I decided to speak about my feelings concerning the gaming press instead. A few weeks ago, I sat down to write some notes on the subject. Two hours later, I had written a full speech. I tried -- and failed -- to memorize it in time for the session. The entire text, almost exactly as I read it from my phone in front of the live audience, follows below:

Photo courtesy of Official GDC on Flickr.

I know many of you here are indie game creators. I am not one of you. I've been a member of the gaming press for the past ten years, first as a freelancer, then on the editorial and video teams at GameSpy.com, IGN.com, and 1UP.com where I co-created the 1UP Show. I'm now a part of the independent company AREA 5, where I make videos about games.

In general, the gaming press drives me nuts. So much of the writing is garbage, isn't it? When I read a piece that uses proper grammar and punctuation, it's surprising; isn't that sad? Quality, process and copy editors have been set aside in the name of immediacy and 24-hour-a-day coverage. It's no surprise. It's the same shift that's happened to media at large. It's sad.

The worst part is that I still care. Maybe I'm stupid. Maybe it's crazy to think that the most interactive and modern art form on the planet needs to be picked at and pulled apart by writers, radio and video producers, and fellow game creators with a vast knowledge of the medium. Maybe I'm crazy to think we need to pay these termites talk about their insights from a late night online gaming session or how No More Heroes relates to French New Wave cinema. Maybe I'm nuts to think we should give them open access to studios to let them dissect the game design process and write about it. Would it be insane to let them burrow through the craft, peek at its insides, focus on its intricacies and help us all see how it works? I know. I'm crazy. I want people to dig through it all so that we can learn from their findings and have a document of the triumphs, the growing pangs, and mundanity of our medium in its infancy. I won't apologize for it, though. That's what I want: an industry with space for real critics.

But since I started working as part of the gaming press ten years ago, the number of quality gaming outlets with a budget has gone down, not up. The number of writers I respect has increased, but the vast majority of them have moved from editorial teams into game development. And it makes sense: games benefit from great stories. Publishers need tastemakers to build their communities. And most importantly, these writers have families and need to be paid an honest wage to survive. But when the potential subject of these former critics' work is a single game rather than all of them, the number of checks and balances in our system decreases. Even if what they write is only subtlety influenced by the corporation calling the shots, it still is. Not only are we losing all this potentially great, moving, and insightful game criticism, we're losing the ability to keep our industry honest.

The largest of the editorial outlets will continue to survive based on the quality of their SEO, the number of users on their messageboards, and the quickness with which they can post the latest media assets from the biggest AAA games. They don't want or need to enable the best of us to act as curators of the medium while also aiding us in paying our rent. Their dot-com-boom-esque staff sizes, huge tech and production teams, and arcane, flash-driven front pages define them. What they pay for all that could be focused into quality editorial work and clean, simple, modern web design. But it's not. Because nobody wants to upheave their own operation if it already pays; and pay it does.

I'm just one disenchanted guy with five minutes to talk. I can't change the way things are. But if I could make a humble request of the gaming press -- one that would cost nothing but a little time and effort on the part of the writers to implement -- it would be this: treat games equally. AAA games. Indie games. iPhone games. There are thousands of great games out there waiting to be discussed. They're all competing against each other for the same thing: our time. Despite their budgets or the number of people involved in their creation, these games are influenced by each other, our culture and and the people who play them. They're all important to the future of the medium. And a lot of them are even fun to play.

