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I FINALLY MADE IT AS A GAMES JOURNALIST - by Mr Biffo

13/2/2019

24 Comments

 
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Back when I was first writing Digitiser, something myself and Mr Hairs were keen to stay away from was the cult-of-personality thing which most games mags of the day engaged in.

I mean, it backfired completely - giving ourselves ridiculous names, in response to a reader's query, was meant to be flippant, and yet they stuck. And here I am 26 years later still calling myself Mr Biffo.

At the age of 22 - the age I was when I started writing Digitiser - I was possessed of a slightly forced cynicism, but in reality that was mixed with a little bit of envy. We acted like we thought games journalists who plastered their photos - or, worse, cartoons of themselves - all over their magazines were tawdry attention-seekers.

In reality, we didn't care as much as we made out, but so far did my self-depreciation go back then that I didn't dare do anything which might've appeared like I wanted anybody to know who I was. It went so deep that even though Digi was written by individuals, we adopted a collective "we" when it came to any opinion.

It was ridiculous really. Just another way for us to strut around like we were better than everyone else. I mean, the games journos-as-celebrities thing never bothered me when I was on the outside of the industry. I liked feeling I was getting to know the writers of my favourite magazines.

​It was only when I accidentally became one of them - albeit writing for Teletext, "The scrag-end of journalism", as we used to say - that I felt uncomfortable drawing too much attention to myself. But that might've been because, on a barely conscious level, I believed I didn't deserve to be one of them. 
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FACELESS JOURNALISM
The truth is, most games journalism these days is online, and relatively faceless - barring a byline and a link to the author's Twitter account. You're highly unlikely to ever see a photo of a games journo in which they're pulling a stupid face.

On the rare occasions a feature is accompanied by a photographic byline, it will appear ripped straight from Instagram; tasteful, the subject perhaps smiling and staring off into the middle-distance, flat white just out of shot...

I don't really blame the writers for this, more the competitive nature of the industry. By necessity, the fun has gone out of most games writing, which - when I look at many of the big sites - seems to be either heavily news and reviews focused, or deep into gaming culture. Stuff which, more often than not, I've got no great interest in reading. 

Furthermore, the sheer turnover of content - and speaking as somebody who has been laid up with flu since the end of last week, I know all too well the pressure of getting new stuff out - and the amount of competition, again skews the types of articles that get written. 

Clickbait has become a dirty word - there have been a few times I've been accused of it - but you want people to read your stuff don't you? Surely you want to lure them in? It makes me roll my eyes when I hear the word sneered as an insult.

And then, in the same breath, I also wonder what the point is in writing something if the writer is merely writing to be read. However well-written something might be, if all it's doing is existing to get advertising clicks, then it's the journalism equivalent of being paid to stand in the frozen food aisle of Morrison's with your trousers around your ankles, shouting "Look at me! Look at me! Now look at the frozen chickens!"

This isn't an attempt to shit-on modern games journos; there are lots of incredibly talented writers out there, and I'm in awe at the level of research and thought that goes into much modern games writing. I just wish there was a bit more... silliness, I suppose.

I'm not saying my way is right - certainly, in my experience people seemingly would much rather read 5,000 words on the socio-political context of Animal Crossing than one of my stupid lists (10 Games Where The Main Character Hasn't Got A Bum!). Nevertheless, I do miss that devil-may-care, mates-having-a-laugh, gang feeling you got as a reader of Your Sinclair, or Mean Machines. 

That is what seemed to define games journalism back in my day - particularly British games journalism; strong voices, who didn't take everything too damned seriously.
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STICK
Games journalists are still getting a lot of stick - I note a recent deeply misguided attempt to restart the ethics in games journalism "debate" - and I wonder if this change is, in part, because today's journos,  again, by necessity, are perceived as less like one of us, and more like part of their own club. 

To me, games journalism simply appears less inclusive than it once did, and this is why the main gaming personalities these days aren't journalists but YouTubers. There's a sense that it's now Us and Them, rather than just Us, and people are nothing if not tribal.

Certainly, much of my favourite content is put out by enthusiastic amateurs, who are ploughing their own furrow without the pressure to sell advertising. The reward isn't always the biggest audience, but more often than not you will get a passionate one. 

