2089: Connect the Dots

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Connect the Dots.”

“Scour the news for an entirely uninteresting story. Consider how it connects to your life. Write about that.”

When looking for “entirely uninteresting stories”, your first port of call should almost certainly be your local newspaper. Sure enough, the Daily Echo didn’t disappoint with this marvel:

BREAKING: City bridge closed due to ‘police incident’

A SOUTHAMPTON bridge was closed this evening due to a ‘police incident’.

The Itchen Bridge was shut at around 6.30pm but the exact nature of the incident is unknown.

And the bridge was quickly reopened at 6.40pm.

This is currently the top story on the Daily Echo website, which probably gives you an idea of the sorts of things that get posted on there. But let’s ponder the actual question from the daily post: how this connects to my life in some way.

Well, okay. This is actually quite an easy one in many ways. The most obvious connection, of course, is that I live in Southampton, and consequently I know where the Itchen Bridge is. But the connection actually runs a little deeper than that: about five or six years ago, I used to live very near the Itchen Bridge in the town centre. The bridge itself was within walking distance, only about five minutes or so away. This didn’t really have much of an impact on my life for the most part, as I tended to find other ways to cross the river owing to the toll gates at the other side of the Itchen Bridge. But during my oft-mentioned “difficult period” in my life — the time my first wife left and my life pretty much fell apart — the bridge became somewhere that I liked to occasionally head towards in order to just stand and reflect.

I don’t think I ever seriously considered jumping off the bridge, though with my mental state at the time I won’t lie to you: I certainly thought about it more than once or twice. Ultimately I knew that I’d never actually have the courage to do it, though, for all manner of reasons: firstly, part of me, despite being deeper in a pit of misery than I’d ever been in my whole life, I didn’t really want to die; secondly, even contemplating that sort of thing made me feel guilty about the people I’d leave behind; thirdly, the idea of jumping off a bridge into horrible dirty water sounded both terrifying and unpleasant. And, I mean, I know killing yourself (or the contemplation thereof) isn’t particularly pleasant anyway, but I kind of figured there were easier, less painful ways to do it.

That didn’t stop me regularly going out to that bridge, though, noticing the Samaritans stickers on the railings every time I walked up to its highest point to look out over the water. I never called them — as I say, I knew that I didn’t really want to jump — but they always gave me pause when I saw them. Perhaps they did help, in their own way.

Eventually I settled for getting these musings out of my system with a piece of creative writing. In the short first-person narrative — which was left a little open-ended in case I wanted to expand it into a full-on story at some point — the protagonist, who was very obviously me, walked out to a bridge that was very obviously the Itchen Bridge, tormented by his own despair, and jumped. At the last moment, he was saved from his seemingly inevitable demise by a character I’d created and had my own story in mind for; this particular little narrative was set after that other story, even though, to date, I still haven’t written all of it. In other words, the character who saved me was the character as she was at what I had planned to be the conclusion of her original tale; as it happened, she fit nicely into this little fantasy scenario, though.

But I digress. How does this news story connect to my life? Well, my first thought upon reading the headline of the story on the Daily Echo website was “someone’s probably jumped”. Given that the bridge was re-opened after just ten minutes, though, I wonder whether that was really the case or not; at the moment, it looks pretty much like a non-story, despite its prominent billing on the Daily Echo website. I guess my thought process ran something along the lines of “I wonder if there would have been a story like that on the Daily Echo website if I’d actually given in to my despair and jumped back in those dark days?”

Bleak? Oh, absolutely and definitely. But, well, there you go. That’s me.

1169: Suffering Fools

The Internet has ruined April Fools’ Day.

That’s the sentiment that seems to have been prevalent on social media for most of today. And to be fair, it has. Between Operation Rainfall’s teasing of games that will never exist (Catherine 2, The Last Story II, Theatrhythm Deus Ex) to the utterly cringeworthy press release I received earlier claiming that Doodle Jump is becoming a Broadway show (seriously, guys, 1) Doodle Jump hasn’t been relevant for several years now, and 2) try harder) it’s been a thoroughly irritating day to be online. Thankfully, a significant proportion of the press seems to have grown up a bit and is refusing to play along with these shenanigans, but there’s just as many reputable publications putting out exceedingly lame “jokes” that they really should know better than to post. The Guardian producing special liberal glasses that block Richard Littlejohn columns? Hilarious. The New Statesman rebranding entirely in Comic Sans? Oh, help me, Doctor Tendo, for my sides have split.

