Reviewing games, as much as it’s seen as “Just playing a game, then writing about it”, is actually a fairly nuanced subject… And, because one thing I often see is reviews that reveal how a reviewer has missed something that colours their whole review (It happens to a lot of us, but it is something to watch out for), it’s something I’ve chosen to move up the “On Games Journalism” timetable.

How Long Should A Reviewer Play?

A comment I got, a fair while back (As much due to not properly editing an article I wrote while writing the game as differing ideas of “How long should a game’s examination take?”), when I wrote about Skyrim, was that it was not possible to review Skyrim in 33 hours. Balderdash. 4 hours (What I’d written at the start of the review, adding unnecessary confusion) was enough to note a fair bit about how it differed from previous games in the franchise (Especially since I had played the rest of the series), and 33 hours? That was enough to finish several guild questlines, get most of the way through the main storyline, and enough time to get bored. In fact, with a few exceptions, I started to feel bored about 9 hours in, and remained somewhat bored for the majority of the time. I cared about the woes in Morrowind. I cared about the woes in Oblivion. I didn’t, particularly, care about the Dovahkin and the politics of Skyrim.

There are three indicators of when you should stop, gather your thoughts, and write things down. When the game is too buggy to continue (4 BSODs was 3 too many for Sword of the Stars 2.) When you are bored of what you are doing for a long period (The game is not engaging you. Be honest about that.) When you’re pretty sure you’ve got a good picture of the game. We’ll come back to that last one, because it’s the hardest to judge.

Should A Reviewer Finish A Game?

Where possible, yes. But if you are not invested in finishing the game, either somebody on your end fucked up by asking you to review it, or the game just isn’t that interesting in the first place. I was not, and still am not invested in finishing Skyrim, despite loving me some RPG action. However, something complicates this: Often, it is considered bad form to talk about later parts of a game in anything but generalities, and there’s this strange disconnect between readers who want to know if it’s actually worth slogging through a game to the end, and readers who GODDAMMIT SPOILERS SPOILERS SHUT UP WITH THE SPOILERS ALREADY. One of these groups tends to be a tadge more vocal and angry about it than the other, you may have noticed. And even putting a spoiler warning on the title and having a headline view won’t necessarily stop folks getting angry.

This does lead to some less than useful disincentive. Another one we’ll deal with a moment.

However, this varies from game to game. Some games can never be “finished”, so finishing a review is a case of seeing enough of how it plays to know what you’re talking about. Some games have a difficulty curve, or other design features that mean finishing it is going to take you forever (Older RPGs and Strategy games are particularly prone to this), so it’s unlikely you’re going to be able to talk about the endgame. And sometimes, the game makes it not worth the time it’s going to take… The phenomenon known as Grindfest. For example, I’d be surprised if many folks who looked at the .//HACK games actually finished them before review. Not all, because some folk are that dedicated and good, props to them, but many. Because god-damn, that series has some serious grind. Does that mean they’re not good? Matter of taste. But it does mean they’re more difficult to completely review.

How Quickly Does The Review Need To Be Finished?

Ah, this, this is a problem! And I have good news… And bad news. The bad news, first, is that, the later you write a review, the less people will care. Many will think that they’ve gotten a good picture from a day one review, but… This isn’t necessarily the case (In fact, “Day One Review” is often used as an insult, claiming that the review is biased. We’ll talk about that another time.) Skyrim, once again, returns (Yes, there’s a reason I reprinted that one today.) You see, the review was written during a very infamous patch… You know the one. The one where dragons flew backwards, and armour that was meant to be weak to something was strong to it, and vice versa (A misplaced negative number symbol was the cause of the latter, by the way, and it was fixed.) Did that affect the review? Not particularly. In fact, re-reading it, I’m not as sure why it got the hate it did (Even after the correction). I was much nicer to it than I could have been. But it could have.

To take another (and seemingly better) example: You can get an idea of how Half Minute Hero plays from the first hour. But that’s not as useful as you’d think, because the game changes. If you just went by Hero 30, you’d miss the other game modes, how they differ, and extra story that you can think about. You would miss, in short, a large portion of the game you’re meant to be reviewing. Whoops. Big whoops.

The good news is that, in the case of games that take more time to review, people are more patient. PR folks will understand if you take two weeks, or even a month to review a large game. Editors on a publishing schedule less so, sadly.

The point I’m trying to make here is that, the bigger the game, the longer you should take over it. And that although day one issues should be acknowledged and discussed (Especially in the case of trainwreck day ones), they shouldn’t dominate your review.

