I didn't set out to be a journalist. You could say that I was drafted, and
that would as true as it is clever. The important truth is that I didn't
have much better to do.
Maybe that's not such a bad thing. You know what they say; those who desire
power are the last who should be allowed the luxury.
Now it seems that some influence over mass opinion has been thrown into my
respective lap. My job is to figure out what the heck to do with it.
Although this power has its fun elements, it becomes daunting when I think
too deeply.
The fact is that people, as a whole, tend to believe whatever they're asked
to believe. They like what they're told to like; think what they're meant
to think. They rarely complain because they either don't know, don't care,
or are scared to admit just how little of their lives is their own.
This is not to say that people, individually, are not intelligent. They
are, for the most part. I don't know that I've met many who are truly
apathetic, either. It's just that we're all abused.
We're all hurt children. We don't know who to believe, so we grasp for the
most comforting, available parents we've got. We are raised not to believe
in our own judgement, and to defer to Nabisco. To Tom Brokaw. To the
Government. To Science. To God. To the experts.
Life is above us. We don't know any better.
Well, sure we do. We just don't have the confidence, or we tell ourselves
that we don't have the time. Or, due to the Clearchannelization of our
culture, we just aren't lucky enough to have exposure to any alternative views.
What's getting more than a little scary is that in a broad sense, our news
media have become a narrow, manipulative entertainment machine. Subjects
and the public are exploited alike, in the race for speed, ratings, and
corporate favor.
We're not challenged to think. In fact, that's the last thing any
politician or marketing executive worth his salary wants from us.
Put into that framework, considering the decline of the important media,
there's not much different about game journalism. It's just that the
problems are all the more obvious in our corner of the world.
We're more inept. We've even lower standards. The propoganda and dogma is
more opaque. And so on.
The real problem is that as we are now, we're not very important. If
today's news is entertainment, then we provide a dubious sort of
meta-entertainment, important only to the obsessive. And he really needs to
get a life.
And that's really the key point: the day game journalism comes into its own
is the day that it becomes relevant to people's lives.
It's not as tricky as it might sound -- all we have to do is stop for a
moment and look at what the heck we're doing.
Videogames are a form of human expression. You can call it art, if you
like. You can deny that and call it entertainment. "Art" is merely what
happens when the listener starts to apply that entertainment to his own life.
That is to say: if videogames don't say anything to you, that's your own
fault for not listening. It's the same as with anything in life.
What amazes me is that, as things are now, so few do seem to be
listening. It's a feeding frenzy, both amongst the consumers and the media
who might otherwise be a guide. We demand and we superficially memorize and
cover, yet we're not willing to put the effort in and meet the games or the
people behind them halfway.
When we review, we review games as product. As a channel for discussion,
we've become a weird mix of free PR and advertising, and the latest issue
of consumer reports. Videogames are objects. The people behind them are
their manufacturers, both in a literal and a figurative sense.
Our major challenge is to make the leap from understanding videogames as
things to viewing them as ideas.
Once we've done that, we're on the way to gaining our own voice. There's
only so much importance you can put behind a thing -- but an idea? Those
have possibility.
The journalist's job is to observe, and to describe what he sees for those
who aren't in his position. To enlighten them as he makes some kind of
sense out of the world.
Journalism is meant to inspire free thought. We all search for Truth, in
one way or another. We read what others have to say, to provide a framework
for and to help seed the idea bed of our own lives. Journalism exists to
give us the information and context we need to make decisions for
ourselves, about our lives. In the case of arts coverage -- and indeed
that's more or less what we become once we start to discuss ideas --
factual truth gives way to conceptual truth.
I've a question to ask. When you read a review by, say, the Chicago Sun Times' own Roger Ebert, what do you see? I
have had interactions with some people who have shown contempt for his
reviewing style. It is informative, true, but then he goes on to analyse
the film in question. He runs it through the filter of his personal
experience -- both his thirty-some years of reviewing and his own life and
observations. Through all of this, he makes an assessment about the nature
of the film -- about what it has to say, how well it's been said, and
whether it strikes him as an interesting message.
It seems this pisses some people off. It might or might not say something
to me that the people I've seen who have been so off-pissed have been to
some extent involved with gaming media. Online gaming media, at that. These
people are so entagled within the mire of "just the facts",
consumer-oriented style of coverage that all of the meaning goes whizzing
past on its bicycle of context.
As such.
If you look again, you will notice that there is much to learn from even a
single review of Ebert's. Even if one doesn't agree with his assessment in
any given instance, one can clearly see how he gets where he goes. Subtly,
with every movie he analyses, he walks the reader through the process of
how to look at, how to think about, movies. About how to look for meaning.
In so doing, one builds up the muscles to make similar observations about
anything in life. One slowly becomes a more astute, critical, sensitive
observer.
This is a vitally important set of skills for anyone, in nearly any
profession, in any stage of life. One gains a better understanding not only
of art, but of politics, business, love, eroticism, ethics, and of one's
own inner workings.
I mentioned that people tend to believe whatever they're told to believe.
It would be more accurate to say that they use the tools they've been
given. The idea behind art is to allow people more flexibility in their
thought. It's to give a few more hints at how to find Truth within one's world.
The study of art is the study of life. It's really as simple as that. Those
equipped to hear the words of artists, through their art, are equipped to
live fuller, richer lives and to further inspire those around them.
People are intelligent. People care. They've just been abused, and
neglected by the media bombardment of our post-modern world. It's time to
give them the attention they deserve.
This is how videogame journalism can become relevant. All we need to do is
act as a filter for the games in question. Ask questions. Try to find what
they mean to us, and learn how to distinguish why.
The goal for game journalism should be to point readers toward the truths
that matter in life. To show how one can gain legitimate meaning from a
medium such as this. To increase literacy, as it were. To help to spread
appreciation, the sense of recognition, of trust for one's own innate -- if
often neglected -- instinct for truth.
For those of you who scoff, and tell me "they're just games" -- well, fuck you.
When have I ever been talking about videogames?
Eric-Jon Rössel Waugh
means well. Really.
[Next: Chapter 3: Warning Signs That You Are A Bad Video Game Journalist
]
| 
