Oldschool Hard

OMFG EDITUR PC GAMING IZ DYING, CONSOLEZ ARE EVERYWHAR, HALP?!

I’ve been reading the first few issues of the new Australian version of Game Informer magazine, and so far I like most of what I see. Some of the content comes from the US parent magazine (I recognise the names of some of the writers), but content from both sides of the Pacific seems to fit together well, without any glaring mistakes that come to mind (*cough*Atomic buying content from Custom PC, pulling out reviews for items that aren’t sold here, but leaving reference to the pulled items in other items in the feature – again, I recognise the writers*cough* (Although to be fair, Atomic seems to run on the smell of an oily rag, I don’t think they have a dedicated sub/copy-ed, and if they’re looking for one, I’m available with a reasonable salary request, and I promise I won’t leave parentheses nested in other parentheses in the magazine…)). I can’t say exactly how much content comes from the US, because there’s only a certain number of magazines I can afford to pay import pricing for, and the US Game Informer is not on top of my priority list, not that I recall seeing it very often anyway, except maybe in Borders, which always feels vaguely wrong to shop in, no matter how wide the selection.

On the note of import pricing, I especially like what the Aussie Game Informer has done with their price and design. The newsstand price is aggressive, the subscription price very aggressive in a market that tends not to do very aggressive subscription pricing (lo, I see the US $10/yr Wired subscription offer, and I weep), and the covers are more like the uncluttered design of a typical ‘subscriber’s edition’, not like a typical newsstand cover with a million lines of clutter.

I love magazines. I love to read – I’m not against iPads, Kindles, Slates, JooJoos, or anything like that, but I love the smell of a magazine, the feel of it, the way I can slip one into a bag and if it gets a bit creased, it doesn’t matter. Neither is inherently superior, they’re both just different ways of getting to the same thing – the written word.

What do I read, gaming-wise? Every month: Retro Gamer and any specials they put out, Atomic.
Most of the time: PC Powerplay, US PC Gamer.
Sometimes, depending on if there’s a good feature: Hyper, Edge, Maximum PC.
Never: Any non-PC single format magazine.
Every month so far but we’ll see what happens: Game Informer.

Used to: EGM (dead), Nintendo Power (I grew up), Gamepro (grew up, Grandma stopped subscribing for me), Custom PC (most content I want to read is syndicated in Atomic anyway), Mean Machines (dead), C+VG (also dead, but probably another example of ‘I grew up’).

Outside of gaming I mostly read Wired, except when there’s one copy left and it’s all chewed up. I’m anal about my magazines, and if anyone’s going to dog-ear them, it’s going to be me. I read a lot of books. Occasionally I read car magazines like Motor, Top Gear and Performance BMW (yes, I own a BMW, no, it would not be described as ‘performance’, and being 21 years old and well used, would barely stretch to ‘luxury’ anymore, either), or music and guitar magazines (mostly if Neil Young is on the cover) like Guitar World and Rolling Stone, although the older I get, the less interesting I find rockstar behaviour. Sometimes I’ll read literary magazines if someone I know or have an interest in has a story in there, and very occasionally I’ll read a current affairs magazine, but as political discourse gets more and more hysterical…and I’m completely getting off point.

Ignoring my tangent on what a bunch of people tell you will be gone soon anyway (‘Print is dead, man…’), the point I wanted to get to, even though it will probably make up the minority of this post, is the content of some of the letters in games magazines, not exclusive to Game Informer at all, but brought to the forefront of my attention in there. Even though a magazine’s letters page is far more civil than the crap in most internet forums (I love you fanboys, don’t ever change), I see the same boring, circular arguments every month. Here is but a small selection:

- PC gaming is dying/not dying. PC gaming will never die as long as PCs exist. It will ebb and flow as to what is popular, and how good a value a gaming PC is as compared to what a console can offer at any given point. But as long as PCs exist to do your tax, look at pr0n, or whatever else, there will be games on them.

- Australia needs an R18+ rating for games. Yes, it does. We know that thanks to the way the law works, one guy is cockblocking it. Acting like children towards him just reinforces his ideas in his mind. Eventually the law will change. Be patient.

- Will PS3 outsell XBox 360? Probably, eventually. Does it matter? Play on what you prefer. They’re both above 30 million sales at the moment, which is hardly what I’d call a failure for either. If it’s a multi-format title, my preference is for 360, for the IMO better multiplayer setup, a controller I find more comfortable, and, yes, achievement points. Often 360 versions of games have played smoother/looked better, too, although these days as the developers get a handle on the PS3 it seems to be much of a muchness. It doesn’t really matter. I own both; it’s not the days of ‘Sega do what Nintendon’t’ anymore.

- How can I get into the games industry? Don’t. If you’re a coder, go make database software or something similarly prosaic. You’ll get paid more and work less hours. If you’re an artist or an animator, go work in/for Hollywood. The hours are similarly stupid but you get paid better. If you’re a writer, that alone is not enough to work on games, and if you want to write about games, there’s not many paid positions to do it. You’re better off working in PR or marketing somewhere, writing copy about breakfast cereal. You’ll hate yourself, but you’ll hate yourself in a BMW and a nice suit. Shit, go write for Harlequin if you really want to be a writer, you can churn those out and live very comfortably.

