Reviewing the months

Going through these three months of mine at Write On Media, which incidentally will be merged into Blue Inc. soon, I discover that, to my disappointment, as a writer you are still a journalist, meaning you still go out to meet people you don’t care for for the sake of having something to write about. That’s a major problem for me as I count myself among the people who chose to go into this profession to avoid meeting people. A terrible misconception on my part, caused by the equally bad misleading conception perpetrated by the Internet. As a result, I am taking an escape route which leads me straight into the very pit from which I was trying to escape.

Even so, it’s not all barf and crap, as I am a tech writer to be specific, so there are some benefits, such as getting news of new headphones, speakers and computer parts entering the market, promising to turn your entertainment world more real than the real world itself. It’s not all moonlight and roses either, because, more than anything else, you get news, most which no one cares for, like some telco having some deal with some other company for some reason or other; unless you own said companies or have some major shares with them, I doubt you would have a drop of rat’s piss to give.

Then there’s the next problem I have with this field of work: photography. What was once a hobby of the rich is now a job of the poor. Sure, some people may enjoy it, and these people are called photographers, and are paid to do nothing but that. That’s not the case anymore; with every Tom, Dick and Harry having a DSLR following the DSLR boom, everyone is expected to be expert photographers as well, including people like me who couldn’t give a flying toss about following dumb trends of what’s ‘fashionable’ and believe the eye to forever be the best camera. And this is a problem because whenever stuff comes in to be reviewed, we need photos of it to go together with the writers’ opinions of it and since the Internet is as unreliable as it is helpful, we have to get our own hands dirty and get shots of our own.

Now let me just get things straight: I have no problems whatsoever with people who are into photography. I believe it can be a form of art and that photographers deserve their madly high pay because they are artists. But to force this onto people who are less than uninterested is just too much for me to handle, not to mention the bandwagon that is the DSLR boom, birthing twits who claim to have a passion for photography but setting their unbefitting DSLRs (which deserve better owners) to full auto mode. That is, as I have said many times before, like having a gaming mouse and playing nothing but solitaire and minesweeper. I’ll admit to committing the crime of using a DSLR on full auto, because I simply couldn’t care less and have no choice because I know nothing about DSLRs when I was being sent away to take pictures during events, but this sort of thing is just inexcusable for people who claim to be passionate about something. I mean, wouldn’t you willingly go and find out more about something you like doing? Sure, people are unwilling to admit that they’ve jumped on a bandwagon to follow a trend, and this is precisely why they are twits.

I find trends to be like a pandemic disease; something the whole world has or is doing, most of which I’d rather not affect or get anywhere near me. Notable ones were the Sony Ericsson Aino from over five years back and DSLRs a year later. And there’s the elitist iPhones, which I don’t remember when it started (somewhere around 2007 I reckon), but is the longest lasting one I can remember. And Samsung, which started shortly after but is now competing with Apple to be the longest lasting disease in human history, not to mention slowly becoming equally elitist as shown by their Galaxy Gear, which only works within the higher ends of their own range of phones. And I hate them because people get it because it is ‘cool’ and then drop it a second later. Sure there are people who pick up a DSLR and keep on learning about photography and end up being pretty good photographers themselves, but most, like I said, get them to take hi-res selfies and then leave them somewhere or other to be a dust magnet. Same with the phones; people pick them up because everyone has it, then buys a new one whenever a new one is released, even if it is released a day later, and is the exact same phone as the previous one except in name.

But I digress. Point is that I have to deal with stuff that I don’t care for, and that just makes me hate them when I initially didn’t, and other things which I don’t care for but don’t mind doing. Then comes the thing that I came here for in the first place: reviewing games. Despite only getting two at most, this is the only thing that’s stopping me from storming out the front door and never returning at the end of the first month. Some are not really satisfying (such as F1 2013), while others, like Pokémon X and Y, were a major source of joy. This is as close to living the dream for me as it gets. Unfortunately, as always, sweet dreams end abruptly and sometimes you get nightmares instead of pleasant ones. As mentioned, I only get to do two a month (there are only so many games being released every month anyway, and I’m not the only writer around), some of which are crap anyway, and your words do not remain your own when you have an editor looking through your final product.

