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Thread: Gamasutra interviews Arnie Katz, co-founder of Electronic Games magazine

  1. Gamasutra interviews Arnie Katz, co-founder of Electronic Games magazine

    Fascinating article on one of gaming journalism's pioneers. (And, yes, I'm aware that the term "gaming journalism" is usually met with derision around these parts.)

    Excerpt:

    Do you think in modern era of the internet, with blogs and user generated content, that people now expect it to be some kind of stepping stone?

    AK: Yes, the lines have been blurred. I do not say this to be discouraging, but I am saying it as somebody who recently folded a web site because I found no way of making money at it. The reality is, there is a delusive factor and it has always beset writers (at least for my entire career and well back beyond that) that people confuse the ability to type with the ability to write.

    Artists are lucky. People inevitably find out if they can or can't draw. If you can't, you can't. People say to me things like, "I could have written that if I had had the time." That's like saying, "I could have done that brain surgery if I had all that training".

    The fact is, I love the internet. I ran web sites starting in the early '90s. After leaving the electronic gaming world, I became the editor in chief and the chief editorial architect at a site named CollectingChannel.com that became the fourth largest site on the internet, when I was doing it.

    I love the internet, I spend a lot time with my friends on the internet, but when it comes to writing, there are 100 times more people writing than there should be. When you look at the blogs they are mostly terrible, mostly a waste of time. It's a waste of time for the writer, a waste of time for the reader. Of course there are exceptions, but the average blog is read by seven people.

    It is very difficult to gain an audience because there are so many voices.

    AK: Yeah, there is a bad signal-to-noise ratio. There is a lot of noise and it makes it very difficult for people to find an audience. There have always been people who felt a yearning to become writers without the desire to submit their work to nay kind of critical scrutiny. They start their own little magazine, now they start a blog. Most of them are not very good. There is no question that the abundance of online material about video and computer gaming has largely destroyed the newsstand magazines.

    With several magazines folding over the last year, what do you think of the industry now? I have not really followed print magazines since Next Generation folded a decade ago.

    AK: There is a reason for that. They don't respect your intelligence. By the way, neither did Next Generation. They reviewed games they had never seen.

    I liked Next Generation because they were the first guys to have a retro column.

    AK: Yeah, they did that. They would also trumpet some game was rumored to be under development in Japan as the greatest game ever. Then, a month or two later, they would review it, based on screenshot or something, and it would be "almost" the greatest game ever. Then a few months later the American edition would come out and it would be crap. They were marks.
    Gamasutra
    Last edited by Brisco Bold; 30 Dec 2009 at 01:42 AM.

  2. #2
    Nice read. I missed out on his earliest writing at the time but I bought VG&CE plenty of times. So many early game writers disappear and we never hear from them again. It makes me wish the current media would spend more time tracking these dudes down and interviewing them.

  3. Good read.

    I've spent time on the internet searching various older writers in the past, but haven't found a whole lot. I have fond memories of PCXL and was looking some of the editors up. I didn't find a whole lot. Most of the people just seem to disappear.

  4. Interesting read, especially the stuff about mags reviewing stuff sight unseen. I'm not sure I agree with his negative take on blogging & small sites though. The point of writing is self-expression, it's not necessarily justified by audience size or somebody else's opinion of it.

    This cover is priceless, btw:
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Click image for larger version. 

Name:	katz_eg1.jpg 
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    -Kyo

  5. He comes off as more than a little bit arrogant. Having a solid grasp of language and the relevant information is more than enough to put someone on his level. It's not fucking brain surgery.
    But of course we all know and revere the great CollectingChannel.com, so he's golden.

  6. What the fuck is collectingchannel.com

    Collectingdust.asshole

  7. Quote Originally Posted by kedawa View Post
    Having a solid grasp of language and the relevant information is more than enough to put someone on his level.
    What percentage of people attempting to write articles about games possess these traits would you say?

  8. I don't know, really. I don't read blogs, but judging by the state of 'professional' game journalism, less than a quarter.
    I think that has more to do with poor staffing decisions and backwards priorities on the part of those managing the gaming press than it does with any lack of talented writers.
    It's not exactly an attractive line of work, either, given the poor job security and pay.

  9. It's a line of work a high burn out rate, so I think sometimes staffing decisions are based as much on whether or not someone has a proven track record of hanging in there. Which is understandable.

    But yeah, I think he's just saying that there's a lot of garbage out there obscuring the quality, not so much that it's this rare, unique trait that no one has but him.

  10. Quote Originally Posted by Frogacuda View Post
    What percentage of people attempting to write articles about games possess these traits would you say?
    Quote Originally Posted by Gamasutra quoting Katz
    There have always been people who felt a yearning to become writers without the desire to submit their work to nay kind of critical scrutiny.
    Nay kind whatsoever.
    -Kyo

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