When I saw the Gamespot headline NBA Street V3 garners gold, I initially thought the game had won some sort of award. I found this a bit odd, at first, because the game had not yet come out when the article was written. I read on, though, and found that the game "is off to the factory and will be on store shelves February 8." It had "gone gold" as the saying goes.
Notwithstanding the difference between going gold and garnering gold, I always found the phrase "gone gold" to be more than a little distracting. Granted, I can see using the term occasionally if stuck for space in a headline -- "gone gold" does fit better than "ready to ship" or even the comparable "complete" -- but the term has crept into common usage in the text of game enthusiast sites and press releases. Many of these uses offer no explanation to the term's meaning except for context. Others explain it to the extent that the term itself is rendered useless, as in these two examples:
id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead announced today that its eagerly anticipated action/horror title DOOM 3 has finally "gone gold," meaning that it's been signed off as complete and sent off for duplication, with an "official" in-store date of August 5
-DOOM 3 has GONE GOLD!
Bungie today announced that Halo 2, easily the most anticipated game in the Xbox's history, has passed all the critical phases in development and has reached the final stage in its production process: It's gone "gold."
Gone gold isn't actually what happens anymore to most final discs. "Gold discs" are in fact digital tapes that get transferred to a master disc that is then copied onto millions of discs. But putting technical explanations aside: Halo 2 has been shipped to retail manufacturing and it's being duplicated for millions worldwide as you read this.
-Halo 2 is Golden
In either case, the term is exactly the type of shorthand jargon that makes video game journalism utterly inaccessible to casual readers, and this reason alone should be enough to do away with it for good.
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crap - i thought going gold meant that a game has been ordered by stores in the amount of 500,000 copies.
ReplyDeletei guess that's only music
Gone gold refers to the master disc that is sent to the publishers. The disc is gold in color.
ReplyDeleteI understand how this can be confusing. I first read about it about 3 years ago about a game going gold, and I don't think I've seen in mentioned in an article since.
You know I really shoud bave read the whole article before I posted my comment.
ReplyDeleteThe software companies I've worked at (all outside the games industry) use the term "GM'd" short for golden master'd (heh) instead of gone gold... and I have always preferred that because its less confusing, less prone to having multiple meanings. That said I never even considered the comparison between GM software and a record going golden or platinum until now though. Dubious.
ReplyDeleteAmen to that. Another term to get rid of is "rev."
ReplyDeleteWhenever I see an article refer to their "rev" of a game, I cringe. How can that make any sense to anyone outside the game industry?