Before I continue, let me just say it up front that I respect my editor. In fact, I respect everyone here, as they really know what they’re doing. The only issue is that, when two styles do not match, the writer may lose his at the discretion of the editor, simply because the writer writes his opinion in his own flair and flavour, while the editor needs to make sure that readers know what the writer is on about. This is a problem for me because I like to write in long and convoluted sentences (as you can see) and leave some ambiguity in game reviews. This is especially so when a game is as good as Pokémon X and Y where I want to hint on certain features without revealing too much, not to mention the word limit lest I fill the whole magazine with one game. The editor does his job and makes necessary amendments which, alas, makes me feel a tad disappointed because when I read the version ready for print, it feels as though I didn’t write it, but someone did attempting to mimic my style of writing. I don’t blame him, but it just doesn’t feel right for me.

Then there's the fact that I only get to caption pictures which I provide myself. Might be because I'm new, but I don't get the full press access to game images, and I'm sure as hell I can't just Google them up, as one does not simply take screenshots of a 3DS. Sure, there are some phone cam pictures, but I can't use them firstly because they suck and secondly the magazine need high res pictures so that the graphic designers have some room to do their job. Not sure exactly how that works myself, but that's the way it is. At any rate, when I don't get to do my own captioning, it is up to the editor to do it and since I cannot know what images he has chosen to use and how they caption them, errors, like in this month's issue where Venusaur has been misidentified as Bulbasaur, are bound to happen. I say that because, after all, you don't expect the editor who watches over the entire magazine to research every single game being reviewed, do you? 

Actually I do, and especially when it comes to Pokémon. But then again it can't be helped because as it turns out I'm the most knowledgeable one when it comes to Pokémon in this company, despite my missing Generations 4 and 5. So I'm not sure if I'm expecting too much when I wish that trivial mistakes like this are not made because trivial or otherwise, they are still mistakes, and when you cater for a narrow target audience, they are bound to be nitpickers such as myself and thus do not let mistakes slide.

Incidentally, GameAxis, or GAX as it is now known, will soon cease publication, with the December issue being the last. From then on, it will be integrated into HWM as a 10-page section, the way the original (Singaporean) GameAxis apparently did. This saddens me, as the only surviving English gaming publication is Malaysia is finally dead as a standalone publication and maybe for good if they later decide to kill the 10-page section altogether, and all that’s left for Malaysians are English imports, mostly from Britain and some from America, and countless other Chinese publications from who knows where, and woe be unto readers if they mirror content from China the way PC Gamer Malaysia did with the original from Britain. I say this not out of contempt of any kind, but merely due to the fact that the land of the greatest pirates can really show the reason behind their resorting to piracy. Keep in mind that they have news mistaking a buried fap tool for a mushroom of some kind so they are evidently not the brightest bunch, though such gullibility might have something to do with their addiction to censoring as many things on the internet as they can. Make no mistake, though, that the brilliant among them can be truly brilliant and are the reason China is rising as an economic force to be reckoned with.

But I digress. Again. So yes, 2014 will be Malaysia’s first year of having no more English gaming publications and everyone will be going online to keep tabs on new developments (which, I guess, everyone is already doing), and with that, my affiliation with Write On Media; it's the sole reason I wanted to be here so badly in the first place, and the only thing that made the other nonsense that no one else cares for even bearable. And in the process I have reconsidered the possibility of being a shrink. That’s just maybe. What I do know for sure is that Pokémon‎ X and Y are awesome and I will be spending some time as a lifeless bum on it the way I did with Emerald, and probably the first game I will consider properly playing competitively, despite the amount of luck involved to prepare for such a thing.

And on that bombshell, adieu to y’all.