Tag Archives: games press

Why I Don’t “Review” Games

I have a few things lined up to write about, but I saw an interesting discussion online earlier today, so I thought it would be something worth talking about.

It’s a discussion that seems to have continued in perpetuity ever since the earliest days of gaming media, so regardless of whether you’re reading this at the time of writing or a few years down the line, I suspect it will remain relevant.

I’d like to talk about why I don’t consider myself to “review” games in the traditional manner — and why, from the very beginning here at MoeGamer, I have not made use of any sort of summative system such as percentage scores or star ratings. Let’s talk about that!

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It’s Our Birthday!

Yes, it’s April 29 once again, which means that I am a year older — 39 this time around — and so is MoeGamer!

Yep, this happy little nook tucked away in a corner of the Internet is six years old today, and over the course of those six years it’s been a gradual process of learning, growing, changing and adapting until you have what you see before you today. And doubtless the next six years will continue to see gradual change and evolution here without undermining the fundamental mission of the site: to celebrate our fantastic hobby of gaming, and particularly those parts of it that go overlooked or underappreciated.

For those interested in the story of how the site came to be in the first place, I invite you to enjoy this retrospective that I penned on the site’s third birthday. For today, some musings on why I do what I do, and why I feel independent creators like me continue to do important work.

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Editorial: Supporting the Little Guys

Good morning folks! There’s a MoeGamer 2019 Awards post coming later today, along with Warriors Wednesday, but a few things have been on my mind of late, so I wanted to think them through “out loud” and share those thoughts with you.

What I’m going to talk about today was primarily sparked by the recent plagiarism accusations levelled towards Niche Gamer by Sal Romano of Gematsu, but it also ties in with other surrounding matters such as the horrendous attitude towards a wide variety of marginalised groups displayed by One Angry Gamer and the hostile and abusive point of view expressed by the mainstream press towards fans of particular types of entertainment.

Let’s talk!

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Let’s Respect Each Other’s Tastes (Or: “This Game Isn’t For You, and That’s Okay”)

Whenever any creative person sits down to compose something, they inevitably do so with a particular audience in mind.

Sometimes that audience is as simple as the creator themselves; they want to write something that simply expresses themselves, and if it happens to resonate with anyone else, that’s a happy bonus. Sometimes a creator makes an attempt to appeal to as broad an audience as possible — though it’s very difficult to please everyone. And sometimes that audience is a specific group of people.

Whatever a creator decides to create, we should respect their intentions. And, by extension, we should respect the audience it ends up attracting — even if we find ourselves outside that group.

Continue reading Let’s Respect Each Other’s Tastes (Or: “This Game Isn’t For You, and That’s Okay”)

The MoeGamer Podcast: Episode 17 – Death to Metroidvania!

Hello! Welcome back to The MoeGamer Podcast, featuring my deliciously fruity vocal tones along with those of my good friend Chris Caskie of MrGilderPixels.

The MoeGamer Podcast is available in several places. You can subscribe to my channel on YouTube to stay up to date with both the video versions of the podcast and my weekly videos; you can follow on Soundcloud for the audio-only version of the podcast; you can subscribe via RSS to get the audio-only version of the podcast in your favourite podcast app; or you can subscribe via iTunes. Please do at least one of these if you can; it really helps us out!

Or you can hit the jump to watch or listen to today’s episode right here on MoeGamer.

Continue reading The MoeGamer Podcast: Episode 17 – Death to Metroidvania!

The MoeGamer Podcast: Episode 10 – Hype, Hype, Hooray!

We’re into double digits! We’re a real podcast now!

Don’t forget you can view the podcast in its full video glory on YouTube as part of my YouTube channel as a whole, or you can check out the audio-only version of the podcast on Soundcloud. You can also subscribe via RSS at this link, as well as finding it on iTunes and a couple of other podcast platforms I can’t remember the name of.

Or you can hit the jump and watch or listen to the latest episode right here, right now.

Continue reading The MoeGamer Podcast: Episode 10 – Hype, Hype, Hooray!

Inti Creates: On Being a Truly International Game Developer

cropped-header-6691213This article is one chapter of a multi-part Cover Game feature!
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As gaming has evolved, the medium of “video games” has broadened considerably. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that a wide variety of disparate markets have started to overlap and mingle.

One of the most interesting things about gaming today is the wide variety of experiences we can enjoy from creators all over the world. Here in the West, for example, we can enjoy more quality games that hail from Asia than ever before thanks to the sterling efforts of localisation companies — despite the occasional controversy, of course!

But then there’s the odd company out there who does things a little differently; the odd company that “thinks global” right from the beginning rather than making sharply delineated distinctions between “East” and “West”. And one of those companies is Inti Creates.

Continue reading Inti Creates: On Being a Truly International Game Developer

Games Awards Should Embrace a Broader Spectrum of Games

At the time of writing, the 2017 nominees for The Game Awards — referred to by some as “gaming’s Oscars” — have just been announced.

While it’s nice to see some high-profile Japanese games — most notably Persona 5, Breath of the Wild, Final Fantasy XV and Super Mario Odyssey — get some recognition, once again the overall lineup for the awards is a fairly predictable affair that primarily boils down to “which games were most popular and/or made most money this year”.

And while there’s some merit to celebrating those games that have performed well from a commercial perspective over the course of the year, it presents a rather narrow view of the industry that leaves a number of titles underrepresented and underappreciated.

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Destructoid’s Valkyrie Drive Review is More Than Just “Bad Games Journalism”

This week, Destructoid’s Jed Whitaker posted a review of Valkyrie Drive Bhikkuni, a PC port of a Vita game produced by Senran Kagura creator Kenichiro Takaki’s new studio Honey Parade Games.

The review, such as it was, angered a lot of people — and with good reason, since it began with the headline “Dynasty Warriors for paedophiles” (later edited to “Dynasty Warriors for aspiring paedophiles” and finally “Dynasty Warriors for aspiring paedobears”) and didn’t improve from there, demonstrating throughout that Whitaker was unwilling to engage with the game in good faith and raising serious questions about his professional rigour in covering a title.

Whitaker’s article isn’t the first to follow this mould; it’s just the latest. But it’s a problem. It’s more than just “bad games journalism” — something that can be laughed off. It’s a problem that needs to be tackled.

Continue reading Destructoid’s Valkyrie Drive Review is More Than Just “Bad Games Journalism”

MoeGamer: The Third Birthday

Somehow, I only remembered recently that I actually share a birthday with this little corner of the Internet.

Sure enough, if you check the first ever post on here (complete with old-style Midori and Yumi) you’ll see that it was published on April 29, 2014. That’s three full years of this site being in existence, after it launched on my thirty-third birthday. And while it hasn’t been three years of constant content — the regular posting schedule is something I’ve only introduced relatively recently, beginning with the introduction of Cover Games around this time last year — it’s still quite an achievement in the cutthroat world of “writing about games”.

MoeGamer is something I’ve come to do simply because I enjoy it. But it originally came about as a result of the state of the modern mainstream commercial games press — and how apparently there wasn’t a place for someone like me in it any more, despite working in the field having been a lifelong dream.

So let’s look back at how MoeGamer came to be, why it exists now and why it’s important to me personally.

Continue reading MoeGamer: The Third Birthday