Like, oh my God, games journalists should totally grow up

4:38 PM on 08.09.2008   |   Jim Sterling

100 comments

You know what annoys me? How games journalists these days never take anything seriously. Games are serious, and if we want them to be taken seriously, we have to be serious about games, serious about gaming and serious about taking games and gaming seriously. I'm serious about this. 

I've had enough. As a games journalist -- which I totally am, since I write on the Internet -- I want to make a stand, here and now, and take it to these immature frat boys who think that talking about boobs and saying words like "butt" and "buttface" are acceptable ways to write about videogames. They are WRONG. There is only one way to write about games, as dictated by me, a random person who has decided it. 

Hit the jump as I take us one step closer to credibility.

My problem with so-called games journalists (who are not PROPER journalists like me) is that they act like gamers and tend to write in styles that the majority of gamers find enjoyable. This is UNACCEPTABLE! Gamers are, by and large, scum, and even though we write for them, we should never write in a way that they would enjoy. As journalists, we are better than that. I prefer to think of games journalists as beautiful butterflies surrounded by mewling cockroaches.

Games journalism should never be fun. We're talking about videogames, not teddy bears and candy. I want my videogame news so dry, you could die of thirst just from reading the first sentence. Give me nothing but the facts and don't you dare try to be funny. You don't see the anchors cracking jokes on BBC News 24, do you? No, you don't, and we should be trying to act exactly like them!

Another thing that aggravates me is that they deliberately try to be shocking by having opinions. I am absolutely disgusted by the amount of journalists these days who have the utter gall to think about the news they are posting, and actually form opinions from those thoughts, which they will then state, just to cause controversy. 

And why do they cause controversy? PAGEVIEWS, of course. Us real journalists never do anything for pageviews, and actually never intend to earn a single shredded dollar for our writing. It's disgusting how some of these sites, however, have the audacity to try and earn enough money to pay for their hosting costs. These sick filth merchants want hits to generate ad revenue, and that's the kind of sordid, disgusting business practice that I would never ever indulge in, even though practically every site works that way.

One day, I am totally going to win a Pulitzer prize for writing about Princess Peach, but that day is being pulled further and further away thanks to these juvenile garbage peddlers destroying everything that games journalism should be. There are games media writers out there who don't write like everybody else, they don't serve up boring and bland articles that lack any sense of personality, and they don't post press releases with half a paragraph of accompanying text. So long as we have these mavericks in our midst, I'm afraid that we will never be given complimentary fedoras with "Press" labels sticking out of them, which all real journalists are issued with.

I read an article once about Halo 3 in which the so-called writer cracked a joke. I found the joke so funny that I laughed quite loudly. Afterwards, I emailed the Editor-in-Chief of that Web site to have the writer sacked on the spot for dereliction of seriousness. I had never been so angry in my life that I found a videogames article amusing, and luckily the publication in question was equally furious and fired the perpetrator right away, smartly claiming instead that his reviews sucked. I won't mention any names, since I think the writer has suffered enough for his transgression. Let's just say that his name rhymes with Beff Berstmann, however. 

He'll never work in this industry again, and thank GOD for that. 

As long as I live, I will continue to fight the good fight in the name of bland and uncreative videogame journalism. Every time some shithead doodiehead dares make a politically incorrect ironic statement, I'll be there on my little blog site that's read by three people, bitching and complaining until I feel good about myself. Every time a games journalist writes a headline that may contain a whole joke, you can be sure that I will frustratingly hammer angry words into a Wordpress text box, unable to fathom how other Web sites are more popular than my copypasta press releases and fifteen-page long dissections of why I think Nintendo is a videogames company selling videogames. 

I shall prevail, mark my words. One day, videogames journalism will be taken from the gamers, and be put back into the hands of real people. Then, and only then, will I get my damn Pulitzer.