The smartest videogame writers
This is a vote.
Vote for any number of your favorite intelligent, insightful, witty or smart game writers, and I'll tabulate the results. (Don't vote for people who are dumb as rocks) You can vote for bloggers, forum'ers, podcasters, writers, game-devs, whatever.
To avoid conflict of interest, no GWJ'ers on the list. You already know they are awesome.
Feel free to make arguments and cite references for your choices. This can be a kind of introduction to your favorite writers and podcasters, so I hope you'll invest the time to make good arguments.
Current Tally
1 - Abigail Sponge (shackcast s2 ep1, shackcast s2 ep 2)
1 - Alan Au (xcom piece)
8 - Bill Harris (dubious quality)
2 - Bonnie Ruberg (Heroine Sheik)
1 - Brenda Brathwaite
1 - Bruce Geryk (Tom Vs Bruce: IL-2 Sturmovik)
2 - Chris Avellone (Wrote Planescape: Torment, Vision statement for Planescape: Torment)
1 - Chris Remo (shackcast s1 ep 29, shackcast s1 ep 18
4 - Clive Thompson ( Columbine rpg)
X - Colleen Hannon X__X - Vote struck from the record by a bolt of ethics
1 - Dave Alpern (Balancing Act Column, The Games WE Play, Castle of Love)
1 - Dan Cook - (lost garden)
1 - David Sirlin (sirlin.net, Playing to Win)
0 - Derek Smart
2 - Erik Wolpaw (old man murray, Portal, Half Life 2 Episode 2)
1 - Erin Hoffman
3 - Kieron Gillen (rock paper shotgun,
The Girl Who Wanted To Be God, Journey Into The Cradle)
2 - Leigh Alexander (sexyvideogameland.blogspot.com)
1 - Lorenzo Wang (noisewar)
1 - Mary Flanagan, Michael Mateas, Nick Montfort, Scott Rettberg, Andrew Stern, Noah Wardrip Fruin (Grand Text Auto)
1 - James Paul Gee
1 - Jane Pinckard
1 - Jeff Green
1 - Jim Rossignol (Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Sex, Fame and PC Baangs: How the Orient plays host to PC gaming’s strangest culture. The Invasion)
7 - N'gai Croal (Vs. Mode Portal, Bioshock and Metroid Prime 3, Manhunt 2)
1 - Raph Koster (blog)
1 - Rich Laporte
1 - Roberta Williams
1 - Scott Johnson (My Extra Life)
1 - Sheri Graner Ray
8 - Shawn Elliott (Crysis Review, Racist imagery in RE5 trailer?)
3 - Stephen Totilo (Vs. Mode Portal, Bioshock and Metroid Prime 3, Manhunt 2)
2 - Tim Schafer (half-tuck, also made Grim Fandango among other classics)
2 - Tom Chick (Shoot Club Stuff @ quarter to 3, Tom Vs Bruce: IL-2 Sturmovik) Doom 3 review
2 - Yahtzee (zero puncuation)
I like Yahtzee's Zero Punctuation game reviews. Aside from being funny as hell, he really does cut to the quick and expose truisms of various gaming genres and the industry in general. Though his slant is decidedly caustic and obviously should be taken with a grain of salt, he still manages to offer genuine insights about the products and consumers he's roasting.
Derek Smart? I mean, it's right there in his name.
Fedaykin98 wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:
N'Gai Croal and Stephen Totillo are awesome. The Vs. Mode exchanges they do on their blogs are really great and in-depth. Through their back-and-forth format they seem to build a shared grammar to talk about aspects of gaming that we all recognize but don't have the vocabulary yet to describe.
I'm like a flashing lightning and a rolling thunder, I'm like a stepping razor
Shawn Elliott. His fascination with the juvenile turns a lot of people off to him, but he's always interested in going deeper when talking about games: asking why things are the way they are, why they work and don't, and what they might mean.
xbl y3llow5 | steam yellow#5 | PSN ForrestTheWicked
I second elliott and croal, with third vote for bill Harris. I'm recusing myself from opining on anyone who's written for gwj
Gamertag: GWJ Rabbit | Last.fm | Twitter
"In other news, Miyamoto pissed on my head, and gave me a forecast of rain." - *Le
Up one for Shawn Elliot. He may do juvenile griefing online, but you know, I rarely hear anyone be as insightful as him about gaming.
