John Davison

Back in the olden-olden-olden days (OK, it started in 2001) when there weren't Twitter feeds or even blogs for that matter, people still read newsletters. How quaint! I'd almost completely forgotten about this - but I used to write one that went out every week called (imaginatively) "Thinking Out Loud." This was before 1UP even existed, and the "official" website of EGM, CGW and the Official PlayStation Magazine was Gamers.com. Remember that? Good times. Well, no. Not really.

Anyway, every week I let nonsense spew out of my keyboard, and it gathered quite a bit of a following. In a weird kind of way, I guess it was a very, very early precursor to the kind of conversation (albeit one way in this case) on 1UP Yours. The brand "Thinking Out Loud" lives on as a gathering of thoughts from bloggers on 1UP, but the original was just me talking shit for a couple of thousand words every week.

If the archive on an old hard drive I just found is to be believed, the piece pasted below is actually the first ever Thinking Out Loud from November 28, 2001. So it's like a digital collector's item or something. Note the seer-like quality with which I observe industry happenings, and the clairvoyance I display in predicting that some obscure game called "Halo" has the chance to be pretty successful.

Here it is. Enjoy. I've not tested any of the links that are still in there. Chances are most of them are broken, given that it was nearly eight years ago.

THINKING OUT LOUD 11.28.01

Apparently, according to conservative estimates, between us we managed to spend somewhere in the region of $400 million during gaming’s “big week”. Considering that the newspapers told us on Wednesday that we’re “officially” experiencing a recession, and we’re all supposed to be broke, that’s pretty darned impressive. There aren’t many actual numbers on system sales, but from what I can gather from contacts at both Nintendo and Microsoft, as well as various retailers is that the official number is “all of them.” According to the majority of news sources, Nintendo alone made more cash in that first weekend than Harry Potter managed to…and that took us all for somewhere in the region of $93.5 million. That would explain why I still can’t find a Gamecube anywhere I guess. I have a copy of Rogue Leader ready and waiting, but I can’t find a system anywhere…let alone a black one. If you stumble across one let me know, eh?

The nice people at Konami announced on Wednesday that they had shipped 1.8 million copies of Metal Gear Solid 2 already and that they’re really rather pleased about this, thank you. If you haven’t bought it yet, go out and do so. There are apparently plenty. If you foolishly pre-ordered it from an online retailer that still hasn’t got round to shipping it, at least check out the official website and let the music make the hairs on the back of your neck tingle while you’re fuming. Do yourself a favor and keep away from the chat forums online about this one until after you’ve started playing it though. People have a tendency to talk about all the bits that you’re not going to want spoiling.

In other PS2 related news, those of you dying to know what’s going on with WipeOut Fusion will be pleased to know that…no, it hasn’t been given a release date, but it does have its own website now. The last thing I heard, the UK release had been pushed back to next year to “make a product worthy of the WipeOut name.” Does that mean that the thing they’ve been working on for the last couple of years isn’t worthy of the WipeOut name? There’s still no word from SCEA as to whether they’ll be releasing it in the U.S.

Did you hear the one about the Xbox making Sony execs rethink the PS3 release strategy? Nope…it isn’t a joke, according to a recent interview with The Financial Times, Kunitake Ando, president and CEO of Sony, said that the Xbox could force the company to transition to the PS3 earlier than intended. "The biggest threat to the PlayStation 2 is that the Xbox changes the industry's life cycle," said Ando, who feels that it is unclear whether the current PS2 business model is sustainable and that its console life cycle could be reduced to three years as a result. This doesn’t sound like the typically bullish Sony to me. Where’s all the talk of “ours is better than yours” and people holding press conferences to say that no-one else has a chance? Check out Gamespot’s full story.

