Double Agent
Razing the fourth estate - January 10, 2001 - Ed McGlothlin

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this column are those of the participants and the moderator, and do not necessarily reflect those of the GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive material afoot. Third day of class, still not registered! Boo-yah! Don't say we didn't warn you.

I was quite pleased with the thoughtful and constructive nature of the letters I got about gaming journalism, especially considering that this is my last guest hosting day, as Chris is now fighting the third form of the flu (the one with the angel wings) and should return by tomorrow.

I was even more pleased that my free Vivi from PlayOnline.com arrived! Vivi is easily one of my favorite characters in RPG history, and takes his place proudly among my other character-based swag, minus my missing Psyduck. Oh well. Time for one gigantic column!

More obviously enlightened people
Gaming journalism is an interesting thing. It is interesting how it has changed in such a sort time, especially on the internet. I remember when I started to get into reading video game news on the internet about three or four years ago. GameSpot (or at least VideoGames.com) was the king of the hill in major video game news, mostly because of it's association with EGM, and IGN was just forming itself into a real site from being an affiliate network. As for the independents, well most of them sucked ass. Well that hasn't changed. There were only a few good independents RPGamer probably being the best of them. Back then the newsgroups were still a pretty viable source of news but signs of decay were evident.

So what has changed? Well both Videogames.com and RPGamer have stayed pretty much the same. Infact other than "changing" their layout (infact all they really did was make the old layout harder to navigate and take longer to load), and adding a weekly question for the editors (which they always seem to try to weasel out of or "misunderstand").

The GIA showed the world that independent sites don't need to be amateur. A quote from Thor comes to mind (which I would quote but his site is down) about how the GIA was quoted in the Grandia 2 ad and that no one would ever dream of quoting RPGamer. Also IGN has clearly surpassed most other gaming sites, at least in my eyes, through good interface and mostly intelligent and thoughtful commentary. They still have problems though as they were founded as an alliance of sites and that still shines through. The DC section and to a slightly lesser extent the Nintendo and Sony sections are quite biased towards the systems that they write about. So to sum up what has changed in internet journalism? Professionalism. The old guard feels like a bunch of opinionated kids and the new wave is more like professional journalists.

What has changed in the land of print journalism? Well not all that much. There are some mags that are good, there are some that are bad. In general while content hasn't changed that much overall layout has. For example if you look at an issue of EGM now, it is much different that a few years ago. It now looks like a magazine for grown ups. Also newer mags have followed this trend such as Next Gen.

So where is gaming journalism going? Towards professionalism, and mainstream appeal. There are less sites being made for kids and more for adults. Just as the gaming industry itself is diversifying and becoming more mainstream so is the journalism that follows it.

Sweet Zombie Jesus that was long. Probably won't get printed now. Oh well.

BeerGoggles_FromMARS
Daniel Kaszor
Who still subscribed to Nintendo Pravda till 1998

The fact your name is "BeerGoggles_FromMARS" made up for the extra length in your letter, and you hit the general nail right on the head: independent does not need to equal amateur. You can quit reading the column now if you expect me to shy away from saying that the GIA is the most professional video game site out there. Sometimes people take the whole "intelligent" moniker as being egotistical, but we take this stuff seriously - and that perception is a price we're easily willing to pay.

In terms of layout, I wholeheartedly agree that those like GameSpot's try to compensate for the inability to design a decent navigation system by trying to link to everything from the front page. The funny thing is that GameSpot's navigation system isn't half-bad; it's just surrounded by crap nobody has any use for.

Certain companies and media outlets have noticed that we try really, really hard to treat gaming like it deserves to be treated instead of a joke or a throwaway hobby that doesn't even merit somebody...

...using their own damned name.
Yo Ed,

Any site that features people who don't use their actual names is always rather suspect. It gives me bad Gamepro memories.

--The Steve

This is THE number one pathetic thing about gaming journalism today. Staffers at web sites and magazines are so fascinated at their own jobs that they create an entire new persona to go along with their work. The normal ones just make a variation on their own name, but the truly insane claim they become gaming characters, ninja warriors, sorcerers, or that they don't belong to either gender.

