Video game canons and flesh colored band-aids

I was obviously asleep when the announcement was made that this stab at a video game canon was announced last year:

Mr. Lowood and the four members of his committee — the game designers Warren Spector and Steve Meretzky; Matteo Bittanti, an academic researcher; and Christopher Grant, a game journalist — announced their list of the 10 most important video games of all time:

Okay, I can pick at the list. Anybody can pick out a list. Did they screw up? Sure. Where's KABOOM!? (kidding on that one -- for now)

What concerns me is that these guys are, well, just that. All white guys. Sure, it's a pretty good crosssection of dark haired white guys. There's a short one. One that's not ashamed of his poor vision. Two -- no, on second glance, three -- major facial hair decisions. Still, as humans go, it's a pretty diversity challenged group on its face, har har.

What else unites the Superfriends of Ludological Canonization? That they all decided not to make their rationalizations for picking these ten easily Googleable [by me].

In any event, even if white guys too largely made the games and white guys too largely play/ed the games, is that really a good reason that white guys should pick the games? I imagine these guys would likely find my dimestore critique here uncontroverstial, but then why not branch out before announcing your list at the Game Developers' Conference and posing for the NY Freakin' Register of the US Times?

Insert smilie.

Labels: classic, culture, ethics, hype, marketing, peer pressure, pretension, retro

--ruffin at 11:46

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More Curmudgeonly Comments About Mac Game Journalism

I like Inside Mac Games a lot. That quick apology aside, ethically they're still giving me fits. I remain extremely concerned with the extreme integration between Inside Mac Games and macgamestore.com, and the site's large, advert/header banner continues to be "sponsored" by the store that shares an owner, no, IS owned by the "news" site. That IMG hocks the same stuff it purports to "review," a word which implies a degree of fairness and impartiality to me, isn't news to most IMG readers, I wouldn't believe. Still, it's unethical for a site doing gaming news and reviews to sell those same games.[1]

I wonder if some of this proverbial incestuous dilemma accounts for the recent disconnect between the content of IMG's RSS feed and the content of one of the features it advertises, IMG's editor's latest blog entry. You'd expect the RSS feed and the article to match up. I don't think they do.

From the feed:

IMG's founder Tuncer Deniz weighs in on today's surprise announcement made by Electronic Arts. Although he's estatic [sic] with the six titles announced, he questions whether EA will be happy. Will EA be in it for the long haul or is this just another "experiment". [sic]

(emphasis mine; comments about Bolivia nearly resisted)

From Tuncer's Blog:

A few weeks ago I learned of EA's intention to bring some of their game titles to the Mac and since then I've been wrestling with the consequences and impact of EA's 'renewed' commitment to the Mac.

(emphasis again mine)

If you've known about it for weeks, it's not a surprise. If you've known about it for weeks, where is our news? Dang it, folk, if you're simply pandering to sources, withholding information until they believe it's time for it to be made public, they're not your sources, you're their shills.

I believe we've had some discussion about NDAs and their effect on journalism -- um, killing it -- before.

Why didn't Tuncer tell us about the announcement weeks ago? If Inside Mac Games is that the best Mac game news outlets have to offer, which I believe it is, we've got another classic case of IMG's predilection for "journaltisement".

So just for fun, let's end with our standard mantra: Buy used books, get your games at Ambrosia, and when you're riding your bike at night, always, always wear white.

[1] At times, I've seen advertisements for games on this site. I don't see a dime of that ad revenue. I think Matt might fairly literally see a dime, but will let him deal with any ethics violations there himself after saying that I'm 99.44% confident he doesn't pick what runs, and I know (hope?!) he doesn't get a percentage of each sale from those stores.

Labels: apple, ethics, img, journaltisement

--ruffin at 17:25

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Things Changing, Staying Same, Re: Kotaku

So as the blog world found out last week, Sony tried to play hardball with Kotaku to keep them from posting a rumor (which in the process became all but substantiated) that they were working on a new PS3 system feature, the "Playstation Home," to combine X-box Live's popular obsessive-compulsive Achievements feature with the Wii's Charlie Brown-creator tool. The mixture will, in the end, allow people to create a virtual, anthropomorphic personification of their PS3, which will live in a little virtual house, and collect little virtual game-related trinkets that represent your game accomplishments. Perhaps a future update will let the little guy live in the virtual basement rent-free beneath his virtual mother's home.

But let's set the Playstation Home thing aside, although there is certainly a lot of comedy there to be mined. Instead, let's talk about the attitude that prompted Sony's little do-our-bidding letter to Kotaku. For assuredly, it is far from being a exclusive to them. The assumptions that lie beneath that odd missive get to the heart of why the game journalism world in general, let us not mince words here, sucks.

The big sites, the ones who get the big news first (leaving the dozens of second-tier sites to lap up their used news and reprint in the great echo chamber of the internet) usually get that news by making a Faustian bargain. The contract reads "Our PR guys will spoon-feed you news, on the condition that you present it the way we want, and when we want it." An organization that obeys that kind of edict doesn't sound, to me, like something that can be called a press. But what can a site do but play the game, or be banished to the abyss of the second-tier?

Kotaku could buck the trend because, really, people don't go there, or to Joystiq, or Insert Credit, or Penny Arcade, or (yo homies) GameSetWatch, or here, for breaking news. They go/come (t)here for commentary. That's what blogs are best at.

Of course Kotaku isn't innocent either. One of the things that Sony requested of them in their ball-collection note is their debug PS3, something that Kotaku could not have acquired without agreeing, on an unspoken level at least, to the deal. And THIS week, they did pull information gained at GDC off the site because it had actually been "embargoed," and Kotaku had received a letter from Microsoft saying, in essence, "Who's your daddy?"

Most of the top-tier game news sites, the Gamespots and the Gamespies and the Gamewhosits, do this, but of all those that have used the Red Pen to ink their names on the contract, IGN would seem to be the ones who hide it the worst.

IGN, the guys who set up a subscription plan so that one can pay for untainted access to the PR spigots of major game companies. A recent blog post from IGN Wii editor Matt Casamassina said:

Labels: ethics, ign, kotaku, media, sony

--JohnH at 01:39

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