Text Tree: A Week of Interviews on New Media v1.3
Photo by Christopher Anderson/The Gazette
As you may or may not remember, last Friday we began a series of interviews titled “Text Tree” where we asked WhatTheyPlay’s John Davison and MTV Multiplayer blog’s Stephen Totilo a few questions regarding the role that new forms of content delivery are playing and how changing business models are affecting the way we cover the game industry. We’re kicking off this week with Crispy Gamer’s own Kyle Orland. Hey, didn’t that dude also write a book? Yeah, he totally did (“Wii for Dummies“)! Anyway, he was kind enough to take some time out of his schedule for us and what he said (specifically about changing business models) might surprise you.
(GEEK): As a freelance journalist and having hosted/been a part of a variety of gaming podcasts, could you explain why you think podcasting is an important approach for games coverage, and more specifically, games journalism?
Personally, I find gaming podcasts compelling because they’re the only type of game journalism you can consume WHILE playing a game. In a world where every second spent reading about a game is a second you could be PLAYING a game, this is just efficient time usage. In fact, why are you reading this? Go play a game or something!
On the downside, listening to podcasts while gaming means you can’t listen to the in-game music/sound effects. On the plus side, most game music and sound effects are pretty bad!
(GEEK): In your time as a games journalist/games enthusiast, you’ve seen games writers laid off or resign for other ventures (be they game-related or otherwise). It could be said that the cutbacks we’ve seen budget-wise in games journalism are symptomatic of changing business models that are effecting journalism on the whole. In that regard, do you believe Crispy Gamer or, maybe more importantly, all publishing entities in the games writing are adequately adapting to changing business models?
That was a mouthful! I think in general they are… game journalism has always been ahead of the curve as far as adopting the web as a platform, and the readers have been ahead in using it to get their information (makes sense… it’s a tech savvy audience). Within that, gaming sites are taking advantage of RSS, blogs, podcasts, videos and such at an alarming rate. I think our industry is making the transition from primarily magazine-based to primarily web-based with a minimum of pain.
(GEEK): And finally, what else do you believe we should be doing, as journalists, to pursue better coverage going forward? What should we be doing better?
Wow… that answer could fill a book. If I had to pick one thing, I’d say we should be more skeptical and more willing to champion innovation. Stop buying into the hype of “Generic First Person Shooter Three” and try to look instead for games that do things differently and really move the state of the art forward.
