might as well muse on games journalism here, because no one else wants to hear it. and because i've just engaged in it, however inauspiciously. i can't comfortably sneer at game writing anymore, because it turns out i'm very bad at it. any wit or ease or perspicience i might tentatively display on this board evaporates the moment you sit me in front of a word processor, at which point i automatically produce very bad, very dutiful school assignments. but i'm not actually embarrassed by my bad review, because i think it demonstrates the thing that matters in game writing: that the writer played the game with his eyes open, and wrote his piece without naive recourse to stock phrases. and that's what i liked in xbn generally. not that it can't be sneered at, or that the writing therein is uniformly good. it can, and it isn't. just that it had moments of sharp, specific, personal observation. there are xbn lines i'll remember. and it sucks that i can't read it anymore.
there were elements of that whole "new games journalism" position that i liked: it values talent, it militates against cliché and generality. but i don't agree that idea that the capital "i" should be foregrounded, or that games writing should be about the feelings games elicit. no one would contend that books should be written about that way. i'm not arguing that games are like books, or that games are as important as books, but if games have any value at all, then to write about a game should be to observe it intensely and tease out its essential quiddity or whatness. and if games have no value at all, then games journalism is a stupid joke, and the hacks have it right.
RIP xbn. i've only read a couple issues of gmr, and i didn't come away with any strong impressions, but the posts in this thread make me want to read back issues.