Speaking of the Xbox, it’s shocking how the overall perceptions of the Xbox have changed isn’t it? Let’s be honest and admit that we’ve all spent the last year poo-pooing the idea of Microsoft building a games machine. We’ve all bitched about the crappy software line-up that they showed during the summer. We’ve mocked the system itself for weighing as much as a small car. We’ve mocked the joypad for feeling like a potato with a Pog wedged inside it. Now that it’s here though…it’s a bit different isn’t it? We’re a bit disappointed that the green thing in the middle of the system isn’t the glowing jewel-like orb that we originally thought it might be, but we’ve been wowed by what the box can do. We’ve also laughed at the Dead or Alive 3 commercial (even if, and I may be alone in this, the game itself isn’t really that fantastic). We’ve grudgingly acknowledged that Munch’s Oddysee is really fun and, most of all, we’ve come to the realization that Halo may turn out to be one of the finest games ever made. It’s a wonderful experience that will eat into your free time the way that Microsoft itself is eating into its $500 million ad campaign. Even if the sound track does occasionally sound a bit like Riverdance. C’mon! What do you mean you don’t hear that? There are places when the action gets a bit tough and the music erupts in such a way that you wouldn’t be surprised to see one of the Covenant prancing around like Michael Flatley. I spent the majority of the holiday weekend alienating my loved ones and blasting my way through Bungie’s epic and loving every second of it. Sure, there were some odd moments involving bits of spaceship that appeared to have been built by skatepark designers (why are there little jump ramps sprinkled along a major escape route?) but I haven’t had that much fun with a shooter since the first Quake.

Play Halo all the way through. Play it again and try and finish it on “legendary” level (if you’re man enough) and then try and convince 15 of your friends to gather together four TVs, four Xboxes and 16 joypads so you can experience the superb multiplayer modes. Few people will get the opportunity to play it this way, thanks to supply, cost, friend-availability and space issues…but if you ever get the chance, find a large room away from distractions and dig in. Alternatively, check out GameSpy’s hack that allows you to link your Xbox to a PC with a broadband connection and pretend you have lots of friends by meeting them online and kicking their asses. It may get a bit sluggish at times, but if you have the opportunity, try it out.

The team at Electronic Gaming Monthly have been hopelessly addicted to the game and it’s no secret that Halo was in part responsible for “winning” the magazine’s Xbox vs. Gamecube feature…as well as causing everyone on the team to be late handing their work in on time. There are 11 editors on EGM…six of them voted for Xbox, five for Gamecube. If you speak to them now (hunt them down in the forums) you may even find that some of the Gamecube fans are switching allegiances. Who would have thought huh?

Halo’s probably been responsible for a lot of the positive press that the Xbox has been getting too. That, and the recent surge of patriotism that everyone’s been feeling lately. The most unusual comment I saw was Joe Salkowski of the Chicago Tribune who posed the thought that the “purchase of Xbox [is] a patriotic quandary.” He even closes his piece with the comment “If I don't buy at least one game console this Christmas, I'm afraid the terrorists will win. At least, that's what I'm telling my wife.” Hope she believes you pal.

So…when is Sony going to get round to doing the right thing and dropping the price of the PS2 then? It’s down to 199 pounds in the UK (that’s about $249), in Japan they just dropped the price to the equivalent of, ooh…lookee here…$249, so now it’s starting to look like the U.S. has the most expensive system anywhere. Except Canada where I hear you have to pay with your firstborn child. Right now, everyone at Sony is steadfast in their denial that there are any plans to drop prices. A telling sign could be the prices you can find a GT3 pack for these days. A lot of stores are selling this for $329…which does work out a bit cheaper than a PS2 and a copy of the game separately. If you’re gift shopping – this would be the choice to go for.

Speaking of gift shopping, here’s something perfect if you’re on a tight budget. The recent surge in demand for the Dreamcast thanks to the price drop has prompted the production of 2,000 more black Dreamcast units in Japan, according to Consolewire. It seems that it will never die. The official U.S. price is now $50, although not all retailers are sticking to this at the moment. A giant heap of systems at a local Best Buy here in the Bay Area still has them tagged at $69, but even that is a complete bargain. If you don’t have one – go and get one while you can…if only to play Soul Calibur. And NBA 2k1. And NFL 2k1. And Shemue. And Crazy Taxi as it was meant to be played. And…and…and….and pretty much every other Dreamcast game there is. They’re all bargains. This is like the gaming gods cutting us all a break and handing out gaming manna. This kind of thing doesn’t happen very often, so take advantage of it.

