Does Video Gaming Need a Lester Bangs?
This topic resurfaces every couple of years, but L. B. Jeffries at PopMatters.com has perhaps the best article that I've seen on the subject. Delving into the collected works of Lester Bangs, he dregs up the good and the bad, and the role Bangs carved out for himself in the music world.

The frustration Bangs had with music criticism at the time pretty much mirrors the state of what passes for videogame journalism today. Recent events, of which the Eidos attempt to delay negative reviews is the latest, have demonstrated that there is far too cozy of a relationship between review sites and magazines, and the game publishers. But independent voices are as hard to find as independent games. Not that they aren't out there (in droves!), but they are off the average gamer's radar.

But do we need a Lester Bangs, or do we have a sizable number of "Bangs-likes" beating on the gates like a small barbarian army?

Good question.

Does Video Game Criticism Need a Lester Bangs? at PopMatters

Labels: Biz

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:09 AM (Permalink)