Killed by Friendly Fire: Game Critics Rant
Update: Evan Narcisse filmed various speakers during the panel session - you can find links to these clips after the jump sprinkled liberally throughout my notes..
We give you a rundown of one of the most explosive (and fun) panels at GDC - Killed by Friendly Fire: Critics Rant - and we give you the entire session in audio format so you can judge for yourselves. But first a rundown of all the dirty little details right after the break..
Notes
People are making a big deal about Jason Della Rocca’s farewell rant at the Game Developers conference at the Game Developers Conference, but the truth is that the former head of the International Game Developer Association’s rant was mild compared to some of the tings said on that panel. That panel, Killed by Friendly Fire: Critics Rant, was volatile to say the least.
It featured rants from developer Chris Hecker, former journalist-turned-consultant N’Gai Croal, G4 TV’s Adams Sessler, Gamasutra’s Leigh Alexander, a special guest rant by a dude from the Wall Street Journal , MTV Multiplayer’s Stephen Totilo, Heather Chaplin and a special guest appearance by Clint Hocking.
The most passionate rant of the entire session wasn’t from Della Rocca (Jason Della Rocca Clip), but Sessler, who opened his rant by saying “fuck Metacritic.” Leigh Alexander commented on the vicious three-way relationship between readers, journalists and developers (Leigh Alexander Clip), and Totilo tackled the subject of bad writing (Stephen Totilo Clip). Interestingly, a journalist from a certain mainstream publication had a rant of his own in the press room (as documented in this Escapist story) in which has pondered who the hell a guy from MTV thought he was to tell him about grammar. We think it was a rhetorical question.
Sessler’s rant about Metacritic was probably the most pointed, as he complained about how the site owned by C|Net recalibrated his scores to mean something other than what was originally intended - even over his objections and appeals directly to the site. He also said “shame on you” to publishers for using the Metacritic system to incentivize or punish developers based on the review score aggregator’s numbers - which he noted are pretty messed up. (Adam Sessler Clip)
Chris Hecker made a guest appearance (he’s a regular to the GDC rant panel) to rant about journalists doing their job - citing a 1UP story that used a forum post as a basis for a pretty strong statement against the Spore developer - read the story he speaks of here. Hecker says that journalists may have the most important job of anyone in the industry because what they say affects lives and jobs. (Chris Hecker Clip)
One of the more interesting rants - and the last one I’ll talk about here, was from a guest ranter from the Wall Street Journal, who talked about race in Resident Evil 5. One of the things he suggested game developers consider when making games is to add a broader range of character ethnicity to games. Make them important NCPS, make them antagonists and make them protagonist and it will be hard to call any game racists ever again, he said. He also said that anyone who didn’t have the courage to address race in RE5 when reviewing it has no business being a games journalists. (Brophy Warren Clip)
I could leave the rest to your imagination, but instead I offer the full panel audio recording below. Please forgive some odd sounds and the buzz of my cell phone in there.
