Meanwhile, over at Just Games Retro…
“I never realized how many people were actually running sites like this until a few weeks ago. And if not their own sites, then talking over vid captures on YouTube, or swarming meta-review sites or Gamefaqs with their opinions. It’s a little disheartening, I suppose, that I’m not as fresh and edgy as I thought. I think it’s part of the reason that a review of the original Mega Man is currently dead on paragraph three. Maybe Tycho’s right.
Too bad the Abandonware Blog is still down, this would be a good topic. Maybe the boys at FFG will pick it up? Hmmmm?”
Consider it done.
So, did you see any particularly good ones? I don’t really like to look for the same reason.
I guess it shouldn’t come as a massive shock that there are lots of people out there who play and enjoy old games and are capable of stringing a few sentences together. Puncturing of egos aside, I think it can only be a good thing for old games if people are putting together and maintaining decent review sites. It’s more disheartening to log onto MobyGames and observe the plethora of poorly written user reviews on there.
As for the Penny Arcade thing, I’d like to think that it really is the reviews of the likes of Pac-Man and Solitaire that they’re criticising as completely unnecessary, but I guess it could be taken to mean that we’re all wasting our time here. Certainly, when covering games like Monkey Island or Half-Life, you can sort of feel like you’re reviewing Star Wars, but it’s an easy trap to fall into to assume that everyone’s played and enjoyed them already. For example, I’ve just started to play Fallout, a classic in most people’s eyes, for the first time. I’d have to say that reading a few well-written reviews and features (such as on JGR) beforehand were a significant factor in me giving it a go.
Sorry – I seem to have hijacked JMan’s original point here, so I’ll cease my rambling. Anyone got any thoughts?
Posts
No, the only reviews I frequent are yours and the Angry Video Game Nerd. I’ll read/watch every update regardless of my interest in or opinion of the game itself. So you and the AVGN have been the most entertaining, but the metareview sites and downloadable demos for current games, and the explanatory blurbs at HOTU for the classics, have really been more useful in finding new games (Abandonia’s are too long for a download site in my opinion. It’s like having a game store with a two-page review attached to each box… thoughtful, but if I’m there, I already intend to get the game.) Not that I wouldn’t check out a game you recommended and that sounds interesting, but it’s not why I frequent FFG. You tend to follow the same mantra that we do – documenting a game at least as much as you judge it – and that alone is entertaining to read.
PA’s news post for that strip seems to focus the ire on current-generation magazines and game sites reviewing XBox Live and Virtual Console releases like they were new titles. I can understand that to a point, as I really don’t care what IGN thinks of Metroid, or what some mook who wrote a total of four sentences thinks on MG. I would instead look to sites like this one if I wanted a serious opinion and analysis. Someone who would respect the period the game came from, not be afraid to let you read the information and come away with a different opinion, and not say ridiculous things like "Well it was awesome back then, but there’s really no reason to play it now when you could play Bioshock." I do agree that competent, current reviews of classic material have value, and I do believe that eventually everything old is new again. I try to write the kind of reviews I would want to read.
But I think I’m bothered because I’m starting to see in old game reviews the same reasons why I don’t do movie reviews, even though I’d be more qualified for it than games. EVERYONE reviews movies. I don’t review current games because EVERYONE reviews current games. I’m not worried that we’ll get lost in the shuffle or we aren’t "cool" anymore, like disowning a band you’ve loved for years now that they’re on the radio. I am more concerned about adding useless drivel to a flood of it. I think it’s a personal belief that chiming your opinion in with a sea of others makes you look like an asshole. Bloggers provide a brilliant example of this.
So while I’ve said in the past that I would continue to write the reviews even if no one was reading (and I do believe that devil-may-care attitude actually makes for the best content), I feel like there comes a point after you attract an audience that you’re responsible for giving them what they can use. Call it being a responsible member of the Web 2.0 community. Sure, I believe that everything that is optional has the right to exist. But I also believe you’d better be offering something, or you’re wasting space. And if I’m wasting other people’s time, I’m also wasting my own.
A side note to explain my mentality on this: getting readers has actually complicated matters quite a bit, and my greatest fear is that I’ll attract an enormous following and suffer a gentleman’s duty to provide massive amounts of meaningful content on time. (If anyone really wanted to piss me off, a successful Slashdotting of JGR would do it. I would invent curses for that day.) My climbing visitors has meant a greater level of care, purposely alotting time to old games, trying to meet a Sunday deadline and feeling a bit of irrational shame when I’ve "let the site go" for more than two weeks. So maybe I’m just trying to make the argument that it’s "all hard and stuff" now so I can go back to bed.
To put it another way, while the edgy, East-Coast side that started JGR is the side saying "Hell with em! It’ll be there if they wanna read it!" it’s in conflict with that responsible side that wants to provide a nice, tidy little home and a laugh for all our visitors (coincidentally, they’re the same two arguing sides that love Mini-Wheats for the delicious frosting, and the good-for-you wheat).
I guess this ultimately begs the question if sites like ours better serve the public by covering games that are fading from history, instead of chipping our pfennigs in toward games well-covered. You could make the argument that Mega Man 1 is fading in comparison to the legacy of the Mega Man Series, and thus worthy of a review, which is where this starts to get complicated. But do I need to cover Mario? Is it more valuable to look into an old text adventure than to rampage down the lines of Command & Conquer or Warcraft? Do we need to offer stuff you can’t get anywhere else? As a comparison, we’ve gotten the most mail about a single game we’ve ever had over Reelect JFK; a game that people clearly remember but that has no formal information left on it. Does the previous standard of "play whatever you want and write about it" still fly with the readership?
August 29, 2007 @ 4:46 am
I guess it’s about trying to strike a balance.
On the one hand, you want to write stuff that might actually be useful to someone who reads it – so there’s certainly a case for trying to pick the occasional obscure or little-known title. On the other hand, you also have to feature stuff that you enjoy (or have enjoyed) playing – and sometimes this includes something like a Monkey Island or a Half-Life – or else the motivation to keep adding new content could start to wane. I’ve waded through quite a bit of above-average crap recently, and it was a nice change to blaze through Max Payne and write a positive review.
Stoo’s original idea for this site was ‘let’s write about some old games that we think other people should play’. Obviously, we had to start branching out as time wore on, and as you say, once you become aware that someone out there is looking at the site, you do feel more of an obligation to consider them before deciding what to cover. You sort of think, ‘Does anyone really need to know whether I liked Half-Life?’
I don’t reckon it’s worth worrying about too much. If you start thinking that you have to wade through all sorts of obscure oldies just to keep things more interesting, it can start to feel more and more like a chore. If, as you say, a laid-back attitude does produce the best content then it’s probably safe to trust your own instincts about what to cover.
‘Play whatever you want and write about it’ may be slightly self-indulgent but I reckon you need to have that spark to keep you enjoying it all.
August 29, 2007 @ 11:15 pm
So how is Fallout working for you?
September 10, 2007 @ 3:46 am