04.27.10
Posted in games, work, writing at 7:09 pm by Rob Fahey
I’ve been ignoring this blog, of late. Apologies to my handful of subscribers. Fear not – exams are upon me, and the opportunities for procrastination presented by blogging are too delectable to pass up upon. With that in mind, I’m working on a fairly mammoth post about the upcoming election, proportional representation, and what’s truly at stake on May 6th.
In the meanwhile, pray indulge me a few quick links to some stuff I’ve been working on recently.
First up, here’s a gigantic retrospective article on the making of Halo 2 which I wrote for Eurogamer to commemorate the closing of the original Xbox Live service earlier this month. Bungie were amazingly helpful in writing the feature and gave me fantastic access to the original developers of the game. It’s been known for years that Halo 2 had a tortured development process – the feature, I think, puts some meat on those bones and demonstrates just how close the team came to utter disaster in the years after Halo’s breakout success.
(I love writing features like that. My favourite task for all of last year was writing Eurogamer’s mammoth World of Warcraft retrospective feature (that link takes you to part one – part two is here). They seem to do pretty good traffic too, by all accounts. Editors, commission more of them!)
Secondly, here’s a feature I wrote on the current troubles at Infinity Ward, the studio which made last year’s billion-dollar hit, Modern Warfare 2. It’s all about how this saga is an expression of a deeper struggle in the creative industries – one between a philosophy which says you must nurture your creative talent, and a rival philosophy which says that if you own the copyright, you can always hire new, cheaper talent. If you don’t want to register for GamesIndustry.biz (it’s free, though), you could read it on Eurogamer instead.
On a similar note, here’s a piece I wrote in the aftermath of the Digital Economy Bill being passed by Parliament – on why stupid, badly considered law like this is damaging, but ultimately pointless, since it amounts to trying to hold back the tide by holding out your hands and shouting. The Internet has changed culture as profoundly as the invention of recordings did in the first place – companies sticking their fingers in their ears and pretending otherwise are, ultimately, doomed. That one’s on Eurogamer, too.
We’ve also done quite a few episodes of Stage Clear since I last updated. We’re winding down to the end, now – we’ve recorded our last “normal” episode (Season 2, Episode 13), and we did a live show at an event in Southampton a couple of weeks ago which should be posted on the site shortly. One more studio show (in London, with the wonderful GameWank guys as special guests and co-hosts), and possibly another live show, and then I’m off to Japan for a year – at which point we go on extended hiatus.
Whether the show returns depends largely on two factors – whether anyone wants it to, and whether co-host Perrin and I can maintain this sham of a so-called friendship for that long.
Proper blog post in the next couple of days. I promise.
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05.12.09
Posted in games, politics, work at 5:55 pm by Rob Fahey
I’ve written a pair of retrospective pieces in the past few weeks, tying up two stories which I’ve been covering pretty much since the start of my writing career. I don’t expect that either of these stories is actually dead and buried now, but they certainly seem to have reached conclusions of a sort.
First up, a summary look at the rise and fall (and fall, and fall, and fall…) of Eidos, Britain’s one-time great white hope for games publishing. They were bought by Square Enix last month, finally putting an end to years of speculation as the wheezing corpse of the company limped towards an uncertain end.
Secondly, I couldn’t let Duke Nukem Forever pass into the great beyond without a farewell. As I mention in the article, I started my career with Duke – my very first published page in a national magazine included a news story about two exciting new PC games being announced back to back. They were Duke Nukem Forever, and Daikatana. (I’d like to pretend that I’ve got better at calling ‘em over the years, but I’m not entirely convinced.)
Presently stuck in the middle of SOAS’ end of year exams. When I close my eyes, kanji dance a crazy jig on the back of my eyelids, mocking me by being almost, but not quite, recognisable. Count yourselves lucky – if I didn’t have so much revision to do, I’d definitely be writing a gigantic post about the present expenses scandal.
