MIT prof. Henry Jenkins talks gaming, look at him go

Hennnnnnnrrryyyyyyyy JENKiiiiiinnnnnnns!

Sorry. It goes through my head every time I see him. He's a really cool guy, though.

This interview was a great read. Some of my favorite excerpts:

On gamers allowing developers to become complacent:

"They don’t necessarily support the most creative and original games on the market. They line up to buy new installments of the same franchises. They want to make sure that the new games have the same features they’ve enjoyed in old games. They are often hostile to things that don’t look like games to them. I can be critical of the big game companies for not breaking the mold but when they do, consumers often aren’t there to support experimentation and innovation."

And on the current debate of video game content laws:

"So, one negative scenario would be that games become tightly regulated and many of the current mature game titles or their equivalent get taken off the market. This is a very real possibility and gamers who aren’t paying attention to the public policy debates and are not writing letters to their political leaders on these issues are going to be blind-sided when this happens."

I also liked his theories on "combined intelligence." Which states that online communities (like Joytiq) foster learning through group communication. We can learn more from each other than we could on our own. Very insightful.

I will be buying his book for sure (and anything else he publishes).

!!!

IT'S SANTA!

From the interview:
"It has historically been because there were powerful, imaginative, and intelligent critics who took on the responsibility to educate the public about the emergence of something creative, fresh, and original.
...
There are not yet game critics who reliably serve that function."

I think Gabe and Tycho are what he's looking for. I get more useful recommendations from Penny-Arcade.com than any major review site. Plus they discuss a lot of games I would never have heard of otherwise. They tend to mix things up as well, not focusing on just mainstream or just independent games.

They just state their opinion about what they're playing. Not only is there gamer authenticity in each news post, but there is also a depth to their personality that is only understood after reading them for a while. I don't know how to put it exactly. I don't get to "know" any of the reviewers at Gamespot or IGN the way I feel I "know" the PA guys. Maybe it's because they are vocal about their opinions, or maybe it's just because there are only two of them.

(Although, in a way, they benefit from the "combined intelligence" of their readers. They get tips from their readers, they pick the ones they like and post about them. This generates more readers which leads to more tips, and the cycle repeats. Similar to Joystiq, but with more personality. No offense.)

Another example would be 1up.com's 1up Show. It has greatly improved their staff prescence to me. Seeing them talk openly about the games (unlike the dry, scripted monologues in most game reviews) makes them seem more human; it removes the authority of them being a "game critic", which I think is a good thing.

That was a great discussion on gaming, from someone who takes the medium seriously.

One interesting passage:

"Media’s influence is most powerful when it reaffirms our existing structures of beliefs and behavoirs, least powerful when it seeks to change them. At the end of the day, we are shaped much more by the immediate influences on our lives—our schools, our families, our neighborhoods—than we are by what we see on television or experience in a game."

I'm just as concerned as the next guy about the extreme of some content in games/movies these days, but it's irrational to think that these are the only things have an impact on kids. Other things come first... good parenting, for one.

"I think Gabe and Tycho are what he's looking for. I get more useful recommendations from Penny-Arcade.com than any major review site."

I'd agree that Gabe and Tycho serve this function, but then I think it's telling about where the game industry is right now that the critics that serve as evangelists for the medium flip-flop between adult and adolescent.

I couldn't comment on the fact that they're comic artsits first and game critics second, because I don't how if that really affects anything much. I doubt there were dedicated movie critics in the 1920s.