Gamers are livid over last week’s Time article on the Halo series. The author, Lev Grossman, shoots on players for loving games with “lonely, alienated, and unironic passion,” and refers to Halo 2 as being an “exclusive for the Xbox 360.”
Dan Zuccarelli at BBPS, who brought the article to a wider audience yesterday, is canceling his Time subscription in anger over what he considers to be an attempt to “devalue and marginalize video games and, by extension, video game players” and goes on to accuse Grossman of numerous other incorrect facts and assertions made in the piece.
“We’ll start with the simple stuff,” Zuccarelli writes. “The stuff that points to the laziness of the reporter in doing even a minor amount of research.”
The article also touches on videogames as art:
This devotion is fueled by a belief, not shared by the world at large, that video games are an art form with genuine emotional meaning and that Halo 3 will be the premier example of that art.
and offers commentary on what the Halo franchise is doing to break out of the videogame market:
There’s an opportunity beyond video games, too, for Halo to break out of the ghetto and become a mainstream, mass-market, multimedia entertainment property. Other parts of the culture are catching on. Marvel publishes Halo comic books. There are five Halo novels in print. The Halo sound tracks are released as albums.
The article concludes with Grossman’s thoughts on Bungie, Halo‘s designers:
They don’t need to legitimize Halo by associating it with other, more respectable media. They sell enough units and make enough money. They’re happy in their invisible geek ghetto.
