There are plenty of sites devoted to video gaming out there, a few of them very professional and are actual institutions. Game blogs can and will be done, there is no way to stop that, but why on Earth would they be necessary?
Most professional websites offer new, previews and opinions, but most importantly they offer reviews. These sites are consumer information sites. They are there to provide information to the consumer of what is coming out and if its worth their time. The news and previews are designed to increase hype and visibility of products. That is all well and good, but in the information age there is a noticeable difference between video games and mediums of old. Movies, novels and poetry were around before information was available instantly at the drop of a hat. One thing that video game lack is an actual critical look at games.
What choices did developers make in level design, story, mechanics, and/or concepts worked or did not work? These are done to an extent in reviews, but there is no look at why this is so. Commercial websites don't have the time to do this analysis. So we turn to the Blogosphere.
In other mediums people in the industry learn by viewing other people's work several times to see what can be done and then they could read up analysis on why it worked. Video games not so much because the average game is 5 to 6 times longer than the average movie and requires much more scrutiny than the written word. Also, modern video games comprise the visuals of movies, the possibilities of animation, the story telling of books, and also add in the gameplay mechanics of arcades. It isn't possible to note everything about a wide variety of games as it once used to be.
Creative design blogs are the way to go. You could liken them to the critical magazines when they were more well read way back. Thinking along those lines design blogs are the transition of content of what was once part of the print media to the digital one.
Fred McCoy is an avid video game critic who strongly suggests looking to Eric Swain for indepth articles on his game design blog. |
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