Tipa of West Karana fame has been discussing her recent experiences with Fantasy Earth Zero. In the latest post, she starts off wondering why there weren’t more first hand accounts of this game (and by extension other games which fall beneath the radar here in the West), and ends on a pretty valid note: why aren’t more gamers blogging about their experiences with a particular game?

Most gamers are familiar with the “bush off” posts and reviews that a lot of news sites offer as “reviews”, but which are based off of only a scant few hours of hands-on time (*cough* APB *cough*). Based on Tipa’s point, I see that what’s missing isn’t the hands-on, per se, but rather the drive to educate other potential players about a game that we ourselves love. Who better to talk about a game then the people who are playing it? Instead, we leave it up to the “professional” news sites to provide write-ups when they have time, out of obligation, and possibly about games that the reviewer has absolutely no interest in playing in the first place (like me, and racing games!).

As any good blog post should, Tipa’s article made me think, mostly about my own blogging habits. I never blog about a specific game, at least not to the depth that others like Werit or Stargrace do on their blogs. I have a few reasons:

  1. I don’t stick with games for long. I do, but on a larger scale. There’s a few I consistently return to (which is a post in itself), but I will only pay for 2 MMOs at a time, which means that I jump around a lot. I lose out on much of what people experience in these games, which brings us to number…
  2. I don’t dig deep into my games. I’m not a min-maxer, or a loot whore, or achievement collector, and I have never reached the level cap in any game I have ever played (see point #1). In fact, the last game I did finish? Halo 3. It seems that a lot of bloggers/commentators speak of very specific things: the attributes of the Sword of Purple Fire or the strategies of tackling the Dungeons of Doom or some-such. I don’t have that knowledge, nor do I reduce my games to numbers and strategies meant to be discussed outside of their context in the game. I don’t really have anything to offer by way of opinion or analysis on this level (which is what many people seem to want), which brings us to number…
  3. Reviews of MMOs are difficult, and are generally “looked down” upon. Savvy MMO bloggers know this, yet we get these all the time from established news sites. Those “in the know” instead give us “impressions” or “previews” which inherently approach the subject knowing that what we see now isn’t what we’ll see in 6 months, and that the points laid down are strictly those of the blogger. Your mileage may vary, which is why if I do write about a specific game, I try really hard to limit it to mechanical details, maybe with some reference pointers to other titles to allow players to compare. These posts have all the charm of your car’s owners manual.

While Tipa has an excellent point – that we should rely on the experience of those elbow-deep in the game like we rely on family and friends who have experience with, say, dishwashers or movies – we really need bloggers who can transcend the fandom inherent in such a call-to-arms. I’m as guilty as the next person: you find something that excites you, and you want to gush to anyone and everyone about it as soon as possible, regardless of the length of your experience with it. Once the high wears off and things settle down, in retrospect, the hype might seem like a bit of a disservice, since it was offered at a specific point in time before the luster wore thin.

When players can both write coherently (which isn’t always the case, unfortunately) and can get beyond the shiny, I’d go so far as to say that they have an obligation to their community to promote what they enjoy. We’ve seen enough games slip away in the night due to low reception, and if the level of “smarter then thou” snark being offered by a lot of popular gaming sites is the go-to voice for the games we love, we’re essentially letting the fox guard the hen-house.