Finally, the big news this week is that Square has taken the bold an unprecedented step of announcing that it will be shipping a game earlier than expected, and on top of that, it’s a game that we really want to ship early. December 26th will be a big day for us all…as it means that we have to rush out, still hungover from Christmas day and try and track down one of the early copies of Final Fantasy X that’s shipping that day. Fantastic eh? If you can’t wait even that long, and can get yourself to San Francisco on December 15th, Square will be previewing the game at the PlayStation store at the Metreon all day.

I've talked occasionally about my first "professional" video games writing gig, which was for an Atari themed magazines called Page 6 (no, that's no me in the bios, that's my dad - also called John) starting back in 1987. This past weekend however, I got an email from my parents with the following "magazine" scanned in from old printouts they'd found filed away in the attic. This "Atari Micro Mag" dates back to (based on the "news" items within) just prior to the release of the ill-fated Atari 260 ST, which puts it probably around 1985. So I was (counts on fingers, toes) um...maybe 13 at the time of "publication." Judging from the bylines, it was a school project or something, as they were all guys I hung out with when I was 11, 12, 13 years old.

Anyway...here are the scans. From printouts on a "Star SG10 printer" apparently. All designed in Broderbund's Print Shop. Remember that? Fantastic program.

Are reviews primarily a consumer guide, or should they serve another purpose? Do review scores deter intelligent discussion of video games? Is the presence or absence of a review score the only difference between a reviewer and a critic? What is the role of the reviewer when the Internet is democratizing published opinion? How should reviews and reviewers evolve in light of the emergence and growth of Flash games, small games, indie games and user-generated games?

These questions and more were on the mind of N'Gai Croal, John Davison and Shawn Elliott last summer when they decided to expand their conversation to a number of noted reviewers, writers, bloggers and journalists for a published email symposium on game reviews. (See below for the full list of participants.) The planned list of topics include Review Scores; Review Policy, Practice and Ethics; Reader Backlash; Reviews in the Age of Social media; Reviews in the Mainstream Media; Casual, Indie, and User-Generated Games; Reviews vs. Criticism; and Evolving the Review. Round 1's topic: Review Scores.

Participants

* Leigh Alexander, Gamasutra/Sexy Videogameland/Variety
* Harry Allen, Media Assassin
* Robert Ashley, freelancer
* Tom Chick, freelancer
* N'Gai Croal, Level Up/Newsweek
* John Davison, What They Play
* Shawn Elliott, 2K Boston
* Jeff Gerstmann, Giant Bomb
* Kieron Gillen, Rock, Paper, Shotgun
* Dan Hsu, Sore Thumbs Blog
* Francesca Reyes, Official Xbox Magazine
* Stephen Totilo, MTV News


The entire transcript of the first part of this discussion, which focuses on review scores, can be found on Shawn Elliott's blog here. It's an epic read...16,000 words worth of insight from the above list of folks. I think it's worth noting that while we discuss the topic at great length, it is not our intention to set the world to rights and instruct everyone how things should be done. We are by no means perfect, and certainly don't suppose to tell people how they should do their jobs. As a "symposium" the goal is simply to air the issues as each of us see them, discuss them, and above all else raise questions and thoughts that will get all of us thinking about the topic, and possibly even change each others' minds.

From a purely personal perspective, I have to say that it's a remarkable thing to be a part of. I have a tremendous amount of respect for absolutely everyone on the panel, and reading their thoughts has been a fascinating experience. One of the comments that really gave me pause to think about how we approach writing about games was from Harry Allen, who says, "Though I use different language, I know that when I started writing about hip-hop professionally, in the late '80s, I made it my objective to never talk about an album in terms of whether I liked it or not. Instead, I always saw it as my job to explain the artist's intent to the readers. I've never called myself a "music critic." I've always said that I am a Hip-Hop Activist."

