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Explore the intriguing realm of video games through a unique lens. Delve into the under-rated wonders, challenges, and excitement of gaming culture, while pondering your role in the gaming community. Discover why covering games matters and how to approach game journalism innovatively.
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Gamers Kan Read The weird, wonderful, exciting and quite under-rated world of videogames
Why you are here • Don’t cover games and wonder if you should • Don’t cover games and wonder how to do it • Do cover games and wonder if you are doing it well • Do cover games and wonder if I am an ass
What’s Up? • The Problem • The Numbers • The Content • A Solution
Size of the Industry Movies Books Games Music Comics $ in Millions
Size of the Industry Lawns Speakers Iceland Games Mongolia $ in Millions
Demographics 30 Average age: 43 Percentage of women gamers: Percentage of regular gamers who read books and daily newspapers on a regular basis 93 Percentage of Americans who have purchased, or plan to purchase a game in 2005 47
Regulation or Censorship? "This is a silent epidemic of media desensitization that teaches kids it's okay to dis people because they are a woman, they're a different color or they're from a different place.”
A Solution Game Journalism as Arts Criticism
My framework • What is it? • Why do I like it? • What does it mean?
What is it? • Free roaming • Gritty urban crime story • Steal any car • Find lots of weapons
Why do I Iike it? • It’s not like other games I’ve played • You can match your play style and mood to the game • This game understands being bad is fun and I never get to be all that bad
What does it mean? • What does it mean to live in a world that has a game like this? • In a world dominated by conservative “do the right thing” rhetoric, is being bad a healthy transgressive practice? • Is this what we look like to the rest of the world?
So, how do you cover games? • Just like everything else • But you need to consider the medium, and open it up for writing about games, not just people who play games.
Contact • David Thomas • David@buzzcut.com • http://www.buzzcut.com • http://www.igja.org