December '03 wrap-up

Happy New Year, readers. Finals are over and the holiday craziness is behind us, so it's time to get back to the nitpicking. In an effort to play catch up, here are some short comments on a few stories I noticed in December.

• Thanks to the entire world (okay, okay, three people) for pointing me to an outrageous editorial from the New York Post's business section which urges readers to dump their Take Two stock because of the moral wasteland that is the Grand Theft Auto series. There has been much talk in forum threads about the articles comparison of playing a game to child abuse and securities fraud, and there's nothing I can really add to that discussion. Even if I could, it's not really my place on this blog to argue with opinions; it's an editorial, and the author is entitled to make whatever arguments he wants.
  
  That being said, I don't think the article was properly classified as a business editorial. Except for a few justifications thrown in at the end, the article is rooted in the authors moral outrage rather than hard financial facts. As one Ombudsman reader put it: " the reasoning seems to spring from the authors own personal moral beliefs and not harder or more in depth research." Basing financial advice on such beliefs is pretty foolhardy, for one, and pretty irresponsible journalism for another. My theory is he used the overriding theme of a stock "analysis" as an excuse to get the editorial published somewhere in the paper.
  
  Anyhow, I'd encourage readers not to get too worked up over this. It'd be like getting worked up about an National Enquirer story saying that video games cause AIDS. It's obviously false and irresponsible, but no one really respects the Post or the Enquirer anyway.
  
  
• The New York Times had a rather large feature on the biz called "Playing Mogul" It's a long read, but definitely worth it, if just to see how our industry is perceived by the Paper of Record (TM) (R) (C) (All Rights Reserved). Chris Kohler and the commenters over at Kobun Heat (scroll down) got pretty worked up about some of the philosophy and general opinions in the article, but the only thing that really got to me was the total lack of any mention of the GameCube. Given Nintendo's history in this industry and the relative dead heat they are running with Microsoft's box worldwide, there's no real excuse for not even mentioning it. Other than that, there are no major problems that I see from a journalistic standpoint; he did a decent amount of research and presented it in a way that would appeal to a non-specialized crowd. A good base to start from if the Times wants to start taking games more seriously.
  
  
• On a lighter note, I came across this analysis of video game magazine covers in the course of some random surfing. The author takes the interesting tack of placing magazines from other sections into the "games" area of a bookstore and comparing and contrasting. I have absolutely no authority to speak on the aesthetic matters the author discusses, but I found them fascinating nonetheless.

You readers should know that I will soon be taking a volunteer position as the Ombudsman for gaming news site GamerFeed. I'll discuss the implications of that position to this blog once my tenure actually starts. In other blog news, I plan to start my long-planned interview series with influential video game journalists sometime this month, and I also hope to get back to a 2-3 times a week posting schedule. I'm also planning a total overhaul to the sidebar and maybe a new look for the entire blog. Thanks to you all for reading this past half year or so and I hope to hear from you in the future.