A Note to the Editors
I’ve found I simply enjoy hearing opinions on video games. Yes, yes maybe that’s the obvious but most people only like hearing from people they agree with. Now granted I draw the line on post comments on the major video game message boards, but any intelligible opinion on video games fascinate me. And what intrigues me even more is how the opinion is delivered. I would also love to see some charts and diagrams depicting who plays what games and which podcasts they tend to gravitate towards.
Justin McElroy from Joystiq for instance constantly speaks of his opinions (on the podcast at least) as facts and words to live by. Granted he’s being sarcastic but its such a constant factor it is easy to forget that he speaks almost entirely in sarcasm (ie “this isn’t the kind of game I want people playing”, “you’re wrong, this game is bad. Play some better games”, etc). The Joystiq podcast is actually an interesting phenomenon to me. I really enjoy listening to it and hearing all their opinions and subsequent deliberations but I rarely agree with any of them. Yet I’ve listened to this podcast the longest out of the ones I still follow. Ironically this podcast is probably the most insulting out of all the podcasts I listen to in terms of if the audience disagrees with the speaker. Heck listening to their Final Fantasy 13 discussion was an extremely interesting set because of how much they disagreed with each other. I could be wrong, but Ludwig sounded pretty ticked off. Either way I still enjoy listening to them and keeping up with their news articles.
Giant Bomb is another site I can’t get enough of that I constantly disagree with. Their review on Transformers had me feeling like I was a bad person (seriously society, why do you want me to feel bad for loving giant robots? Giant robots need love too). Giant bomb tends to have a round table discussion with the goal of coming to a consensus and declaring it video game law. Its a fascinating approach. I would love to hear what Nintendo fans think of Giant Bomb since they seem the most outspoken against the Wii. Also where Joystiq constantly berates themselves, Giant Bomb constantly speaks with authority and conviction. For me, Giant Bomb is mostly about humor because as I said, I constantly disagree with them.
And then you have 1Up, where I imagine most of the Nintedo fans go for their news. Where Joystiq is fairly pro 360 and Giantbomb is kind of just shy of middle of the row between 360 and PS3, 1Up loves Nintendo. Really in all reality, 1Up is simply the one website that doesn’t seem to berate Nintendo constantly (although they did seem to love Nintendo at E3 a little more than everyone else).
For me, the enjoyment on 1Up is Active Time Babble, the RPG podcast. JRPG’s seem to polarize audiences all through the US, with people either loving or hating them. The stereotypes that go along with JRPG’s are hilarious and almost always a complete miss, but this post is not about how JRPG haters believe every JRPG is Final Fantasy 7. But really what happens in Active Time Babble happens through all of 1Up. 1Up has a whole lot more intelligent conversation and examination than either GiantBomb or Joystiq, but very few jokes. So they run the risk of boring the audience if they start dissecting a topic that does not hold interest for the audience. But its this same strength that makes me wish all their podcasts were weekly.
Yes there are many, many other websites and podcasts to listen to or follow. For me, these are the big three. I’m not a fan of Destructoid and I’m not into the business aspects of the industry enough to follow Gamasutra. All the other podcasts I listen to are fan based, the primary and best one of the bunch being That Video Game Podcast.
Anyway, this is just ramblings. No one’s opinion is right. And quite a bit more of both the science and business world are constructed of opinion than we like to believe. I know you might disagree with me on science but let’s not forget, science is based on proving itself wrong. The history of science is a fascinating subject especially when realized from that context.