On the subject of scores he says, "I think a reason similar to this is also why I always resisted, during that brief period of my life, when male friends would ask me to assign a number to a girl I've seen. In hip-hop / Black slang, a "dime" is a girl who's a 10...but what does that mean? According to what objective scale? And indeed, isn't that the core idea that disproves the fantasy: That without an actual 10 to which one can point—the theoretical perfect game—the numbers become meaningless? That is, on a foot-long ruler, "4" only means something because there's a "7," and a "9," but, most of all, because there's a "12." However, "12" only means something because there's a "13" and "25"; an agreed-upon metric, in other words."

With the kids on the Virgin flight out. They were remarkably well behaved.



The location of my brother's wedding, out somewhere deep in the southern English countryside. There were wild horse wandering around. Seriously.



Pete and Jane, several second before doing the ring thing. Apologies to both of them for the unflattering camera angle here.



Mrs. D looking crazy hot in her bridesmaid/maid of honor (or whatever she was...I forget) get up.



I appear to have caught the exact moment at which everyone in my family (and a bunch of people I don't know) weren't smiling for some reason. It was a happy day...honest!



Me and the big guy at the wedding reception. Both kids were remarkably well behaved.



Car museums are pretty awesome.



A 1949 bus that we got to go out in one day. The boys seemed to get a kick out of it.



It should be noted that this is not actually our bus. This is simply the Davison clan in front of a bus belonging to someone else, who very kindly took us out in it.



With the kids in Cambridge. This picture doesn't do justice to just how miserably grey the sky was all day. "Why is England so cloudy, Daddy?"



Yes, they do Halloween in England. The little guy was a ninja this year. This is his ninja face.

I've been a little busy. Sorry about that.

I sort of got my panties in a bunch this week while reading through all the reviews of the latest games. Now that I'm outside the processes of the "machine" and looking on from the outside, it's a very different experience to be looking at coverage of games. It's inevitable that I'll feel this way every Q4 moving forward, but at the moment I'm super aware of the inconsistencies that seem markedly apparent in a lot of the "criticism" of games. I do the obnoxious air quotes thing there, because honestly, that's part of the problem. Without veering too far into games criticism wankery – that's just annoying to read – the core problem (for me) while reading the reviews of things like Rock Band 2, and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is not that I necessarily disagree with the opinions voiced (I do, but that's irrelevant) it's that the coverage is neither criticism, nor buying advice. Because it aspires to be both, ultimately it is neither, and what we get instead are subjective little microcosms of opinion. Less and less, we see content edited within the context of the outlet in which it lives, and the result is that we see the same arguments used to reinforce contradictory points. Reviews editors are increasingly just editing individual reviews, and are not editing their reviews sections. Otherwise, we wouldn't constantly see these contradictions.

To paraphrase:

"This game is just like this other game, and that makes it awesome."

"This game is just like this other game, and that makes it terrible."

Today on What They Play, we posted a story about this in the context of how it impacts people that aren't hardcore gamers. Given that parents, by and large, are not avid followers of video games, and only look for content (if at all) when a purchase is about to be made, we pondered whether the editorial reviews available are actually of any use. Personally, my feeling is that no, they aren't. Why? Because more often than not, decisions about entertainment are made outside of the critical process. People go to see bad movies. They watch crappy TV shows. They play games that aren't necessarily well received. We are polling our audience on the subject right now, so if you have an opinion on the subject please provide a comment on the story, or at least click on the poll that we have.

As these things tend to do, the musings suddenly took on a life of their own. After Twittering something of my usual drivel-level standard, and this in turn being sucked into my Facebook status, I found that discussion on this subject started turning up in Wall responses. First, good friend and current LucasArts employee Brooks Brown chipped in noting that "reviewers seem to not enjoy games like they should," and was soon joined by Robert Ashley (whose work I respect immensely, and have since the OPM and early 1UP days when I first met him) who noted, "The fact that critics who play 40 or 50 games a year don’t feel the same way about games as the average consumer shouldn’t be a shock. It’s not that they’ve lost touch with the spirit of gaming. It’s that experience drives them toward novel and away from familiar."