Very occasionally, people love their jobs. You are unlikely to be one of those people. By taking a job that doesn’t have much in common with your hobbies, it just makes your hobbies more enjoyable. In this blog I write about gaming’s problems, and I think a large number of them stem from game makers living in a bubble – working ridiculous hours to make ridiculous deadlines means that they don’t get to play many other games. I know if I was in that situation, the last thing I’d want to do to unwind in the little time I have is to play with what I’ve been working on all day. So, yeah, entering the games industry, don’t.

Anyway, so it goes on, every month, repeat ad nauseum. In the letters pages, the comments on webpages, forums…wasting time that could be spent doing something useful or at least fun, like actually gaming. Not to say talking about gaming can’t be fun, or interesting, or useful. But all this fades pretty quickly when the same points keep being revisited. Sometimes I think this is why gaming turds can be continually dropped – sure, there’ll be a little debate and some complaints about Shovelware 2: Electric Boogaloo for a while, but then the room goes quiet, and someone coughs, and then it’s back to a discussion about whether PC gaming is dying or not…

Image from The Stranger.

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“So I ask you, from this podium, where is film’s Planescape: Torment?”

For one more semester, I’m a full-time grad student. Being currently unemployed, largely by choice, less due to the workload than the belief that I will end up strangling a customer if I ever work another day of customer service in my life, I have a fair bit of spare time on my hands.

I channel that spare time into gaming, scratching my head while staring into space with a slack-jawed expression to come up with ideas for this blog, and I also read a lot of magazines, websites and books, including a few gaming magazines (Retro Gamer, Atomic, PC Powerplay, (US) PC Gamer) and a lot of gaming websites, which are pretty much encompassed by the links on the sidebar. When I did my undergrad studies, including writing a few essays on gaming-related topics (it was a Media Studies/Journalism degree), there wasn’t a great deal of available academic and ‘serious’ discussion about games to study, but in the last few years, a lot of serious-minded blogs, books, and websites have emerged, putting discussion of gaming into a different context.

Among practical consideration of how to make games, and how games are played and ‘used’, there’s often more theoretical and abstract discussion about what games mean and how they ‘work’. Common themes that tend to come up include: narrative in games, ‘are games art?’, and my personal favourite flavour-of-the-month discussion, ‘where is gaming’s Citizen Kane?’

Where is it? It’s nowhere. It doesn’t need to be anywhere. To digress slightly: living in Australia, I’m sorely aware of the ‘cultural cringe’, where ‘we’ as nation are ever-so-concerned with what visiting celebrities and dignitaries think about our country, and get enraptured when they talk about going to a wildlife sanctuary and petting a Koala or Kangaroo, or following the breathless coverage of what they bought when going out shopping. Celebrity worship pervades (western?) culture, but we have a special form of it where our validation as a country and culture seems to depend on what other people think.

In the same way, ‘gamers’, if they/we can even be referred to as one group, seem to feel a similar cultural cringe, a need for validation from people outside of gaming, and seem to think this can be achieved if there’s a ‘Citizen Kane‘ to hold up and proclaim ‘see, gaming is important! It does matter! It can be art!’ And to that I say, why can’t you enjoy it for what it is?

I’m all for drawing influences from other media to make games better, but only if they make games better under the standards of games themselves. Games don’t need to stand up to some arbitrary standard to please people who don’t like and/or understand games. If we’re so concerned about making gaming ‘matter’, then why don’t we look to some books and ‘arthouse’ movies: Gravity’s Rainbow (try to untangle this narrative using motion control!), Portnoy’s Complaint (with realistic liver-fucking action!), Requiem for a Dream (using the e-motion despair meter!), maybe Irreversible (yeah, I’m not even gonna touch that one).

Forget WW2 games, all about the glory of war and sacrifice and rah rah rah, how about really showing the despair of war, with some WW1 games based on well-known ‘franchises’, like some All Quiet on the Western Front? Spend hours in a fetid trench until you have to deal with some trenchfoot! MEDIC! Suck in some mustard gas and die painfully, not being able to draw breath properly, because you didn’t piss on a rag in time! Or better yet, charge over the top of a trench at the order of a hopeless commanding officer and be mown down en masse by a machine gunner for trying to move 10 ft further in! Or don’t charge from the trench and get artillery shelled! Fun for the whole family! No, no, don’t thank me. Just making the games would be enough. You think I’m being silly? They managed to mash the ideas from The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged into a game, didn’t they?

Of course, I’m being facetious. Only a small percentage of media ‘matters’, and its legitmacy is usually self-evident. Like any other medium, if the ‘reason’ for games has to be explained to someone, that person’s never gonna get it. Enjoy games for what they are, and stop looking for legitimacy from people who have no right to give it.

Image pulled from Alt Film Guide.

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