Culturally Illiterate Time Magazine Mangles Gaming
Time Magazine's Lev Grossman wrote the cover story for the latest issue, which tackles Halo. And by "tackles Halo," I mean attacks gaming with seemingly little-to-no research on the subject or even the slightest hint of objectivity. Considering that Grossman's bias is immediately obvious, you have to wonder what effect Time's editors thought such a mean-spirited and wrong-headed tirade would have upon their dwindling readership. While not writing about vastly "cooler" subjects, Grossman has this to say about Halo and its people:
“The Bungies bring a grinding, jeweler’s meticulousness to what most people consider an unhealthy amusement for children.“
I'm not the world's biggest Halo fan, but even my grandmother would say that's a heavily subjective, anachronistic, and backward way to describe gaming. And insulting:
“This devotion is fueled by a belief, not shared by the world at large, that video games are an art form with genuine emotional meaning and that Halo 3 will be the premier example of that art.”
Hey, Lev Grossman speaks for the "world at large," which is odd... because the "world at large" spends more than 7.1 billion on games (and that was in 2005), which are played by 69% of heads-of-households - and that 25% of all gamers are over 50, and consist of more female players (30%) than underage boys (23%). Lev would have known that, had he done his homework.
Make the jump to find out more reasons why you should join the millions of Americans who have forgotten about Time Magazine!
“There’s an opportunity beyond video games, too, for Halo to break out of the ghetto and become a mainstream, mass-market, multimedia entertainment property.”
That sentence did not infuriate me, simply because it's so laughably absurd. It's like saying "One day, comic books could make money!" Does this Lev fellow live in a cardboard box, or does he just look down upon games enough to not mind revealing the profundity of his own ignorance?
“Not that the Bungies care. They don’t need to legitimize Halo by associating it with other, more respectable media. They sell enough units and make enough money. They’re happy in their invisible geek ghetto. But that’s the logic of the marketplace: it can’t leave subcultures alone; it has to turn them into cultures. It may be time for the Master Chief to come in from the cold and join the party, with the popular kids.”
"More respectable media?" Respectable according to whom, precisely? Lev Grossman? Time? Print media, which retains the out-dated belief in its own inherent worthiness (and thereby the worthiness of the opinions of its writers)? The phrase itself is an insult - and incorrect.
"With the popular kids?" Lev Grossman, were you unpopular as a child? When did entertainment media become about popularity? What an absurd and revealingly wrong-headed thing to say. Makes me echo Dan Zuccarelli's call for Newsweek's N'Gai Croal or MTV's Stephen Totilo to resoundingly trump Mr. Grossman's culturally illiterate, nasty-spirited, flat-out-wrong bungling. Decent reporters: to the rescue!
Time Magazine makes a mockery of “journalism” in Halo cover story [The BBPS]
tiny dancer
Posted to Hot Stuff, Video Games on 4 September 2007
· Comments (13)
Other stuff like this: bungie, gaming, halo, horrible journalism, lev grossman, time, time magazine
Oh please, when people don't know anything about gaming the first thing that would come out of their opinionated mouths is something negative, worse insulting. Mr. "Gross"-man can just stick his opinions to something else.
Its no wonder I dont read newspapers =P
God, I love you. GREAT article. :)
yeah, I noticed that too in the article. You could have changed the name Halo to Harry Potter or Pokemon and it would have been a article they recycled before. It's a very dumbed down article considering they did plenty or articles and cover stories on video games. They even handed Donkey Kong Contry a technology of the year award in 1994 and proclaimed Crazy Taxi is a must buy. The article just read "What is this new fangled halo that sells a truck load all about?"
Someone needs to get this link to someone at Times and/or Lev himself.
invisible geek ghetto? What the fuck? Looks like someone is a horrible writer and doesn't research.
Hell, if I were writing an article about something I didn't really respect or know much about, I'd at least fucking research it. I am not about to write an article about Yu-Gi-Oh! but I know enough to put an exclamation point on the end of the name.
The cover of Time caught my eye today (my boyfriend subscribes for some reason) "Halo 3: The thinking gamer's shoot-em-up"
I went in thinking the article was going to make Halo 3 sound like some cerebral experience, and I was WRONG.
The writer seemed to have never played video games before. Also the article doesn't really say anything. The gist is that Halo is developed by Bungie and its very popular. All that is tied together with over-dramatic ramblings.
Maybe it was a slow week at Time, but its clear that Time doesn't respect video games enough to give gaming coverage to a skilled journalist.
I'd disagree with the notion that Halo 3 is the "premier example" of games as art (I'd put Bioshock in that position), myself. As for the rest of the article, the man's got his head up his ass.
Maybe he's made because he can't get past the first screen in Donkey Kong.
Umm Grossman is a GAMER did you see his nerd world blog?
Read this http://time-blog.com/nerd_world/2007/08/now_in_papervision.html
But other than that I agree that what he wrote was extremely ridiculous.
Grossman said he wrote that article for the "non-gamer" and of course that makes very little sense since that is just about the worst possible way to represent a video game to a non gamer.
Oh, come on. The article isn't nearly as bas as you make it out to be. In fact, it's rather gaming-positive, calling Halo "lyrical" and states explicitly that the game should be regarded as art. It suffers from some minor cases of hyperbole, which to me is nothing else than Grossman being a bit to conscious about writing for a non-gaming audience.
The "ghetto" he's referring to isn't about gaming being a closed circuit (I think), but rather the mainstreams (such as the readers of Time magazine) ignorance of it's cultural impact.
The only truly weird thing is when he talks about the opportunity of making money, as if the video game industry wasn't already closing in fast on the movie industry...
Applaudes go to Chris about knowing how to do basic research, even down to simple things like the Yu-Gi-Oh!'s exclamation mark.
BTW, digitalnoir, you did bring up a good point but actually, the video game has been bringing in more money than the movie industry for over a decade and 1/2.
Ouch.
Great post.
You have to wonder what goes on in the heads of some of these people..