The author is the prism through which many readers see a site's work, and if that writer is some cartoon character of their own creation, how the hell am can I take what they write seriously? It's great that you can get your own anime persona and graphic signature, but I wonder if these people have ever considered that it just may be time to grow up in what is a maturing industry.

I'm in my last year of college and the top thing on my resumé at the moment is the site you're reading right now. I guess the standard I use at the moment is that if I worked at most any other gaming site, I'd be embarrased to have a potential employer visit, fearful they would stumble across some rambling article that treated the industry like one big in-joke.

Do you believe in magic?
If I had a magic wand, I would erase three facets of gaming journalism from existence:

1) This stupid ten-pronged review scale. You know what I'm talking about; IGN uses this scale, I think, and I know a lot of fansites do. Can we bury this stupid, complicated, lumbering two-brained dinosaur forever, please? I mean, I tend to ignore numerical scores in general, but I know I've never read one of these reviews and thought to myself, "Gee, this game got a seven for gameplay, but only a two for sound and a three for presentation. Do I value gameplay over presentation?" It's so gimmicky, and a lot of the scores end up being almost totally arbitrary.

What IS presentation, anyway? I think we've forgotten reviews are supposed to be, by and large, written, not calculated.

2) Anime. STOP TALKING ABOUT ANIME. This is coming from someone who prefers anime over video games. If I go to gamersextreme.com or whatever, I expect to actually see coverage of games, believe it or not, not debates about Utena vs. Evangelion or how to translate "Aa! Megami-sama" (cough).

3) Civility. You're doing pretty good, Ed, but in general, you guys don't take enough potshots at other gaming sites. Let's see some blood, okay?

-- Andrew Procter

1) If sites try to replace words with numbers, they will fail, and be forced to tack on things like "not an average" on the end of their reviews. I think numbers have zero place in a review (haha), but I accept that a five-point scale is useful as quick reference to give the reader an idea of the game's quality. If they don't take the time to read the text before buying, then they deserve to waste their money and will hopefully learn in the future.

2) This is part of the same problem that the silly nom de plumes and alter egos cause - it makes gaming seem like an enthusiast-only activity. It promotes an entire underground which turns off anyone who isn't already a dedicated gamer or follower of Japanese culture. Hell, I've watched something like four animes in my life. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with a subculture, but it shouldn't outweigh everything else.

3) I hate to disagree, but it must be remembered that this is a letters column and has (for today) my name at the top - the perfect venue for bashing. Nothing like this belongs in the disclaimer-free editorial portion of the page. We've been guilty of letting bias bleed through into the occasional story before, and it's something we've tried to notice and curb. Don't attack for the sake of attacking, attack because you want to draw attention to something you see as wrong or harmful.

When a certain large corporate gaming site posted some reviews that were shoddy to the point of insulting anyone in the business, I e-mailed their Editor in Chief and, after I got over myself a bit, we discussed the issues at hand like colleagues. It feels good to vent, but more venting is certainly not the solution to anything outside being entertaining in a letters column.

Mario just needs a scandal or two
Double Agent,

Me? I'm happy that comprehensive gaming journalism even exists. I shudder to think of the days when Nintendo Power was my sole source of gaming information. But nevertheless, I have often wondered why game coverage does not progress as rapidly as the medium. For example, why does a magazine entitled "Entertainment Weekly" virtually ignore one of the most profitable entertainment industries in the world? In my opinion, the lack of recognizable names in the gaming industry is partially to blame. To hardcore gamers, news of a new project by Matsuno is met with unparalleled enthusiasm. Unfortunately, this sort of headline won't exactly sell magazines. We may look at Hideo Kojima with awe, but MGS2 would recieve significantly more mainstream attention if, say, Steven Spielberg directed it. Maybe one day, Matsuno and Kojima will be household names in the United States, rivaling even Spielberg himself. But until then, mainstream game coverage cannot hope to reach its full potential. Incidentally, only when game coverage reaches its full potential can Matsuno and Kojima hope to be household names in the United States.

Bottom line: the only true icons in gaming (in America, anyway) are the game characters themselves.