XBL: NSMike | Steam | PSN: NSMike | Wii Friend Code: 7763 1519 2475 2278 | GWJ Google Calendar
I'll throw down a vote for Chris Remo, former Editor in Chief of Shacknews. His analysis of gameplay is really fantastic across the board.
Check out his thoughts on No More Heroes, on episode 29 of the Shackcast. It's funny to hear, S. Elliot and Remo talk about No More Heroes (episode 02/15/2008 | 1UP Yours - Podcast): They're both really smart guys, but they have the opposite opinion.
Or his thoughts on Super Mario Galaxy, where he compares Mario Galaxy to Bach's Goldberg variations, in episode 18 of the shackcast.
Another Shacknews personality: Abigail Sponge. She absolutely crushes the internet nerd-idiot archetype/demigod Chris Faylor in Season 2 of the shackcast. episode 1 episode 2
She doesn't do much gameplay analysis, but she takes down Faylor so impressively that she gets a vote.
I vote for Bill Harris. He has good enough attention to detail to point out game flaws that actually might effect you.
"Everyone's always in favour of saving Hitler's brain but when you put it in the body of a great white shark, ooh, suddenly you've gone too far."
Another vote for N'Gai
Plus one for James Paul Gee who writes books and articles about games and learning
Plus one for Bonnie Ruberg of Heroine Sheik.
Plus a group vote for the writers of Grand Text Auto, whom I've just recently discovered.
*Legion* wrote:
informationgames.info
http://twitter.com/nnschiller
Harris also goes all over the damn place for information, including fellow writers.
Unfettered Blather - Daily updated nonsense
X-Box Live Gamertag - CrazedJava
Less chatter more splatter!
Clive Thompson: a journalist with an interest in video games. A good example of quality journalism can be found in his Wired writeup of Super Columbine Massacre RPG. He not only played and beat the game, he conducted interviews with the game's designer, and victims of the Columbine attack.
I echo Totilo, Croal, and Elliott.
Bill Harris would get my vote if the poll was best momblog/dadblog.
Gaming / PC Tech Blog: www.blastprocessing.net
Xbox Live: Legion SB / PSN: Legion_SB / Steam: legion028 / Twitter: legion
If I'm going to be an ass, I might as well be a hot female sportscaster's ass.
BTW, I was kidding about Derek Smart.
Fedaykin98 wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:
When I saw the list of the type of people you could vote for..
Jeff Green is my vote.
Your friendly neighbourhood hair splitting singularity.
Aperture scientist is my alter ego.
(Christmas avatar by Mystic Violet)
Absolutely agreed. I'm not a PC gamer in any way, shape, or form, but I listen to GFW Radio religiously because of the interesting and insightful things that Shawn Elliott and Jeff Green have to say. And while we're on the topic of 1up folks, I was also always impressed with the things Jon Davison had to say when he was a regular on 1up Yours (although that may have been partially due to his dreamy British accent
).
XBL/PSN: zeroKFE | BHA: zeroKFE
Clive Thompson tries, at least. His Slate articles show that. And more importantly to me, he's willing to mix it up and interact with the users. We've gone back and forth in the Fray a couple times.
Bill Harris just rocks.
And also staying outside the GWJ Proper Penmanship Club, I'd like to nominate Dave Alpern and Alan Au.
Dave has written all over the place and is an icon for the old Evil Avatar crowd, but I'm most familiar with his Balancing Act columns over on Gamerdad. If I had to pick a couple favorites, it'd be this one and this.
Alan is a regular on the Escapist and several other publications. He's got an interesting look at game X-com here.
Duoae wrote:
I'm going to have to give a vote for Shawn Elliott on this one. As everybody's pointed out, he's got a juvenile sense of humor but once you get past that he's really passionate about his work and delves deeply into each game he tries and is always willing to try new things and explore them from every angle. An example are his comments about why GFW decided not to review the Left Behind game in one of their podcasts. He didn't agree with why the magazine had made that decision and made an excellent comeback as to why they should have reviewed it.
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Thanks for the excellent post, with sources momgamer.
As for all you Sean Elliott banana ridaz, please hook me up with a link to your favorite S. Elliott moment for the OP.
