Bad video game writing

[yendi]

A while back, scalzi wrote about why there are no good video game critics.

Had someone in the comments thread not already beaten me to it, I'd have suggested The Escapist as at one frequent source of good writing (if not criticism, per se) on video games.

After today, I might have to change my mind. From their lead article:

Romero.

Perhaps it's something about the name itself that brings to mind great things. Some combination of etymological triggers, perhaps; a heady mental mixture that's part romance, part Camaro - sex in a Z28.

Good. Fucking. God.

This is the sort of bad writing that wins Bulwer-Lytton awards. Wow.

(And that's not even taking into account the fact that the only reason Romero's surname resonated at first was because it's the same as the director of a bunch of modern zombie classics.)

The interview itself is worse -- Romero doesn't say anything that he hasn't said before, but he's turned his asshole chip down a notch, at least. But that might be because the writer/interviewer doesn't ask a single bloody question about the Romero topics that are actually, you know, interesting, like Daikatana or the feud with Id. Worse, when Romero offers a perfectly good and intriguing quote ("I fought hard to keep two of the co-founders from trying to shut down the Austin studio every few months - that's just a taste of the pure insanity that prevailed in the Dallas office."), did the interviewer ask a follow-up question targeting that, or stick to his pre-prepped questions? Bet you can guess without clicking over.

I'm frustrated, of course, because this is The Escapist, not 1up.com, and I have higher expectations there.

Fortunately, there's a good (if short) article on Infocom in this week's edition. Mind you, it begs for some follow-up itself (there's no mention of the Infocom-branded graphic adventures, the schism over what they mean in relation to the original games, or the text-adventure community that's sprung up in the last ten-fifteen years as an attempt to recreate and surpass the original Infocom experience*), but at least it's well-written and addresses a few issues I was curious about (Cornerstone, the Activision buyout, etc).

Even more fortunately, there's a damned good insider's story on the how a game company can fail.

I'll just go ahead and pretend that the Romero interview never happened (same thing I do with pretty much all of his post-Doom games, anyway).

*Although, to be fair, they ran a story on the latter already

Comments

[texmorgan.livejournal.com]

I could talk about this for hours. There was an excellent article in Gamasutra about how to properly review/critique a game. I wrote a few of them. Oh and really the video game industry is more like playing roulette, just look at what happened to Aklaim.

[yendi]

Well, Acclaim did some stupid things on their own, too (the financial shenanigans, the XXX stuff, etc).

Gamasutra is another site that usually gets it. Then again, so is the Escapist, normally.

[chris-walsh.livejournal.com]

"Acclaim" and "XXX"? Do tell! (I'm assuming this has nothing to do with Vin Diesel...)

[yendi]

BMX XXX

[montykins.livejournal.com]

Ah, Cornerstone. Although a couple of good games did happen after the Activision buyout (and I actually like Beyond Zork, which was one of the graphical games), I still think of Cornerstone as the canonical "going outside your company's strengths to disastrous effect" example.

And they were so excited about it! The Status Line had big articles about the New Direction Infocom was taking, and then . . . nothing. So sad.

[yendi]

I liked Beyond Zork too -- it used graphics without making them interfere with the game itself (in fact, the mapping alone was a touch that I wouldn't have objected to in other games).

Ah, The Status Line. I think the real beginning of the end was the legally-mandated name change away from The New Zork Times.