The CON/text
Plague Dogs, Paper Gods, and Game Blogs for Dialogue
By Jamie Love - July 15th, 2008
Growing up with the intention of writing blighted me with a severe tunnel vision for many years.
Even while struggling against the traditional path, I subscribed to some part of it. The idea of furthering education, of developing a sense of voice and style, and of cultivating a self loathing to the question of what it was I planned to do with my life, all of this seemed necessary if I was going to create a great work of fiction.
Today’s minor dose of “Know Your Jamie” is where I detail that intention: I desired only to write fiction if there was a way to augment style and narrative to create a work that felt new, or at the very least presented new challenges. Which is a fancy way of saying, I certainly did not want to write the same story someone else wrote but with new character names.
And that’s a very hard thing to do. My best advice to the aspiring writer is to try to lean heavily on the slipstream. But since I’m not on the best-sellers list, feel free to ignore my advice altogether.
While drifting through my twenties, it became easier to consider changing the focus of my writing. I’d become increasingly cynical of writing fiction, convinced that the possibilities of innovating that industry weren’t likely to penetrate the people participating within it. Any idea of online writing seemed trapped in prehistoric presentations of black text on white space stories that could easily be confused with another. Worse yet, it seemed that the same people producing work were largely the only ones reading it, creating little more than the circle jerk of “look what I did here” writing that people often associate with that crowd to begin with. Needless to say I wasn’t fond of that scene.
Moving into a form of “games journalism” became the new natural choice. It was evident that the game medium represented a nexus, a convergence where all other mediums were becoming something greater than the sum of their individual comprehension. And there is also a sizeable void in the attempt to explore and understand the cultural impact of the game industry, making it the most challenging field for any writer or free-thinking person today. Furthermore, no institutions are greatly concerned with such comprehension. And it doesn’t help that there’s no great monetary reward for giving games a cultural context despite there being an appetite for it within the gaming community.
Perhaps this has kept “games journalism” a prisoner of old world operations. A text and image collage of titles both in development and newly released. Magazines and websites function as a marketing tool, whether intentionally or not, offering little more than a consumer’s guide to gaming. A vapid expanse of space that needs words to fill it, and on occasion provides some forum space for the community to express opinions that have little impact on its operations or direction. And if there is a large scale lack of respect, and a reality wherein only a small percentage of gamers consume this brand of journalism, it certainly stems from that reality where the goal is to feed consumption via rating systems, bland comparisons to previous titles, and lacklustre reporting. Whether this beast hates or loves a title, or by whatever moral code it claims to represent a certain gamer, it ultimately serves no purpose beyond informing a purchasing decision.
But it isn’t as if the gaming industry makes it easy for journalism to evolve. The nature of the system allots all power to the companies designing the products. These companies determine the flow of information, deeming what is knowable to the press, and thereby the gamer as seen fit by a decision making process most know little about.
There’s a great deal of secrecy in the name of market competition, and a solid sense of old world control in determining who receives information and who does not. And yet is this any different from the journalism of the “real world?”
Do Governments and corporations act any differently toward society? But as such, is it not the journalist’s role to ask difficult questions and press for and uncover information despite the consequences? Furthermore is it not imperative for the journalist to connect with the reader by challenging them on multiple levels? And Is “game journalism” as it exists today any less conflicted and constricted by the same system of control that news media is entangled by?
This is usually when the academic world would step in to assume the task of bringing serious dialogue to the medium. But insofar as gaming is concerned this really hasn’t happened yet. On occasion, I’ve been less than optimistic on the role educators might play as a systematic instrument. But it is only because I do not believe that gaming will ever be a field that can be placed within those institutions. At present there simply is no course for approaching the comprehension of this medium behind those walls. But in the void between the time that gaming gains the respect and ground necessary to be discussed in a greater capacity at such institutions, there is already an effort to do the work that traditionalists have ignored.
When first encountering the anomaly of serious game blogs, it would be easy to perceive another exercise in self-indulgent writing. Certainly there exists a circle in which many people are producing work, and also serving as the primary readers of one another’s work. But where there could exist an environment similar to my past experiences, there is something entirely different occurring.
What one discovers instead is that you can stumble across an article by Michael Abbott (The Brainy Gamer), where he uses the idea of keeping a scorecard at a baseball game to pierce a level of understanding about the intimacy of gaming. It immediately strikes as both a strange and brilliant approach, perhaps as different from previous work as the next one may prove, because there is no guide to the work taking place at this site. There is absolutely no roadmap or user manual where the objective is conceptualizing the complexity of gaming, leaving a writer of such pieces at the forefront of a new expanse that is both boundless and free of restriction, aided only by the workings of the world s/he possessed up until they begin to script their approach. And the work doesn’t stop when the piece is finished, proofed, and posted. Reactions come through from the readership, and instead of the “look what he did there” stagnation that could occur, this sets into motion the creation of a follow up piece by Chris Lepine (The Artful Gamer) that doesn’t close the created circuit, but expands upon the unique approach Abbott has brought forth so that we might understand gaming through a new perspective. While this scenario may not take place 100% of the time, the existence of the opportunity confirms the faith in my decision to pursue this new journalism where ever it might lead.
And though most fields value a ratio of success to failure, this new approach feeds from the attempt to fill the void that has evolved with the gaming industry. On any given day you can find a game-writer like Keira Peney or a game-journalist like Leigh Alexander, contributing to this endeavour with no economic incentive, participating in a complex dialogue that grows as new readers are engaged by that effort to bring comprehension to the medium. Done in what could be deemed an inhospitable wasteland of fandom and reactionism that has become the toxic by-product of the industry.
The result is an open, freeform discussion, one that any individual willing to accept the challenge of can participate in without the restrictions of past mediums often ruled by centres of authoritative control. The dialogue being created will be the basis for future comprehension, even for where the industry moves, evolving as more of the gaming community realize the unique advantages of this open system. Where anyone who feels inspired, challenged, or compelled by those already at work in this new territory can enter the debate. Where both the challenge and reward stem from the absence of boundaries and individuals are free to bring their backgrounds and experiences to an equal share of the discussion.
