How does one become a "cultivated" gamer?
InvictusCobra
Member Posts: 108
Title. Basically, what I mean is how can a person be considered cultivated gaming wise?
This whole concept of culture is highly subjective, but after hearing definitions of culture and cultivated people at university, it got me thinking. For culture in general, one of the several meanings of culture is that being cultivated regarding something is being able to have critical thinking towards it (i.e. being able to tell impartially if a book is good or not because you read a whole sort of books). I've been a gamer my whole life and I'm only 19, but if I were asked to reflect upon a game or developer, I think I would not be capable of much; or of at least doing something on par of let's say TotalBiscuit, Super Bunnyhop and Jim Sterling.
These are my main references when it comes to commentary of matters such as this one. As such and given that most of the people I've seen on this forum have more life experience than me, I'd like to know your opinions on this subject. How does one become a gamer that is informed, experienced and capable of looking critically at this industry in order to improve it?
P:S: This ties in to the fact that I'd like to be a gaming journalist when I enter the job market, thus the whole emphasis on a gamer educating himself in terms of the industry and it's products.
This whole concept of culture is highly subjective, but after hearing definitions of culture and cultivated people at university, it got me thinking. For culture in general, one of the several meanings of culture is that being cultivated regarding something is being able to have critical thinking towards it (i.e. being able to tell impartially if a book is good or not because you read a whole sort of books). I've been a gamer my whole life and I'm only 19, but if I were asked to reflect upon a game or developer, I think I would not be capable of much; or of at least doing something on par of let's say TotalBiscuit, Super Bunnyhop and Jim Sterling.
These are my main references when it comes to commentary of matters such as this one. As such and given that most of the people I've seen on this forum have more life experience than me, I'd like to know your opinions on this subject. How does one become a gamer that is informed, experienced and capable of looking critically at this industry in order to improve it?
P:S: This ties in to the fact that I'd like to be a gaming journalist when I enter the job market, thus the whole emphasis on a gamer educating himself in terms of the industry and it's products.
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Comments
In that, I think you have all of the pieces that you need to answer your own question. The more experience that you have with a given topic, the more you expose yourself to various aspects of that thing, the history, the diversity of the topic, and the more you can look objectively at something the closer you will become to that goal.
To be able to look at a game that you didn't necessarily enjoy, but appreciate from an aesthetic or mechanical perspective would be a good sign. Another is if you can look at comments made for or against a given game and evaluate them to determine weight and veracity of the comment would be another indicator.
I don't think that it "Necessarily" needs to have anything to do with your age, although certainly the older you get the more you are likely to experience and be able to evaluate a given topic. But simply use your mind. If a comment sounds leading, superfluous, or otherwise not well grounded, it probably is. If you can look past the surface of a game and see it for how well it achieved the game designers goal, instead of listening to the din of haters who just want to be heard, you are probably getting close.
At the end of the day though its all mainly opinion. Everyone is entitled to their own. Be happy with yours. If others are happy with what you have to say? That's about as close as you are going to get.
The first is the "canon" of the field, the main works that serve as reference points. You need to know the context of what the games you're writing about build on in order to really understand what they're trying to do. An review PoE by someone with no knowledge of IE games would probably lack insight into how the game did or did not move the genre forward. So play "landmark" games, and think about them in the context of gaming history.
The second is other people's writing in your area. To know whether your own writing is original, you need to know at least something about what has already been said, and what common critical consensus is. It's fine to allude to Daikatana being a disaster with little or no explanation, since that article has already been written many times. But if you said FF7 was junk, you'd need to defend that position. Knowing when you're going against the grain and when you're being trite is only possible by reading a lot.
The risk there is overdoing it and steeping yourself in so much knowledge that you end up essentially writing for other critics instead of for the gaming public. A lot of academic literary criticism, for example, is pretty far up its own ass at this point. Remember your audience and avoid that trap.
More particular to gaming journalism is technical knowledge. It's important to understand what is and isn't technically possible, and how new technical innovations are being artistically utilized. If you have some programming inclinations, playing around with making or modding games might give you some intuition about this. Either way, talk to people who make games to understand the process and limitations better.
