Caltrops - Peter Molyneux's The Movies





	[quote name="I need clarification"][quote name="Seth Schiesel"]For those of us who have, as Stephen so baldly put it, "structured our lives in a way that allows games to dominate our entertainment-consumption food pyramid," we have to be honest about that to the public. For example, Blizzard was probably not entirely thrilled that my write-up about the new World of Warcraft expansion was in many ways an exploration of my concern about playing the game so much in the past. But I had to cop to it.[/quote] His whole viewpoint is what developers think of him, rapidly cycling between hoping his industry friendships survive his new career and boldly challenging them by being "honest" in his reviews of them. He's learned well from Ebert, who has never shown much interest in the movie going public and instead addresses every review to the people who made the film. "I'm like you," he says, "but I have a better perspective." It's why he gave up writing movies after Beneath the Valley of the Dolls - how much easier is it to make good movies when all you have to do is tell the people making them how to do it? Much easier. The same thing now with Schiesel - in his mind, Blizzard was reeling after he spent his review talking about his past experiences with WoW. But Blizzard couldn't give a shit about what the New York Times thinks about Lich King. To be honest, neither do the people who play WoW, but Schiesel should at least pretend that they're reading his column. How does talking about his experience playing WoW help them understand what works and doesn't in Lich King? Of course the whole thing is a farce because one video review will always be more valuable than 10,000 words in the NY Times and everyone who plays games knows it. So I assume he's writing this for people who have to pretend to be interested in games even though they don't play them, much like some people read the NY Times Book Review faithfully every week but haven't read a book in years.[/quote]