I don't think that New Games Journalism is such a bad idea, what I think, is that journalists are afraid to the new and innovative ways people are looking at and thinking about video games. They are afraid that if NGJ grows, that they will be left behind, but there are different types of readers for all the mediums that are written about.
Video game journalism, for the most part, has been written in the strict format that all other forms of journalism are written in. Journalism is about separating oneself from their writings, but NGJ is about personal experience on some level, which throws the rules of journalism, and most form of professional writing, out the window. It is hard to write about a video game that is exclusively multi-player, like World of Warcraft and games that focus on the multi-player functions that add to the story, without writing about one's personal experiences, whether they are being played with friends or with someone a hundred or more miles away.
I am not saying that everyone out there writing about their experiences or in the NGJ format is going to be worth reading, but obviously there are some people out there that will be able to take full advantage of NGJ. Personally, some games don't get enough hype from the media and there is a need for some one's personal experience of the game to get it selling. I don't know how many games I have bought just because my friends had great experiences with them, so why not write about it and put the game out there for further review?
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The responses to each others post are typically the same inane jargon..I agree..blah blah blah, I think I might just start typing blah's. But I seriously do agree. NGJ doesn't threaten me nor is it worth getting all up in arms over.
ReplyDeleteI agree that learning about a game from personal expereince can really be the best way to decide if the game is a good fit for you. In writing like this I think it's important to, as you put it, "throw the typical rules out the window". This is a different kind of writing and it needs different rules. Writing from your personal experience gives us more depth about the positives and negatives about the games.
ReplyDeleteI think you bring up a good point overall. The fact that some people are afraid of getting pushed aside because of NGJ is like laughable. Did radio die out when television was invented? Obviously the answer is no. Both NGJ and regular journalism have their place in the world of games, and there is no reason why they can't both exist and prosper.
ReplyDeleteConsidering this increse in New Games Journalism and focus on the experience, should we let civilian journalism, the movement in current journalism where regular people report the news simply because they can through the internet and phone cameras and other new technologies, run its course? Getting experience accounts from average people, and a collection of them at that, might be a good way to facilitate NGJ.
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