(Suffice it to say that I respectfully disagree with (the otherwise wonderful) Stephen Fry on this one; for one thing, I think there’s a different morality involved when it’s public money on the table, and that a higher standard of moral behaviour can rightfully be expected from those whom we trust to make the laws that govern our nation. For another thing, while Fry is quite right in calling out the nation’s journalists as a venal and disgusting bunch when it comes to expenses and allowances, I don’t think anyone is proposing to let them run the country. Pigs place their snouts in the trough – that doesn’t mean MPs need to.)
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04.14.09
Posted in games, work, writing at 12:26 pm by Rob Fahey
You may have caught the controversy over Konami’s new Iraq war game, Six Days in Fallujah, last week. In a nutshell, the Daily Mail decided that this was a horrible insult to everyone who has ever even heard of Iraq, rang up some of the usual suspects and ran a chest-beating “evil game makers make fun of Iraq tragedy raaagh” piece.
I got a chance to write about this for two very different audiences – once for GamesIndustry.biz and Eurogamer.net, and then for The Times on Saturday. I’m pleased with The Times’ coverage – we wanted to present this as a discussion of accuracy and relevance, and challenge the idea that games can’t intelligently address current affairs, which is quite a progressive position for a traditional newspaper.
Also, if you missed it, Episode 9 of Stage Clear went up late last week. Our iTunes feed is still broken (I believe it’ll fix itself next week), so you’ll probably need to download it manually – sorry!
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03.19.09
Posted in games, work at 1:57 am by Rob Fahey
I’ve been even more sporadic than usual in my updates here of late. I’m blaming my workload; it turns out that doing a university course which everyone and his dog warned me was “really really tough” at the same time as trying to earn a living like a proper person is actually quite hard. Who’d have thought it, eh?
I have, however, been finding time to talk bollocks about videogames once a week, which you’re very welcome to listen to. Episode Six of Stage Clear, featuring a discussion of horror games and a section which co-host Perrin is worried will “get us into trouble” (I’m not sure with whom, exactly, we’ll be in trouble – his mum?), is live on the Stage Clear website (and on iTunes, if you’re that way inclined) right now. (Episode Five, which I never mentioned on this blog, is up there as well. We didn’t just skip that number in case it was unlucky.)
Couple of other quick links – a piece in The Times about why the right games triumphed at this year’s BAFTAs, and an editorial on Eurogamer and GamesIndustry.biz on why it’s fair to point the finger at videogames over childhood obesity (as long as you’re pointing fingers in quite a few other places simultaneously, starting with the parents).
Second term is almost finished, so I get a month of my old life back before the exam term begins. I’ll blog properly once that happens and stop just spamming links to other stuff I’ve been up to, promise.
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03.02.09
Posted in games, work, writing at 6:21 pm by Rob Fahey
Well, not so much “news” as a collection of links illustrating what I’ve been up to recently.
I never mentioned that Episode 3 of Stage Clear went live last week, marking three whole weeks of actually obeying the schedule we set ourselves. I’m off out to record another this evening, which will bring us to a month. I’m as surprised as you no doubt are (and slightly frightened, if I’m being truthful).
We’ve had great feedback to Stage Clear so far, which is wonderful. To be perfectly truthful, we set out to make a handful of recordings with the assumption that only a couple of our friends would listen, and that they’d get bored after the first few. However, our download figures are significantly better than that, and we’ve had fantastic feedback, which has taken us somewhat by surprise. At this point, we’re thinking about bizarre things like “growing the audience”, but honestly, the only way we’re keen on approaching that is through word of mouth – so if you like the podcast, please do tell all your friends / fake Facebook friends / forum pals / mortal enemies. (Of course, if you don’t like the podcast, you should keep your filthy mouth shut*.)