Don't limit the scope of your coverage to games with titles you've seen in the press releases filling your inbox. Go out and find new stories yourself. You say: we cover indie games now, dude! I say: bravo. But just covering new releases on XBLA and PSN isn't enough. An indie round-up once a year won't cut it either. Don't compartmentalize your coverage. I'd like to see fewer top ten lists and blogs dedicated to the best twenty iPhone games that came out last week. I love Offworld and TinyCartridge as much as anyone else, but I don't feel those sites have that much of an opportunity to expand the minds of the vast majority of Gears of War players, for example. Their audience will always be limited next to that of the big boys; it's the larger outlets that I want to see mention God of War III, Heavy Rain, Spelunky, Colorbind, and Auditorium all in the same breath. You have the power to turn your readers, watchers, and listeners on to so much more than what's new this week on Xbox 360 if you simply talk about both the big and small games with the same level of commitment, care, and enthusiasm. The scale of your operation gives you the unique opportunity to cover more. This "all games are equal" mantra has worked for my team and I. We're constantly getting Twitter followers and commenters telling us how grateful they are about being turned on to some tiny game they would've missed simply because we included it in the conversation. Put simply: our audience comes for Halo: Reach and stays for VVVVVV.

If we can expand the number and type of games that enter the consciousness of the audience, the diversity of the games themselves will inspire more creative criticism. We can invite more people to care about what the creators we critique create if we can show them just how ambiguous the definition of the word videogame is. Hopefully then we can get back to building our side of the industry into what it should be rather than let it grow into a larger version of what it is now: a vast landscape of consumer reports and the same daily headlines copy-and-pasted across thousands of websites without ever being edited by another pair of eyes -- or a spell checker -- all while our best writers are being picked off or burnt out one at a time. Treat games equally. That would be a baby step in the right direction.

Between getting together the content we need for the first episode of a show we're doing for EGM (in case you missed it, there's a preview video of the digital version of EGM up on YouTube--the video was produced by none other than those jerks at Area 5 Media), The Game Developer's Conference happening this week in our back yard and me doing a panel at next week's SXSW, there just aren't enough bodies in the office or enough ours in the week to make CO-OP Live happen. Remember, we love you and we'll be back ASAP!

As for my panel, if you're going to be at SXSW, save some time on Tuesday. Here are all the details. You all should bow-down to the awesomeness of my friend Karen Chu (now at PlayFirst) for setting up all this panel stuff. She's a force to be reckoned with.

Instead we opened the case to find 45 amazingly well-mastered 1UP Show DVD's, courtesy of Dana Laratta, an incredibly dedicated 1UP Show/Broken Pixels/CO-OP viewer whom (like many of our fans) we owe an incredible debt of gratitude.

You know, working in an industry where release dates dictate our production schedule, it's easy to forget the work we did four weeks ago let alone four years ago. These DVD's serve as a great reminder of all the wonderful people we met, games we played, and times we had while making the 1UP Show. Suddenly, sitting in those busted cubicles, watching Jason getting body-slammed by Mielke for being an unruly intern doesn't seem like that long ago.

Thanks Dana :)

PS. Unfortunately we don't have the rights to sell the DVD box set, but I'm sure if you talk to Dana, you guys can work "something" out... if you make it "worth his while..." I'm talking about "SEX."

<- Stop! Digg this story and spread the word about CO-OP!

Yes, the ApocalyPS3 has come and gone (we hope), but we couldn't just let it go without poking a little fun. If you have a TS3 (that's not a typo) like we do, hopefully you didn't suffer the same fate. More after the show:

<- Apparently people still don't know that you can watch the show after the live broadcast is over. Help us inform them!

In this live show, we experimented with all-live gameplay. First it was the delightfully delicious The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom and two awesome Independent Game Festival finalists Monaco and Puddle. Ryan was an IGF judge for the festival this year so he's got some unique perspectives to share. Also, Cesar and Jason got to see Skate 3 and are all in a tizzy about it! More after the show:

<- Apparently people still don't know that you can watch the show after the live broadcast is over. Help us inform them!

Events like X10 can be as frustrating as they can be awesome. First, going to see a bunch of stuff and then not being allowed to show any video of it is pretty much "worst thing ever" for a video show. Second (secondly? I good at grammar!), actaully playing something and then not getting to talk about it due to embargoes also qualifies as "worst thing ever." But it wasn't a total loss! We got to get some serious hands-on time with Dead Rising 2, Splinter Cell: Conviction and Game Room and those we do have video of and can talk about. Hooray! Also, we'd like to give the award for Most Development Studios on a Game, Ever to Bioshock 2. Was it worth the global effort? JayFresh and I lay it on ya. More after the show:

<- Our first LIVE show was a success! Tell the world!

