Joe Martin Words

Anyone who knows me even a little can probably anticipate that I don’t have a great opinion of games journalism. There’s a lot of good stuff and I certainly don’t want to detract from that, but by and large the output is terrible. Even the best writers consistently prioritise style over substance, while there’s only very few who have the understanding of ludological principles that might give the work any real import. We are shockingly bad at our jobs, all of us. Something needs to be done.

But that’s a discussion for another time. Friends have advised against publishing my grand and angry Anti-Games Manifesto and that’s undoubtedly where this moaning would lead.

In July though I decided I should do something, so I started collecting a list of the best journalism I’d read this year – some of it gaming, but most of it not. I thought it would be interesting to compare them later even if not all of it was necessarily written this year. Over time it grew to include more than just conventional journalism and eventually it morphed into just a ‘Things I Like’ list, rather than a template for the future. You’ll find the full list below regardless.

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