John "wardrox"
Editorial, Rant Saturday, March 28th 2009

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I wasn’t at GDC. I’ve been too busy being lazy, adolescent and bad at writing. I, like the entirety of the game’s industry, am a bastard and don’t deserve even an ounce of respect for my leeching, degrading, derogatory, un-skilled and bias work.

From IGN:

“It’s not that the medium is in its adolescence, it’s that you’re a bunch of fucking adolescents,” she said. “It’s even worse because you’re technically supposed to be adults.” Chaplin traced the paucity of more mature content in games to four basic ideas that frighten men the most: responsibility, introspection, intimacy, and intellectual discovery. She described game developers in terms of neoteny, an idea from developmental biology that describes adults of a species who have juvenile traits. This can be seen in mature Chihuahuas, which resemble infant and fetal wolves. Chaplin closed by challenging the audience, “What do you want to be, a Chihuahua or a wolf?”

That’s Heather Chaplin, author of a book about video games, or something. Joining her at the “Burned by Friendly Fire: Game Critics Rant” was N’Gai Croal who complained about the words we use. Leigh Alexander was also there, offering some helpful complaints about the mixture of journalists, the audience and the game companies. There were a few game devs on hand to “balance” out proceedings. Ubisoft’s Clint Hocking and Maxis “staffer” Chris Hecker said some things. So did Adam Sessler. However, I wont cover their words as they didn’t piss me off very much. I actively agree with Sessler’s “Fuck Metacritic” stance.

I should probably be cheering all of these noted persons onward as they complain and bitch about everything that’s wrong with the video game industry. Annoyingly, I can’t. I spend all day reading and writing what many “journalists” would consider the low-brow, dregs of the games press. I’ve come to love the unkempt, crude masses. I admit I also love reading well thought out articles about gaming. I’ve subscribed to most of the indie/art sites as well as the industry sites and I love it all. But this love of all things gaming does put me almost on the defensive when people like Chaplin go on the attack.

Perhaps this is why my gut reaction to these people is a big middle finger an the words “well, fuck you too”.

Firstly, in regard to Heather Chaplin, her vision of the games industry just seems skewed. During her talk she compares the game’s industry to that of film and rock & roll, which had their Bob Dylans and their Citizen Kanes within the 35 years video games have existed for. Ridiculous comparisons. These are different industries. Both film and rock & roll were taken as forms of art almost immediately and were simple to understand artistically and expand upon. Video games have grown out of computer science and found love first from kids. This doesn’t mean it’s immature, it means it’s different. And it’s improving every single year. Just look at Braid, or any other art-house game for your example.

We don’t have a AAA copy of Braid because their simply wouldn’t be enough people able to appreciate it for it to be financially viable. An issue almost alien to film or music. This is a complex issue, and not one I really want to dwell on.

The theme of improvement continues with the main complaints the panel had. Complaints aimed against bad journalism. Things are changing, things are improving. No, we’re not seeing “real” journalists start to cover gaming, they don’t have the knowledge needed. They spent all their time learning the meaning of under-used and needless words, rather than playing video games. What we’re seeing is people like me, a person who plays a lot of video games, really aiming at the heady heights of “journalism” and apparent validation. But it’s not to appease people “fed up” with the gaming industry’s child like status. It’s to make the games industry a better place for me.

I think my biggest objection when I read things like this is the feeling of authority these people enforce. They have their soapbox atop a high horse and they are going to sit there and tell us all how shit we are for a very long time to come. But that’s all these people seem to be doing, and have been doing for years! I understand that’s the whole point of this GDC session, and I understand that I wasn’t there and that I am too adolescent to comprehend the big-people’s words. I’m not in the la-di-da journalist’s club of meta-discussions and in-jokes about obscure Japanese games you have to pretend to have a high IQ to play.

Ok, I’m just getting generally annoyed at all of this now and am going to stop writing because I’m failing to expand upon points, and haven’t the patience to write out all my annoyances. I also don’t have as much information as I would like.

Maybe I have legitimate reasons for my ranting, maybe I don’t and it’s some subconscious jealousy. Or maybe it’s hunger. Who knows. Have a read of what was said and I would be very interested in your thoughts.

Sources: David Jaffe, MTV Multiplayer, Joystiq)

(Originally this article had the word Journalists in speech marks, but I realised I actually have a lot of respect for at least some of the people on the panel.)