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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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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03.02.09
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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01.31.08
Posted in games, politics, writing at 1:44 am by Rob Fahey
A couple of weeks back, Britain’s embattled (and increasingly forlorn-looking, as fellow closeted BBC Parliament fans will have noted) Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, took up the standard of the battle against the single threat to our country’s youth. Not the erosion of their civil liberties, or the crumbling of the economy that’s meant to sustain them; not even drugs, or alcohol, or terrorism. This vile and pernicious threat is, of course, videogames.
Brown parroted elements of the spiel of his repellently false opponent, David Cameron, in calling for videogame makers to ban knives from their games – essentially saying that they should accept responsibility for the recent spate of highly-reported knife crime among youths in Britain’s cities, especially around London.
I wrote a fairly lengthy feature on the matter for GamesIndustry.biz, which pretty much sums up my own view on it. In the wake of that, I was contacted by the Evening Standard, who wanted me to write a short piece outlining my perspective on the debate.
Although I spent quite a while working the piece into the word counts they requested, they didn’t publish it in the end – and rather rudely, didn’t even bother dashing off a quick mail to apologise for wasting my time. Being that the Standard is an odious, biased and unpleasant rag at the best of times, I’m not entirely surprised – I got the impression that they had contacted me purely because I was one of the few game writers who made a point of seeing both sides to the whole Manhunt 2 banning story, and were disappointed to find that this doesn’t translate to being enough of a fool to think playing videogames is what’s making members of violent gangs stab one another in South London.
Anyway, in case anyone is interested, here’s what was going to be published. Shame, really – I was quite looking forward to slagging off old Gordy in the national press. Some other time, maybe.
It’s very disappointing that Gordon Brown would try to make videogames into a scapegoat for London’s youth crime. It’s a cheap political trick to point the finger at a soft target like videogames, instead of accepting responsibility for the difficult, complex roots of this problem.
I don’t think for a moment that a politician as experienced as Mr Brown really believes that we’re going to solve violent crime by taking some videogames off the shelves. He knows that what’s really needed is to tackle the thorny questions of deprivation, social integration, drug policy and policing – but videogames make for a nice, distracting soundbite and take the heat off for a few days.
There is definitely a debate to be had about violent videogames, but Mr Brown’s comments aren’t helpful. We need to look at the enforcement of age ratings, and make sure that retailers are sticking to them. We need to make sure that parents know what their children are playing, and can control their access to unsuitable material.
The research into the effect of violent games on people’s behaviour is very inconclusive – but even in the absence of a clear answer, I think most people, including those inside the games industry, agree that children’s access to violent media should be controlled. We already have a great age rating system, but there’s a lot of work to be done on that, and the Government needs to be working with the industry to ensure that children are protected, rather than just pointing fingers.
The tragedy of knife and gun crime among young people in London shouldn’t even be part of this debate. There’s no evidence of any kind of link with videogames – but plenty of evidence that links these crimes to social problems like drugs, underage drinking, poverty and poor social integration. London needs to hear Mr Brown’s plans to tackle those problems – not just empty allegations of blame and cheap soundbites.
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12.19.07
Posted in writing at 2:50 am by Rob Fahey
It’s quarter to two in the morning. I’ve been tweaking the wording of a feature for a couple of hours, and I just leaned back in my chair to contemplate a paragraph that’s really annoying me. I don’t normally spend this long fiddling with wording, but I’ve got insomniac tendencies at the moment.
No sooner had I leaned back, than the Demoness Cat launched herself bodily from floor level right onto my chest, causing me – I regret to say – to shriek like a small girl with a stubbed toe. Offended, she promptly meowed at me, slapped me in the nose with her paw, and leapt off again to stroll off in a sulk.
Bloody animal is trying to kill me ever since I foiled her daring break for freedom (diving through my legs while I was talking to someone at the door) earlier today, I swear it.
Technorati Tags: cat, Tia
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08.18.07
Posted in writing at 2:10 am by Rob Fahey
I have returned, physically unscathed if mentally disquieted, from my sojourn in Ireland. I’ve come back with a fair chunk of work done on some fiction I’ve been writing for a long time, which is a Very Good Thing. Of late, my ambition to actually finish a book has been classified somewhere next to my ambition to win the lottery in terms of likelihood. Suddenly it all feels back on track, to some extent.
Unusually, I also ended up writing some short form fiction in Ireland – inspired by a sleepless night in a cottage on the Atlantic fringe of Galway, when rain, wetly slapping tarpaulins, screeching foxes and childhood memories of an abandoned village just up the coast all conspired with my fertile imagination to produce both insomnia, and inspiration, in fairly equal measures.
I have uploaded the results of my labours here for your perusal and, hopefuly, pleasure.
In the cold light of day, I’m fairly happy with this as a story – sufficiently so that I’m pondering sending it to a couple of magazines which publish horror fiction. It’s a pretty traditional ghost story in structure, I guess, and that’s not something I’m familiar with writing. Any comments or feedback would be greatly appreciated, bearing in mind that while praise is always welcome, criticism is always more useful!
Technorati Tags: fiction, short story, writing
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02.15.07
Posted in web, writing at 12:53 am by Rob Fahey
Well, I do. The evidence is pretty much undeniable.
Actually, I’ve been fucking around with WordPress for some time now, but never actually got around to putting it “live” so to speak. Still, everyone else has one of these things, and the opportunity to vent opinions that nobody will pay me to publish is certainly appealing. Much of whatever I scrawl here will probably end up duplicated across my LiveJournal and maybe even, god forbid, my MySpace – but it’s my little chunk of the blogging revolution, god damn it, and that’s what counts. So there.
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