Am I Missing Something Important?

This is an important issue. Make sure. Half Minute Hero was a good example, and another? SWYDS2015. That arrow is obvious. It leads to more options. But some folks apparently missed it (Not naming names, but it happened.) And so they missed the game getting progressively weirder as it goes on. This, as much as anything else, is a factor in how long you play the game before review. And I could cite many more examples where the game changes in some important fashion later in the game. Hell, one of the first would be the first Ultima, which had a space battle segment late in the game because… Well, I don’t actually know for sure. It was pretty jarring. Might and Magic pulled a similar trick with their first game worlds, CRON and VARN (Stale Spoiler: They’re not, strictly speaking, planets.)

These factors sound simple… But unfortunately, the variety of games, and the tricks developers like to play (Even today), means that you will always find edge cases. It’s part of the reason reviewing is not as simple as it looks. It’s part of the reason why a good review takes time and effort. Mistakes will, undoubtedly, be made. We’ll go into that, other facets of reviewing, and how we all make mistakes another time.

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This was originally posted on my personal blog in February of this year. There are only light re-edits.

For anyone keeping up with gaming news, Peter Molyneux recently got it in the pants over Godus. Bigtime. While some things needed to be said to the British GameDev Wunderkind, others didn’t, and it made me think of something we tend to forget: Everyone in the Games Biz, from the devs to the journos, to the players, are only human. And we tend to forget this. All of us.

The Devs

Richard Garriott. Warren Spector. Graeme Devine. John Romero. These, and many more, are names to conjure with in the games industry. But we, both players and games press, tend to overlook the oddities and failings of these folk. Go look at Martian Dreams and Savage Worlds. You’ll find a literal self insert of Warren Spector in both. In fact, Wikipedia has a selection of his self-inserts on the page about him.

They’re good folks, but they’re not rockstars. They have their failings. Tabula Rasa was a flop. Thief: Deadly Shadows definitely had flaws. Even the series I’m currently Let’s Playing, Wipeout, Made Mistakes.

But we have a tendency to ignore this, and when we do discover folks have their human qualities, not necessarily good ones? We tend not to react too well. An extreme case in point: Phil Fish. Phil Fish is another dev who’s been raked over the coals, for the crime of… Being abrasive and temperamental. And because he is a public figure, a celebrity… The reaction is disproportionate.

But let’s look at the other two sides here.

The Journos

As someone who used to review, I’m just as guilty as every other game journo out there for being attracted by something that just… Doesn’t… Work. In my particular case, a prime example would be Nuclear Dawn.

What, you haven’t heard of it? But it rewards good team-based play, actually talking to other players, and… Oh, yeah, it didn’t do very well because it wasn’t accessible to the average player. See, the average player, for various reasons, just wants to god-damn play. They want to shoot mans, not stand in a corridor waiting for an enemy push they’re not sure will come. They definitely don’t want some asshole telling them what to do (Especially if said asshole turns out to be incompetent), and they don’t want to spend time guarding said asshole from the enemy, even if that’s a vital element of the game.

So what ended up happening was that whoever co-ordinated and/or had a decent team leader would steamroll the pubbies. Again. And Again. And Again. And lo, it Wasn’t Fun. So the servers were nigh ghost towns, and the game didn’t do nearly as well as its interesting gameplay could have gotten.

On the other end of things, for me, was Blur, by Bizarre Creations. Blur had problems. The track design meant that a reasonably skilled player could DNF (Did Not Finish) all the other racers on many tracks, people were having connection issues out the wazoo, and a third to half the vehicles were basically reskins. But the first part and the third in our equation, Players and Devs, came into play here…

…You see, Bizarre Creations also made Project Gotham Racing, which was, in many folks’ minds, a Good Series. So when a review score was lower than expected, they came out to complain. I didn’t get a whole lot of complaints (A whole ten, I think… I’m not a celebrity writer, never was), but, on the strength of those, my editor at the time claimed that I had been “experiencing day-one issues”.

Three months later, I issued a re-review (Something many game journos will tell you is a bad idea… And they would generally be right), and nobody appeared to care one way or another (A pattern that has held for all of the rare occasions a re-review has been issued by me). Bizarre, you see, had started copy-pasting responses to bug reports, claiming it was being looked at, while already talking about a sequel, and working on another game (Bloodstone, which also Had Problems).

