Beat Report

I have chosen technology as my beat for this class. More specifically, I want to write about video games—whether it’s a review of a game or the cultural implications of a game. I wanted to pick something that would be the most interesting to me so I would actually feel like writing; there’s nothing worse than writing about something you’re completely disinterested in.
I’m currently attending Columbia as a magazine journalism major, and I’m also a cultural studies minor. On top of that, I’m taking classes in the interactive arts and media department since technology and video games are what I would like to write about for a living. My angle is usually about the culture of video games and what they have to say about the culture that plays them. By choosing this as my beat, I’m hoping to have more of an opportunity to write about video games since I’m usually too busy with other classes to make the time to write about what interests me the most. I also think it’s important to learn the ways in which articles such as mine would be laid out in a magazine, or even on the web.
I think one website that’s devoted to video games and already does this well is Kotaku. The layout doesn’t take away from the articles, and there’s usually one giant picture to go along with each article to catch the audience’s attention. Their news is always up to date, and I find that they usually have the latest news about video games and technology before any of the other gawker websites too. Now more than ever it is important to report the news fast because the web has enabled us to do so, and Kotaku achieves this well. I only wish that they had more people on their staff who were as interested in the cultural implications of video games and technology like I am. People typically don’t take me seriously when I try to tell them what I like to write about, and my aim is to change that.
Covering stories like these are important to me because I feel like people don’t really take into account all of the technology that they use and consume on a daily basis. The fact that video games are on the more interactive side possibly means that messages are being translated through these media even more so than movies. Instead of blaming video games and technology for the “way we are,” I take a different approach. I argue that video games are violent because our culture is already violent. I argue that video games are hypersexualized because our culture is already hypersexualized. Video games can continue to reinforce norms, or developers can take a closer look at what they’re creating and figure out how to do things like make games for girls and women that aren’t incredibly stereotypical and condescending. I like to point these issues out.