Editor's note: Meghan carries on a conversation started on a recent Mobcast with this post. And here's my pick: Chuck Klosterman. -Demian
Not too long ago (this is still relevant, I pinky swear), the guests on Mobcast #63 discussed the “difficulties of finding a unique voice in game coverage” and listed several non-games writers who they would like to see write about the industry. Which got me thinking, who would be on my own list?
So I put together my dream team, mostly pulled from my past magazine-feature-writing courses (thank you, Professor Price), as well as articles and books I've read. Take a look at my picks, see if you agree or disagree, and, in the comments section, add your list of non-games writers, bloggers, journalists, novelists, content creators, etc., who you'd like to see apply their talents to our industry.
And in no particular order, my fave five:
Gay Talese
Talese’s Frank Sinatra Has a Cold is still one of the most brilliant magazine stories I’ve ever read. Talese writes an incredibly personal story about Frank Sinatra that's chockfull of superb description and analogies without ever actually interviewing Sinatra. That's some mad skill.
I would love to do a story like this on, say, someone like Shigeru Miyamoto, Hideki Kamiya, or someone in the games industry who has a crazy creative process.
(NOTE: Despite what I expected, Talese's name makes a surprisingly safe Google Image search.)
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Susan Orlean
I. Love. Her. Style. Susan Orlean is amazing at converting mundane aspects of life into incredibly interesting stories, and exploring even the most niche subcultures.
In the book New, New Journalism, (highly recommend for aspiring magazine writers) she describes what subjects she prefers to write about:
“I’m not an ‘investigative reporter,’ in that I don’t look for the ‘secret story’ or try to discover the machinations behind something. I love stumbling on an idea, or something, and thinking, ‘Oh my God, this has been here in front of me all along!’ My stories tend to fall into two categories: The part of daily life that you’ve never stopped to think about, and the fully realized subculture that I don’t know anything about.”
For crying out loud, she makes orchids and orchid fanatics interesting and wrote a whole book about them in The Orchid Thief. I’d love to see her cover subcultures like 4chan or LAN gaming.
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Eric Schlosser
His book Fast Food Nation completely changed my perception of what “knowing the industry” means. After reading that book, I can’t help but come away with the feeling that there’s not a corner of the fast food industry he hasn’t seen.
I’m not suggesting that our current games writers don’t have similarly voluminous knowledge of their subject, but Schlosser just digs in a way that’s relentless. He also has a knack for presenting otherwise boring statistics in a very entertaining manner, with colorful anecdotes and stories from his sources.
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Chris Jones
I’m not sure where Chris Jones would fit in covering the games industry, but he’s a very brilliant, highly entertaining writer, so I'm sure he'd figure it out. I’d love to see his voice in the games press.
I started reading his work after I came across the story Home, a poetic, gripping tale of two astronauts stranded in space. The whole story somehow has a lonely but beautiful Shadow of the Colossus vibe to it. I recommend checking out the rest of his work at Esquire.com.
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Jon Stewart
Stewart's not your traditional journalist, but his hilarious and snarky sarcasm often cuts to the true underlying issues of media and politics quicker than most traditional news programs.
Some pretty silly things happen in the games business; companies announce when they are going to make announcements, after all. The games industry is rife with topics to parody, and I would love to see Jon Stewart take a shot at it. Or maybe he would tell the games press that they’re all incompetent f*ckwits instead?
Share who you’d like to see cover the games industry! I’m looking forward to see who you come up with.
Meghan Ventura is senior editor/social media coordinator at MyGamer.com, and writes about Japanese video games and culture at her blog, KanjiGames. You can talk journalism with her and follow her on Twitter: @meghanventura.She hopes to be able to legitimately add herself to this list someday.