Bemoaning the state of print game journalism, GameDaily decided to go to the source of the issue and ask how things could improve, specifically, The Almighty Preview.

The piece starts off kind of bright, noting the plus sides to print. Referring to a couple of magazines he'd read on a flight recently, writer Gus Mustrapa says they "featured exclusive cover stories presenting previews of highly anticipated games." He feels in spite of the somewhat sad state of things, this form of journalism is still able to do what it does best, do it well, and with style. And more than that, the look of it reigns superior:

"For all of the Internet's ability to deliver streaming video, gigabytes of screenshots and all kinds of other multi-media fireworks, most websites still aren't all that much to look at. It could be bandwidth concerns or perhaps just the utilitarian demands of readers, but magazines still trump the web when it comes to making a page look pretty."

Is this a natural problem with the web? Could it just take the right designer for a site to triumph over print? Either way, I think print will always have that something. The question is whether or not that something will be enough to sustain the medium.

The rest of the article focuses on the style of game previews. Mustrapa says they should be more self-explorative, touching on the styles normally only attributed to "entertainment" magazines. Obviously, video games are entertaining, so he has something of a point. According to him, print magazines could possibly benefit from a more personal style of writing.  While he praised EGM's Joe Rybicki's first-person coverage of SOCOM: Confrontation, he wonders if previews shouldn't get more personal:

"..what neither magazine really accomplishes is setting a sense of place outside of the virtual worlds they're reporting in. In fact, they assume that the reader either already knows about the game designers or simply just doesn't care to know more about them. We never hear where these previews are being held or learn anything about the game designers besides their names and titles. Perhaps both publications are reluctant to let us see behind the curtain for fear of revealing that their moments with the game designers took place in boring hotel rooms during GDC. Or maybe they know their readers all too well, having fielded hundreds of letters demanding 'just the facts.' "

Clearly, this is the part where you come in. Yes, you. For fear of sounding like a marketer, what do you want to see more of in previews, and print journalism in general? What will keep you coming back to print journalism, if anything?

Something I came across while researching for an earlier piece on Silicon Knights head Denis Dyack has sort of haunted me since. Dyack said previews should be abolished altogether, only promoting the game before release once it is actually finished. Via one of Dyack's postings on NeoGAF:

"Honest criticism is exactly what you are not [his emphasis] going to get from previewing games that are not finished -- I am saying it is not possible to evaluate games properly before they are done. Despite anyones best efforts. I think the guys from EGM gave their best efforts but their methods are fundamentally flawed."

Could this improve the state of print journalism and the gaming industry in general? I'm torn, myself. On one hand I agree and it seems perfectly sensible, on the other, I absolutely love watching out for upcoming games and keeping up on their development, it's part of the fun and excitement of it all; in a good number of cases this fun and excitement turned out to be valid, as the final product was as promised, or better than I anticipated. Video game journalism without previews..now there's a thought. Especially with demos now available even for many console games, could we do it? Should we do it? Which direction is best for the gamer? For the industry?