We live in a post-modern world. Individual truths hold sway over universal truth. In video gaming this is especially true, so to speak. From journalists' reviews to forum discussions and gamers' blogs, everyone has an opinion they believe in. Amidst the racket it is hard to discern the facts. We hope to set out our view of games journalism � where it has gone wrong, and where it should be going. We're aware of the apparent arrogance of doing so, but believe it has to be said nonetheless.

Reviews

Reviews are misleading. Whether games are scored out of 10 or by percentages (to decimal points, no less) games reviewers do a surprisingly poor job of getting to the bottom line. What is the difference between a game that receives 9.2 and one that scores 9.3? Movies are not rated like this. "Obscure" doesn't begin to cover it. This is compounded by the fact that many reviewers do not even utilise the entire scale. 7 out of 10 now means "average": it is the default rating. And so reviews are distorted: inflated scores flatter third-rate games. Website content is driven by streaming video � probing articles are found wanting. Life span is gauged by hours of gameplay, a meaningless measurement; a game may "last" 10 hours, but if it is poorly designed you will not want to trudge through it twice. Worse still, heavily advertised, corporate-owned websites do little to address concerns about conflicts of interest. The gaming community rarely discusses the difficulty of reviewing a game when it is advertised on the same website. Apart from anything else, there are unashamedly bought reviews � remember the Driv3r fiasco of 2004? Flatly stated, journalists have become apologists for mediocrity and shirk the hard questions, such as: is this game really worth your money? We have abdicated responsibility to the community, content to dish out scores of 8s and 9s to games we know will go stale in a few months' time. A few writers remain dedicated to honest reporting, but the rest of us must try harder.

New Games Journalism

As the death rattle of objectivity echoed throughout the industry, a saviour appeared in the form of New Games Journalism. NGJ is built around the writer's personal experience of games, rather than an attempt to appraise a title objectively (Wikipedia has all the info). The influential article by Ian "Always Black" Shanahan on his lightsabre duel with a mindless bigot is the finest example of NGJ: it is an exceptional feature and thoroughly gripping. But the limitations of NGJ have been quickly uncovered. For every engrossing piece such as Ian Shanahan's article there are ten pretentious, self-indulgent, self-important ramblings. NGJ has become a journalistic bombsite strewn with the debris of half-baked ideas, irrelevant reminisces and fractured grammar. It has collapsed into a parody of itself. Do I really have to read another clichéd navel-gazing piece about a gamer's "experience" of playing Command and Conquer in high school?

Well-written as it is, Ian Shanahan's Jedi Knight II article is significant because of what is said, not how it is said. The writer analyses prejudice and racism in gaming. How many other journalists have asked similar hard questions?

Subjectivity and fanboyism

The combination of purposeless reviews and NGJ has only catalysed corrosive fanboyism. Internet fanatics have been given licence to claim their opinion as "truth", and to hell with the facts. There is no place for any underlying evidence or reasoning. "Facts versus opinions" has developed into a fundamental problem, since fanboys fundamentally can't grasp the difference. Some forum users are guilty of what amounts to Internet harassment: lacerating individual words or phrases, smearing other board members, ridiculing legitimate points and setting up so many straw men that forums have begun to look like spin doctor testing grounds. Postmodernism has given a voice to anybody with a computer and Internet access, but who can hear anything over the din? Anyone can say anything about games, and consequently we say nothing at all.

More problematically, many gamers base their purchases on loyalty, and pledge their first loyalty to the big companies who run the industry � not to their fellow gamers. This is why mediocrity is defended fiercely and classics are racked up for target practice. In stifling debate, many forum users hide under cover of the term "anti-fanboy" � in effect, any criticism is stymied. Attempts to advise fellow gamers against buying poor titles leads to wearisome fanboy/anti-fanboy denouncements. And it's a wonder that games companies budget for advertising when they have legions of goons who will do it for nothing.

Responsibility

These core problems reveal something about gamers: we do not shoulder enough responsibility to each other. All of us fork out hundreds of pounds for games systems and new titles. We have a duty to our fellow gamer to be as objective as possible, as our views will have some influence on others' decision-making. We will detail our belief in this duty in the follow-up article.

Nick Bennett
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