This, of course, leads to another problem. Game characters exist only in games, whereas movie/television characters are portrayed by actors. This may seem irrelevent, but it is actually quite important. Half of EW is seemingly devoted to celebrity arrests, fashion, houses, weddings, etc. Eminem can pistol-whip a bouncer, and BOOM! Instant coverage. How can game characters hope to remain in the spotlight? An artist can only render so many poses of the same damn Lara Croft model before she is no longer newsworthy. What we need is a good scandal involving Lara Croft and Duke Nukem (has anyone seen the cover of Next Gen?). Now that would sell magazines.

Imagining the possibilities,
~BlackCracker

This might be the best point made today and was the only letter that raised it. Entertainment is more personality-driven than ever -- and so are things like politics for that matter -- but gaming's very nature precludes the kind of personalities that draw in casual fans. I'm tempted to say things are best left to those of us who know about gaming, but I can't help but say that the industry deserves mainstream respect, if only because it isn't built expressly to cater to it outside a few pathetic franchises. There has been progress in recognizable franchises that have mainstream appeal (think Resident Evil), but the lack of celebrity is often crippling.

Be still my bleeding heart
OK, I've seen various DA's and GIA staffers slam more gaming websites than I can count. Daily Radar, IGN, VGS, RPGamer, the list goes on and on. What I want to know is, what game sites do you guys actually trust? I respect the GIA more than just about any other game site on the web, and I'd like to know what sites you guys respect so I can respect them too :)

Xenon, who thinks AK is a genius because he's probably the only person ever to guest host a letters column and bash the column itself simultaneously.

First of all, tanks to Xenon for going the extra mile and including the requisite HTML in the letter himself. Talk about making it easy to choose a letter to print!

As for your question, the staff all has their own opinion, but here we go anyway:

IGN: knowledgable, their updates are regular, and their layout fairly friendly. Even so, the pages for each console are ridiculously biased towards their machine, most notably the fanaticism of IGN DC. It leaves a balanced perspective nowhere to be found and is like having two sections of a newspaper for wildly skewed articles from each political party.

IGN also has a minimum word requirement for every story, which means basic announcement stories get packed with inane crap. Witness this epic love poem of a story, ostensibly about Tecmo doing GBA games, yet somehow ending up as an eight paragraph monster that runs over a thousand words! The same bloated format applies to their reviews, which often devolve into hyperspecific comments on areas of the game best summarized in a few sentences. All this while year-old screens that are often still in Japanese line the margins. Many lessons here can be learned from print media, especially that brevity is the soul of wit.

Videogames.com: uses a cryptic five category formula that is a severely lacking way to decide review scores. If you're going to weigh reviewer tilt so heavily, why not just have them assign a score outright? The features are fine, I just picked them at random as something to bring comment, though their previews are out of date unless about the highest profile titles. The layout is an absolute nightmare, and the search engine is bordering on useless. Their news has recovered well from most of the staff leaving, but not quite yet, and reader reviews are often one paragraph challenging other gamers who live in the same town.

Daily Radar: not worth my time, though they managed to teach IGN a lesson in brevity by showcasing their best reviewer on Link's Awakening - remember, helpful signs will point you in the right direction.

Gamers.com is a decent layout away from being a fantastic site. They drained talent from the best sites and resources from venture capitalists when they were still gullible, and despite a rocky beginning, the site is now doing a bang-up job. They seem to value balance, and the unified structure prevents the pointless infighting of IGN or DR. The layout, however, continues to suck mightily despite redesigns - once they decide on having a readable news site instead of a portal, things should improve. And major kudos for Thresh to building a real gaming site instead of a monument to his Quake fame.

Game Informer isn't half-bad at all, and they don't take themselves too seriously either.

Gamefan: Try them for... oh wait, Gamefan.com is dead! (snicker) The print version even went after us in their FFIX review, veering out of their way to bash FFVIII and stating that "...as for all those intelligent gamers [emphasis theirs] that labeled this game as the best RPG of all time, well, how do those words sit in light of an RPG that is 10x the game the previous chapter was." Despite not liking FFVIII at all, but I got FFIX, didn't I? So there's no real need to be bitter, is there? I wonder how they lasted so long in the first place.

