And I thought David Jaffe just produced kick-ass games, little did I know he also had some hardcore ranting skills. Last week Jaffe posted a "Plea to The Game Journalist" to stop being such fanboy, industry suck-ups and start doing their jobs. I couldn't agree more. Here's his excellent P.S.

ps. There are SOME mags/sites that ARE doing some really nice writing about games in my opinion. So it's not a total wasteland in that respect....and NO I won't name them. I think that crosses the line from a standpoint of hurting Sony in that I don't want to be the guy who is out there bashing specific magazines and then see those mags take it out on Sony games just for spite. But catch me in public and you know I'll spill the beans! Oh, by the way, I don't dislike ANY of the key magazines or websites. I really do think they all do at least a few things really well and I gladly pay for them all each month/year. I'm just talking in regards to the issue of real, meaty game journalism.

Oh, but I will say this to ALL the fucking print mags: LESS FUCKING PREVIEWS AND MORE FEATURES!!!! I can get my previews on the web a shit load faster than I get them from you. I wanna read some STORIES and MEATY INTERVIEWS in the print mags....and I wanna spend more than 5 minutes reading your magazine that I've paid 5 bucks for. I really should be READING your magazine, not just FLIPPING FUCKING THRU IT!!! More content please!!!

Did you see ROLLING STONE with the BONO interview?!? Give me THAT but with KOJIMA....OR MIYAMOTO! And no more of this bullshit about how he plays the fucking banjo and likes to garden. Wow, that's hard hitting! Shit guys, dig into the man and let us know what makes him tick, what he really likes and dislikes, his political views, what his stresses are, what his vices are, does he feel stress to save Nintendo,etc....you know, go and WRITE something! Man, I would gladly pay triple for a mag like that! And shit, if you guys don't champion the real visionaries of this biz in a meaty and detailed and challenging way, who ever will?!?

That rantish column received nearly a hundred links and more than 60 comments, it also spurred Jaffe to post a second time on the subject to better explain his points and respond to some of the chatter out there.

Bottom line, in my mind, is that game journalists need to be journalists first and gamers second. It's great to love video games and great to have some knowledge on the subject to help put things into context. But covering gaming needs to be about getting past the press releases, past the shwag and fanboy mentality and digging into what makes a game good or bad and what the industry is doing right or wrong.

The good news is that the mainstream media is waking up to the power, money and importance of gaming and have started covering it as a real and important industry.

The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Mercury News all have excellent gaming writers. More importantly by far is that those papers and others are starting to create fulltime positions for their gaming writers, so the days of reporters having to cover games in their spare time for a paper are going to go away.

I speak with some experience on this. I'm a fulltime reporter at the Rocky Mountain News covering crime (something I've reported on for major dailies for the past 11 years) and the publisher of our paper recently approached me about becoming a fulltime game writer.

The reason newspapers are suddenly willing to make the plunge is because the gaming industry has finally pushed enough into the mainstream for newspapers to realize that they can see a significant increase in both advertising and in young readers if they start to cover gaming.

We're in for some interesting days as game sites, blogs, magazines and newspapers compete for the same readers. Mark my words, expect some major changes in the way the industry is covered.

A PLEA TO THE GAME JOURNALIST and DON'T WANNA BE NO INDUSTRY RANTER! [David Jaffe's Thoughts on Video Games]

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