The most popular even have names for their fans - PewDiePie's Bro Army, for instance - making them, for better or worse, feel like part of a collective in a way that readers of the 80s and 90s games mags did. I get that. I totally get it, even if I would like to flush PewDiePie down a lavatory.

I realise that part of why Digitiser had such a loyal following was due to its in-jokes and use of language. None of it was by design - it was usually just stuff that had made us laugh which we threw in, and readers would pick up on - but it had the same result; to make the readers feel like they were part of something.

Yeah, our bosses did accuse us of "excluding" potential readers (and it backfired when they attempted to make Digitiser more "inclusive"), but I'd always rather have an audience of 1,000 passionate readers who are on my wavelength, than 100,000 who don't really care one way or another, because the content is so watered down and beige that it doesn't risk alienating anybody. Although, y'know, back then we did have hundreds of thousands of readers... NOT ANYMORE!!!!

Here's what's really funny though; having spent the early part of my career railing at journos whose faces were plastered all over their magazines, not only am I now plastering my big face all over Digitiser videos, but I'm also going to be getting a cartoon of said big face to accompany my monthly column in Retro Gamer magazine. I felt no shame when they asked, more a sense that I'd finally made it as a games journalist.

​It only took 26 years. 22 year-old me would be appalled. Sell-out.
24 Comments
Barrie link
13/2/2019 09:39:21 am

Any chance of a list of some of the YouTube / etc. voices you personally enjoy? Obviously would just be a lucky-dip sample.

I agree, a lot of writing is very po-faced / dry. I enjoyed Mel Croucher's bit in Wireframe. Love your nonsense mixed with curiosities, occasional food for thought.

Where else is worth a look these days?

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Nikki link
13/2/2019 10:02:20 am

You know that "10 Games Where The Main Character Hasn't Got A Bum!" has to happen now, right? And you have to speculate how each character does their poos? Good, glad we got that cleared up!

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DEAN
13/2/2019 10:57:06 am

I was thinking the exact same thing - stupids lists are where the good times is at!

Rayman - out of that 'O' on his front.

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Nick
13/2/2019 10:21:15 am

Mr Biffo's rapidly ageing assemblage.

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Paul
13/2/2019 10:59:44 am

Mr Biffo's Incontinent Crew

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Al__S
13/2/2019 10:48:33 am

I think balancing the "modern serious" and silly is something Rock Paper Shotgun do quite well, but that's strictly PC gaming (which is fine, focus can be good). John Walker's weekly run down of the Steam charts is now a joyful construct of fan-boy baiting and in-jokes.

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DD
13/2/2019 11:45:32 am

‘In jokes and use of language’

This is exactly what separates Digi from the rest. You either ‘get it’ or you don’t.

When I was much younger I’d stick teletext on the read Digi after school.
My Dad would just sit there in a state of
absolute confusion when I was reading about Reverse Segwicks (-ways?) Zombie Dave and Mr T’s bins. DO YOU SEE?!?

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Phil
18/2/2019 10:35:41 pm

Reversible Sedgewicks!! I have used that description untold times in various applications and not once has anyone asked me what the hell it/they is/are.

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Spiney O'Sullivan
13/2/2019 12:11:40 pm

It is strange that in an era where games journalists are more accessible than ever through social media, we've lost the feeling that the old magazines had of "these people are just a bunch of mates and could be your mates too".

As well as the many reasons given by Biffo above (i.e. games journalism just being a less fun job than it used to be due to insane pressure for constant content), I imagine it's partly the result of journos now having to deal with thousands of tweets from angry gamers that previously just went to a mailbox to be ignored (or made fun of depending on the magazine), making the whole reader-writer relationship seem a bit more hostile. And before anyone says the G-word, I think it was already that way long before that whole debacle happened. It's just the nature of social media to become a giant sinkhole of negativity.

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Jim Leighton (Future World Darts Champion) x
13/2/2019 12:52:19 pm

What G-word?

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Gok Wan
13/2/2019 02:56:42 pm

Gonk.