They folded a few months after my re-review (A sad occasion, regardless.) Now, here comes the weird part. The players came out again, but they didn’t yell at me (Who scored the game relatively poorly). No, I opened up the letters page of PC Gamer, to find someone blaming them for the demise of Blur. This was pretty irrational, as PC Gamer had been a lot nicer than I had, and didn’t even mention many of the issues seen with the game.

It was a head-shaking experience. But it leads us nicely to the third part of our little equation.

The Players

The Mass Effect 3 Ending. Starbound’s “Caveman Tier” play. Fucking Bush-Wookies. The list of things players complain about, not always making sense, is immense. Let’s take the Bush-Wookies as an example.

Bush-Wookie is a nickname for the Recon class’s sniper builds in the Battlefield series, especially Bad Company 2, because their camouflage… Well, it makes them look like Wookies from Star Wars. Also because it helps them hide in bushes. Duh.

The problem is, a good sniper, in pretty much any multiplayer game, can lock down entire areas of the map. And it’s a massive pain in the arse to dig them out. Never is this more prevalent than in the Heavy Metal map of Bad Company 2.

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This piece was originally printed on my personal blog, while planning the move back to freelance Game Journalism. Certain sections have been extended.

So, Joe Martin, a short while back, wrote a deservedly scathing piece on Games Journalism and Money , specifically the phenomenon (Which I myself have fallen victim to at least once in the past, for reasons I’m going to go into) of unpaid reviewing, often badly justified. I’d recommend you read that piece first, because it’s an actual concern, and it’s pretty widespread. Furthermore, I’m going to go into a bit of detail as to why this hurts the industry in general.

So, the problem of pay is one that has struck journalism all over, but has affected Games Journalism on pretty much an endemic basis, pretty much since the internet hit. There are also several factors that complicate things, and it’s those I want to go into a little.

There Is No “Ideal” Pay Scale

I thought I understood this game at about five hours. Then I hit the biiiig difficulty spike for completionists at around fifteen. I still play an hour or two every now and again, but it will be a long time before I finish it.

That you should be paid for your writing, and that the review copies are tools for your job, not the pay itself, is indisputable. It is a product you are meant to review, for your job. But there are only two types of payscale out there: Flat rate, and per [X Period]. Neither of them are ideal for games reviewing. Let’s start with per hour, to illustrate the point.

Let us say I am paid £6.75 an hour (Pretty close to the minimum wage for my country) for reviewing one of two games. One of them takes four hours to complete (Allowing a complete picture of the game), another can be completed in thirty hours, but a complete picture of how the game works may take up to fifty. Bam, instant lack of incentive to choose the smaller (But possibly better) game. It doesn’t help that, unless it’s on Steam, your editor can’t actually check how many hours you’ve played unless all work is done in the office. As any freelancer can tell you, this mostly isn’t where you’re doing things from.

The same applies to a flat rate, but the other way around… I am encouraged to pick the smaller game to review, because it will give me a better return on my writing. It must also be noted that how buggy a game is can further skew this, one way or the other. Sword of the Stars 2, for example, brought my computer to a BSOD four times when I reviewed it, and if that had screwed my computer? Well, then either the editor has to fork out for replacements (Providing the company has such policies, and really, since they’re also tools of work, they technically should), or you’re out of pocket for not only the review (Which won’t be able to be technically finished), but also the replacement parts.

“What about a sliding scale?” Ah, well that disincentivises the editors and owners from larger games. They have to pay you more, for a larger product.

Personally, I’m okay with a good flat rate, and so are most folks I know. But it’s not ideal, and I doubt it ever will be. But so long as I feel compensated for the hours of work, I’m good. Of course, this segment applies mainly to places with multiple writers, and for freelancers wishing to work for said places. For writers who wish to go it alone… It’s somewhat different.

Many Editors Won’t Take Ex-Unpaid Writers

You may like my writing, you may not. I hope you do, because I enjoy writing, and I enjoy talking about games. But the very fact that I have, in the past, gambled on a startup which has pulled this unpaid (Oh, but we’ll pay you if the site starts paying out!) bullshit has, and will bar me from writing for many paid sites.

In my defence, I will say that unemployment makes you do desperate things at times, reaching for any olive branch that will even have a chance of getting you out of the dole queue. But it also needs to be said that punishing the potential writer for taking such a gamble, out of desire for entering a field that, quite frankly, isn’t amazingly friendly to newbies (Due to limited paid positions, and a relatively low turnover in writers) is Not Cricket.

