The Lost Zen of Games Writing

[This special guest article comes courtesy of freelance games writer Alex Jones.]

Nobody can write competently about videogames. Not a single person. Everybody who tries is a pre-pubescent moron who spends their spare time taking cheques from publishers, pissing over the English language and pushing crayons up their nose. You can’t trust them. They are wicked and evil and you should be angry at them.

At least, this is what we are constantly told by influential games writers themselves. There is a myriad of writing available on what is wrong with the way people working on blogs and sites represent the medium and its culture, going back to Alan Dang’s opinion piece on the subject published on FiringSquad in January 2006.

Going back even further is documentation on how flawed the industry and its output is, early examples of which include a piece by Greg Costikyan in the December 1999 issue of Game Developer magazine. Even twelve years later his complaints about the industry, saying it “looks dull and played out and repetitive”, resonate at the same pitch as many modern editorials: publishers are terrible people, videogames are awful, and the industry is a crumbling artistic void. Every month brings a new clarion call for the end times of the medium, and in its wake a thousand diatribes follow.

This is what is wrong with games writing: the constant, unrelenting cynicism.

It seems that writers nowadays tend to spend more time and energy giving their thoughts and opinions on the negative aspects of the industry. It makes business sense, in theory; the more controversial an article is, the more the link will be shared around because everybody will want to see what the fuss is all about. Take a look at the most popular opinion pieces of the month on N4G, the most popular gaming stories of the past 30 days on Digg and the most recent opinion pieces on Kotaku and Destructoid. Not only are pieces on the faults of videogames and the industry more numerous than those standing up for them, but they also generate far more discussion in the majority of cases. This popularity helps confirm in the minds of editors and managers that controversial output is more worth publishing than any comparatively positive writing.

There are also plenty of examples of writers attacking the standards and practices of their contemporaries. It’s not exactly difficult to find the menagerie of manifestos and soapboxes that have been published over the years decrying the current state of games journalism.

We have become so involved in the quest to name and shame bad writing that we often overlook good material when it comes along. One way in which this has manifested itself can be shown by a quick comparison of Games Journalists Are Incompetent Fuckwits and Good Games Journalism, two blogs that let readers submit examples of bad and good games journalism respectively for exhibition and comment. GJAIF gets submissions every day, whereas GGJ hasn’t had one in three weeks. Does this mean that there hasn’t been any decent writing about videogames in that timeframe? Of course not. What it indicates is that we have created a culture of cynicism wherein exploiting the bad and ignoring the good is normal business practice.

In a day and age when gamers and writers are beginning to care more and more about the perceptions of videogame culture held by those outside it, it seems odd that most of our editorial output should be so damning of ourselves. It is this constant negativity that threatens to both alienate our medium from the wider cultural world and to stem the flow of future talent. Who would want to work in our industry, either as a developer or a writer, when we spend most of our time pathetically squabbling over what everybody else has done wrong?

Videogames writing has lost its sense of perspective, and we need to claim it back.

As things stand, negative coverage of the industry outweighs praise of it. This serves only to neglect the honest work done by good developers and publishers in favour of various witch hunts and campaigns against bad ones. To redress the balance, we need to shine the spotlight on those who do great things for videogames as an industry and medium. Games writers need to remember why they wanted to do what they do now. By taking a step back and recalling what made them such avid gamers, writers can find their lost passion for videogames and channel that into editorial output that engages the reader and enlightens them to all the good that still exists in the industry. If a writer’s rage inspires fury within the community, then surely their love for the medium can be equally as infectious?

Of course, there are things that are wrong with the industry and the games journalism establishment that must be discussed. Publishers should not get away with bullying developers and lying to customers without outcry, and blogs should not be able to twist facts and compromise editorial values without scrutiny. However, this should never take precedence over the hard work and effort of those who have been making creative, artistic and technical strides behind studio doors for our benefit. To sustain our own passion for videogames, we must uphold those whose passion manifests itself in fantastic games. If we don’t, we could potentially damage our image, our craft and the way gamers themselves perceive the industry.

At the end of the day, writers need to ask themselves an important question: Is writing all this material on what’s wrong with the industry and its reportage fun? Probably not, and if it is – if you like complaining – then there’s something wrong with you. Writing and reading about videogames should be enjoyable. It should allow people to share knowledge and enthusiasm. By placing as much emphasis on what we’re doing right as what we’re doing wrong, we can reclaim our lost sense of perspective; our Zen, if you will.