2006 proved to be a particularly vocal year for those who are not happy with the state of game journalism. Usually, these criticisms get written off as moody, self-righteous pap, but we actually saw a couple of public spats erupt out of this latest salvo of bitch sessions.

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Number 10:

Apparently Game Writers Can't Write

Over the last couple of years, it has come into vogue to criticize game journalism. Much of the discussion has been loosely structured message board squabbles that start out asking why the current crop of magazines aren’t more like 60 Minutes or Nightline, but quickly disintegrate into tirades over how games are reviewed, spiraling into accusations of console bias and general chaos. However, it’s been an underlying theme this year, particularly in the early months when it seemed everyone was crawling out of the woodwork to tell game writers how much they suck.

Now, this isn’t the first time this has happened. There was that whole “New Games Journalism” thing a couple of years back where a subset of writers seem to have developed an unhealthy obsession with Hunter S. Thompson. What makes this latest round of criticism more interesting, and worthy of our list, is that discussion was coming from areas besides backwater fan sites. There were a decent number of professional, and semi-pro writers discussing the state of game journalism.

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Probably the most public bout came when Chris Buffa from Gamedaily wrote a series of articles that were critical of game journalists. These sparked a surprisingly strong backlash among writers who took exception to the pieces. What likely compounded the problem for Mr. Buffa was that he was weighing in on the tail end of a battery of articles that were particularly critical of

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writing in the gaming press. Writers were already suffering from battle fatigue after a number of people told them that they weren’t doing their jobs very well, and Buffa’s articles were the straws that broke the camel’s back. As his articles went live, one could almost see the vein in game journalism’s collective forehead pop out, and the floodgates were opened for unfettered rage targeted at the unfortunate Gamedaily writer.

For a time it seemed that the situation turned into a good old-fashioned brouhaha between the folks at Ziff Davis and Gamedaily, and it was a feud that dragged out a lot longer than expected. Whatever the case, for a good four weeks the back and forth was a dose of drama that entertained or frustrated, depending who you were (and if you wrote about games!).

Who was right and who was wrong is not the point of this entry, and is something that can be debated else where. The point is that there are still a lot of opinions floating around as to what game journalism “should be”. On the surface, this feud that erupted might make for a delicious little distraction from the normal grind of the industry. However, looking at this particular event in combination with other recent criticisms of game journalism does raise the question of whether this is a vocal minority who have a beef with the current state of writing at the various magazines and web sites, or if there may be a considerable number of malcontents.

In any event, it is doubtful that the debate over the quality of writing at game publications will end any time soon. Hopefully in the future, though, people that have an issue with the state of game journalism will take steps themselves to address the issue rather than simply bitch about it. 2006 seems to have been the year of complaining; hopefully 2007 will be a year of doing.

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