Reboot games journalism!

By at 11:55 am Wednesday, Oct 6

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.

Link (Thanks, Jim!)

Cory Doctorow

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