I think games journalism is-is in a really, it’s in a really improving state. I think, like, what’s often sort of forgotten, I guess, within the online community, particularly where people get very heated about, like very, very silly topics from time to time, is games journalism back in the day, back in the magazine era, was essentially product journalism. A lot of it was little more than rewriting press releases and like, paid-for reviews, and all of that sort of stuff, and a lot of it was part of the sales process of the industry. So like, official magazines, for instance. If you think about it, they’re kind of a ridiculous kind of construct, right? Imagine Universal Studios having it’s official Universal Studios magazine, right? You would think that’s just really bizarre. But for games, ‘cause it was a young medium, and it was largely kids, that those kinds of critical distinctions, if you like, those ethical kind of distinctions, they didn’t really exist. Whereas nowadays, you get a number of sites like Polygon, or Giant Bomb, or um, uh, plenty of them where, they have an identity - Rock Paper Shotgun - they have an identity of-of, like experienced journalism, I guess, they’re forming a critical dialogue around games, which I think is very interesting. There’s certain degree of authorship, and there’s a certain degree of, like, Pauline Kael-esque kind of game criticism that’s kind of coming through, and a lot of it is incredibly useful and, I think, um, helpful within the contest of the industry, because it, it gives voice to the idea that there’s more to games than just, you know, selling discs to kids, like that kind of stuff. Um, and so, for me I-I think, I personally think games journalism is, has been doing very, very good things. I think it’s helping to hero a lot of indie games, particularly, to help discover a lot of games that otherwise would’ve, go completely unnoticed. Um, I think there’s a lot of very conscientious writers working within the games journalism space now. I think there’s some who aren’t, but, that there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of coverage, if you like about what it is to be in gaming that didn’t exist, or didn’t exist to any great extent, let’s say 20 years ago, you know? And so, I’m a big fan of, and I’m a big supporter of the idea that, that sort of side of games journalism should continue to-to grow and evolve. Because if we don’t have that, we’ve just essentially got reviews and previews, or previews. And that’s it. Um, so yeah, so like, why not, why not talk about games like a grownup medium does, you know, and why not allow that voice to be heard? Why, why get all heated up about the idea that somehow that’s wrong?
