Mainstream Vs Hardcore

Mainstream Vs Hardcore

Of course writing an article for a newspaper like The New York Times or a magazine like Time on the subject of video games is going to be a bit different than writing one for, say, FiringSquad, because the audience will likely have readers who won't understand terms like MMORPG or LAN party. But is there a need to "dumb down" articles for a mass audience? The reporters we contacted were a bit mixed with their responses.

Mike Musgrove, who covers video games for the Washington Post newspaper, told us. "Sometimes I know a thing or two that doesn't make it into an article, but probably any reporter on any beat could say the same thing -- I have never thought in terms of "dumbing down" a story," Mike Snider, who covers games for USA Today, told us, "I’m not sure if it is dumbing it down. But mainstream readers are typically not as “into” games as the readers of monthly game magazines or gaming web sites. I would say that the mainstream press covers games with a wider stroke than the more detail-oriented enthusiast press. Most of my colleagues at major media are much more astute than I am in covering the industry and have written great stories that are able to translate what one would consider “inside baseball” concepts without totally confusing a typical reader."

Lev Grossman, who has written a number of video game themed articles for Time magazine, has a slightly difference stance on the subject of "dumbing down" such an article for the mainstream media. "Sure. We do it all the time. "Dumb down" makes it sound like a bad thing, but the fact is, I'm not writing for a hardcore audience, and you always want to pitch your writing to the people who are reading." Wook Kim, who has covered video games for Entertainment Weekly magazine, agrees. "Yes. And that's part of the unique challenges of technology or business journalism. Let's face it, terms like 'frame rate' or 'ragdoll physics' or 'collision detection' are meaningful to fans, but they have a certain eye-glazing effect on the uninitiated. Whether it's explaining the basics of a gravity-assist maneuver in space or the technical achievement of the last Grand Theft Auto, it's the job of the writer to present the story using everyday language."

Chris Morris, who writes the regular, "Game Over" column for CNNMoney.com, doesn't think avoiding the terms of the video game culture in a story means making the story itself "dumbed down."Look, everyone thinks if a story is written below their level of knowledge that it’s dumbed down. That’s just not true. Stories for wide audiences *should* be written so that everyone can comprehend them. The gaming industry is rife with buzz words and phrases that, if you take a step back from things, really go out of their way to alienate non-gamers. You don’t see stories about film go into minutia detail about the intricate details of how a movie is made, but that information is available if you watch some of the tech-wonky DVD extras. There’s a huge difference between enthusiast publications and mainstream media. They reach out to different audiences, though there is some cross-over. It doesn’t mean that either is less important. But I don’t think that avoiding phrases like megatexture and polygons and batch data means a story is dumbed down"