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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12.11.07
Posted in games, work at 1:24 pm by Rob Fahey
A quick update; I’ve moved house somewhat successfully, and although the new place is only about a kilometre away from the old place, I’m enjoying it here a lot more. It’s a nicer house, on a much quieter street, and closer to transport links into town. It’s also got a kitten in it, which is a good thing except when I go to the toilet at night and she stands outside the door mewling loudly at me the whole time. That aspect is just weird.
No Internet yet, though. I’m connecting on a HSDPA wireless broadband modem in the interim. Sadly, “the interim” turns out to be longer than expected due to a complication with the phoneline; as a result I suspect I’m waaaay over my 3GB monthly limit, and my only hope for avoiding bankruptcy is that the rumours of Three’s inability to bill for over-allocation usage at present is true.
Work related stuff…
I was asked to moderate the Xfire Debate Club event last week, which was an online discussion between a number of journalists - topic, “Best In Gaming 2007″. It was more fun than I expected, actually; I was slightly dreading the 10pm GMT start (it’s a US-centric thing), but the chatter flowed quite nicely and it was interesting to see a broad sweep of opinion about the last year’s games. There’s a transcript (the “Main Floor” one - the other one is an open chat room transcript) and a mugshot of me that makes me look like a nightclub bouncer on the Xfire website.
(On a similar note, I’m rather looking forward to Eurogamer’s annual institution, the end-of-year top 50. Those are always a bucket of fun both to read and to participate in.)
A topic that arises a few times in the Xfire debate is the whole Jeff Gerstmann thing. In all honesty, I’ve never been a big fan of Gerstmann’s writing, and even less so his presenting style - but I still hate seeing stuff like this happen, because it erodes trust in the entire videogames media and makes life more difficult for everyone else working in it. I wrote a piece for GamesIndustry.biz on the topic, which sums up the events to date and why they’re such a big deal for a sector that’s already widely mistrusted by consumers.
A few EG reviews for your delectation as well, if you fancy them - selected highlights being a second look at MMOG title Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, which now actually works thanks to nine months of patching (shame they didn’t think to spend an extra nine months in development rather than leaving it half-finished, eh?), a review of surprisingly bloody good Canadian-developed anime tie-in Naruto: Rise of a Ninja, and an absolute hatchet-job on the single worst game I’ve played this year, Fury.
By the way - I don’t know how long it hangs around in stores for, but the issue of Neo with my Gundam cover feature in it appeared a few weeks back. If anyone’s read it, I’d love to hear some feedback on the piece - good, bad or indifferent.
Heading off, before my bandwidth bill threatens to exceed the GDP of Chile…
Technorati Tags: anime, Eurogamer, games industry, Gerstmann, journalism, magazines, Neo Magazine, Xfire, videogames
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11.12.07
Posted in technology, work at 2:17 pm by Rob Fahey
Despite being a Gentleman of Leisure these days, I still have a basic built-in loathing of Monday mornings. Self-employment is simultaneously great because it allows you to wake up when you like, and awful because it means that every day is, in effect, a working day; so Mondays should, in theory, be meaningless, and mornings even more so.
However, if something is going to go wrong for the week, it’ll probably go wrong on a Monday morning. So it doesn’t really bode terribly well that thus far, the bulk of my Monday has been spent swearing at my PC, followed by taking Affirmative Action and delving into its bowels to try and work out what ridiculous thing has gone wrong with the heap of ill-conceived junk that is the IBM-derived Personal Computer this time.
I’ve just spent an hour at my desk laboriously taking apart my graphics card, meticulously cleaning the heatsink and fan, carefully dabbing off the bizarre gunk that passes for thermal paste in whatever South-East Asian sweatshop is throwing together curiously brand-named ATI chipset boards these days, painstakingly scraping on a thin film of Arctic Silver paste, and then excruciatingly carefully screwing the whole godforsaken assembly back together.
I’m almost afraid to try loading Tabula Rasa again, frankly, because if it doesn’t work I’m going to heave the whole fucking box out the fucking window.
Who ever said PC gaming wasn’t fun, eh readers?
Oh wait, that was me. About ten times a week. Grr.
Technorati Tags: PC, rant, videogames
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10.13.07
Posted in work at 4:08 pm by Rob Fahey
I had vaguely planned, at the outset, to use this blog as a “workblog” - collecting together all the stuff which is published with my name on it, if only to make life easier for very bored stalkers. Things haven’t quite gone according to plan on that front, so instead of regaling you with post after post of links, I’ll probably do small digest posts every now and then for those who perversely wish to hang off my every word.I’ve reviewed a number of rather good things recently; highlights since the Infamous Halo 3 Review include Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Eternal Sonata and Final Fantasy Tactics. FFT is certainly the best game of the three, but Eternal Sonata is a firm favourite, if only because any game that can be summarised by the line “Frederic Chopin takes on peculiar monsters in a music-themed fantasy world” is a game to be cherished.If commentaries on the games industry are more to your taste, I’ve also recently questioned Microsoft’s attempts to make Halo 3 look like a mainstream entertainment product, mused on the future of independent development in the UK following a spate of high-profile buyouts, paused to consider the new challenges Nintendo faces thanks to its meteoric rise on the Japanese stock market, and been deeply, deeply unimpressed by Sony’s new 40GB PS3.Outside of games, well… Admittedly, outside of games much of what I’ve been working on is PR and marketing copy, which is soul-less and occasionally glows with an evil more normally associated with the Elder Gods, but which does pay very well.However, if you’re a fan of words on pulped trees, you should look out for the next SFX Total Anime, for which I wrote a couple of reviews - or the forthcoming issue of NEO Magazine, for which I had the pleasure of writing the cover feature, about the Japanese phenomenon that is Gundam. I was a bit worried about how the latter feature was turning out at one point, but I think the end result is something fairly interesting and possibly even insightful. Crikey.