Judge a writer by their writing, by their passion, their style, and their eye. Please don’t judge a writer for falling for promises, because as it stands, it’s not easy to get in to the treehouse.

Why It’s Hard To Get Into The Paid End

A selection from Gamejournalismjobs.com … Most of these adverts can and will use the language in Joe’s article. Oh, it’s always so fun to scroll through the- [shoots self]

Go google game writing jobs. I’m a member of a LinkedIn group for video game writers. I search every now and again. And 90% of what you find will effectively be these unpaid internships. Even many of the “paid” positions will either have some restrictive conditions, or will have catches. I’m looking at one right now that isn’t paid in the work sense, but offers $30 for the “best contributor of the month”. Of the month. I’m looking at another, and I don’t actually see a mention of pay beyond its existence. I may ask them what, exactly, they’re paying… But I don’t expect a very useful answer.

I can remember the last time PC Gamer made a call for new freelancers. because I sent a piece in. I can’t recall getting a reply back, though. And you can guarantee a lot of writers applied. We’ve already mentioned low turnover on paid sites, but another problem is knowing which sites pay. Because you can guarantee jobsites like Indeed or LinkedIn aren’t too helpful. You can definitely guarantee many places and groups specifically for game journalism are going to be a fucking slog, because all of them, to some extent or another (With an average of “Two hours before potentially finding an actual paid job on a given day) suffer from the problem I’ve already mentioned.

As to going it alone, it’s decidedly difficult. No matter what people will tell you, you have to advertise. You have to push yourself out there to get noticed, and, if you’re going the crowdfunded route, to get paid. In a very real sense, people will resist this, not only because there’s this (false) perception it’s not a real job (More on that below), but because even the majority of folks who have a stable income will, on some level, resent the idea of paying for what manifestly appears free. They resent adverts, but, paradoxically, won’t support a writer to ensure said adverts don’t happen, and that the articles keep coming. And there is this perception that any nonstandard job that requires a Patreon or the like to stay alive is “Not real work, just begging.” Let’s discuss that for a moment.

It’s Not A “Real” Job (AKA “Fuck You, Got Mine”)

I’m writing this one from a mainly UK perspective, but it’s true nearly everywhere that, to many folks (Including our “lovely” Department of Work and Pensions), writing reviews, much less games journalism, isn’t a “real” job. Never mind that breach of contract is a real thing. Never mind that reviewing and games journalism has a code of ethics. Never mind that, if you’re doing the job, you should get paid for it. Getting advocacy for rights to the pay that you deserve is an uphill struggle, because the majority of folks who could advocate for you, who could punish potential employers for an unlawful (and unethical) internship contract, aren’t going to, because people still think of games as this limited, almost whimsical field.

“Oh, you play games for money? How quaint.”

Yeah, tell that to the QA Team who are tearing their hair out (sometimes literally), right this very minute, when they’re told “Oh, we’ll wait for the Console QA team to report this bug before we take it seriously” (An actual thing I have heard from at least one QA lead, although I will protect the sources). Tell that to the copywriters, panicking because there’s no way anyone’s going to buy this thing the company rushed, no matter how they dress it up, all over a fucking release date. And tell that to me, who lost at least one computer in the line of reviewing, who has had companies stop talking to him because he wasn’t afraid to say that their product was deeply flawed , and who has been told at times that 33 hours is nowhere near enough to have an idea of how to review Skyrim… Despite the fact that the game can be completed in less than 20 if you don’t faff about, and a number of other factors that conspire to say “Why yes, actually, you can get enough of a picture in 30 hours to review quite a lot of games.”

It All Ties Together

Image Source: An article by The Drum on “The Ad Tech Minefield”. Only somewhat fitting, but still…

Of course, this leads to a gigantic interrelated clusterfuck. We’re saturated in potential viewpoints, and that’s good, variety in viewpoints is useful for reviews! Problem is, for the newcomer to the field (Or even someone like me, who did 3 years of reviewing and games writing), it’s not easy to get paid. You’re going to get a lot of heartbreak, a lot of applications with no reply, and you’re going to be told that it isn’t a real job. It’s tempting to write somewhere for free, but the very act of doing so, no matter how much it builds your skills from practice (And hopefully mentoring) is going to close doors on you.

