In this first part of what shall I hope become a long-running series of letters to editors, I’ve written to ‘The Editor’ of gamedaily.com, an impoverished videogame site, about an article published yesterday which (after three previous pieces) really set them up for a taste of their own medicine.

To: editor@gamedaily.com
Subject: Chris Buffa’s ‘How to Become a Better Videogame Journalist’
Date: 29 July 2006 11:20 GMT

Dear Ed,

It seems that Chris has forgotten the main rule of any soon to be ignored ruleset and that’s never to follow any ‘how to be a good X’ guide, especially when considering journalism. You don’t read about how to write, you write.

That said, I think the best tip he could have offered to misty-eyed future journalists would have been to pointedly avoid reading any of the review material on gamedaily.com. Let’s take Mr Steven Wong’s ‘Night Watch’ review as a first example. The opening paragraph is wanky, meandering, pretentious and grammatically  challenged. The next paragraph: “the underlying premise is..” launches into the predictable cliche of summarising the entire game plot in one block. How is it the ‘underlying premise’? It’s not underlying in the least. And so on.

The rest of the article is dull as dishwater and you surely appreciate me not analysing each sentence for errors, god knows you probably had a hard enough time passing it through (you edit these things, right?). It never steps outside what is expected for a short review about a crappy game no one is going to bother playing: there’s no personality and it’s a list of features with basic criticisms. To learn how to write entertaining and informative short reviews, Mr Wong should refer to PC Gamer UK’s John Walker who wrote the ‘They’re Back’ short review section in the magazine for years.

Let’s pick another review at random: Zoo Tycoon 2: African Adventure. Oh, okay, it’s Mr Wong upto his old tricks again. I stopped reading after the first paragraph. STOP. STARTING. NEW. SENTENCES. WITH. NO. CONTENT.

Prey review by Robert Workman. A very workman like review. Yeah, don’t thank me. We’ll ignore the fact he gives the game 4/5 when it barely deserves 1. What on earth is this:

“The gameplay feels just fine, with your typical first-person shooting controls reacting very well, and some puzzle-solving coming into play so you can push ahead or find some extra ammunition and health packs. These usually come in the form of disgusting alien eggs that you can roll along, and then blow up to clear the slime off a door or open up a pipe to a lower level. The action never really gets over the top (even with the promise of an enlarged foe), but it’s sufficient for a game of this nature, and, let’s face it, it’s fun to lay out enemies and even sacrifice a few disturbed humans in the process.”

The gameplay FEELS JUST FINE. The controls REACT VERY WELL. Some puzzle-solving COMES INTO PLAY. The action NEVER REALLY GETS OVER THE TOP. This doesn’t tell anyone any single thing about the damn game, however, and it seems like Mr Workman is pushing on for his 1,000 word limit so he can cash in his paycheck. What a load of bollocks.

Cloning Clyde review: “The end result is a game that probably won’t be one of the most memorable platformers for the system, but is a good time all the same and worth a few hours of play.” Robert Workman what would the world do without your mind-numbingly pointless verbiage?

I’m going to avoid picking out any more examples. I’ve actually never read GameDaily before but since one of your writers (I don’t know, maybe you’re Chris Buffa) is ‘ragging on’ the rest of the journalistic community and you’re getting picked up by Google News, you’d think that GameDaily would be coming up with some pretty hot reviews to afford to level out such high-horse criticism. Frankly I’d be ashamed to have published any of it.

I also read ‘Why VG Journalism sucks’ (how edgy is that title?!) and ‘How to Fix Videogame Journalism’. These are laughable. Mr Buffa can’t even write a good article himself and yet somehow he apoints himself worthy enough to criticise what he perceives others are doing wrong!

“What many of us need to do is brush up on the basics. Grammar and punctuation need to be studied, and after we’re able to craft good (even great) sentences, then we can explore how to string them together to produce articles that have an even flow.”

Thanks for stating the bleeding obvious, Mr Buffa, even if you clearly don’t have any concept of what good (or even great!) grammar or sentences might look like (in fact does anyone understand what he might possibly mean by good or great grammar?). I’m beginning to wonder whether Mr Buffa had this shopping list of good reviewer skills scrawled out somewhere with a mind to actually embodying some of them in his later work, and yet through some brilliant happenstance it was written up and published on your site. “What many of us need to do is brush up on the basics.” No, what Buffa needs to do is stop patronising people and start including himself in the problem. “Grammar and punctuation need to be studied”. Sure, grammar and punctuation (more accurately known as syntax) need to be studied by kids in elementary school. Writers write for a living, they don’t need to study anything. Buffa again fails to notice the shocking irony in the sentence where he himself cannot string an interesting or informative prose together and yet criticises others. “we can explore how to string them together to produce articles that have an even flow”. Oh, now it’s ‘we’ is it? At least he’s now being honest with himself, although nobody on this everloving earth knows what ‘even flow’ could ever be understood as).

Are you getting bored of hearing your writers criticised yet? Well, I’ll start on you, assuming that you’re not any of the people I’ve already mentioned. Frankly, as I have said, if you publish articles slinging dirt (however inaccurately they might be constructed) then you have to be prepared to both receive some back and to look a little closer to home and give your site a health check. GameDaily has no redeemable features whatsoever. The writing is often incomprehensible, always information-less and about as exciting to read as love letters scribbled up the sides of school toilets, some of which probably possess a better grasp of the English language anyway. Buffa cannot write articles, as much as they miss the point, from this standpoint.

So shape up.

–

Rob

I actually got so bored thinking of synonyms for ‘worthless’ that I forgot to launch into an attack on the editor himself, whoever he is.