I'm about to complain a bit. It will probably come out as attention whoring whininess.
I don't really care.
I'm normally a bit surprised that anyone wants to read my stuff, much less bother to tell other people about it or link to it. But I had expected a little more support from the GamerDad interview. I mean, when I got a developer from SWAT4 on the line, Blues' and Shack posted it as did several fan sites and Irrational themselves. Considering what a hot topic violence, kids and games are these days - why not?
Well games.slash rejected it in about a half hour. Blues and Shack ignored it. Evil Avatar posted it, but they decided to categorize it as such:
Yeah, that's right ... the site for "gaming news with attitude" considers an interview with a professional game reviewer wherein he talks about games and the game industry and kids and gaming and just a whole bunch of stuff about games to be totally off topic.
Which is sad. Because that means that if a crazy ass lawyer who probably hasn't played a game in his life gets up and makes a speech - everyone will hear it. But if a perfectly rational gamer who is trying to actually help parents make a decision about gaming gets up to the table ... well I guess sane people just aren't as interesting. So the people who know the least but yell the loudest will get center stage because they're entertaining. Rational dialogue is going to be the sideshow.
Avatar's explanation is that "We do not normally link to interviews with other webmasters. Webmasters, despite the hard work that they do, are not developers." Right, because the only news worthy of being posted comes from developers. And not marketing guys or reviewers or producers or anyone else in the game industry. Whatever.
However because I do love to produce offtopic material, I plan on continuing this kind of interview. I've already got one lined up and am hoping for a third to sign on by the end of the week. At least then we'll have it on record that these conversations have taken place.
Thanks goes to the various members of the blogosphere who linked up and to ConsoleGold News ... who by the looks of it never sleeps and gets just about every news bit out there.
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Strange Reactions
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3 comments:
That doesn't speak well to EvAv's target audience - or its ideas of who its target audience should be. As a gamer and dad myself, I'm a member of an increasingly large gaming demographic that EvAv and so many other sites are apparently completely out of touch with. All the more reason I'm glad I unsubscribed to their RSS feed months ago.
Loved the interview, by the way.
I loved the interview and linked to it from my blog. Andrew's always been one of my models as a writer, and I'm a big pusher of his site whenever I get the chance.
Regarding the lack of interest from the general gaming community, could it be that Gamerdad is, in a sense, old news? The site's been up for a while, has been profiled in the mainstream press, etc. One more blog that picks his brains is probably ho-hum to many people. Plus, you can't get into a self-righteous foaming over something as reasonable as Gamerdad.
I think the "lack of self-righteous foaming" is the part that worries me.
Andrew might not be brand spanking new, but the debate about the ESRB, the effect of violence on kids, etc., has been brought to the forefront thanks to all the flap with Hot Coffee.
So by passing on hearing from someone with a very solid perspective on the issue means that the flap about the issue is way more prevalent than actually talking or doing anything about it.
And Avatar's decision to dismiss it to an offtopic category and not even consider it, you know, gaming related, is just bizarre.
Case in point - my post about Counter-Strike Porn landed on a German website which ended up bringing more traffic to good old CTan than anything in it's short history. And I did nothing to promote that. But a reasonable dialogue isn't even relevant?
No wonder parents who aren't gamers get so apathetic. The mainstream press is out to scare them. The politicians and lawyers just want to score points with them (or make money from them). And the gaming media could give two squats about them.
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