Game reviews are, arguably, one of the most important wheels in the giant machine that is the gaming industry. Many people make their purchasing decisions based upon reviews or previews of games, which is why shows such as E3 and PAX are so important and monumental to games journalists. But as our attention spans grow [...]
Majora’s Mask: Why So Divisive?
June 29, 2011 By 8 Comments
This is not a ‘Shadows of the Damned’ review
June 27, 2011 By 14 Comments
There is a poignant, almost beautiful moment in Grasshopper Manufacture’s Shadows of the Damned. Demon hunter Garcia Hotspur happens across a giant storybook; a fable of an upcoming boss’s human existence. Garcia, fresh from splattering buckets of demon blood across the soil outside, reads it aloud, soft-spoken and almost cautious. He struggles to pronounce larger [...]
Killstreak Rewards: Boon or Bane for the FPS Genre?
May 26, 2011 By 14 Comments
Since Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was released in November 2007, killstreak rewards have been commonplace in the online multiplayer in numerous FPS titles. Popularized by Call of Duty 4’s UAV (3 kills), Air Strike (5 kills) and Helicopter Strike (7 kills), the idea of rewarding players for staying alive while continuously taking out [...]
It is time to be ‘players’ and not ‘gamers’
April 30, 2011 By 8 Comments
Back in gaming’s early days, gamers were a pretty homogeneous bunch, from local kids hanging out in dimly lit arcades that smelled of pizza and soda to the days of home consoles such as the Atari 2600 and the Nintendo Entertainment System. Even though there were other systems and ways of playing games, those foundational [...]
Editorial: Should Twitter be a source for gaming news?
April 13, 2011 By 4 Comments
The gaming press at large has recently shown a surging interest in celebritizing game developers and treating tweets as the gospel truth. From Cliff Bleszinski’s thoughts on whiskey and one-armed women to what Kojima is or is not eating for lunch, industry writers now more than ever are obsessed with the personal activities of game [...]
VGW’s Daniel Wise Talks Games Journalism, Reviews on Prattle Podcast
April 11, 2011 By 1 Comment
The never-ending debate surrounding games journalism and review philosophies continued recently on Prattle’s 19th episode. Host Kristen Maxwell joined Matthew Weise (Lead Designer of MIT’s GAMBIT Game Lab) and our very own Reviews Editor Daniel Wise to tackle some difficult issues including lazy game reviews and “copy and paste” games journalism. Daniel pimped out VGW [...]
It’s the End of the Magazine as we Know It
April 9, 2011 By 4 Comments
When a media outlet gets an exclusive story on a popular item in the public eye, it’s a big deal. It sells magazines, it secures ratings, and it attracts hits. Why, just last month, VideoGameWriters.com had a slew of exclusive information on titles like Gears of War 3, Portal 2, and Brink that did very [...]
Video Game Reviews and The Infallible Reviewer [Opinion]
March 28, 2011 By 9 Comments
Reviews have dominated many of my conversations throughout the past couple weeks. Be it with the VGW collective, on podcasts or with friends, the topic of reviews has been buzzing significantly for me. This has sprung some fond, and not so fond, memories of my own review writing. I’m still fairly fresh in the space [...]
5 More Dysfunctional Romances that (Predictably) Ended in Tragedy
February 12, 2011 By 4 Comments
Call us sadistic, but we had such a blast rounding up our first batch of dysfunctional video game romances, we just had to make our readers suffer through another five, and these are arguably more twisted. So as you sit pondering your romantic disasters on Valentine’s day, take solace in the fact that these fictional [...]
Ratings, Content and Misconceptions: Why the Bulletstorm Controversy is a Call to Action
February 9, 2011 By 8 Comments
Yesterday, Fox News took a break from shooing kids off their lawn and complaining about the orderlies stealing their money. Yep, they published an article detailing the correlation between violent video games and violent acts in America’s youth. I’m not here to debate that particular point because the data and verdict on this issue seems [...]
Waging War for Integrity: The Curious Case of Benjamin Paddon
February 5, 2011 By 3 Comments
The editors and writers here at VGW have been discussing a Bit-Mob article that sheds light on the latest issues pertaining to video game reporting and criticism. There is a war of words brewing between independent bloggers like Benjamin Paddon who desire a more honest view of the games industry and writers at established websites [...]
Games Aren’t Art, They’re Architecture
One year ago, Roger Ebert wrote a Chicago Sun Times article about how video games “are not and never will be art.” Slightly less than a year ago, I myself wrote a blog post about how his assertion forced the gaming industry to take a long hard look at itself and try to figure out [...]
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