It’s small wonder so many folks are trying to pay their bills through crowdfunding, and though I don’t hide things behind a paywall, make no mistake… I have bills to pay too, and if I can’t pay them, I can’t keep writing. Because we’re not a friendly field… In fact, right now, we’re a minefield. And it’s going to take a lot of work to dig out those mines. I want to work toward that, and so do many others. David Wolinsky, who has tirelessly been interviewing games industry figures to combat misinformation about the field. Lana Polansky, who covers Alt-Games and the oft-forgotten artistic side of the industry. Tanya DePass, who shows us that diverse viewpoints allow games to grow, to reach more people, and to speak to more people. Rock Paper Shotgun, one of the relative success stories, who, just like me, aren’t afraid to talk about The Publisher Silence, celebrate games for what they are, not just how much they cost. And many more. There are people out there who want the games industry to improve, for it to gain respect. There are people out there who, like you, are groaning in metaphorical agony when a game is released in a state best described as “A buggy, poorly written, corner-cutting mess” for £40.

But for the games industry itself to support them is unethical. For governments to support them takes away from education, healthcare, and other things that, were they to degrade, we’d notice. You want change? Support good games. Don’t pre-order. Look for diverse views on a product before buying, to see whether it’s really for you… And help keep those view diverse, by supporting a writer. Doesn’t have to be much, individually. Because, even in my own bailiwick of PC Gaming, there’s 14 odd million folks who play. And the more who help, the less an individual “needs” to pay to support better games writing.

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There is a great confusion surrounding Early Access games these days. It’s not entirely undeserved, as the field is relatively new, and Mistakes Have Been Made. Some games have come out too early. Some came in too early. And some never really made it out. But not all the confusion is “Should I buy this thing?” or “Will I burn out on it before it’s released?”

Part of it is the role of the person paying the money. This one is a common one, and it is technically our fault, as an industry, that the problem exists. The other fault, of course, lies with entitlement, and a misunderstanding that refuses to go away: By paying for a Kickstarter, or an Early Access, or a Patreon, you are not a shareholder. You are paying for the product it produces, in the belief that it will work. I’ve done so with Formula Fusion, because I know the developers have a pedigree with Future Racing games, and I know they can produce another good one. I did not back it because I thought it would be another Wipeout game.

And yet… People are already asking “What kind of Wipeout physics they’d like to see in Formula Fusion.” Seems like an innocent question, doesn’t it? But there’s an assumption there, and a dangerous one at that.

Not Wipeout. I can understand some confusion. But it’s not.

Formula Fusion is not Wipeout. It’s not in the game plan, although features inspired by previous games they’ve worked on (Which, hey, happen to be Wipeout) are part of this plan. What makes this even more insidious is that people are assuming based on an alpha build. Specifically, version 0.0.4, the first public build. Thankfully, cooler heads have pointed out these facts, and the fact that accessibility for new players is a far more important concern than the wishes of us old horses, but it’s a common trend I’m starting to get sick of.

I may sound like I’m over-reacting, but this is by no means the first time I’ve seen talk similar to this. Starbound is an excellent example. See, Starbound starts you with… Some very simple kit. It’s got a slow-ish start, taking something like 4 hours to get off the first planet, and into the wider plot. But one of the most common complaints I saw, throughout the Early Access of the game, was the Caveman Tier complaint. Why do we gots to start so slow, Chucklefish? Why do we gots to make our tools, Chucklefish? Why can’t we just be exploring, murdering stuff and building massive bases, Chucklefish? Wouldn’t it be better if, wouldn’t it be better if, wouldn’t it be better if…

Burn Down Cavema- Oh, Wait, I got past it. Never mind.

If. If. If. I can understand disappointment when a game isn’t quite to expectations, or when expectations are misled due to some poor sod on the Marketing end (Journo, copywriter, or PR rep) who’s been told something that later turns out not to be the case. Dungeons, for example, was considered by many to be a spiritual successor to Dungeon Keeper. Problem is, “Spiritual Successor” does not mean “Sequel”. Hell, often times, sequels are different beasties. Going back to Wipeout, Wipeout Fusion is a very different beast to Wipeout 3, itself different in important respects to Wipeout, the original. But this is precisely why so many journos, myself included, say things like “DON’T PREORDER!” Because expectations without critical thought can lead to talk like “Ugh, Burn Starbound Caveman Tier”, and other backseat developer talk.