Well, at least WE think it was a success. What do you think? What could have been improved? What actually worked really well? Any suggestions for new stuff we can try out? As for all of you that were worried there would be no "recorded" or archived version of the show, here it is! From what I hear, the flash-embedded version was up only an hour or so after the live broadcast finished. The download links went up only a few hours later, so from now on I'll be doing these blog posts Tuesday evening when everything is up and live and available to download. More after the show:

You know how people on the freeway always seem to let their foot off the gas as they drive by an accident as though they were in some morbid, cinematic slow-mo; trying to catch a glimpse of whatever carnage ensued moments before? "A few minutes earlier and it could have been me," some of them must be saying to themselves, drifting slowly by, craning their necks like carrion birds...

This is NOT how CO-OP Live plans to begin its life. There are a million moving pieces to a live production and we've been rehearsing them all until they're as solidly integrated as the blocks of the fucking pyramids. Things will still go wrong, but we can guarantee you that what you won't be getting is some dues sitting on a couch talking at the camera for an hour. Yes, there will be some dudes sitting on the cough talking about video games, but bear with us, it's not what you think.

So where do you come in? We're going to have dedicated fan segments that are going to come near the end of our show or at specifically planned times. In order to keep things snappy, we're going to be tied to a schedule with someone yelling in our ears (no, really, we'll have things in our ears like TV anchor people, how groovy is that?) when our time to yap about a game is up. We'll bring you in afterward to agree or disagree with us, so write down those thoughts ahead of time.

For our first show (SPOILER), we're going to have a special musical guest. After the first performance, we're going to sit down with said guest and have a quick fan segment where you can ask him questions. He'll do another song to play himself out and then we'll come back to a full fan segment where everything is fair game. Just don't ask Ryan to dance. Ryan doesn't dance. Unless he's drunk. Then he dances AWESOME. If you're not already, follow @COOP_live on Twitter. You don't really have to follow our show Twitter to participate, though. Just use @COOP_live anywhere in your Twitter post and we'll see it! Our hope is that Twitter will be easier to manage than a chat room and that since we can control the flow on the page we won't have to worry about stuff scrolling off the page before we get a chance to read it. Be patient with us, though, as there was no way to test this part of the show beforehand to any real capacity and it's going to take us some time to get it running all swimmingly. All question and comments are welcome, but lame ones will be ignored.

Here's a summary of the details"
- Bookmark http://revision3.com/co-op
- The show starts at 4PM PST/7PM EST SHARP!
- Tweet to @COOP_live during our fan segments to get in on the act
- If you miss the show, it will be recorded and put out on the regular iTunes feed later tonight.

Lastly but not least-ly, we're going to need your help! We hate lame shit as much as you do and CO-OP Live CANNOT be lame shit! Tell us what you think is awesome and want more of and what you think is terrible and want less of. We couldn't have gotten this far without you and without you there's no future for our show. Thank you, and enjoy (*crosses fingers*)!

<- Tell the world about our new show! We want the premiere to be as epic as possible!

You may have seen this announcement already, but here's the post where we spill our guts on all the details. Can we do this?? YES! Can we do it without screwing up, live, for the world to see? Probably not. That's the theme of this announcement video. Watch it, first, and then read below for how you can be a part of the show!

<- Time to Digg this post! It really is the best way you help spread the word about the show.

It's the second part of our epic, 2009 year-in-review special! We assembled a crew of the finest CO-OP regulars to share what their favorite games of 2009 wound up to be. This isn't a "Game of the Year" rank-a-thon, but rather a recollection of what made 2009 such a freakin' awesome year for gamers! More after the show: