Those Things Called Games

Some people are content to play games as a hobby. I'm not. I write about games here, but I also have journals filled with game design concepts and game mechanics, and a shelf for board game prototypes that my friends (and I) have built over the years. I'm sort of inescapably immersed in games, which leads me to write these articles since I really have no other outlet.
 
Things may change in this regard for me soon, and it's lead me to reflect on gaming as a medium, and how someone can try to express themselves within it. When I think of other media, books for example, it seems much easier for someone who watches or criticizes the medium to actually participate in it. You can write books and bitch about them at the same time, although whether or not you're a good writer is an open question. Movies are a bit more difficult to bitch about and create in at the same time, in part because it's a much more collaborative medium, but also because its current distribution model and production costs make it much easier to get lost in the shuffle if you're trying to make any money (video sharing is a great way to become known, at least for a little while, but the sacrifices can be pretty big. It's a lot bigger effort for a reader to read a free text than for a viewer to watch a free video, so the latter is much more readily used (and abused)).
 
Games are most often collaborative because of their technical requirements, although there have clearly been some people with the diligence to make games on their own. It's certainly not as easy for most of us, though, to start programing as it is for someone to start writing (again, quality is not as easy to pin down).
 
All this sticks in my head when I think about how best to express one's self through gaming. 
 
If you're a reporter, you have to keep up with trends. Sure you get to play early-stage games and if you're lucky go to junkets in the mountains, but that race means you don't get as much time to actually play games for enjoyment. If you're busy trying to beat a game so you can talk about it with authority, you may be playing it a different way than the people who will read your reviews trying to figure out if they want to buy it. You get the power of influencing opinions, but you're also stuck in the gears of the machine yourself, and the more notoriety you have, the more likely it is that something you say will have weird, unintended consequences. 
 
If you're one of those people lucky and diligent enough to get a soapbox to stand on and an audience that listens to you, you may have the chance to focus on certain games or genres more. Catbird seat if there ever was one, but the scrutiny on you is probably higher than on a reporter, and the unintended consequences can be even wilder.
 
If you're in the business of actually making games, you're stuck often making the same thing for months, watching the machine break over and over, and the bigger your company is, the more hassles you have. The bigger your project is, the more that's on the line, and if your PR folks are doing their job and many people know about your game, you get the waves of public opinion crashing into you. Unlike reporters and editorial writers, you don't really get a chance to escape one problem and move on to another. You're stuck with the projects you have. To try to be a reporter or editorial writer while you're making a game, you have to make sure you're either independent or not stepping on the wrong people's toes, and if you're reporting on your own stuff you come off as insincere, even if you're genuinely enthusiastic about what you're making.
 
Most of us are consumers, or at least fans. I try to make it clear I don't buy a whole lot of games, but as I said here I tend to think of games a lot. More than I'd like, really. I still buy games on occasion, though, often catching up to stuff I missed in the past. Folks like me may come across as casual because we don't buy from the selection of latest releases, but there was a time when I was doing just that, when my family was ponying up ridiculous amounts for stuff like Phantasy Star IV or Grand Theft Auto Vice City because we were on the crest of the wave and wanted to experience things fresh. Still, you have to pick what you want to buy, and I've come across many stories, especially lately and in many different gaming fields (and really consumer media in general), where people find they're buying more than they ever use. We're sort of split into two different types of consumers: one that plays games and one that buys them, with the latter sort of being a game in itself to try to get things quickly or cheaply, never mind if you're ever going to actually PLAY them or not.
 
I don't spend a whole lot on games, but I still have a pile I never play. I've been collecting more than playing, it seems. We who are on the outside, who feed the industry our money, have to rely upon reporter's honesty, and game designers' integrity. We can usually only guess what's going on behind the scenes in either field, unless we know folks on the inside. A lot of us, myself included, wondered what it would be like to be in either of these priveleged positions, and I used to wonder if there was some sort of ideal combination of these things, perhaps a person who was as free to spout their opinions about games as make them. There's a lot that goes into that though, and a lot more people to anger the more people are involved. There may not be any perfect combination.
 
Should I ever become a reporter, I may have to give up pet favorite genres, or learn to hold my tongue and act pleased when things look weird just so I don't alienate who I'm talking to. When reviewing I have to take into account everything I'm saying; the more casual reviewer can throw around the vitriol and have some fun at the expense of the people who made the game, but the more we know these people, the harder it gets to mindlessly slag. As someone who's written a few reviews (for another site), at least for me it's a real chore to get the tone just right, to be honest but not be manipulative or needlessly cruel, since you're trying to do everyone justice.
 
Should I ever make games I'll have to bear in mind who out there is unwise to piss off without good reason, and the bigger the company I might be involved with, the smarter I'd have to be with what I say. I don't know how you guys have felt about my writing over the years, but I look at myself as trying to write honestly about the games I experience and to come to some understanding to this whole games phenomenon. A part of me dreads having to stop writing here or to have to edit myself because of politics. 
 
In a way, as powerless as we often feel as consumers, as individuals we're in a privileged position because at any moment we can decide to walk away with very few, if any, consequences. One person told me once that game companies basically serve him, and that the money he spends on games should be well spent, because he also has to feed his family. The fact that games are so important to some people that feeding your family has to even go in the same sentence with game purchases is a bit shocking to me, but I do recognize the importance of entertainment in helping keeping our psyches from disintegrating, so I can't be too judgmental. I will say, though, that our big freedom is to be able to choose NOT to buy things, or to change what we buy, making it fit with what we're actually able to comfortably consume.
 
Reporters, for all their privilege, still exist BECAUSE of consumers, even if they are, in a way, sort of high-rank consumers themselves. Game designers could exist in isolation, but the reason we call this an industry is because it's a huge pipeline for capital flow, and even a savvy individual can make a killing if he or she is lucky enough to tap into the right vein, but that capital was once OURS. We sort of gave them that power through our monetary vote, as well as our general energy and attention.
 
But still, as a consumer, you're largely outside of Games. You pick up what you can, play what you can, involve yourself in content creation or reviews, but if you've ever wanted to make your stamp on things, doing that might mean losing time that could be spent on other things.
 
It all seems mutually exclusive, these relationships. You can be many things at once, but not everything. It's a natural conclusion, sort of obvious, but I wonder if it's the technical side of things that makes it different than writing. Maybe as game creation software lets more people create with less technical skill we'll see more of a combination of things, where a journalist who has an idea of how games should be after playing a hundred games a year can actually sit down and create something and illustrate what they're talking about (or learn that it's a lot harder to make them than talk about them). 
 
Whatever happens for me in the coming months, I hope you all find satisfaction in your relationship with games. Here's hoping I do, too.