Thinking about it, though, I’m not sure April Fools’ Day has ever been particularly… well, fun. Sure, the stuff Google comes up with is often mildly amusing, but for the most part it seems to be a day where people think that lying as much as possible is an adequate substitute for being genuinely entertaining. That’s sort of mean when you think about it, really.

I’m trying to think back to a time before the Internet (yes, young ‘uns, we did live in such dark times once) and whether or not April Fools’ Day was fun then. I have a peculiar feeling that it wasn’t. I recall a time at school when everyone suddenly and inexplicably learned the word “gullible” simultaneously for some dark purpose, and it was a hellish few weeks of people making up outlandish stories and then jeering “HAAHAHHAAH GULLIBLE” and running away if you even looked like you were about to say “really?” April Fools’ Day is just like that, really. An opportunity for unfunny twats to be particularly unfunny twats and think they’re being Comedy Gods.

I know it’s all a bit of fun and I shouldn’t be so grumpypants about it. But as with so many things on the Internet, oversaturation leads to cynicism and active dislike. And over the last few years, we’ve seen so many painfully obvious April Fools’ Day jokes that it’s just a bit old now. By far the most laughable example was the Doodle Jump press release I mentioned earlier — that actually really made me quite cross, though I restrained myself from rebuking the sender with a tersely-worded response — but that’s far from an isolated example.

To quote my former editor Mr Jason Wilson: “Journalism isn’t about jokes. No one for a journalistic site should be making up shit. No one at a PR agency should be, either. Send me that BS and you go straight into my ‘you suck at PR’ folder.”

Quite. The news is enough of a disorganised mess in which it’s a nightmare for some stories to get noticed anyway; quit cluttering these channels up with your made-up crap. It’s not big, it’s not clever and it’s not funny.

This has been your Grouch for the day. Tomorrow I will write about something nice.

1015: JARNAWRITINGLIZMZ

The discussion surrounding the recent “Games Journalists Might Be Corrupt” debacle continues, it seems, with a recent piece by Ben Kuchera over on the Penny Arcade Report summarising nicely why it’s an issue worth discussing. I don’t really want to get into that conversation again right now because it’s already being researched and reported on by people with more time and resources on their hands than me.

What I do want to talk about, though, is the ancillary discussion which always crops up any time Issues surrounding “games journalism” crops up — that is, a matter of what is “games journalism” and the divide between “journalist”, “blogger” and any other definitions you’d care to give.

I saw an interesting quote earlier today on Twitter. I forget who it was from so I can’t link to it, unfortunately, but it read something like this:

“Don’t get into games journalism because you like games. Get into it because you love writing.”

That’s exactly the reason I enjoy writing about games — because I love writing, as the 1014 posts prior to this will attest. I mean, sure, I love games, too, but I could love games without wanting to write about them, and yet I voluntarily compose thousands of words on the subject every week — here, over at Games Are Evil and for my day job. If I didn’t love it, I wouldn’t do it.

There’s something of an air of snobbery surrounding writing about games, though, and it’s all to do with that “J” word. When outlets like Polygon publish a piece like this, you get people expressing genuine surprise that someone has “done some actual games journalism”. For sure, well-researched investigative pieces are very much worthy of note and should be praised — but just as in regular newspapers, they are not the be-all and end-all of writing. In mainstream culture and current affairs, we have plenty of critical and opinion pieces alongside the deep-dive investigative pieces — so why is this sort of thing looked down upon in games writing?

It’s the obsession with that “J” word. “Journalism” carries with it certain expectations — specifically, reporting and investigation, and perhaps uncovering some facts that might not have come to light otherwise. But there’s just as much value in someone composing an in-depth personal response to something they’ve played in detail, or indeed an opinion piece on a pertinent current issue in the industry.

It’s not “one size fits all”, in short, and I think part of the problem in the “writing about games” sector (whatever you want to call it) is that too many outlets are trying to be one size fits all. We see sites like VG247 posting articles on everything from the latest DLC drop for Call of Duty to sales figures via who has got a new job on a magazine — something which the vast majority of gamers who are not involved in the industry probably wouldn’t give a toss about. We have sites like GamesBeat experimenting with a review format that features feedback from a games critic, a business analyst and an academic, and it’s not entirely clear who that’s for.