On a more actually-serious writing front, I’ve been doing bits and pieces for The Times again recently – their games coverage is genuinely going from strength to strength at the moment (no, seriously), with me on the sidelines chipping in context and analysis columns to go alongside some really good feature spreads. Most recently I talked a bit about “How Nintendo took on the world. And won.”, and to go along with the launch of Halo Wars last week, I penned a column “In defence of game sequels”.
Oh, I also got a barrel of good feedback for last week’s Eurogamer / GamesIndustry.biz column, Creative Downturn, so I’m rather chuffed with that too.
I think that’s about the lot. Other than that, I fear that my life has largely been absorbed in a whirlwind of learning kanji and new grammar structures, as my attempts to absorb Japanese at a ridiculous pace continue. You’ve all been spared any further political rants as a result – it’s not that I haven’t been shouting at the television, it’s just that I don’t have time to write it all down right now…
* Or tell us why you don’t like it. We’ll either improve based on your suggestion, or mock you publicly in the next episode, depending on how much we like you.
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07.06.08
Posted in games, work, writing at 4:47 pm by Rob Fahey
Unsurprisingly, I produced a couple of Blizzard-related features this week along with the usual batch of reviews and whatnot. I previously alluded to my piece for The Times, which was my first published work with the paper – if you fancy having a read but didn’t pick up the paper, you can see it online here: The WoW Factor.
I’ve got another piece appearing in tomorrow’s Times, so they must have liked the first one.
Also on the topic of Blizzard, I wrote an editorial this week for Eurogamer and GamesIndustry.biz which explored how the company’s unique “confessional” approach to talking to its audience has played a major role in making them into such a successful developer. Pop over and have a read if you like: Blizzard’s Perfect Storm.
(Sorry, this blog has gone all work-related again. I’m sure I’ll have another political opinion to hold forth upon soon enough – especially as the by-election in Howden & Haltemprice approaches…)
Technorati Tags: Eurogamer, gaming, journalism, MMORPG, The Times, videogames, workblog, World of Warcraft
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07.02.08
Posted in games, work at 12:23 am by Rob Fahey
A quick work-related note – I’ve started writing for The Times, and the first of what will hopefully be many features is appearing in tommorow’s (Wednesday’s) times2 section in the paper. It’s a report from last weekend’s Blizzard Worldwide Invitational event in Paris, and is designed as a gentle and fairly positive introduction to the unique society and culture that has grown up around World of Warcraft.
It’s also, of course, an excuse for The Times to run lots of pictures of cosplayers, but the article text at least presents them in a positive way rather than “christ, look at the freaks”.
I don’t know how regularly The Times will be commissioning work from me – after all, if they hate this piece they might never commission anything again! – but if all goes well I’d hope to get pieces in there every month or so, if not more often. There’s a real enthusiasm at the paper for getting their coverage of videogames up to scratch with the rest of their (excellent) arts and culture coverage, which will mark a welcome departure from the lazy “what are these evil modern things doing to our kids!” scare stories which much of the British press falls back on for games coverage.
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05.19.08
Posted in games, work at 1:25 am by Rob Fahey
It’s been a bloody age since I updated this – sorry. Life has been busy. A couple of weeks in Japan surrounded by several hectic weeks of work here in the UK have seen to that, with the result that every time I’ve thought “gosh, I should really update my blog”, I’ve proceeded to groan audibly.
Very briefly, though, I thought I’d pop in a belated link to this rather handy new feature on Eurogamer – the ability to view the article archive filtered by author. Unfortunately, I appear to have a split personality as far as EG’s archive is concerned, so if for some odd reason you want to keep up with my latest output, you’ll need to click both here and here.
There’s no clever way of getting a “latest articles by this author” feed out of the thing at the moment, mind. You could probably do it if you’re really clever with Yahoo! Pipes or suchlike, but I’d start to think you were some kind of weird stalker at that stage.
