"Last year my brother was skewered by a moose."

I've started posting items on a more regular basis to the Gaming Enthusiast Press Awards blog and as result I find myself constantly flipping back through the metaphoric pages in my brain looking for "pinnacles" of good writing.

I've already added a post to Old Man Murray's classic feature "Crate Review System" which actually provided quite a bit of mirth back in 2000. Oddly enough, the Crate Review System is still valid twelve years later, possibly more so. But there are other "classics" that stand out over the last decade and one of those is a (fake) Cudgel of Xanthor game preview, penned by Jeff Green back in 2007 (in Computer Gaming World), which I've included below.

The piece does an effective job of completely skewering games writing and lampooning the extremely low bar that many of the enthusiast press aspire to. The article also manages to include just about every cliché about games writing one can find, all the while not saying anything substantive about the game even though the writer was "literally foaming at the mouth" after playing the game.

I present to you the piece in its entirety:

Interviews: Then and Now

In the first three to five years of The Armchair Empire's glorious existence, one of my favourite aspects was snagging interviews. And it was so, so simple. I'd send an email to someone -- Jeff Green, Bruce Campbell, Al Lowe, Tim Schafer -- via their official site or some readily available email address, we'd connect, I'd send some questions, they'd answer them, etc.


If you've been paying attention, Interviews have really trickled off on the site -- we haven't posted a new one since December 2010! -- and there are two reasons.

Al Lowe

Time or lack thereof, plays into it, but mostly it's lack of response from the other side. Most developers have a layer of "protection" from people like me, people that want to know things that maybe are only tangentially related video games or the current project. We line things up as best we can and fire a salvo of questions only to have them drop out of the sky for unexplained reasons or just completely vanish with absolutely no echo. A couple of follow-up emails or phone calls later and still no response... my time is more precious to me than that. I'm not willing to hound people.

There's also the fact many developers and publishers have cultivated their own outlets -- blogs, Facebook, Twitter, official sites -- that eliminate the need for any "middle man" source. They pose the questions and they answer the questions. Control is important in this case -- there's very little room for a game journalist to plan for a "Gotcha!" moment that fools some game developer into explaining what's really on his or her mind.

For those moments we have to wait until someone comes unhinged or says something on Twitter they shouldn't have or spouts off at a live panel discussion, where the layer of PR/Marketing messaging is thinnest, mostly, I think, because the PR/Marketing handlers are stopped from rushing the platform.

Anyway, I kind of lament the stagnation of our Interviews section. It's probably time to be more aggressive getting interviews, likely from the indie games crowd who have no layer of PR.

For the Record...

Just wanted to put this "on the record" as far as this blog goes because it's one of the pieces of writing I'm most proud of simply because it seemed to distil -- at least in my own mind -- the complete run of CGW/GFW Radio (on the 1UP Network) in a handful of paragraphs. This was written for the CGW/GFW Radio Reunion at PAX Prime in 2009 to introduce the cast:

A man who flew to Seattle on a flaming burrito,
And woke up on the bathroom floor only minutes ago,
The Peggle-code begging Lord of the Rings himself

JEFF GREEN 

Creator of the Monopoly scoring system for PC games
And the "This but this" format of game reviewing,
Getting ready for Frodo's birthday, the real Tingle

SEAN MOLLOY

A dolphin that can sing like a chicken,
Straight from Chernobyl with the bruises to prove it
George Lucas's worst nightmare, it's

ROBERT ASHLEY

The quiet one with a burning hatred of Mark Millar
And snack machines around the world,
Direct from Dharmaville, Hell Yeah! it's

RYAN SCOTT

A prankster with a degree in giving customers the pickle
Straight out of a Second Life acid trip, chomping on candy,
The Punisher of video games, he's here to protect you

SHAWN ELLIOTT