Sometimes, I’m with you, because advertising can be misleading, and the games industry has a nasty habit of “sexing up” their footage before they’ve actually sexed up the game (As Breach, a game where even the UI dropped in quality between E3 and release showed, it’s not limited to AAA heartbreakers like Aliens: Colonial Marines). But this kind of backwards looking backseat commentary isn’t productive. Mighty No. 9 is a prime example of how unproductive this entitled viewpoint can get. A community manager jokes about wanting Beck, the protagonist of Mighty No. 9 to be a lady, and suddenly, death threats are flying over the internet, because how dare anyone suggest that Mighty No. 9 stray from the Megaman vision! Assumptions. Mighty No. 9 looks and plays a bit like Megaman, and has the lead designer from Megaman. But y’know what else plays like a Megaman game? A.R.E.S. Shovel Knight. The (Sigh) Angry Video Game Nerd game. And I don’t hear angry players complaining about the differences in The Vision with any of those. I certainly haven’t heard of death threats being sent.

This is not Dungeon Keeper. It is a “Spiritual Successor”. There’s a difference.

In the case of Formula Fusion, the Kickstarter video goes on for about half an hour as to what they want to do, and, unsurprisingly, it’s not “Another Wipeout”. Wipeout is mentioned, a lot (Which may lead the inattentive to think things), but it’s in the case of “We liked this idea which didn’t work last time (Fusion’s upgrade system)” or “We wanted to present a more dystopian world than [the Wipeout Series]”

Sometimes, your beefs with a game are based, not on whether it’s like that thing you liked, but whether it works, and I’m down with that too. I’ve got an article lined up as to design mistakes that Quantum Rush Champions makes, and not a one of them is “Ugh, it isn’t Wipeout”. Wipeout is a comparison point for difficulty, but the design decisions themselves are unique to QRC, and they are not good. I am definitely not alone in thinking them bad either. Whether something is a common complaint is something I like to check when writing an article or a review, but I also check whether it’s an opinion thing, or actually has an effect. In the case of, for example, weapon pickups having small hitboxes, that’s definitely a problem. That the viewpoint in QRC is not exactly like a Wipeout game is definitely not among my gripes with QRC.

So, hopefully, at this point, you’ve been reading and nodding, thoughtful. I’m going to summarise now, so as to make sure we’re all clear on this. You are not the developers. You are not shareholders. Your input is valued, but if you do not like the product, unless it’s to do with crashes, bugs, and things that definitely don’t do the game justice, that is on you. Please don’t backseat develop, it’s somewhat rude, and is not going to help your enjoyment of the game. Please think before assuming a game is going to be like a game before it. You’ll be less disappointed and clearer headed for it.

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Much of the time, conversations with fellow members of the games industry (writers, developers… Doesn’t matter) are either shop talk or just shooting the breeze. But sometimes, things get interesting. Segue achieved for this comment, by MAIA developer Simon Roth:

“While we are on the subject, we genuinely need the equivalent of an ISBN for games.”

Most of you will at least have noticed that books have a 13 digit number on the bottom, or seen ISBN on a book’s Amazon page, but not realised how powerful those thirteen digits can be. Each edition of a book has a different ISBN. Want to find the specific edition with that typo or cover or introduction you liked, or want to compare editions? The ISBN has you covered. And I could immediately see at least part of why it’s important.

There are several different versions, for example, of roguelikes, and some of them are drastically different, such as Nethack. There are many games with exactly the same name as other games out there (While this is less often true with AAA titles, there are definitely examples, such as Powerdrome, which has an older version… And a PS2 reboot), and, to make matters worse, some games almost completely fall under the radar (For example, when choosing titles for the side videos of my current Let’s Play, which are to do with Future Racing games, I completely missed quite a few titles, including… “Future Racer”. It wasn’t very good, but it was embarassing to have missed something so obvious, because so few places refer to it.)

It would be of great use to do this, not just for gamers, who can pass around a… Let’s call it an ISGN (Because that’s the easiest acronym) instead of trying to find a reference to a game that’s only mentioned in rare places. It would be useful to archivists, and game academics, who could then have an easier time referring to the specific game when using academic notation such as the Harvard Method. It has a lot of uses… And it’s already a thing that isn’t restricted to books, with music and magazines also having their own identifiers.

…But obviously, it’s not a thing that can spring up overnight. So all I’m going to do here is leave this article, just proposing the idea (And giving fair credit to the person who originated it), and let game devs who read this to talk it over. I’ll be happy to put discussion on the subject in article form, via the usual contacts, and if enough of the games industry likes the idea, keep people posted on the progress.

But for now, it’s just an interesting and useful idea.

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