Aha! A video game review in mainstream media!

How appropriate! Just when we were all lamenting over the lack of videogame reviews in the media, I open up my browser and lo and behold! a videogame review appears on the frontpage of my city's online newspaper site! The San Francisco Chronicle occasionally reviews videogames using the same rating system that they use for films. The clapping man jumping out of his theater seat is a sign that the video game is super awesome. Anyway, this videogame review rates this new videogame called Bully. This is an "immersive boarding school experience" where you have to play "Tough kid Jimmy" whose "weapons of choice were itching powder and wedgies." Cool!

Reading this reminded me of two things--

1) More and more, I'm realizing that truly enjoyable immersion in a game necessarily means that there are limits to what you can do instead of total freedom. According to this article, you have a specific role--a tough kid bully. Therefore, knowing your character and his traits, you play within those constraints and act in a manner and perform actions consistent with who Jimmy is. There's less of the fumbling around that we saw in Facade, in which we are totally clueless as to character motivation and goals. Here, a clear game world as well as a believable character for you to role-play allows you to actually immerse yourself without confusion. I think a lot of our academics in First Person would approve.

2) I think it's cool that this videogame review appeared in a mainstream paper, but as I recall, someone mentioned during class on Monday that a lot of videogame reviews, including this one, don't read like they've been written by a hardcore gamer. Specifically, the tone and content of the article shows that the writer's addressing a very mainstream audience since this is, of course, a mainstream paper. The specific details and strategies that I would expect from a gamer's review is lacking here. Whereas most entertainment pages of mainstream papers have film critics who write movie reviews or book critics to write book reviews, this particular guy who wrote this videogame review is a random general-media guy who writes on all aspects of media--not a hardcore gamer. His writing, though not tailored towards the gaming elite, is very reader-friendly, and I'm sure that's why he wrote it rather than a pro gamer.