Best videogame writing (articles/essays/reviews/whatever)

Okay, we all know videogame writing sucks. Sucky critics, sucky journlolists, and so on. Well, let's turn our sights upwards and be optimistic, and offer optimism to others, by creating a resource of great videogame writing, whether it be humorous, fictional, analytical, critical, whatever. Just think of cool stuff you've read, post the title, author, link, then quote an excerpt, ideally the opening paragraphs but if you feel you can better represent the article by quoting elsewhere do that instead. I'll start.

Secondary Concerns by Chris Breault

http://post-hype.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/secondary-concerns.html

I can't think of another game so destroyed by its dialogue as Splinter Cell: Conviction; not by bad lines alone (which are nothing novel in gaming) but by the way Ubisoft's designers and programmers used them. It could live on, maybe, as a cautionary tale in design meetings: "your idea would poison our game, sure as secondary dialogue killed Conviction!" It struck me because secondary dialogue is a subject I know a little about.

Secondary dialogue, or situational dialogue, means lines shouted by the doomed, samefaced individuals who jump boldly in front of the player's gun; lines like "You just fucked with the wrong Russian!" or "You shot me right in my Russian knees!" or "I die, so far from my homeland, Russia!" (I'm not making fun of the nice Russian dude who commented on my last post; a lot of shooter villains are Russian.) The lines will stay more like 5-7 words long, because the gamer is in the shooting-people business, not the listening-to-monologues business. (The casting business?) Sandbox games offer more flexibility for the writer, but feature more NPC personas and many more lines to write. Basically, this is the low-rent dialogue, the writing done in bulk by interns, assistant writers, and whoever else steps in when the overworked lead writer doesn't have time to stare at an Excel spreadsheet that demands 5 different lines for 40 different actions for 50 different personas. And I was one of those interns*!

SpaceWar! review by Alex Kierkegaard

http://insomnia.ac/reviews/pdp-1/spacewar/

Why "Spacewar"?

Why not "Earthpeace"? — Why not "Earthlove"? Why not indeed. And how about that exclamation mark? How much youthful, unconcerned enthusiasm it betrays! What a delightfully immoral sense of adventurousness! For aren't we constantly being told that war is supposed to be a Bad Thing? Something indecent? Something unethical? Something that must be abolished? What's the point then of glorifying it by simulating it?

To these kinds of questions, which have never ceased to crease the brows of all kinds of blockhead commentators and assorted journalistic clowns and never will, I am for the time being only going to reply with a condescending smile and a salutation:

Welcome to the World of Videogames: Corrupting Mankind's Youth Since 1962.

The Trouble With BEING The Batman by David Jaffe

http://criminalcrackdown.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/trouble-with-being-batman.html

But here's the problem I have with your pitch and similar pitches (and trust me, I hear your line of thinking all the time):

You make the mistake of thinking that many of us who make gamey games don't care about infusing great story into our games and are just in it for the BIG! BANG! POW! because that's what we grew up with. Not the case. My generation also grew up with JAWS and ET and EMPIRE and OUT OF AFRICA and on and on and we are very aware of what film is capable of and there was a time a lot of us (myself included) longed for games to have a similar impact on our audiences (and on us).

But then we actually worked in the interactive medium and studied the medium and watched how the brain works when a game is played and realized that PLAYING as BATMAN in the interrogation scene would look NOTHING LIKE and FEEL nothing like WATCHING Batman interrogate the Joker. And that's the mistake so many in your camp make (and I used to make it as well): you watch movies and get moved by them and then rush to say 'I want my games to feel that way too!' BUT you fail to realize that the feelings you are so amped by come from the very nature of OBSERVING SOMEONE ELSE'S STORY from a tightly controlled, highly manipulated, and non-interactive vantage point.

Me? *prepares for heartbreak*

@video_game_king:

Seconded. Also, P Klepek all day, every day.

Can anyone recommend more writings like this one?

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/bastard-of-the-old-republic-article

I really enjoy other people's stories of playthroughs.

Alex Navarro is my favorite games writer. Guns of Navarro was a joy, along with his Year of the Cage entries and everything he did on Screened. He just has an easy to read, conversational style that doesn't meander and tells you what you need to know.

Here's stuff about Microsoft, Reversal of Fortune.

