New Games Journalism

Strangely enough I had read a couple of those reviews on one of the websites before without realising they were a radical new style of journalism. Whilst the fanboyish, over-personal reviews on websites such as gamefaqs annoys me, clinical and completely objective review styles are perhaps not entirely relevant to games articles.

When I play a game - especially an online multiplayer game - I will have a completely different experience playing the game to someone else. You do become personally involved in a game, despite how silly or meaningless it may seem as explored by some of the article. If someone slags you off on battle.net, you do get annoyed. And although the ignorance and sexism of random 15 year olds across the globe shouldn't bother you, after many hours of gaming it begins to grate. So therefore if I were reviewing a game and certain issues or experiences arose which were either unique to me or unique to the game, it would make sense to include them in a review, to show the various possibilities of the game.

Damn I just got carried away and ended up reading a ton of Penny Arcade comics. Which is of course very relevant. Webcomic artists often have comments within or after their comics about companies, reviewers and games themselves. High profile comics like Penny Arcade can often be very influential and powerful about showing the views of gamers themselves.

Perhaps the current system of reviewing and having various scores out of ten for games is demeaning. Ranking games on graphics, sound, controls, replayability or multiplayer options seems to punish games for not relying on technical aspects. Video games should strive further to be more of an artistic medium, and therefore be reviewed in a more artisitic manner rather than being broken down into chunks. If I read a review of an art exhibition, the artist is not punished for choosing not to include sound in their exhibition, as sound may not be relevant to what they are trying to convey.

Videogames should be reviewed as a personal experience relating to what the videogame is trying to achieve and also what the reviewer views as important. Whilst not in the style of new games journalism, www.womengamers.com manages to incorporate issues important to the reviewers into their articles without seeming to push an agenda. After the review is concluded will be a section entitled 'Making efforts towards women' and the reviewer will discuss how the game fares on this particular issue.