A dissenter! Burn him!
I hope this letter gets posted, because I find that topic about the quality (or lack thereof) of other gaming sites offensive.

First of all, I like both IGN and VGS. Both sites have good gaming news, reviews, features, etc. I actually LIKE VGS's history features; you actually learn something about your favourite games and companies! And I don't mind IGN's long reviews--in-depth reviews are much better than crappy 1-page, 1-paragraph reviews! And I don't see YOUR site doing better than IGN or VGS! For one thing, both of those sites cover more than just RPGs; the GIA's letters, reviews, previews...pretty much everything is mostly RPG's! This site might as well be an RPG-only site! If I want to find some previews of, say, Mega Man X5, I certainly *can't* depend on the GIA! I don't think IGN or VGS need to "tune-up" or remove anything that you (this goes to Ed) might find ridiculous. I think the site that needs some work is the one I've just written this letter to.

-Mike

Your letter largely got printed because it was the only one with a single word of complaint, and it didn't even arrive until I was midway through the column. It's simple: we don't cover everything because everything doesn't need more coverage.

Are you lacking in football game analysis or wrestling game news? Do you really need a preview to figure out what Mega Man X5 is going to be like? Here's a hint - try Mega Man X4, Mega Man X3, Mega Man X2, and Mega Man X. If you haven't gotten it yet, you might try Mega Man 8, Mega Man 7, Mega Man 6, Mega Man 5, Mega Man 4, Mega Man 3, Mega Man 2, or Mega Man. Oh, and it isn't much like Mega Man Soccer.

Anyway, the moral of this story is that we cover what we find interesting and we think gets overlooked elsewhere. We've mulled covering games from Jet Grind Radio to Perfect Dark, but instead devote resources to thing people might miss otherwise - the Persona series, or Ogre Battle 64. We aren't here to be a small-scale IGN or their affiliate.

Sega just can't catch a break
Dear Ed,

I was just dying for GIA to bring up this topic. While most commercial gaming news and reviews websites are pathetic, I feel there are few that actually have respectable standards of journalism. IGN64 is one of them - they provide in-depth interviews with key developers and well-written reviews. Sometimes IGNPSX has good stuff. Ummm, that's about it. While I do read fgnonline.com every morning to catch the press releases, that's really not journalism - it's just summarizing press releases.

The problem with most commercial gaming websites is that they have to cater to the tastes of the mainstream gaming audience. That's why we see front page headlines like "WWF2 SMACKDOWN Rocks!" or "Exclusive Diablo II Reference Card Screenshots!" or even "First Night Orgy with my PS2!" Those things are popular and cater to what sells in the mainstream gaming market. That's why I like IGN64: they have in-depth coverage of games like the Indiana Jones adventure game that was condemned to be released only in rental stores and online. It's not about sales - it's about what the developers did to turn a mediocre PC title to a spectacular N64 port. And while I don't like the Persona series (I played through Revelations on PSX), it seems like only independent sites like GIA or Gaming-Age provided real reviews of Persona 2.

And don't get me started on mainstream media. While it seems like Newsweek is improving its video/computer game coverage (they even had Chrono Cross featured), that is not the trend for other mass media sources. After going to E3 2000 and seeing the horrible Sony booth and spending a good time at the popular Sega booth, I open up the Los Angeles Times to read: "PS2 dominates E3," with little mention of Dreamcast. Even most commercial gaming websites slammed Sony's E3 presence ("a museum") and lauded the Sega booth, which was littered with scores of quality titles. If you read the weekly gaming reviews in the LA Times, you'll quickly find out they're more like parental advisory warning than reviews. (sigh) I don't think they'll ever change until gaming news and reviews move from the business/tech section to the arts and theater section.

-Fares

What happened to Sega in the post-E3 mainstream press was a shocking example of just how aloof supposed professional journalists can be. They walked in knowing what story they were going to write, wrote it, then left. Sega deserved so much better after putting one one hell of a show that featured one hell of a line-up. (sigh) is right.