Technorati Tags: Eurogamer, games industry, journalism, magazines, Neo Magazine, SFX, writing
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09.24.07
Posted in games, work at 11:31 pm by Rob Fahey
Early morning start tomorrow - if you’re having serious trouble sleeping, I’ll be on BBC World’s World Business Report show at 5.30am, talking about Halo 3 and what it means for Microsoft and the Xbox. I think it’s repeated throughout the morning on BBC World, and also on BBC1 (which runs a BBC World feed until programming begins at a more sensible hour).
Spare a thought, though; I do these analysis spots for BBC World on a semi-regular basis, and while they used to want to interview me at 9 or 10 in the evening, they’re increasingly frequently asking me to come in for the 5.30am slot. Owch.
Technorati Tags: BBC, Halo 3, journalism, media whoring, TV, videogames
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09.23.07
Posted in games, work at 10:51 pm by Rob Fahey
My review of Halo 3 is live on Eurogamer.
In summary - it’s the best game in the Halo franchise, and since I assume that you’ve worked out by now (six years and four iterations down the line, counting PC versions) whether you like Halo or not, it’s a shoo-in for a 10/10.
What’s quite interesting about this review is not so much the text, or the score, though. Rather, it’s how I had to conduct the review process itself - an unusual and not entirely comfortable taste of how things may turn out as games become bigger “media events” and companies like Microsoft struggle to exert further control over the review process.
Normally, when I review a game, I am sent a game disc that I can pop into a console and play in my own time, on my own equipment, in my own house. I have the opportunity to try out any aspect of it I like, and to spend as long as I like with the game - deadlines allowing. Given that interactive software is such an incredibly personal experience, I hold that this is by far the best way for a reviewer to engage with the product. It lets us explore, experiment, and think about what the game is offering, how it’s accomplishing it, and where it sits in the context of the medium. That’s important.
Halo 3 was…. Different. Unpleasantly different.
For Halo 3, Microsoft didn’t let the code out of its sight. Instead, we were requested to turn up at the Sanderson Hotel, an achingly posh haunt just north of London’s Oxford Street, and spend a day there playing the game - with an open offer to stay the night as well, if we so desired.
I confess that the alarm bells which rang in my head weren’t quite as justified as I expected, but it was still an odd experience. I turned up at the hotel at around 9am on a Tuesday morning, and was greeted by Microsoft’s PR staff in the lobby - and handed the key to my room, despite the fact that I had made it clear that I didn’t want to stay the night (frankly, it just felt like an unjustified level of PR luxury, given that I can get a night bus from Oxford Circus that gets me home in under 20 minutes).
Upon heading upstairs through the hotel’s astonishingly overblown decor, I ended up in a double bedroom decked out in luxury, with a large Samsung plasma screen and an Xbox 360 sitting on the desk at the end of the bed. This is the thumbs-up to the experience; once the PR types had put Halo 3 in the 360’s drive and sealed the console with a tight cable-tie, I was left to my own devices in the room to play the game. I had feared that I’d be playing with PR types looking over my shoulder and generally being a nuisance - thankfully Microsoft, unlike some other publishers whose antics have reached my ears, had the cop on to avoid that particular nightmare.
So, with a break for lunch, I played through the game in a day in a hotel room, vaguely guiltily helping myself to peanuts and bottled water from the mini-bar which probably came to about eighty quid’s worth, if the ludicrous bar price list is anything to go by. I think the peanuts cost about eight or nine quid for a small bag. They were fucking shit peanuts, too.
In the evening, a room had been set up full of additional screens and consoles, with all of the journalists brought together to play multiplayer maps. This was quite a good plan, because it meant we got to experience lots of nooks and crannies of the multiplayer modes that might not have been apparent through the hit-and-miss process of setting up Live matches prior to the launch of a game. Full marks on that one, although I did raise an eyebrow at the handing out of 20 pound notes to journalists who won various matches. The point where perks of the job become money in your wallet makes me vaguely uncomfortable, although there’s a more pragmatic side of me which points out that it was mostly just straightforward, competitive fun. And yet, and still…. Hmm.
Overall, though, I still feel like I didn’t have the kind of experience with Halo 3 that left me totally comfortable with my knowledge and understanding of the game. A day was long enough to play through on Normal, and mess about a bit on Heroic and Legendary difficulty - I’d have liked to have played further in those modes, although I seriously doubt it would have changed my conclusions about the game. More annoyingly, there was no opportunity to play co-operative mode, or to try out the multiplayer over Xbox Live - components which I’m genuinely pissed off about having to leave out of the review, just as they’ve presumably been left out of every review published in the UK.
Frankly, I hope we don’t see much more of this kind of thing going on. I don’t have any problem with the industry’s “preview junket” culture, where journalists are dragged off to exotic climes to see games in their early state; yes, it feeds through to positive previews and hype, but to be honest, the concept of a preview is so intricately linked to hype and marketing that it’s almost a non-issue that people have stayed in a five-star hotel to write it.
Reviews, though… When you review something, you are telling a lot of people, most of whom probably earn less money than you do, whether they should or shouldn’t spend a fucking big pile of cash on an entertainment experience. To my mind, that’s a duty that shouldn’t be pissed about by freebies or junkets, and it’s one that any good reviewer should prefer to do in private, in their own time - and in their own place, not in an expensive hotel with eight quid packets of peanuts.
The game is still fucking ace, though.
Technorati Tags: Eurogamer, Halo, Halo 3, journalism, Microsoft, Xbox 360
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