#2 Rez Trance Vibrator
In early 2002, Game Girl Advance had carved out a small niche for itself as an intelligent, academic-leaning blog looking at the world of games. It had a dedicated following among the gaming literati, but it was far from a cultural phenomenon. Then they posted a picture of editor Jane Pinckard in her panties.

OK, the picture was part of a revealing (heh) piece on some, er, lesser-known uses of the "trance vibrator" packaged with a special Japanese version of the rhythmic space shooter Rez. The article's descriptions of Pinckard's "langorous gasps and moans" and the pictures of her panty-clad crotch barely cross the PG-13 line, but the whole thing was enough to launch the story, and the site, into relative internet superstardom.

Visitors left hundreds of comments, some supportive, some rather lewd, all driving up the site's bandwidth costs. Before disabling the comments as a cost-cutting measure, Pinckard left a note expressing "utter astonishment that this story affected so many people" and defending the piece against detractors. "As for the point of the article - it amused me," she wrote. "I don't need any other point, or any other justification, than that. If it doesn't amuse you, take off your pants and amuse yourself!" Amen to that.

Before we get to #1, some quick honorable mentions


  • Game Informer's Paper Mario 2 review – Reviewer gives a 6/10, despite liking the game, because he thinks others might not like it. Overly cautious, perhaps, but not wholly unethical.

  • Editors in Virtua Fighter 4 – 1UP and IGN editors win a contest to get their likenesses to appear as virtual opponents in the game. Most players fail to notice or care.

  • Ebert: Games aren't art (follow-up)– The venerable film critic makes about a bazillion gamers angry by denigrating their favorite medium. But why do we care so much what Ebert thinks?

  • EGM's April Fools jokes – Not controversial per se, but fake stories on Sonic in Smash Bros. and Goldeneye's "All Bonds code" have a persistent way of sticking around as rumors, no matter how many people try to quash them.

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for...

#1 The New Games Journalism Manifesto
Yes, it's the innocuous idea that everybody loves to hate. The product of a late night bar conversation with some fellow journalists, freelancer and roustabout Kieron Gillen starts off his drunken, rambling thoughts on game journalism with a pre-emptive "forgive me," perhaps predicting the backlash to come. His basic point isn't that controversial, actually – he 's against game journalism's clueless "money-men" and hacks and supportive of writing that "[reads] like games journalism without being anything like a piece of any games writing you've ever read." Sounds good.

But Gillen's term ran away with him, being taken up by others to describe practically anything that wasn't a 500-word consumer review. Gillen himself said in a reflection a year later that "probably the most unintended side-effect of coining the phrase was how its definition has been warped to something it was never originally intended." Indeed, "new games journalism" has become a bit akin to the music industry's "hipster," in that no one knows exactly what it means but everyone has this vague idea that they don't want to be associated with it.

Regardless of how desirable the label is, the ideas in Gillen's piece have resonated through all parts of the game journalism world, leading to a small resurgence in experimental and experiential writing about games. But more than that, it's led to a lot self-indulgent writing about the "new games journalism" label itself. The back and forth discussion of the merits of the idea could fill a library, though they've seemed to cool down since The New York Times took its look at the phenomenon a few years late. Looking back, Gillen said he was "especially sad that there ended up being more New Games Journalism Journalism than New Games Journalism" and that, in the end, "labels and names are powerful things, and you should only use them with care." Good advice for anyone hoping to be labeled controversial.

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Got something you'd like to see on Media Coverage? Send it to kyle.orland@gmail.com.

Kyle Orland is a full time video game freelancer based out of Laurel, MD and the co-author of The Videogame Style Guide and Reference Manual. He has written for a variety of outlets, as detailed on his workblog. He's in with the in-crowd. He's knows what the in-crowd knows.

Media Coverage is an opinion column. The opinions expressed in this column are solely the opinions of the columnist and are not necessarily the opinions of GameDaily.com.