NC: At the time, I was so uneducated about videogames that I had no idea how a game was made. ... I assumed that ... the model that I understood more would be the model that got Romero thrown out of id: Designer throws a design document on a table and the minions go build the game. But there's a lot more to it than that.
Honestly I think it's easy to resist the way the game industry's structured now. I'm still kind of shook from the ea_spouse thing. That's not the life I want to lead. I have a pretty good life right now.
I ask these guys: How do you stay motivated working on a game for two to three years? I don't get it.
JD: Remember what we're talking about: One of the key elements of the job description is being able to explain it to people outside of the industry. So I think those of us who can make a go of this are already constitutionally inclined to think of ourselves as outsiders. It's hard for me to imagine myself as in that world.
RP: The majority of games journalism is not like those of us here who have a professional bent and a journalism background. It's folks on blogs and on their personal sites and going to shows for the swag, and more and more of these folks are in it just to get the contacts to get into games. What do y'all think about that?
EVZ: I think absolutely everyone wants to be a designer. ... There's a very fine line between thinking "this could be done better" and thinking "I could do this better myself."
KG: In the U.K., games development is incredibly poor. I have one friend ... they told me his pay, and I couldn't afford to eat. Everyone wants to be a designer, and somehow if you could magically become in charge of a magical world maybe you would, but the idea of being one person in a machine of a hundred people ... I'm completely mentally incapable of doing that. ... The autonomy of [writing] appeals to me. It would feel wrong of me to [go into development].
NC: I was going to say maybe the Luke Smiths and the Greg Kasavins are the Truffauts and Godard's of our generation, although I don't know if Goddard would have settled for being a community manager.
EVZ: I think there are two factors: One is that in the media it's hard to have a good job because magazines are always closing down. ... It's hard to be a journalist. The other element is they always sort of wanted to make games anyway.
KG: Part of the problem about game journalism isn't really about game journalism per se. It's part of the larger cultural malaise about journalism. It's the much larger issue about the media and the public and how people, process that stuff. So part of me thinks maybe we shouldn't be so hard on ourselves. There's good work being done and maybe that's the best we can hope for.
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