Interview with Ben Mansill

You might recognise his name. You might think you know him from somewhere. And that's because you probably do if you've picked up a gaming magazine in the past fifteen years. Ben Mansill - founding father of both Atomic and PC PowerPlay and probably the most well-known games writer in Australia - agreed to sit down for a chat with us late last week and this is the result:

How long have you been writing about games?

My first published review was in 1991, that was in the now defunct MegaZone magazine, then I moved to Hyper, did some freelancing for the Telegraph and PC User, started PC PowerPlay and later, Atomic.

What?s the current state of the games writing in Australia like?

It seems to me that most new writers make the mistake of being entirely subjective with their reviews, and fail to see the greater experience of the game as the reader wants to hear it. All too often I?ll read a web review by some kid that?s all full of himself now that he?s a ?game reviewer?, and assumes, wrongly, that the reader isn?t interested in the game itself, but what Fresh Young Superstar thinks of it, complete with all his bad jokes and over-inflated sense of self importance.

At the other end of the spectrum are jaded, bored and lazy reviewers that have been doing it for many years, and will usually only play a game for an hour before bashing out a by-the-numbers review.

Equally boring are the too-long feature-style "overviews" of the "lifestyle" aspect of gaming. They're churned out by poor starving freelancers without any real clue about gaming, and pitch some controversial issue to a mainstream lifestyle mag, and then everyone reads it and gets an inaccurate, homogenised view of gaming.

On the flipside, right now I thoroughly enjoy Jason Hill's daily blogs for the Age. He's able to find a fresh angle almost every day, and is an expert at flamebaiting his audience to get a solid block of feedback in the replies section. Atomic's Logan Booker also punches out excellent features on the technical and hardware side of gaming.

From the point of view of a journalist, what's your take on the state of the local games industry?

It is very mature and professional. Back in the day, it was a bit haphazard, with very few professionally trained PR people. There's still some cowboys, that like to call you up and have a cry when their game gets a lower than expected score, they hold grudges and will find a way months down the track to somehow shaft you for revenge.

That only happens with a publisher's internal PR. Outsourced PR agencies are extremely good, the major PR companies have dedicated gaming PR divisions now. They work extremely well to give us the material we require and are complete pros to deal with.

All PRs still cling to the traditional belief that print is god. Despite the fact that online audiences now outstrip print readerships by at least a factor of 10 to 1. Most annoying, that. Every single print mag -? whether pure games, or general IT - is tumbling in readership, and we will see at least a couple of mags fold in the next year or so. Bearing that in mind, print is always offered the exclusives and generally far superior access to developers or assets. Print editors, now driven by pure desperation, will sell their soul for any perceived advantage on the newsstands, and PR play that to their advantages. In any given month you'll see every single games mag with the same main game on the cover, all screaming "exclusive".

?Exclusive? is now completely meaningless in print. By the time you read an interview, review, preview, whatever? in a mag that?s claimed "exclusive", all the main games sites have already covered it and moved on.

Do you think that local studios and local games get enough coverage in the press?

Unless it's a feature story specifically focussing on the local industry, then the coverage they get should, and usually is, based solely on the quality and appeal of the games.

Can the press do more for the Australian games industry? Should it?

I don't think there's a games journo in the country that hasn't, at some point, done a story about how world-class the Aussie development scene is. We're doing our bit. I don't think, though, that being "Australian made" gives a game any greater likelihood of sales success with Aussie gamers. They just want a good game. The media's coverage of gaming is largely driven by that ethos.