There is an amusing scene in the film Amadeus (1984) where enlightened ruler and patron of the arts, the “musical king” Emperor Joseph II, having just witnessed a performance of Antonio Salieri’s opera Axur, King of Ormus, confidently declares it to be “the best opera yet written,” awarding the composer a medal on the spot to a standing ovation from the audience in attendance. This occurs in full view of our hero, Mozart, whose own recent opera, The Marriage of Figaro, has just closed down after only nine performances. One does not need to be very knowledgeable about classical music to know which of these two operas is still enjoyed today by audiences the world over and which has fallen into obscurity.

Continue reading "The Best Opera Yet Written" »

Lately, it’s seemed as though not a few weeks go by without some long-time editor leaving an enthusiast publication. Just when I feel like I’ve familiarized myself with someone’s output, they’re up and gone. Occasionally they join competing outlets, but often it seems like they more or less “drop out”: maybe do some freelance work while they set up their moody blogs or work on their artsy pursuits. Or, they simply leave the games behind to cover a more respectable industry. Even the people who haven’t left yet just don’t seem to believe writing about games is any kind of sustainable living. I imagine them quietly plotting their escape into actual game development.

Continue reading "Forget Developers Burning Out, What About Our Press?" »

“We’ll be flying four finalists out to our studio in San Francisco to compete for a $1000 in prizes!”

“Here’s your the chance to show off your skill in team-based military combat.”

“Only two squads will make it to the Finals! These two forces will be pitted against each other in the Finals.”

“Tune in to find out which team earns the Purple Heart, and which is laid to waste.”

- all from GameSpot Tournament descriptions

How is one really supposed to write about a game? Most major game reviewers spend at least some of their review stepping into the shoes of an imaginary Everyman, attempting to impartially value a game based on ostensibly universal metrics. But there has always been experimentation with a more “gonzo,” experience-based writing approach, focusing on a writer’s personal exposure to the game world, something that doesn’t pretend to be objective at all.

Continue reading "The Problem with Experience-Based Writing" »

One thing that struck me about this year’s Game Developers Conference was how so many people seemed to be sitting around nodding their heads at each other about how terrible it is that games do not feature enough meaning. Everyone agrees, or seems to agree, that video games just Don’t Mean Enough right now, and that’s why we aren’t being taken seriously by Roger Ebert and all his irritating friends-in-opinion. Onwards the march towards Great Import by injecting more Seriousness, more Sadness (games must make you cry, apparently) and more moving, tragic Reality.

Continue reading "In Defense of the Meaningless Video Game" »

I will understand if the reader doesn’t believe me when I say that I originally started this site to be serious. But you must trust your correspondent when he explains that sometimes an author feels he just hasn’t got any choice. And so I hope you will indulge me while I talk a little bit about The Escapist and its very odd pull-quotes.

The whole point of pull-quotes is to draw a hypothetical reader – imagine him impatiently flipping through the pages of a magazine while waiting for the dentist or for his plane to reach cruising altitude – into actually reading an article by highlighting a key point, an interesting fact or simply an intriguing turn of phrase. The point is not to stump the reader, nor is it to make him not interested in the article. Right?

Continue reading "Escaping to the Land of the Baffling Pull-Quote" »

Time to get back in the swing of things with an article regrettably cited by Kotaku and GameSetWatch entitled, “Does Portal’s Success Presage Game Industry Shift?” In this bizarre piece, a writer on the game industry admits he has no sales data, cites no budget information, then suddenly makes the claim that Portal's “profit margin is easily better than AAA hardcore titles that require tens of millions to develop...” Huh?

Continue reading "Making Claims With Absolutely Nothing to Back Them Up" »

“The videogame industry has literally never had a year like 2007.”

–Next Generation.

“In looking to the future, we inevitably look to the past as a guide.”

–GameDaily.

“Listen, writing is hard.”

–The Escapist.

I’ve witnessed a few conversations about the possible identity of Surfer Girl by a group of men. This is how they play out:

1. Surfer Girl probably isn’t actually a woman.

2. If Surfer Girl is a woman, she’s probably some kind of secretary or an assistant to a powerful and well-connected executive.

3. Yeah. Surfer Girl must be, like, this receptionist who sleeps around everywhere to get all her information... well, she may also get messages from tipsters from time to time.

The conversation usually diverts from there into some stories of promiscuous women that the people in the group have heard about.

The rapid advance of game technology and their ballooning budgets has resulted in some new trends that I think may become more familiar over the next few years.

Trilogies seem to be the new way to pitch big games.

The basic idea is that so much investment is required up front to create a new franchise that two more installments down the line (with lower production costs) are all but required to recoup the cost. This is sometimes referred to as a “Lord of the Rings” model, since that is supposedly how most of the profit on those films was made. Sequels tend to do well in games generally, and this development model ties in very nicely with marketing (“the story we wanted to tell was just too epic for one game”) and with Wall Street (“we aren’t just publishing games – we’re creating lasting entertainment franchises”). Additionally, if the first game tanks, the next two can always be cancelled. So, it seems like we can expect to see trilogies, whether the material really calls for one or not. Tying in with this is the next trend:

Continue reading "Some Underreported Game Development Trends" »

“I’m convinced that video games are Japan’s stealth strategy to turn our kids’ brains into silly putty as payback for dropping the big one on Hiroshima... The trouble began last summer when my sons started spending virtually every unsupervised hour camped out in front of the computer screen engaged in multiplayer role games like World of Warcraft and Counterstrike.”

– The Wall Street Journal (editorial).

“It hooks kids when their young.”

– Kotaku.