GamerNode: Brendon Lindsey's Columns

When game journalism gets lazy

A quick sidenote while I'm waiting for my lunch to heat up...

One of the big problems with "game journalism" has always been its reliance on being able to go "FIRST!" First to get something on Digg; first to get something on N4G; first to make news viral. To that extent, when a site like Videogamer.com gets an awesome interview/feature with SOE's Ryan Barker, other sites chomp at the bit. First, The Escapist takes the story, regurgitates it with some different words... but misses the point. (Or intentionally misleads so that they can have such a nice viral title?) 

If you read the original Videogamer article, you'll notice that Ryan talks about an MMO for the Facebook crowd being the thing that will kill WoW; you know, a game friends can easily play and interact with each other in, that does...

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The Lindsey Chronicles 08: #1: The first day of E3...

The sun is setting on the first day of E3, allowing many of the attendees to come out from beneath their rocks and move free from fear of the harmful UV rays' effects on their pasty white skin. So far, it's been a day of wins and failures, but to be fair most of it has been pretty failtacular when all things are considered.

I began my journey (like usual) driving to PDX to fly down to LA for E3. No traffic; sweet. Got to my flight on time, it wasn't delayed, and I was up in the air 30,000 feet above everyone else (except other people in planes and people not at sea level) and reading Game Boys by Michael Kane. Then, unwillingly, I played peekaboo with the little girl in the seat in front of me for about five hundred hours before she started screaming and bashing against the seat so hard I ...

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Community Day, ahoy!

Wednesday and Thursday, I left my Oregon home for the (at times) wonderful city of San Francisco to attend Eidos's Kane & Lynch Community Day. Getting there was no big deal, even counting the fact I completely read the plane ticket wrong and left an hour later than I should have. (It's easy to make up lost time driving in Oregon when you grew up in L.A.)

Remember, this is far from the first time I've gone somewhere for a press event or meeting with a game publisher. This is the first time I've been part of a "community" event, though.

Why is that important? Because it's so much better. In the past, most of these types of things I've gone to have been filled with antisocial people doing nothing to contradict the general gamer stereotypes a large portion of the populace holds. They'll talk a...

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An open call to fellow journalists (and industry p...

Honestly, I'm getting tired of seeing opinion piece after opinion piece pop up lamenting about today's problem of reviewing games, and after shooting the shit with him all morning I know Chris is, too. Whether it's the fact the scoring system widely used is skewed, the purpose of reviews is unclear, games are judged for varying reasons, or games are unfairly compared to one another, it seems like every person I've talked to about this has some sort of issues.

To be fair, I've participated in it all myself. I've talked about changing how reviews work, "solving the problem" myself, and all that - I'm even guilty of writing the aforementioned "Why Reviews Suck" piece and ultimately letting it go at that. That's why I'm writing this, and issuing an invitation to you, my fellow gaming journalis...

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How a GameStop Employee Tried to Screw Over My Gir...

Fairly recently, my girlfriend has been getting into gaming. I don't mean "getting into gaming" like she just ran out, reserved the Legendary Edition of Halo 3 and installed Civ 4; basically, she bought a DS. She's played and owned a few games (Puzzle Quest, Animal Crossing, Lunar Knights, and some used GBA games like Chain of Memories), and she wanted to get something new to play while I write, talk on the phone, or play games myself for review.

So off we went to the nearby mall to get some lunch, and afterwards browse the EB and GameStop stores to see if there were any DS games she felt like purchasing. After 20 minutes of looking through DS titles, she finally decided on Mario 64 DS, and I asked if she was ready to leave. "Yea," she said, "but let me buy it alone." (The other times she'...

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What's the Current State of Gaming?

What's the current state of gaming? It really depends who you ask. To some, gaming is enjoying a resurgence in sales and conversions the likes of which haven't been seen since the 80s. To others, gaming is entering murky water, where the true gamers are being left behind in favor of the growing casual gaming population.

But where do we really lie? Right now, we're in the midst of Console War V (according to my own count), and more people consider themselves gamers than ever before. Most of those people, though, play casual games or free Windows games such as solitaire; ask how many "gamers" own a PS2(3), Xbox (360), or Nintendo (pick one), and the numbers likely plummet faster than the suicide ghosts in 1408 (good movie, by the way).

Even with what people consider real games, most of the ti...

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