The New Review: Still no games?
Like all aspiring middle class people the only paper we buy is the Graudian and the Observer and every week we get a little bit angry that games are never covered in The Review supplement. That Travel and Sport get their whole own separate supplements is a bog post for another day. Like a lot of other gamers we're still waiting for an audible 'ding' to alert us to the fact that yes, games are now socially acceptable. If you so wished you too could hijack a dinner party/pub lunch with a boring lecture about games in the same way that it is acceptable for wine bores, travel bores and I've just popped a child bores to do. Even though games probably already are socially acceptable we're still waiting for the ding. The batman signal in the sky, the ironic t-shirt that becomes an unofficial trendy uniform, the endless historical documentaries on BBC4 or even our own OBE. Even more frustrating is that the Guardian do have a fairly decent crop of games writers who don't seem to be allowed to write in meatspace.
So it was with some trepidation that we opened this week's THE NEW REVIEW in the Observer. SPOILERS! Still no games:
Page 3: Gary Numan's cultural highlights. No Games. C'mon Gary we can tell by the way you look you're an RTS man. The iPad was Gary's choice under the 'Technology' section.
Page 4: MORE ON THE WEDDING! Quick aside: since when is a 28 year old woman who has never had a job some kind of working class pauper? Or worse some kind of role model? I never thought I'd ask for one but if ever, we need a Jeremy Kyle special: Layabout Monarchy.
Page 6: The 10 best Coronation Street characters. "Dear editor we hereby cancel our subscription etc. etc."
Page 19: The Discover section begins! Will games feature as part of Science, Technology, Nature?
Page 20: Some shit on robots with typical disappointing headline about how they're going to rule the world despite the fact most robots can't multitask beyond 'get stuck in a corner' and 'fall down stairs'.
Page 21: Something on google and facebook. Twitter probably mentioned. Good odds for part of the article just being a random selection of trendy celeb's tweets Ctrl+Ced and Ctrl+Ved. Easy copy.
Pages 24 and 25: Yet another article on Bridget Riley. AND HALF A PAGE ON ARCHITECTURE. HALF A PAGE!!
Pages 26 and 27: Theatre and Classical. Totally irrelevant. Who reads this stuff? We're no Philistine but we're told almost daily how many of us are gamers of one form or another. A third of us in a survery last week? If there were that many theatre goers it wouldn't be dying on it's arse as it seems to always be doing. We seem to lack the politicking advocacy of some media and the inherent cultural worthiness of other media for games to even be worth mentioning yet alone to receive an incomprehensible wafty semi-review of a one off performance.
Page 31: Sorry, I was wrong. The photography page is the least relevant part of this publication.
Page 34: GAMES AND RADIO, a very DCMS lumping, here we go! The games section is comprised of four reviews, one of which is 34 words long. Two typos in the other reviews. This, remember, is award winning coverage (not even by default).
Then it's 80 pages of book reviews, opinions, charts, listings and news. Then the crossword and TV listings.
Maybe the new, new review will be better. We can understand why games don't get much in the way of decent coverage in the mainstream press but when we look at the plethora of excellent games writers online (who don't get paid) and see games culturally sidelined here. Well we're not being served are we? We can't be the only ones either. Until electronic books, magazines and papers become as comfortable, social and as pleasurable to read through on a lazy Sunday morning over a cup o tea we'll just have to carry on pretending to be interested about the higher forms of media. And TV. And Theatre. And Radio, Dance, Photography and erm anything relating to Apple as filed under 'Technology'.
So it was with some trepidation that we opened this week's THE NEW REVIEW in the Observer. SPOILERS! Still no games:
Page 3: Gary Numan's cultural highlights. No Games. C'mon Gary we can tell by the way you look you're an RTS man. The iPad was Gary's choice under the 'Technology' section.
Page 4: MORE ON THE WEDDING! Quick aside: since when is a 28 year old woman who has never had a job some kind of working class pauper? Or worse some kind of role model? I never thought I'd ask for one but if ever, we need a Jeremy Kyle special: Layabout Monarchy.
Page 6: The 10 best Coronation Street characters. "Dear editor we hereby cancel our subscription etc. etc."
Page 19: The Discover section begins! Will games feature as part of Science, Technology, Nature?
Page 20: Some shit on robots with typical disappointing headline about how they're going to rule the world despite the fact most robots can't multitask beyond 'get stuck in a corner' and 'fall down stairs'.
Page 21: Something on google and facebook. Twitter probably mentioned. Good odds for part of the article just being a random selection of trendy celeb's tweets Ctrl+Ced and Ctrl+Ved. Easy copy.
Pages 24 and 25: Yet another article on Bridget Riley. AND HALF A PAGE ON ARCHITECTURE. HALF A PAGE!!
Pages 26 and 27: Theatre and Classical. Totally irrelevant. Who reads this stuff? We're no Philistine but we're told almost daily how many of us are gamers of one form or another. A third of us in a survery last week? If there were that many theatre goers it wouldn't be dying on it's arse as it seems to always be doing. We seem to lack the politicking advocacy of some media and the inherent cultural worthiness of other media for games to even be worth mentioning yet alone to receive an incomprehensible wafty semi-review of a one off performance.
Page 31: Sorry, I was wrong. The photography page is the least relevant part of this publication.
Page 34: GAMES AND RADIO, a very DCMS lumping, here we go! The games section is comprised of four reviews, one of which is 34 words long. Two typos in the other reviews. This, remember, is award winning coverage (not even by default).
Then it's 80 pages of book reviews, opinions, charts, listings and news. Then the crossword and TV listings.
Maybe the new, new review will be better. We can understand why games don't get much in the way of decent coverage in the mainstream press but when we look at the plethora of excellent games writers online (who don't get paid) and see games culturally sidelined here. Well we're not being served are we? We can't be the only ones either. Until electronic books, magazines and papers become as comfortable, social and as pleasurable to read through on a lazy Sunday morning over a cup o tea we'll just have to carry on pretending to be interested about the higher forms of media. And TV. And Theatre. And Radio, Dance, Photography and erm anything relating to Apple as filed under 'Technology'.
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