Gamepro gets no love in here
Do I get what I need out of gaming journalism? Well, yeah, because I visit Gaming Intelligence first.

Okay, I admit the other sites out there are a little dense (Daily Radar thought the broadband adapter for Dreamcast was a full fledged cable modem, miraculously shrunk to 1/5th normal size and generating no heat while in use). The mainstream media botches every attempt at coverage (A recent article about Game Soundtracks had a pirated Son May disc as the photo of "exciting and fast selling gaming soundtracks"). Gamepro still seems to publish for some unfathomable reason.

Come to think of it, there *does* seem to be a lot of smeg flying around. Keep up the good work, or we could all be playing such classics as "Driving Emotion Type-S" and "Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub Zero".

Richard "KZ" Knight

And remember, kids, don't buy Summoner either.

Loose end #1: Music... makes the people... write me letters...
Recently, I purchased 3 Final Fantasy soundtracks made by Everanime. Being infintie in your wisdom, I'm sure you know that Everanime, along with rival Son May, are the leading anime and videogame soundtrack bootleggers in all of Taiwan. While I realize that bootlegging is a bad thing, getting three ablbums that would normally cost me upwards of $100 for $44 was too good a deal to pass up. However, my question is this: What difference, if any, exists in the official version vs. the bootleg version in regards to quality, packaging, etc... If you can't answer, hopefully one of the readers out there in GIA-land can.

-Megane, searching in vain for the prototype of Crash and the Boys Ice Challenge

Former GIA Agent and game soundtrack expert Arpad Korossy with the answer:

Howdy.

Final Fantasy bootlegs, like most bootleg CDs, are usually inferior to the originals in packaging, and occasionally in sound quality. Although I could go into greater specifics if I knew which albums you purchased in particular, virtually all bootlegs will feature different CD art and liner notes, and in some cases a different packaging setup as well. The legit Final Fantasy VI OSV comes in a small box large enough to accomodate the double CD jewel and thick liner notes. All three CDs are contained in the one package. In the bootleg EverAnime version, presumably to milk more money from buyers, the three CDs are individually packaged in single jewels and sold separately.

As for sound quality, I can't really promise you that you'll be able to tell a difference. I've only owned one bootleg album, and I couldn't tell the difference when I bought the legit version. Of course, I'm no audiophile; I listen to most of my music on $15 headphones and I really can't tell the difference between MP3 and CD sound quality.

Issues of quality aside, a surefire way to tell originals and bootlegs apart is the serial number. Any album that has a serial that starts with G, A&G, GAME, or GM is bootleg. In the case of Final Fantasy soundtracks, all legit CDs will have a serial beginning with PSCN (for NTT Publishing) or SSCX (for DigiCube). I hope this answers any questions you may have.

Loose end #2: Obligatory Uematsu Letter
I was not the person who made reference to this quote from Uematsu, which you asked to see a reference for, but here it is.

"BR: Your decision to make the music for FF7 as synthesized MIDI was somewhat surprising to many people considering that many games on CD use REDBOOK. Do you prefer using Sony's sound chips rather than recording a live orchestra?

NU: My poor English makes it difficult to explain. Of course, I prefer better sound [quality] but recorded sound needs time to read, sound chips don't. Music changes more quickly and smoothly. I don't want every players to feel stress, so I chose sound chips. Do you understand what I mean?"

This is from Interview #5 on the following page. http://www.nobuouematsu.com/speak.html

Much appreciated, though I wonder why can't somebody ask the man in Japanese. Gamers.com easily has the most competent translators on the web by far (led by Nao Higo), so we should probably hope for them to break through before anyone else does. At least Uemtasu's making the choice on purpose, even if his music isn't terribly dynamic compared to games like Rare's Banjo series.

Loose end #3: A goofy letter
ARG, my fishes are dead.

Kandrin.

I hadn't printed a single goofy letter. So there.

Closing Comments:

I'm sure Chris will enjoy responding to this - wouldn't you? Don't deny him the pleasure, send him a letter!

-Ed McGlothlin, the Godzilla to your Tokyo

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