It sounds like you're giving it a lot of thought and going out of your way to educate yourself, both of which are good omens for a successful career. Good luck!
Also, being aware of what the common critical consensus is "Nice" but not necessary. The common consensus might be total crap. Following the leader as it were is not always the way to go.
I know that both of those complaints might appear to be contradictory. What I am saying is, don't worry about what others are saying and have written. Write your own thing. Make your own opinion. Don't copy others and don't avoid what others have written. Make whatever your opinion is, YOURS and don't be afraid of sticking to what you feel regardless of how it compares to anyone else.
To gain any actual in-depth understanding of the industry, you need to join a game development studio yourself, or at least try. In fact, many gaming journalists are people who write about games for a living because they failed to make them for a living.
Also, myself a game developer, I must warn you that gaming journalists, especially those trying really hard to 'improve the industry', are the butt of many inside jokes. So are guys that get carried away with all this 'impartial criticism' thing that no game developer wants to hear. Most devs know exactly what's wrong with their games but the games industry is, after all, business - and that means sneaky deadlines, NAB/WNF (not a bug/will not fix) bugs, unimplementable features and, generally, a huge mess. But still, many journalists blame the devs for delayed releases, bugged gameplay and lacking features. Don't do that. And if you ever happen to do that despite my warning, DO NOT glorify the publisher at the same time for "releasing a great game" that "the devs should have put more effort in", as there is no insurance on Earth that covers being beaten to death by an angry mob of insulted game developers.
One last piece of advice I can spare if you're still hell-bent on writing about games is that a game review is NOT like a research paper... well, *unless* you're writing for a peer-reviewed game studies scientific journal, of course.
And an ultimate and maybe somewhat insulting tip is contained in the spoiler below. Open at your own risk.
In general, @God seems to be giving advice on how to make game developers like you (or at least not make too many mean jokes about you), which doesn't strike me as the most important part of a game journalist's job description. Still, I would hope that most devs have more gracious attitudes toward the gaming press.
Remember that companies develop a product for a specific target market (of which there are many in any given area) and if you don't fit that specific demographic you won't like it - because you weren't meant to - and that does not make it a bad product. So be impartial at all times and make sure you have a proper understanding of the marketplace and the market forces at work.
If you haven't worked in any part of the industry whose products you're commenting on you need to know what you are talking about from that perspective, so get to know someone in the business and acquire some inside knowledge of how the products are developed, produced and marketed and the limitations of the whole process.
Get as much experience as you can of products in your field of expertise, especially those you wouldn't choose for yourself, and ask yourself why they are still on the market. Always bear the bigger picture in mind and consider everything in context.
1. Know the history.
2. Know the mechanics.
3. Know the society.
To be a gaming journalist:
1. Have an opinion
2. Be unique
3. Be entertaining
4. Know your audience.
5. Be critical, not opinionated.
6. Be neutral.
Five and one maybe clashing a bit, but you should have an opinion on what type of games you enjoy. This will allow your audience to be able to gauge if you are having a biased leaning towards one game over another.
The best way to start is with metacritic. Start writing and posting reviews there. Read reviews there and see which ones you enjoy and attempt to dissect why you like them.
Doesnt matter the game's age, if you played it, write a review, hone your craft, find your voice and everything else will fall into place + you now have a nice portfolio to sell any place tou may want to work.
The rest of it--composition, tone, style, knowing your audience--comes with experience, and if you have an interest in gaming journalism chances are you've already been reading what's out there (because otherwise you wouldn't be thinking about it as something you want to do). If what you want is to be someone who knows a lot about games and can talk about them critically, I would ignore what @God said about research papers. If you want to cultivate yourself as a critic of games, you should look at your first few reviews in the same way you'd look at a book report. All of the same principles that exist in a book also exist in some form in any given game, even a game as simplistic as Pong, even a game like Fifa that doesn't look like it has a story.
Treat games as pieces of art. That will give you the respect for the developers behind them, and it will also encourage you to think more deeply than "I liked it/didn't like it" or "It was fun/boring".