Shawn "Shawnimal" Smith (whose Ninjatown game comes out on Nintendo DS next month) then hit the nail on the head with, "this is obviously a complicated issue made worse by reviewers who place themselves on a pedestal without ever really doing the work needed to be taken seriously. The moniker 'Critic' in any form shouldn't be taken lightly, and those of you out there who truly are 'Video Game Critics', and take that title seriously (AND do all of the years of research and constant diligence that comes with it) should be a resource for gamers who want to dig deeper. But then where does that leave the average consumer who simply wants to know if they should buy a game or not? Should reviewers 'dumb down' or should consumers 'smart up'?"

Blogging and posting time is now spread between this, Twitter, the official What They Play blog (which occupies most of my time, honestly) and I've been posting some random photos, quotes and junk on by Tumblr thing. Tumblog? Is that what they call them? Been feeding it all into FriendFeed, if that helps at all.

Lake Lagunitas is at the top of one of the mountain bike trails I occasionally ride at the weekends. The trail works its way around the edge of the lake. It's a beautiful place at the best of times, but if you catch it at the right time of day, it's breathtaking.



This is taken on Lucas Valley road, a few miles from Skywalker Ranch. The valley ahead works it's way down towards the north end of San Rafael and Terra Linda. As I took this picture, I actually had my back to this thing...



This is Big Rock. So called because it's a big rock. George Lucas owns it. The road here is pretty much the highest point on a 27 mile road circuit that I ride. According to the funky GPS device in my watch, the climb up to this point puts me at about 630 feet above the level where my house is.



This is the data that my watch spits out. The top is GPS location data overlaid on a map, and the graph at the bottom is speed (blue) mapped against elevation (grey)

About a year ago, by friend Pete visited from the UK, and cycled to the top of our local mountain (Mt. Tamalpais, it's pretty big) on this crazy, exotic, Italian carbon fiber road bike that weighs about an ounce that he brought with him. Since I'd seen him last a few years ago, he had become super fit, and told me that he was "addicted" to cycling, and that he routinely rode 20 or 30 miles. He then implied that I was nuts for living in the best cycling area in the world but not taking advantage of it.

After he left, I took his comments to heart, and dug the mountain bike out of the garage and started working my way around a nearby trail. Eventually I was riding a fairly tough 10 mile circuit that wormed it's way up part of a mountain, and back down the other side. It was certainly helping me feel a bit fitter.

Then, for Christmas last year, Mrs D bought me a road bike. Something a bit more exotic and carbon fiberous than the tank of a mountain bike I'd been riding. After some embarrassing crashes (thanks to the toe clips), bruises, and near-death experiences as I toppled over sideways in the middle of traffic because I was physically attached to the bike, I started to see what Pete had been talking about.

Now, I'm riding between 70 and 100 miles a week (when I can) and riding fairly rigorous 20 or 30 mile routes that take me through some of the most beautiful parts of the Bay Area. I'm faster, and fitter than I've probably been in 15 years...and now I'm really beginning to appreciate what Pete was talking about when he said it was an "addiction."

Spending all day in front of a computer, working on 10 things at once is certainly stressful. But hurtling down a hill at 40 miles an hour on a road bike requires such singular focus and clarity that it eliminates all the stresses and complications of my usual day-to-day routine. Now, if I don't ride for a couple of days, I really feel it. There's a physical yearning to get out there and ride. Not just for the fitness aspect of it, but for the clarity and feeling of freedom that it provides, too.

Our latest "Question of the Day" is live on What They Play, and we want to know what parents think is the worst thing their kids could be getting up to when out of sight; watching porn, smoking weed, drinking booze, or playing GTA.

Which do you think would be the worst?

So far, weed is winning but as I write this, the poll has only been up for an hour. Head on over to the site, and cast your own vote.