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<\/h3>\n<\/h3>\nThose Guys Aren’t So Interesting<\/p>\n
Last week I bought a new-but-probably-old-by-now copy of the Australian Official Nintendo Magazine<\/a>. I bought it on the grounds that it discusses upcoming WiiWare and DSiWare games in a professional context. The services features a bunch of games that interest me such as Lit<\/em>, New Adventure Island<\/em>, Gradius Rebirth<\/em>, Contra Rebirth<\/em> etc. and yet the online coverage of these two services is weak. I think it’s an issue with the crediting system for press access to free games, an error on Nintendo’s part unfortunately.<\/p>\n I also bought to magazine to rank it against the grandfather of official Nintendo print; NMS<\/a>. Just briefly; it’s head and shoulders above NMS. Respectable magazine, great visual layout, quality writing and they use their biggest asset (being related to Nintendo) to their advantage with great art assets and exclusive material. Although, the magazine appears to be iterative of the UK version. Hmm..<\/p>\n Anyways, in the reader mail was a response regarding a petty dispute over some score the magazine had previously assigned, the kid said it should have been a 93% and not a 90%. Big deal. It made me think though, why would anyone ever email into a writer of a magazine or website? I mean, most video game websites and magazines command a stringent diet of news, reviews and previews with the occasional feature. The three modes of writing don’t open themselves for discussion since they don’t really present an argument. That is, you can’t email a writer to debate over a news or previews piece because such content is usually above the reader’s point of access. If anything the reader might request the writer to drawn on their insight to offer an opinion, but really there is little argument one can make over news and previews. Reviews are often equally bland affairs of dolled out lists of features, so while there should be, there isn’t really an argument for readers to respond here either. The big three modes of operation could (and should) take sides, show opinions and make an argument, but due to the culture of the games writing media, it kinda hasn’t worked out that way – which is why you’re read me, rite? ^_^<\/p>\n I know that readers don’t always email in with questions regarding opinion. As previously suggested, they may simply wish to draw on the writer’s insight into the industry or share a few compliments. But I wonder, besides the love letters, requests for insight and quibbles over spelling errors, why would one ever need to email these publication in the reader email section?<\/p>\n What about the emails already featured in the reader mail section? Good point! It didn’t take me much backtracking to remind myself why I usually avoid reading the dull community discussion. Most of the published letters (this applies for all print magazines I’ve read) are silly anecdotes that end with a magazine-promoting moral to boast the brand of the copy. Other emails are bouts of obvious stupidity, with readers asking whether X company is working on X dream game. Funnily enough, all email responses, even the remarkably positive ones are always met with a pessimistic sentence or two where the magazine staffer breathes snark at reader. Quite disgusting actually.<\/p>\n The reverse of this is what we have here on the internet, and I think of my articles at GameSetWatch<\/a> as a case in point. GameSetWatch has as much weight as any good print mag, in fact the company have their own print magazine<\/a>, but nevermind. So I write an article or two for the site and it’s discussed in the comments both there<\/a> and a little here at my site<\/a>. I receive an email or two by people who have particular responses to the article. I then cross to someone else’s blog<\/a> who has written an article to make me out as a racist, and we debate the article for a few days there. Two American blokes also do a 30 minute podcast<\/a> where they too discuss one of my articles, and then email me for feedback. I don’t mean to denigrate print or promote my gear, print is wonderful – I just paid a good deal of money for the latest two Gamespite volumes<\/a> (they shipped today!) – but as was the message in my article about Hyper<\/a>, print folks that aren’t progressive in their adoption of new media will simply fall behind. \u00a0The web and blogs in particular are shaping games discussion as the community sees fit, wouldn’t hurt to see print attempting to be a little more bold.<\/p>\n![\"official-nintendo-magazine\"](\"http:\/\/danielprimed.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/official-nintendo-magazine.jpg\" "\\"official-nintendo-magazine\\"")
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