Corporations are notoriously slow creatures. That slowness generally stands in direct proportion to the size of the corporation itself. The bigger the beast, the more people, bureaucratic processes, and legal wrangling every single decision must be pumped through before any kind of minute decision can be made. It's why I never expect much when fan outcry arises toward the various monolithic companies that make up the video game industry. Especially in the case of a behemoth like Microsoft, whose Xbox One DRM policies became the subject of much derision over the course of the last month. Here was a company that was laying out its carefully built plans for a new console, its first in eight years. This is unquestionably a huge undertaking, involving years of research and development, and considerable capital. Yes, people reacted poorly when Microsoft announced that it would not allow traditional used game sales on the system, and would require online check-ins every 24 hours in order to even play offline games. Seemingly, in its mind, the potential riling up of DRM-weary consumers was worth the risk given the potential long-term benefits of the tech.

Until, of course, it very suddenly wasn't.

*yadda yadda*

Whether or not this gambit pays off in the end, on some level, you just have to admire the moxie of it all. Sony drilled Microsoft at E3, and managed to rally the core gaming audience behind them in a way that a single console maker hasn't been able to in ages. Where Microsoft looked out-of-touch and indifferent, Sony looked self-aware and clever, and clearly were able to parlay that into strong early numbers. In making this change so abruptly, Microsoft may have dimmed Sony's E3 afterglow a bit, and brought itself back into the race. We have ourselves a ballgame again folks, and when two companies compete with this kind of fierceness, it's we, the consumers, who most often win in the end.

As it happens, I can indeed:

An Illusionist in Skyrim by Tom Francis

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/08/09/an-illusionist-in-skyrim-part-1/

In Skyrim, a mage is an unstoppable storm of destruction. In real life, a mage is just an illusionist: they can't do much except trick you. If one of them turned out to be the world's only hope of salvation, hijinks and sudden death would inevitably ensue. Since these are my two favourite things, I've decided to try playing this way.

Skyrim does have a school of magic comprised entirely of illusions, so I'm sticking strictly to this. I can't wear any armour, hold any weapons, cast any non-Illusion spells, or ever attack anyone directly - not even with a punch. Yes. This is an excellent idea.

Oh, cool, I only now realised this was written by Tom Francis. Cool guy, I could probably post some of his other stuff here too.

Planetside: The 1% by Quintin Smith

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/09/05/planetside-the-1/

But I always tell the same war story when Planetside gets mentioned. I always tell the same story because it’s a really, really good one. And I totally encourage you guys to share your own tales of daring do in the comments, but just let me get this one off my chest first.

(It’s probably best if you imagine this whole thing spoken in a tone of voice that exists somewhere between a throat cancer patient and That One Fucking P.E. Teacher You Had.)

Ahem.

I like this sort of thing as well, and I probably have some more but my bookmarks folder for videogames is horribly organised. The bizarre alternate rules runs can be particularly entertaining and interesting.

Okay, let's continue with some more Tom Francis:

Five Things I Learned About Game Criticism In Nine Years at PC Gamer by Tom Francis

http://www.pentadact.com/2013-07-01-five-things-i-learned-about-game-criticism-in-nine-years-at-pc-gamer/

1. Get to the point

The reader doesn’t know who the fuck you are, what the fuck this is, or why the fuck they should care. At least, you’ll write better if you work on that assumption.

They certainly can’t read everything, so it pays to respect the attention they’ve decided to give you. And you can do that by telling them what the fuck this is and why the fuck they should care right away.

The two ways to treat a reader are: “I am important” or: “You are important.” Some readers do like the first. But for me, if your videogame review starts with the words “When I was six,” I rub my forehead and quietly close the tab.

2. Write like a person

The most common problem with early pieces by a new writer, myself included, is when they try to show off. It’s as if they put what they want to say through Google Translate set to ‘Professional Games Journalist’, and like Google Translate, what comes out is often painfully awkward.

Don’t translate it. Just tell me, the way you’d tell a friend.

“The latest title in the Splinter Cell franchise…”

Don’t write like a suit.

“Bursting onto the scene with silenced pistols blazing, Sam Fisher is back in his new adventure…”

Don’t write like a twat.

“The new Splinter Cell game…”

Write like a person.