Stuart
13/2/2019 02:27:22 pm

I dunno, there was always (to me at least) that wee bit of separation between the reviewer personalities of yore and the readers. Maybe it was my younger age at the time, but it always seemed like they were the older, cooler kids at school that you should be around for want of some of it rubbing off on you. Often the jokes wouldn't be in my frame of reference (boozing, football, etc.), so this may be more about my perspective than the general gaming print culture of the time.

Still, when PC Zone and PC Gamer used to do photoshoots for special features and that, it always looked like they were having a laugh, which was nice to see. I guess some Youtubers do still lark about on occasion, as do Consolevania, and of course Digi, so all is not lost!

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Spiney O'Sullivan
13/2/2019 02:55:01 pm

Yes, I think you've articulated it better. You're right, it wasn't so much that they felt like they were or could be your mates as it was that they felt like a slightly cooler older group that you'd love to be part of.

That said, I'm not sure that younger readers feel the same way about writers on Polygon etc that we did about the crew of N64 Magazine etc. They seem to broadly prefer Pewdiepie or Ninja or whatever gaming Youtuber/Twitch personality is the current flavour of the week. Maybe it's a function of the more personal medium that they're using, since streams are essentially a sort of community hangout session and the internet generation expects and demands interaction with the media they consume, whereas we had to accept a certain distance.

Col. Asdasd
13/2/2019 07:17:30 pm

It's a complicated issue for sure and I think there's a lot of factors at play.

Part of it is the context of the time. As Biffo says the Us and Them were less sharply defined and there wasn't a culture war drawing big jagged lines through the game-playing population (which was also smaller, and so inevitably less diverse).

I think as the medium is 'growing up' and 'maturing' there's also a growing disdain, or at least suspicion, of games played purely as a leisure pursuit among journos, who after all have to explain to fellow professionals the value of what they do for a living at dinner parties.

Another thing is that financially the bottom has fallen out of journalism of all kinds, meaning that the kinds of people who get to do it professionally all kind of come from the same ABC socioeconomic class of people who can in some way rely on support from their parents, which has led to a certain homogeneity across many sites (I challenge anyone to identify a Waypoint article from one from Polygon, Vice or Kotaku).

On top of all that I also think Twitter just generally encourages a more fractious, divided, tribal and generally miserable discourse, and unfortunately the media as a whole is completely besotted with Twitter.

As for effics in journalism, it doesn't keep me up at night but it doesn't seem like a good thing that the GG crisis seems to have absolved the industry of seemingly any need to care about how it conducts its business.

F'rexample, publishers have apparently been leaning hard on the people they invite to their preview events, demanding their PR get to sign off on the articles and videos produced by participants to make sure they meet the list of 'talking points' and general tone of positivity they want.

There's a strong implication that people who won't cooperate will lose future access, access these producers rely on which to me is places everyone in a pretty clear conflict of interest. It certainly made me wonder about a few sites I respect giving glowing endorsements to Anthem, which is almost certainly the game that sparked the (itself rather salacious) account below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFpp9YVw8yk

Spiney O'Sullivan
13/2/2019 07:50:31 pm

I would not be surprised if there was some shadiness going on with Anthem's coverage, mainly just because after the sheer soul-crushing dullness of what was on display at E3 last year you'd definitely have to pay or threaten me to make me even care about it, let alone talk about it positively.

Zerogeek
13/2/2019 04:30:39 pm

I grew up on the gonzo, irreverent games journalism of Zero and Amiga Power, and it led me to an (ill-advised) attempt to get into that club myself via university and work experience.

We are sorely missing the in-jokery, non sequiturs and comedy non-gaming features these days, but if the success of Digitiser The Show has shown anything, it's that the audience is clearly still out there. Gen Xers and elder Millennials who can't find the vibe they like out there in the world anymore.

Let's bring it back ourselves!

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Phil
18/2/2019 10:39:56 pm

Bloody loved Zero. ‘Lord’ Paul Lawkin, David McCandless, and a couple of others I can’t remember but found very funny.

