Taking a Risk
Taking a Risk: The quiet end of re/Action, the digital video games zine that had the unusual idea of reasonable pay for its writers.
Working on Part 2 of The Access Paradox post… some links to consider.
After finishing a post in immediate reaction to the ever increasing display of journalism-ethics messiness within games journalism, I knew a follow up would be required.
Some of the stories to consider for the next one:
Is there no such thing as ga…
Indie Devs vs New Games Journalism [Feedback Loop]
The last year has seen the rise of the independent developer as hero. Does this growing consideration of the developer challenge an eight-year-running trend in game journalism?
The explosion of commercially accessible independent games on platforms like Steam or XBLA have introduced us to a new successful and far more accessible generation of game developers. These new indie game dev stars have induced a change in the approach of some game reviewers. A change brought to the forefront in Walter Garrett Mitchell’s piece on The Escapist, “Alfred Hitchcock Would Make Good Games.”
Mitchell’s focus on the developer is entirely unlike the experience-focused New Games Journalism style proposed in 2004 by Kieron Gillen. That experiential style has more recently been popularized by Zero Punctuation, the rest of The Escapist, @Play, and a variety of other reviews that approached games based on how they played, instead of how people created them.
