My Most Hated Video Game Foe: Fire

A couple of years ago, I wrote an essay called Elegance Is a Shotgun, in which I explained my experience with and love affair with shotguns in video games. Today's article on fire in games is similar (though it ain't a love affair that I describe--just the opposite).

New Games Journalism is a concept that I understand that a lot of people have compared to travel writing, writing about the experience of a place to engage readers (I think) in a way that feels familiar and relatable, whether you have been there or not.

I often think that "telling the story" of your experience with a video game (here's how I played GTA) is often thought of as being the core of New Games Journalism (I might be wrong, but I get that impression). I don't usually like those pieces. I don't really care what you decided to do when you were in Megaton during your playthrough of Fallout 3.

However, I do think that pieces that deal with your experience of a shotgun that attempt to explore why using one is so satisfying in Doom or pieces about how being set on fire in a game makes me always run and attempts to understand that phenomenon (which I think I am not alone in experiencing) is a good use of this critical approach. To me, it isn't place that is at issue, this kind of writing is about perspective and ultimately (hopefully) about a shared perspective of experience that makes this style something like travel writing.

However, maybe I'm wrong about this piece being New Games Journalism at all :

My Most Hated Video Game Foe: Fire