Okay, I'll finish with a funny one:

Is Games Art? by Leigh Rogers

http://insomnia.ac/commentary/is_games_art/

Conventional opinion would have it that games are not art. This is because games are generally about driving or shooting mans or jumping, and these things are not art. However! Games are in fact art. In the olden days, you could not talk about games with women or old people because they are not art and are for geeks. Nowadays, games are mainstream because Sony gave away free roach material in 1998 or something and also Red Bull advertised in Wipeout, and you can talk to women in pubs about combos and stealth kills and games for girls such as Harvest Moon and that one about dogs.

Thanks to this cultural paradigm shift, there is now a market for games that are art. I have identified the following games as being art, with reasons.

Ico

Ico is art because it is a 3D platform game with nice graphics. The dialogue has subtitles, thus raising its artistic status, and it uses timeless storytelling techniques to tell its timeless story of a boy with horns who is in a castle who escapes but then falls in a hole and then escapes again, and is then on a beach. I cried at this point, although I am not sure why. The horns are possibly a metaphor for something.

The game uses advanced storytelling techniques, such as making the controls and combat really annoying as this evokes the real frustration of being a boy with horns trapped in a big castle. Also, at the end, you discover that you are the monsters. This is a twist. In a way, we are all monsters made out of smoke in a big castle.

Shadow of the Colossus

This game uses the art of games to raise important moral questions, such as whether pointlessly killing massive things for your own selfish purposes is a good thing. It does this by playing sad music whenever you kill a massive thing. The game uses a technique called 'repetition' to increase the impact of this sadness, by repeating the bit where you kill a massive thing and sad music plays sixteen times. This makes the game more effective than if it had repeated this fifteen times. If it had repeated it seventeen times, this may have been too much repetition, as it may have made you so sad that you kill yourself.

No idea who actually wrote this one. Leigh Rogers is a character combining Leigh Alexander and Tim Rogers ie. all the stupidity of game journalists rolled into one (though I actually quite like Tim sometimes).

Although this review was spoken in a video, Yahtzee took a break from his normal divisive style in his review of Wolfenstein and wrote the entire review in limerick. I thought it was pretty damn impressive so here you go:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/916-Wolfenstein

I'd also mention any number of Alex's hilarious reviews in which he trashes a game.

And a couple others I'll have to look up and get back to you on.

The best videogame writing has always been people on forums writing about super specific bullshit, not fancy shmancy editorials.

I like Tom Bissell's work on Grantland. I've also read his book, Extra Lives, and it has its moments. Video game discussion rarely gets to be very literate but Bissell is pretty well read and reasonable.

Goddammit phone, stop turning it's into it's. SERIOUSLY

Hmm...where to start.

Tim Langdell Loses In Future “Edge” Trial by John Walker

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/06/16/tim-langdell-loses-in-future-edge-trial/

Not a lot has been heard from trademark champion Tim Langdell in a while. The lawyer-happy supreme owner of the word “edge” was the palm-faced talk of the town in 2009 and 2010 (never better covered than by the excellent Chaos Edge), but his antics have been a little more quiet of late. This is likely to do with his not doing particularly well in his increasingly ludicrous attempts to claim ownership of a noun. And in the latest ruling, from Future Publishing’s case against Edge Interactive Media Inc., Edge Games Inc, and Dr Timothy Langdell, it’s observed that the nontrepreneur’s evidence was “absurd”, and he had even gone so far as to invent people to sign his witness statements. And so much more besides. Read on for an extensive breakdown of the judge’s conclusions. It’s a remarkable tale.

Skyrim: Week of Madness, Day 1: The World According To Sheogorath by Richard Cobbett

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/09/10/skyrim-week-of-madness-day-1-the-world-according-to-sheogorath/

In short, I didn't choose some mods. I chose all the mods. Whole Collections on Steam Workshop, sight-unseen. Running through the Skyrim Nexus' categories and just hitting the download button without even looking at names. Even asking a few friends to send over mods, which I'm pretty sure is why the Riverwood tavern currently houses a gaggle of transexual adventurers and I apparently own an all-male brothel/bath-house outside Whiterun. Thursdays are veal night. Bring the kids. By the time I was done, I had over 240 of them installed, and actually knew what about ten of them were.

And an X-COM Let's Play (arguably the X-COM Let's Play). Spoilers: it's not a video.

X-COM: UFO Defense by GuavaMoment

http://lparchive.org/X-COM-UFO-Defense/Update%202/

Someone wrote a blog a few years back about why video games are art and it was fantastic. I will have to do some digging and post it when I get a chance.

