Heather Chaplin about games journalism

[Michaël Samyn]

Heather Chaplin always has interesting things to say about videogames and their context. Here's a recent podcast: http://cms.mit.edu/news/2012/02/podcast_heather_chaplin_games.php

I feel like the conversations that I have with people about games and game filosophy and systems thinking and literacies are breathtakingly interesting but I don't find any games that I see interesting. (...) I feel somehow that the thinking is way beyond what we're seeing in practice.

Most games journalists are kind of evangelists for games. They're games fans and they really want other people to be fans. And they really want to make a point about why games are cool.

[Michaël Samyn]

The vast majority of games journalism, I wouldn't really call journalism. There's two reasons I would say that. One: I feel like it's done as product review: it discusses it like you would a product, software, not as a cultural thing. And it's so insidery. I'm still struck by how few people are writing about games for a mainstream audience. The websites and the journalists are really talking to each other. Journalism is part of the checks and balance systems of a democracy. It's about keeping people honest. I don't think there's enough of that at all in the games industry.

[Michaël Samyn]

Referring to her rant at GDC (which I witnessed and loved!):

As a journalist, you're supposed to hold a mirror up to people, so they can see things as they really are, not a fantasy of what they want to be. In the games industry there's this big fantasy of how they want to be taken seriously and respected like other art forms. Well, hold up a mirror, look at what you're actually producing: "This is why you're not taken seriously as an art form." It's not even a judgment thing. It's just reality.

[György Dudas]

thanks, that was a good, clear talk. I want to pint out what she said about the war games industry. That they produce images, and that players get used to those images. Then we get those images to see in the news and we do not feel upset, maybe we feel a bit uncomfortable, but we do not get our ass (sorry) up from the couch and on the streets (paraphrasing here). It is just a little piece in the bigger picture. And that I would call good journalism.

[Michaël Samyn]

She also did a good job explaining how game developers are completely oblivious to how problematic this issue is. The commercial and technological focus of video games is so extreme that they don't even seem to realize how expressive their medium is, or has become.

[ghostwheel]

thanks, that was a good, clear talk. I want to pint out what she said about the war games industry. That they produce images, and that players get used to those images. Then we get those images to see in the news and we do not feel upset, maybe we feel a bit uncomfortable, but we do not get our ass (sorry) up from the couch and on the streets (paraphrasing here). It is just a little piece in the bigger picture. And that I would call good journalism.

That's assuming we need to get out "into the streets".