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Lummox60N
13/2/2019 05:41:46 pm

I'm willing to bet there's somebody reading this that can successfully provide the, cough, "punchline" to Your Sinclair's "Why is an orange orange?" joke.
N64 Magazine, TO THIS DAY, makes me laugh with their celebration of their readers' scary letters, most notably, "one nit when i was sleppin a grackler cam", and I can be reasonably certain I'm not alone in that, too.
And here we are, many, many years down the line, STILL chuckling at the output of "Mr. Biffo".
Most other outlets have lost the celebratory, inclusive ethos that made "The Days Of Yore" so glorious.
But not Digi.
I forget where I was going with this.
I salute you, Mr. Rose, my first hero of "journalism". All those years ago you gave us all a place to go, to be, to feel a part of something greater than just sitting in our bedrooms in front of a teeny telly.
I, also, naturally, cuss you bad.

You "made it" all those years ago.
For many of us, at least.

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Spiney O’Sullivan
13/2/2019 07:22:03 pm

Oh my god, I haven’t thought about the nit the grackler cam in years, but it still makes me smile. I still deeply regret throwing out a bunch of old N64 Magazine issues years ago. I don’t miss the old issues of Nintendo Official Magazine, Play or Gamesmaster that have fallen victim to assorted house and flat moves, but N64 Magazine was pure gold. I have just one issue left, the first I ever bought. One day I’ll go on an ill-advised eBay spree and sort that out...

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Captain Commodore link
13/2/2019 06:09:43 pm

Speaking of games journalists and youtubers... has anyone else managed to catch Dave "Games Animal" Perry's first "episode" of Games Animal TV?

Oh dear.

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mrak
13/2/2019 06:53:00 pm

Your man Steve Shields of Zzap!/Commodore Force fame went on to edit various top shelf magazines. Trufax!

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Col. Asdasd
13/2/2019 11:39:23 pm

"I keep having nightmares about old school journalists. I keep seeing Julian Rignall climbing through me window. He's got a big percentage under his arm... big fuckin' thumbs."

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James Walker
13/2/2019 11:55:16 pm

Totally loved this article and it got me nostalgic for that type of ‘gang’ thing, intentionally or not I believe the digitiser channel Has taken on board.
Reminds me also of the time I won Hudson Hawk on VHS in Amstrad Action magazine. Never received it and after a couple of months I’d ring them every week to hassle them for it!
I was slightly star struck but shocked how accessible they were!
Good times.
Never got my video though. The Twats.

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Craig Grannell link
14/2/2019 10:08:22 am

My experience of this from the inside, albeit after the age of classic games mags, is that the publishing industry has basically been freaking out for the past 15 years. Previously, magazines were a form of entertainment in and of themselves. More recently, there’s been a trend towards information. Press releases are rewritten rather than insight being provided and humour being inserted. Online, there’s too often a trend towards what’s good for SEO rather than readers, perhaps because the notion of organically growing a loyal readership means little in an age where advertising money has dried up.

I recall a couple of incidents that align with this in print, too. One was a mobile mag I was games editor for. My take was to bring a bit of Amiga Power into the publication, and the editor went along with that. We were opinionated (our ratings were VERY different from everyone else’s), and had fun with the writing. We were rarely silly, but even short reviews were fun and peppered with puns. Then the mag went digital, analytics came in, and the PTBs tried to nuke the entire games section. The reason? It was the least-read, although not by a huge margin. So they wanted to remove it. (They didn’t succeed, but we had a page cut, and they mandated I could no longer provide tips on any game I wanted – that now had to be for major games, despite those already being available all over the internet.)

Elsewhere, years back, I also wrote two news sections. I only once got a black mark from one editor, and that was because the section was “boring” that month. He noted that it was usually sparky, and that because this was for print there was no point in it just reporting the news. Suitably told off, I also felt vindicated. But it made another mag I wrote news for – where I was specifically told there was “no room for opinion” – feel very off. It’s not that every news piece should be an op-ed, but there was no room for context, reflection, or meaning. It was just straight stories, with the odd quote – and four weeks later than online.

My take remains that if there isn’t a spark of something in what you’re writing, what’s the point? It doesn’t have to be a pseudo-oil Frey head in a games mag, or yelling MOC-MOC-A-MOC, *but* there needs to be *something*. I wish more publications realised this – or, more accurately, those that did were rewarded rather than the dull clickbaiters winning the war.

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