline Davies, be interpreted as “menacing” and “alarming”. Are they all going to be arrested now? Or was Chambers set up to be made an example of? Certainly if the authorities are intending prosecuting everyone who has made mock “bomb threats” on Twitter today, they’d better get started now, because it’s going to take a good long while, and lots of courthouse space to get it all sorted.

Or perhaps they could, you know, focus on some actual crimes. Perhaps they could take some steps to deal with kids carrying knives, youth gangs, burglaries, assaults, murders, even fucking traffic incidents carry more weight than a ridiculous comment on Twitter.

Or even—here’s a thought—they could invest some resources into tracking down actual, genuine terrorists and foiling their plots before they happen. But perhaps that’s too difficult, and it’s much easier to make a scapegoat of a poor fella who was simply excited to spend time with the love of his life, and was frustrated by the fact that the airport’s closure was making that look more and more unlikely.

So, moral of the story, kids? Be careful what you say. Otherwise Big Broth—

[THE REMAINDER OF THIS BLOG POST HAS BEEN REDACTED BY ORDER OF THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND. PLEASE DIRECT ALL ENQUIRIES TO [email protected]]

#oneaday, Day 295: Eat Your Words

Call of Duty: Black Ops is currently in the process of being launched. This game, for the uninitiated, is going to be rather popular, and it’s expected to sell by the millions. Fair enough. It’s always good to see something enjoy so much success. (Unless it’s, say, a nuclear bomb or terrorist plot or something.)

It’s also something that I couldn’t give two shits about, but this blog post isn’t about why I don’t give two shits about it. This blog post is about why it doesn’t matter that I don’t give two shits about it, and why it doesn’t matter that you, the reader, might think it’s the best thing ever. All that really matters is your own personal opinion on the matter, and it’s this principle that the Internet at large (including, occasionally, yours truly) forgets sometimes.

Everyone has a right to their own opinion, of course. But who really has the right to say what is the “correct” opinion? No-one, of course. The only “correct” opinion is the one you hold. If your opinion doesn’t happen to gel with the majority, then that’s fine. If you hold an opinion that’s popular with the majority but unpopular with your circle of friends, that’s fine too.

In most cases, anyway. Opinions involving being a Nazi, a racist, enjoying raping and/or killing children and/or animals or reading the Daily Mail are generally agreed to be Bad Things. These are societal norms. They’re universally accepted. (Except by the racist Nazi child-raping animal-haters who read the Daily Mail, of course.)

But there are no societal norms on what you “should” think about Call of Duty. Sure, there’s a large number of people out there who really dig it. Some may point to sales figures or Raptr usage statistics and claim that Modern Warfare 2 is the “most popular game of all time” and therefore one of the most important that everyone should like and appreciate. But that’s not the case at all.

The simple fact is, all forms of media have, over time, broadened their appeal. No-one can be expected to be “into” everything. There’s no-one out there who’s read every book, seen every film, watches everything on TV. For one thing, there simply isn’t time to do that. And while it was once possible to play every game there was thanks to their short length or relatively limited availability, we’re now at a stage where there’s no need to play every game out there. In fact, it’s arguably undesirable to do so, because it would inevitably mean you’d miss out on some of the hidden depths of some titles. Consider the person who romps straight through Fallout: New Vegas’ main questline and beats it in, say, 20 hours, versus the person who fully explores the world and invests over 100 hours into that game. Who’s had the fuller experience and got better value for money? I guess there’s arguments for either, but personally speaking on reflection I’d much rather have a deeper experience with less titles than whore around with every game that’s available out there.

What that means, then, is that if you’re someone who isn’t interested in Black Ops, you don’t have to feel bad about all the fuss. But at the same time, there’s no need to be an ass to the people out there who are buzzed for that game. They probably wouldn’t be into the idea of playing Deadly Premonition, Aquaria or Super Meat Boy.

So, basically, do your thing, enjoy what you enjoy and don’t be hatin’ on those who like something you don’t. Similarly, if you like something and someone else doesn’t, don’t be hatin’ on them for not liking it, either.

And the world will be a happy place.

Who am I kidding? This is never going to happen. Call of Duty sucks and everyone buying it is a lame-ass fagbrain!*

* This is a joke, tightass.