We need greater focus and less generalisation. The outlets that are good at “real journalism” such as Kuchera’s Penny Arcade Report (and to a lesser extent Polygon) should keep doing what they do because it’s important — and it’d be good to see more outlets focusing on this side of things with properly-trained staff. But at the same time, the sites who are effectively “magazines” as opposed to “newspapers” should keep doing what they’re doing too. Their work is no less valid or important, but their purpose is different — while the “journalistic” outlets’ primary purpose is to inform, the “magazine” outlets’ primary purpose is to entertain. There’s a degree of crossover between both, of course, but I can’t help but feel that focusing on either one or the other rather than ending up doing a half-assed job at both would benefit everyone in the long run.

I actually wrote a piece on this subject a while back regarding the ever-controversial Kotaku, a site which consistently draws heat for its seemingly “irrelevant” articles and often irreverent attitude. I still stand by what I say in that post — if Kotaku was more honest and open about its target audience (18-30 year old men) and tailored its content accordingly, then I feel it would be a better publication as a result.

It’s also what I’m trying to do over at Games Are Evil with a limited team and resources. We’re not under any illusions about being the first to report on anything or the most timely with our coverage, but in acknowledging that fact and taking a more “magazine-like” approach — weekly, focused columns punctuated by brief news snippets on subjects that are a little “off the beaten track” and regular features such as our daily Song of the Day — I feel we’re building a better, more distinctive publication rather than yet another “me too” blog, and one that I’m actually pretty proud of so far.

Anyway. The “games journalism is broken” discussion will probably continue in perpetuity, particularly given recent events. I do know one thing, though, and that’s that I am really glad I am not Lauren Wainwright right now.

#oneaday Day 834: RUMOUR: Rumours ‘Rumoured’, Says Rumour-Monger

If you’ve ever started a conversation with “I heard that…” and then gone on to explain exactly how you heard somewhere/from some guy in the pub/from “The Internet” that something awesome/awful is going to happen, then I urge you to think before you speak in future. Because if you continue with that sentence, you’re simply feeding the rumour mill, and the rumour mill doesn’t produce good things and help us make the Bread of Truth. It produces garbage and poo, and then squishes it all out into the world’s most unpleasant pâté.

Tortured (and gross) metaphors aside, it’s a fact that I wish more people — particularly in the press — would cotton on to.

Today, for example, saw news that Liberty X “might be” reforming for a new album and a tour. Firstly, I don’t think anyone wants that, and secondly, the only evidence that such a reunion “might be” happening is the fact that they were photographed together outside the ITV studios and — get this — they were smiling. Stop the fucking presses.

There are a ton of journalism sectors that are particularly prone to this. Showbiz columns report who might be sleeping with whom. Sports columns report who might be moving to some other club for a disproportionately enormous amount of money. Music and arts columns report who might be working on what. And then, of course, there are the tech-related industries.

Anything related to Apple is accompanied by an inordinately huge amount of rumourmongering, for example. In the run-up to the company’s announcement of the third-generation iPad, all sorts of nonsense was flying around. This ranged from suggestions that it might not have a Home button to the frankly astonishing assertion that the reason iOS apps had started having textures like leather and the like in the background was because the new iPad would have a haptic display — i.e. one where you could feel textures as well as see them.

The video games industry is far from immune, either. Rarely a week goes by without one outlet reporting on some rumour from a mysterious, anonymous source and the “story” then being picked up by every other news site on the Web as if it were fact. This particular rumour mill goes into overdrive as a hardware generation starts to wind down and people start wondering what the next generation of consoles might look like. Inevitably, the vast majority of stories turn out to be absolute bollocks, and on the rare occasions when an outlet or reporter writes something that turns out to be true, there’s at least a day’s worth of smug, self-satisfied cries of “Called it.”

No you didn’t. You were throwing darts blindfolded, and you happened to hit a lucky bulls-eye. Your other fifteen darts are embedded in the barman’s testicles, the barmaid’s left boob, the right ear of that hard-looking dude who drinks absinthe by the pint and the TV that was showing the Bolton v Wigan match. (Everyone is angry. I’d run, if I were you.)

