zero-punctuation posts

In an article entitled "Cahiers Des Jeux -- the Press/Developer Relationship" on Gamasutra.com, Game Developer magazine Editor-in-Chief Brandon Sheffield weighed in on the nature of games journalism. As an opinion piece, it serves to illustrate his thoughts quite well, but as with the very reviews he seems to deride, it reveals a few misleading statements that ought to be examined in a positive light.

To begin, Sheffield mentions review scores, those ambiguous and seemingly arbitrary measurements of a game's value. He's right -- a numerical score indicates almost nothing at all to a reader who hasn't read the text of the actual review. In many cases, the review itself argues in favor of a higher score than what is given. He goes on to note that developers do respect journalists, regardless of the "myriad other misunderstandings" inherent in the system. He sidesteps the idea that people do in fact read reviews to influence their purchases, but that this has less to do with said reviews being "actual arbiters of quality" as it does these reviews having perceived quality. This is an important point.

In what might prove to be the most meta post ever, I'm going to talk about gaming journalism and how it's changed in recent years. Now, the mainstream media -- by which I refer to traditional magazines like Time and Life, and news outlets like the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times -- have always worked diligently to maintain a high-quality standard for themselves. As a collective, they follow the rules set down in regulatory tomes such as the Chicago Manual of Style and the AP Stylebook. Of course, every publication has its own house style to which its writers must adhere, but by and large there are many generally accepted guidelines concerning tone, editorial slant, and the like.

As video games grew as a phenomenon, it quickly became evident that the mainstream press wasn't going to give it the coverage its enthusiast audience demanded. Typically adopting an outsider's approach, traditional news outlets left their coverage at "Here's a new trend. It's kind of strange and we don't understand it, but the kids seem to like it." This journalistic void left the field wide open for a new generational voice to inhabit.

Most of the online gaming community loves The Escapist's Zero Punctuation -- the animated video game reviews created by a disgruntled British-Australian gamer named Yahtzee. Sometimes, though, they also hate it. Why? Because Yahtzee has a propensity to ruthlessly and humorously trash fan favorites!

This week, he dove into Oblivion, the latest entry into the Elder Scrolls franchise. That franchise has been a staple in PC RPGs since 1994, so it's borderline sacred at this point. That doesn't stop Yahtzee though! He never says it's a terrible game, mind you. He just finds a several things to complain about it. Head over to The Escapist and watch the clip. As usual, it's very amusing.

As the case has usually been with Zero Punctuation reviews, this video is decidedly NSFW (unless you have headphones), although it's a bit tamer than usual -- a bit!