Tagged: MediaWatch

The NRA tries to talk to the kids.

How the NRA Isn’t Playing Games

The NRA tries to talk to the kids.
The NRA tries to talk to the kids.

The National Rifle Association (aka the barmy, right wing, gun lovin’ fellas… aka The NRA) has released a game. It’s called NRA Practice Range. It has guns. Elements of the games media find this hypocritical or somehow ironic.

Not only do these reactions portray a failure to grasp the meanings of both words, they also illustrate a huge problem with a perfectly respectable working press that wants to be seen as a political or even art media: writing about games is respectable without having to “defend” games. It is okay to exercise the critical muscle.
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The Plate has opinions too.

Quoting Toby Young

The Plate has opinions too.
The Plate has opinions too. Quote the plate.
Toby Young ran one of those non sequitur hit-begging pieces aimed at goading lefties and making the Right Wing crow and squawk and shriek in agreement at what passes for ideas in their world.

He uses George Orwell selectively to batter home a point about how dead George would have hated a prize that co-opted his name after he died being given to people who he may or may not have agreed with but we will never be in a position to know.

I like to call this technique ‘The Puppetry of the Corpse’

New Statesman’s Staggering Hit Beggary

New Statesman Burgers
Apt story for the death of the left

I write now as a lefty and not as someone whose day job is trying to get people to read the commercial website about video games (‘videogames’) that I edit. Sadly I find myself writing about this sad piece of hit-begging nonsense masquerading as economic analysis in the New Statesman magazine (Est 1913).

Diablo III is a popular product, famous in its Personal Computer (PC) gaming commercial niche. It is a game of dress up and pretend. It has a hokey premise and mildly exhilarating yet still very conservative (as are most video games produced by large publishers as opposed to the imaginative small indy makers) set of mechanics. It is played out by thousands of people who enjoy it and do no harm.

Recently its makers – Activision/Blizzard, an offshoot of Vivendi – decided to introduce real money auctions to this playground. This is a way to make more money from the harmless people playing the harmless game.
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Scaaaaary man...

Strangulation by Press and PR

Or how to frighten your staff into thinking that they’re in an abusive relationship…OK, so we asked a video game developer (D) what they were looking forward to in games in 2013 and what games stuff had been interesting in 2012. We sent a lovely email.

They panicked obviously thinking that we were going to use that information to destroy the industry…

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An Advertisment is Not a Documentary

LesterThe Verge is a tech site run by Vox Media in the United States of America. It is launching its games news site called, for some reason, ‘Polygon’. Those are the facts. Now, as ever when it comes to commerce and journalism, things get fuzzy.

Let’s watch this advert about for what Vox would like us to believe is ‘documentary’ called Press Reset: The Story of Polygon about the making of the advertising-driven website covering video games at the bottom of this piece.

Certainly, as another strand of the entertainment complex, the video game industry is worth celebrating. I agree. Some video games are good. Many people who make video games are good too. Celebration is what annual, voted on awards shows are for. It is not what news and reviews and interviews are for. Those are there to inform (maybe entertain) readers and, in the case of video games coverage, consumers.

Some people who write about people who make video games, who review games and who do interviews (me, I do that) are okay too. Some of us and some of what we do are necessary to inform consumers of video games about those products. Some of us can also be of value in informing game makers where they have progressed or regressed the industry from which we all make money. But, when all is said and done, we hacks, writers, keepers of journals and blogs are largely there to provide a service to our readers.

As I was told early in my career, “It’s great that you want to right a novel, the door to your house is through the exit of this office. I’ll buy a copy of your book when it comes out. Now, tell the readers whether this widget is any good.”

Times have changed a great deal since then. The New Games Journalism has much to say about this. From a “Manifesto” drawn up in 2004 by Keiron Gillen, who stated in the piece that:

“If Games Journalism is just a job to you, you really shouldn’t be doing it. The word should be “vocation”.”

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Whooping Olympic Hell

WhooopBig Ben is probably still ringing in London to herald the start of the XXX Olympiad. The bell began to toll at 08:12. Radio 4 played it, but there was another sound played too. A terrible, horrible sound. A sound like hyenas discovering, finally, a leader and worshipping it… Whooping.

One of the things I’ve liked about the British – the English, Welsh and Scottish at least – over the years is that they do not ‘Whoop’ or ‘Holla’. I suppose that, given I was born in England, that should be “We don’t Whoop”. I’ll be plain, since returning to the island after many years away, I feel unconnected from ‘Britishness’ or ‘Englishness’. The world is just more interesting than that.

What happened when Big Ben began what I’m sure will soon be called “Belling”, is much, much less interesting in every way.

It happened, however, in London this morning. The mighty, historic, stoic, strong and occasionally comforting sound of Big Ben was washed into the air by the sound of “Whoop!”
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The Least Honest Piece of TV Ever?

Thought UnprovokedThe video you can see after the break is described as, ‘The most honest three and a half minutes of television, EVER…’.

It shows “the new HBO series The Newsroom explaining why America’s Not the Greatest Country Any Longer… But It Can Be.” Yes, once more Aaron Sorkin manages to tailor more new clothes for the emperor.

This is apparently classifiable as thought provoking stuff. What thoughts, other than, “Isn’t that a speech from Mr Smith Goes to Washington or some other Frank Capra movie and one thing that most nations need is a memory which isn’t drenched in sentimentality?”

Or maybe the thought, “When was this period in American history when the USA public was more informed?”

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New Yorker Makes Wine Faux Pas

New Yorker WineThe New Yorker ran a piece called DOES ALL WINE TASTE THE SAME?. The obvious answer is, “No”. The actual answer is also “No”. So, how did Jonah Lehrer (“on science, imagination, and the mind”) manage to get more than 1,150 words out the question?

Jonah asks, “if most people can’t tell the difference between Château Mouton Rothschild (retail: seven hundred and twenty-five dollars) and Heritage BDX (thirty-five dollars from the winery), then why do we splurge on premiers crus? Why not drink (New)Jersey grapes instead? It seems like a clear waste of money.”
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Andy Hayman Tache

The Copper, The Times, The Indignation

Andy Hayman - The Times
Andy Hayman - The Times

Andy Hayman CBE, QPM; Assistant Commissioner for Specialist Operations at the Metropolitan Police – the Copper who led the initial investigation into News of the World phone hacking situation.

His recent appearance before the Home Affairs Select Committee (12th July 2011) was reminiscent of a small but aggressive child accused of raiding the biscuit barrel. When asked by Lorraine Fullbrook (MP for South Ribble) if he – while a police officer – had accepted money from News of the World parent company, News International, Mr Hayman (CBE, QPM; Assistant Commissioner for Specialist Operations at the Metropolitan Police) replied with biscuit barrel indignation:

“Good god! Absolutely not, I can’t believe you suggested that! That is a real attack on my integrity!”

Before we have a look, the image used to illustrate this piece is from the News International (well, NewsCorp) The Times newspaper and shows all the writing that Mr Hayman must have done for that paper after he retired from the police force of course.