Sunday, September 29, 2013

Aspirational Video Game Journalists

As evident by the rampantly enthusiastic community of video gamers on various internet message boards, video game journalism is something the majority of those gamers are setting their sights on. Given the sheer amount of those who aspire to be video game critics, one eminent issue I forsee is the surplus of enthusiastic video game fanatics who are not necessarily well-read or otherwise articulate writers or thinkers in general. This is also a problem dealing with an unbalanced quality to quantity ratio. There is an innumerable lot of gamers who are certainly enthusiastic enough about games to make it his or her living, but the question is whether or not those dedicated gamers will ultimately contribute to the industry's creativity, originality, and overall reputability. You can search on YouTube for a gamer's "rant", and you will witness a potential candidate for America's Funniest Home Video. Gamers seem to think their intensity of enthusiasm counts for something. It doesn't mean a thing unless that same enthusiasm bleeds through the page, and is communicated in a creative manner.

Another common misconception gamers seem to hold is that in order to become a video game journalist, one must be more knowledgable in the realm of video games rather than literature.
Industry veteran, Shawn Elliot has on multiple occasions, gone out of his way to teach the public that video game journalists should read more than play video games. This is often a topic of contention as on message boards, as it's fair to expect a divided community who will unendingly debate the strengths and weaknesses of being more knowledgable in the realm of either literature or video games. Personally, I consider it vital for there to be a proportion of one's knowledge of games and literature, as the two familiarities can complement each other in terms of writing an accurate, interesting, and societally aware piece.

5.22.09

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