So why do we persist on reporting on these festering sores on the very arse of journalism? Because they attract attention, particularly if they’re controversial. If one site prints a story that Liberty X is reforming, or that the next Xbox will feature a system to prevent used games from working on it, or that the iPhone 5 really, totally, absolutely positively is coming out this time, then that will attract commenters like flies around shit. And that means page hits, advertising revenue and the little graphs that make the men in suits happy moving in an upward direction. Who cares if it’s absolute nonsense dreamed up by someone who cleans the toilets at Microsoft? Print it!

I make a point of not reading any stories that start with the prefix “RUMOUR:” now. And should I ever find myself back on the news desk for a popular gaming website, I will most certainly do everything in my power to avoid reporting on such nonsense — unless some actual investigation turns up something interesting, of course. But blindly parroting another site’s “anonymous source”? No. Just no.

So, then, I reiterate: think before you speak/write/publish. Because rumours are rarely helpful. Remember that time it spread around the whole school year that you’d shat your pants when in fact you’d just sat in some mud?

Yeah. That.

#oneaday Day 823: Information Diet

Know what I hate? Chavs. Know what else? Teaching. Know what else? We could be here a while. I’ll tell you. Press embargoes.

I get why they happen, obviously — publishers and their PR people want to ensure that coverage of something is coordinated nicely so that everyone gets suitably whipped up into a frenzy all at the same time. But there’s an unfortunate side-effect if you happen to, say, follow a bunch of different video games outlets at the time a major announcement happens: everyone bellows the same fucking thing at the exact same fucking time.

It’s happening more and more nowadays, too. The most notable examples that stick in my head in recent memory are Assassin’s Creed III and Borderlands 2, both titles that I have a passing interest in but find myself becoming curiously resistant to the more and more I get battered in the face with the same information from slightly different angles.

I think, on the whole, this is the “problem” I have been having with mainstream gaming overall. There’s too much information out there — too much coverage, too many “behind the scenes” videos, too many “exclusive” interviews, too many press releases announcing a single screenshot (yes, that is a real thing I received today and I have no shame in naming Square Enix as the perpetrator). After a while, you become completely saturated with information about a product and subsequently have absolutely no inclination to want to touch it, ever. This was a big part of why I didn’t want to play Mass Effect 3, for example — EA’s appalling behaviour was just the straw that broke the camel’s back, really.

I feel for my friends who work in games PR for “B-tier” games, too. It’s hard enough to get a title like, say, Risen 2 noticed at the best of times but when you’re competing with everyone beating themselves into an orgasmic and/or angry frenzy over Mass Effect 3, there’s little hope for your title outside of groups of people like me who have forsaken the mainstream in favour of enjoying less heavily marketed titles.

Conversely, the games I have been playing and enjoying are the ones where information has been trickling out slowly, usually straight from the developers mouths without dribbling through the PR sieve. Take the “Operation Rainfall” RPGs Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story and Pandora’s Tower (which I’m currently playing), for example — these received very little in the way of press attention despite being fantastic games. The aforementioned Operation Rainfall, a grassroots campaign to get these three excellent games localised and released in Europe and the US, received plenty of press, but information on the games themselves was conspicuously absent. As a result, I was able to go into all three of them pretty much blind and have a fantastic experience in the process — a big part of what made all of them great is the sense of discovery inherent in all of them. That just doesn’t happen if you’ve been smothered in information for the six months leading up to the game’s release.

As a result of all this, I’ve come to a decision, and if you’re feeling the same way as me, I recommend you follow it too.

Cut back. Cut out the crap. If you follow a buttload of games journalists and outlets on Twitter, unfollow them. If you want some gaming news, pick one outlet and keep it on your follow list, but chances are if you follow lots of gaming fans, someone will retweet the news as it happens anyway. Otherwise, go seek out the news when it’s convenient for you. Check the sites when you feel like it. Subscribe to their RSS feeds. Use Google Currents or Flipboard to receive information in an easily-digestible format. Receive information on your terms, not that of a carefully-crafted PR campaign.

This doesn’t have to apply just to games — it can apply to pretty much anything that suffers from the problems described above. Film, TV, celebrity news, business, tech… anything, really.

I’m going to give this a try. It will doubtless initially feel somewhat weird to not see some familiar faces and logos in my Twitter timeline, but I have a strange feeling that I’ll be a lot happier, less frustrated and less cynical as a result. Check back with me in a week or two and we’ll see.

(If you’re one of the people I do happen to unfollow, it’s nothing personal. You just might want to consider getting separate professional and personal accounts!)