He's just a typical journalist. Asks some questions that to him sound terribly profound — it goes without saying he doesn't answer them — disguises some banal observations and chit-chat with flowery prose. He makes the same mistakes all pretentious journalists regarding violence, art ect. moralizing about virtual violence as if it were the real thing, chattering about art as the goal for games without even explaining his own definition of it. His subjects are all just grounds on which to strike a pose.

I don't doubt these types of writers spend 5% of the time thinking about the subject matter, and 95% of the time thinking about how to write about it ie. which words to use and how to arrange your wry comments. If you want to make something insightful and at all useful it has to be, obviously, the opposite. Schopenhauer said as much:

On Authorship and Style by Arthur Schopenhauer

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/essays/chapter1.html

There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject’s sake, and those who write for writing’s sake. The first kind have had thoughts or experiences which seem to them worth communicating, while the second kind need money and consequently write for money. They think in order to write, and they may be recognised by their spinning out their thoughts to the greatest possible length, and also by the way they work out their thoughts, which are half-true, perverse, forced, and vacillating; then also by their love of evasion, so that they may seem what they are not; and this is why their writing is lacking in definiteness and clearness.

@ubersmake That Skyrim one is pretty amusing, though his opening paragraphs better explain the point in what he is doing:

Like most of the best and worst ideas I've ever had, this started with a whim. I was browsing the Steam Workshop to see what kind of things modders were working on, with the idea of picking the best for a brand new playthrough, and trying to work out why I didn't have any enthusiasm. It's not like there's not loads of cool stuff. Damn near every aspect of Skyrim has been worked over by this point.

Then it hit me. Where would the adventure and discovery be in simply picking something off a menu? I didn't want to install, say, "Really Pretty Flying Boat House Mod" only to walk over, see it, go "Oooh," and be done. I wanted to turn corners and actually be surprised by what I found.

@nightriff I'm not holding out much hope on this one. Nobody can even act with some common fucking sense when it comes to talking about art — the very subject is an IQ black hole — let alone get anywhere close to even a definition of what art is, let alone how that concept related to videogames or any of the other big questions various idiots periodically vomit essays on (which they do without that all important definition, of course).

Only one essay has hit the nail on the head...

... Aha.

@samsonbarabbas: Alright. I won't waste my fucking time then.

@nightriff Are you swearing at me because you think I've insulted you? I didn't. And are you now failing to promote this work you consider "fantastic", and also denying the other people reading this thread the pleasure of experiencing these insights, because of this imagined insult?

Whatever, dude. I sure do think it would be a waste of my time if you posted it and I read it, but don't not post it for stupid reasons.

Grantland was mentioned, and there is one guy who writes a column over there who is mostly cool:

Saving Zelda by Tevis Thompson

http://tevisthompson.com/saving-zelda/

Late in the original Zelda’s second quest, I got stuck. I couldn’t find the relocated and very well-hidden eighth dungeon. Then one night I had a dream in which I took a map of Hyrule and drew large circles around the other seven dungeons. Somehow I had figured that dungeons were probably not right beside each other, and so by sectioning off portions of the map, I could better find the missing dungeon in the blank areas. I woke up, drew the circles, found the dungeon. Zelda possessed me, and in those pre-internet, pre-FAQ days, my mind worked on it even while I slept.

I still dream about videogames. Sometimes Mario, sometimes the latest Civilization, sometimes nightmares brought on by Demon’s Souls. But I don’t dream about Zelda anymore.

I’m a Zelda fan. The original captured my imagination in 1987 and hasn’t quite let go. I convinced my mother that Zelda II was so vital to my 11-year-old soul that she called, from Kentucky, a store in Canada to secure a copy. (This proved unnecessary, and that French version of the Adventure of Link ended up going to my cousin, Bear.) I’ve played every console Zelda through Skyward Sword, and I’ve even written fiction that takes Zelda (and Mario and Metroid) pretty seriously.

I’m still a Zelda fan today, but I’m not an apologist. Zelda sucks, and it has sucked for a long time. It’s not the greatest series in gaming, and Ocarina of Time is certainly not the greatest game of all time (it’s not even a great Zelda). The original Legend of Zelda is the greatest Zelda, Skyward Sword is the worst, and the trajectory is mostly downhill with a few exceptions (the bold horror ofMajora’s Mask, the focused charm of Wind Waker).