I was just trying to find some sources for N'Gai, Rabbit and S. Elliott, and I failed. 1up.com can be really hard to use sometimes.
This is maybe blurring the line between dialogue writers and analysts/journalists, so I'll focus mostly on the latter.
I'm going to put in a nomination for Tom Chick and Bruce Geryk, who both contribute to the "Tom vs. Bruce" set of monthly AAR-type articles (in the now-defunct GfW) where they provide recaps of multiplayer matches. I find the articles quite enjoyable on multiple levels, whether they're talking about specific in-game tactics, higher-level strategies, or just making fun of each other.
I'll also add a shout out to Erik Wolpaw of Old Man Murray and Portal writing fame.
David Sirlin is worth reading if you're curious about game balance, with his "Playing to Win" series of articles.
Last but not least, I'll mention GWJ's own Colleen Hannon, who has also done some great work for Gamerdad on the subject of managing a gamer household.
- Alan
Shame on all of you.
Philip Scuderi (Lobo)
Russ Pitts (Fletcher)
Lara Crigger (KaterinLHC)
Julian Murdoch (rabbit)
Stephen Failey (Chiggie)
Elysium, Demiurge, fly, pyro, iDgaf, and a host of others before my time.
Show some compassion, there is a whole host of gwj writers sweating bullets over this thread!
We shall grapple with the ineffable, and see if we may not eff it after all.
Here are some of my favorite Vs. Mode exchanges. TL;DR warnings in full effect here.
The Complete Vs. Mode Featuring MTV News' Stephen Totilo Vs. Level Up's N'Gai Croal on Portal
The Complete Vs. Mode on BioShock and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
The Complete Vs. Mode on Manhunt 2
Edit: And here is one of Shawn Elliot's better reviews: Team Fortress 2.
I'm like a flashing lightning and a rolling thunder, I'm like a stepping razor
Here's my fairly randomly chosen top 7, in no particular order.
N'gai Croal
Bill Harris
Stephen Totilo
Raph Koster (http://www.raphkoster.com)
Leigh Alexander (http://sexyvideogameland.blogspot.com/)
Kieron Gillen (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com)
Dan Cook (http://www.lostgarden.com)
Yeah, I don't have anyone else to mention that hasn't already been said. I'll just re-iterate that Shawn Elliot and Clive Thompson are probably my two favourites. I think Shawn's writing took a huge leap forward in his Crysis review.
There would probably be a couple people from Edge on here if I knew for sure who wrote what in that magazine. Only Edge has me reading previews, reviews, articles and post-mortems about games I have absolutely no interest in. The writing is that spectacular, in my opinion.
I would think the first rule of PR is to ignore forum people, because they vacillate between crazy and liar. - Elysium
Does Scott Johnson count? 'Cause I'd vote for him twice, if so.
"I'm absolutely retarded. Not 100% sure why." - atom
"Dhelor + intarwebs = Great ideas." - wordsmythe
"Do I what I do: hate everyone." - Quintin_Stone
EDIT: Ignore this post.
XBL: NSMike | Steam | PSN: NSMike | Wii Friend Code: 7763 1519 2475 2278 | GWJ Google Calendar
I am going with Clive Thompson. His Super Columbine Massacre story was a great treatise on how we, people, need to stop judging books by their covers. It was sort of a rally against knee jerk reactions. And also showed just what happens when you look past a sensationalist grab, you might find a gem that is serious and thoughtful.
Guess I'm a dirty skimmer. GWJ still has the highest concentration of excellent talent as I've ever found next to the Escapist.
We shall grapple with the ineffable, and see if we may not eff it after all.
Definitely N'Gai.
XBox Live: DSGamer GWJ | PSN: DSGamerGWJ
I'm confused. Is this a vote for favourite or smartest? They're not necessarily that same. Like, Jim Rossignol over at RPS is actually cleverer than Kieron, but Kieron's more entertaining. And videogame writers as in journalists or developer?
But anyway, game-game writers:
Chris Avellone (Planescape: Torment, KotORII)
Tim Schafer (Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, Psychonauts)
Erik Wolpaw(Psychonauts, Portal)
Journo-game writers:
Kieron Gillen
Tom Chick
Yahtzee
N'gai Croal
Jim Rossignol
"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."