#oneaday Day 157: E3

I’m in the middle of covering E3, with only Sony’s press conference left to go today. It’s in half an hour and is likely to be about a million hours long, so I’m hoping I’ll stay awake for it.

I’ve got to say, considering that E3 is the biggest event in the games industry’s calendar, I’m largely underwhelmed by what’s been on show so far. Battlefield 3 is impressive — even for a non-military shooter sort of man — and of course there’s a tent in my pants over TrackMania 2 Canyon, but when the most impressive thing you’ve seen so far is arguably a new 2D Rayman game, you have to wonder what’s going on.

Perhaps it’s cynicism. It’s easy to become jaded by endless news posts and press releases about how awesome this not-particularly awesome feature of some obscure game is. You get to a point where you just stop listening to the endless hyperbole and make your own mind up — but unfortunately by that point, all you can hear when you see something genuinely impressive is the PR person in your ear going “Revolutionary! Innovative! Game-changing! First time ever!” and you just want to punch yourself in the nose. Well, maybe not. That would hurt.

Cynicism aside, though, there’s a few disappointing no-shows so far. Ubisoft still won’t make Beyond Good and Evil 2, despite it being an obvious fan favourite. Microsoft’s press conference is depressingly predictable, being full of Kinect and other bollocks. And EA didn’t announce an Xbox Live Arcade version of M.U.L.E.

EA’s conference has, so far at least, been the strongest one, with some great-looking titles on offer. Need for Speed: The Run in particular looks fantastic, and the addition of QTE-driven “get out and run away frantically in a 24 stylee” sequences look set to give the whole thing a wonderful action movie vibe. QTEs aren’t to everyone’s tastes, but I like them when used effectively, and The Run looks like it will be using them well to create a dramatic, exciting road adventure. Plus it uses Autolog, so it’s time to get ridiculously addicted to challenging each other’s times again.

As for Sony’s conference, which is coming up in about 20 minutes at the time of writing, I’m not sure what to expect. Couldn’t give a damn about Resistance 3, though I’m sure someone out there is excited. Will be intrigued to see how uncomfortable it all is following the PSN woes of recent months.

One thing’s for sure, though: I will sleep well tonight. Or indeed this morning, whenever I am able to actually get to bed.

Head over to GamePro to check out my show coverage so far.

#oneaday, Day 33: Twitter: A Skewed Window on a Weird World

Twitter is many things, as I’ve said a number of times on this blog before. It’s arguably my primary means of communication these days, since the vast majority of my friends are quite-to-a-very long way away, and asynchronous communication is nice and convenient. It’s a good source of information (in fact, Twitter themselves now describe themselves as an “information source” rather than a means of “short, timely messages” like they used to) and a good way to keep up with what people you’re interested in are up to—and not just when they’re having a shit.

By far the most remarkable thing it does, though, is something that it wasn’t originally designed to do, but which it was always naturally going to do, given its nature. And that is the way it can give an eye-opening snapshot of “this day in history”. Even when seemingly nothing is happening.

Today, there happened to be several things of (in some cases questionable) note occurring. Depending on where the tweets were coming from, it was interesting to see the differences and priorities.

By far the most horrifying tweets were emanating from the Middle East, where Egypt has been undergoing some not-inconsiderable turmoil. Today, there were violent clashes in Tahrir square, and via one Middle East-based person I follow who was RTing someone stuck in the middle of the violence and horror, it was possible to get a “first-hand” account of what was going on. It was oddly sobering to see the whole thing unfold, and although I didn’t know the person being RTed in question, I was hoping that their tweets would keep coming and end on a positive note. I didn’t want to think about what a sudden cessation of the “commentary” would have meant.

Elsewhere in the world, Australia was preparing for an enormous cyclone. They haven’t had a great deal of luck over there recently. Due to the fact I don’t think I follow anyone who actually lives in Australia, most of the reportage on the incident that I saw today was pretty cold and clinical, although this image, showing what said cyclone would look like if it were en route to the UK instead of Australia, gave pause for thought.

And then there was the curious incident of Justin Lee Collins’ new girlfriend, which was reported by the Daily Mail today featuring a series of obnoxious paparazzi pictures of the couple on holiday. The article in itself was objectionable enough—as far as I’m concerned, celebrity squeezes aren’t news, even if they’re squeezing another celebrity—but what I found rather surprising was the reaction from quite a few (games journalist) people I knew on Twitter.

