Best Stuff on the Net: The Press, The Players, The Publishers and The Games

I always look forward to Giant Bomb's "Worth Reading" column posted by Patrick Klepek (or 'Scoops' if your feeling fancy), partly for showing me around parts of the net that I miss during the week, partly because his summarizing of articles saves me some time.  This week he's managed to link a really cool video that deals with a general history of the gaming press, and some of the problems that still continue today with games writing.  It's a long video, essentially a classroom lecture, but I highly recommended it to anybody who has aspirations of becoming a game's journalist.

The video itself has a lot of interesting points put forth that I couldn't help but think about:

-It's fascinating to think that the gaming press at large is partially responsible for holding back the medium itself as being taken seriously as art.  If writing were to reflect less on a product review and more on what experiences it invokes, how would gaming and the press look today?

-It's quite daunting to think about what a vicious cycle the modern day gaming press currently resides in: tens of thousands amateur writers (such as myself and this site for example) ready to replace the old guard from magazines and websites.  At the same time, this kind of enthusiasm has paved the way for many novel independent content creators all over the net.

-It may be a false dichotomy, but in my mind, fanboy-ish and narrow optimism such as Nintendo Power and cynical snark such as Seanbaby exist on a spectrum.  Each have their advantages and flaws.  While in the end I do believe that being informative trumps most other goals when it comes to journalism, where does the balance lie between the two?  Should journalist continue to be hopeful and optimistic of unreleased products or should we be critical of everything around us for the sake of humor or even improvement in the industry as a whole?

I find it an interesting issue even today with some games.  Take a look here at polygon's recent interview with Eidos Montreal for their new Thief game.  Apparently Chris Plante was originally scheduled to do the interview but was flat-out denied by Eidos due to a negative profile he compiled from an earlier look at the game.  Brian Crecente instead conducted the interview, albeit without the questions being changed.  To me this stands as an incredible example of the relation between game manufacturers as the press, being born much out of press that was perhaps to speculative and favorable in the past (and still continuing into today.  Colonial Marines anybody?)

Make sure to check out Giant Bomb's Worth Reading column every Friday