In other news, this weekend I went to Argos, built flat-pack furniture and installed Windows Vista. I’m not really sure which of these experiences was most painful, but at least the Argos and flat-pack stuff means I now have a nice glass and chrome TV stand in the living room and a chest of drawers in my bedroom. The Vista install just means I have an expensive PC that’s partially broken. Great.
Technorati Tags: journalism, Eurogamer, Vista, workblog
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02.20.08
Posted in politics, work at 3:19 am by Rob Fahey
It may be old news to you that the Daily Mail is a despicable organ of hate and intolerance, but regardless – this little gem is definitely worth reading, and forwarding to that misguided Daily Mail reader in your life.
As standard practice, journalists use a variety of services which send out bulk emails to their lists requesting information, sources or review products for features that are in the pipeline. This is a normal service – for example, if your magazine is planning a feature on most expensive Easter Eggs, you might send out a mail saying so, and seeking responses from department stores or specialist chocolatiers who have products that might feature. It’s quite a handy function, although not one I’ve used myself previously. All perfectly above board and legit, anyway.
Except, of course, when this kind of thing comes across the wire…
PUBLICATION: Daily Mail (Request for personal case study)
JOURNALIST: Diana Appleyard (staff)
DEADLINE: 14-February-2008 16:00
QUERY: I am urgently looking for anonymous horror stories of people who have employed Eastern European staff, only for them to steal from them, disappear, or have lied about their resident status. We can pay you £100 for taking part, and I promise it will be anonymous, just a quick phone call. Could you email me asap? Many thanks, Diana
HOW TO REPLY:
Email: mailto:dianaappleyard@aol.com
That’s how journalism works at the Daily Mail, you see – a disgustingly xenophobic and racist agenda that they don’t even bother to conceal properly. If this doesn’t get you into a rage, try replacing “Eastern European” with “black”, “Asian”, “homosexual” or even “female”, and see how comfortably it sits with you then. Then consider how many people would be willing to make up a story for a hundred quid, given the promise of anonymity? Make no mistake – this is hateful bile masquerading as journalism, and nothing more.
Of course, you probably knew that about the Daily Mail already – but for those not convinced, or for those who know someone that needs a little convincing, this little example of How Journalism Works at that publication is well worth illustrating.
(Grabbed from Liberal Conspiracy.)
In other, finer news, the issue of Disposable Media I mentioned quite a while back has finally hit the shelves – or rather, the download queue. I wrote a piece about Battlestar Galactica for it, which was fun – it’s a bit out of date now since the release of Razor and various other developments, but still amply explains my love for what I’m still convinced is the best thing to happen to TV in the last ten years. You can grab the new-fangled PDF mag right here (about 20mb).
Technorati Tags: Battlestar Galactica, Daily Mail, Diana Appleyard, Disposable Media, journalism, politics, racism, workblog
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01.09.08
Posted in games, work at 3:15 pm by Rob Fahey
Quick work-related heads-up – my feature on Gran Turismo 5 Prologue is up on Eurogamer. (Avoid the comments thread, which has dissolved into idiocy as people who can barely count attempt to argue about sales figures.)
I’ve finally had a chance to delve into COD4, and rather like it. Perhaps because I played Counter-Strike until I was blue in the face (well, until I got fired from my job for absenteeism and sleeping in the office, anyway – true story), it doesn’t feel quite as fresh and interesting to me as it seems to everyone else, and I’m continually pissed off by the absolutely, shockingly awful multiplayer lobby system. But it’s a damned good game nonetheless, and most of my Live friends are playing it, which makes it all worthwhile.
Hating the levelling grind mechanic, though. I’ve played enough MMORPGs to be sick to the back teeth of this mechanism in games – it doesn’t feel like a reward system to me any more, it feels like stealing all my toys and then rationing them back to me. MMOGs like Tabula Rasa are finally managing to break out of this model, only for action games to dive right into it? God, I hope not.
Technorati Tags: Eurogamer, journalism, COD4, Call of Duty, videogames, Xbox 360, Xbox Live
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