It transpires that the “mystery brunette” the Mail was referring to is actually someone who works in PR for the video games industry. I don’t know the person in question and have never had any direct contact with her, so I wasn’t much the wiser once people had explained the whole situation to me. But a lot of people seemed to find the whole situation hilarious—something which I found rather bewildering.

Now, granted, there’s a certain element of “hey, I know that person!” if you see an acquaintance or friend in the paper. But personally speaking, whether or not the games journalism biz had “got one up on the Mail” (normally cause for celebration), if I was the woman in question, I’m not sure I’d be particularly happy about the widespread discussion amongst a number of people I may well have had direct contact with in the past. It’s not her fault she got snapped by some paparazzi scumbag. Some may say it’s an occupational hazard of dating a “celebrity”, but that’s no excuse. Her privacy has been invaded; and while the discussion of the fact “we know who she is and the Mail doesn’t” hasn’t been malicious in tone, it’s drawn an unwarranted degree of attention to her.

In my opinion, anyway. But then I’ve never been one for any kind of gossip; people’s relationships are their own business—not mine, not yours and certainly not the Daily fucking Mail’s.

On a more uplifting note, one positive thing that came out of Twitter today was the #whatstigma hashtag started by comedienne @RebeccaFront. Via this hashtag, she was encouraging people to speak openly about mental illness, depression, anxiety and so forth, without fear of judgement or, well, stigma. It was heartening to see how many people took to it, and proof positive that there are plenty of people out there who are getting on with their lives despite struggling with difficult mental conditions. It was also, hopefully, a slap in the face to the sort of people who like to say “get over it”. (Hello again, Daily Mail.) I’d actually like to write a bit more on this subject as it’s one I do feel strongly about, but I think I’ll save that for another day.

So, on the 2nd of February 2011, what happened? Several shit things. One invasion of privacy. And thousands of people stepping up to publicly say something about themselves without fear or shame.

While not the most positive day the world has ever seen, to say the least, it was certainly an interesting day. Will it go down in the history books? Who knows? But those of us who were here have our own personalised record of the whole thing. And that’s pretty cool.

Good job, Internet.

#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”?

If you would like to share this post with the community, then please feel free to make use of the buttons below.

One A Day, Day 2: More Bollocks

Here we are again. Good evening. What to talk about today?

I was all set to do an immensely amusing post where I wrote down all those stupid random thoughts that come into your head and you really want to say out loud but then don’t because they’d make you look like an imbecile. But I forgot to write anything down, apart from the one I had in the shower last night which, for the record, was “Don’t you hate it when you’re in the shower and close your eyes to stop the soap going in, but nearly fall asleep?” – because I’d closed my eyes to stop the soap going in and had nearly fallen asleep. That’s what I get for showering at midnight after taking an actually-not-that-ill-advised run at a late hour in the evening while our podcast uploaded.

So I have to think of something else to write about. Having been at work all day and not listened to the news I can’t even comment on that… or can I?

*checks BBC News*

Oh, right. Cadbury got taken over by Kraft or something. I did know that, probably thanks to Twitter. Job cuts bad. Cheesy chocolate bad. Boo hiss, and so on.

Okay, that’s the news covered, what did I get up to today? Well, I applied for another job. Most of you know how much I bitch and moan about how much I hate my job, so I applied for another one that I thought I’d like. I enjoy the writing, as should hopefully be apparent from this site (and also this one – the new home of my games-related ramblings), so a writing-based position sounds right up my alley. At this point, I’m not even too bothered if it means a pay cut, as the employer in question (whom I won’t reveal for the moment so as not to jinx things) is pretty high-profile and has a lot of potential for building a future career.

Ugh. Hate phrases like that. So management-speaky. Sometimes you have to use it, and it sucks. One thing I want to make sure I never do is become one of those tossers who sits in their office in a patronising manner, talking to employees about “going forward” and saying that “as a manager…” blah blah blah whilst simultaneously crippling said employees’ self-esteem and sense of independence. Yes, I do have some specific examples in mind but it would be unprofessional and unkind of me to mention them by name.

It’s Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe tonight, a fact which the BBC have inexplicably left off their own site. Charlie Brooker’s work is always a laugh and a half, so I’m looking forward to this new series. Plus I might actually have something to say about the news after watching it. You never know.

Well, that’s today’s brain-dump done and dusted. Two-day combo! I might make it to the end of the year yet.