Village Gamer

Originally Written for the KillaNet Community Resource in 2007

Authors: David Thomas, Kyle Orland, Scott Steinberg
Paperback: 108 pages
Publisher: Lulu.com
October 2007

The Videogame Style Guide is essential reading for anyone who wants to get into any type of serious videogame journalism. As pointed out by Dan Hsu, the Editor in Chief for Electronic Gaming Monthly, if the world of videogame journalism has any hope of maturing, it must find the uniformity of style that is so essential to engaging and maintaining an intelligent readership. The authors, while stating that the Style Guide is a work in progress – meaning that it will be updated as styles change or new terminology is entered, have given journalists an excellent reference guide which can be used in conjunction with any other publication’s in-house style guide.

Not only is the Videogame Style Guide full of alphabetical listings in regards to industry-specific terminology, the appendices also offer many other points of reference on the industry from websites to other published books. The listings of important systems, games, people and companies in the videogame industry past and present offer not only a pertinent “who’s who” directory, but also starting points for a variety of articles and studies.

Overall, I found this publication to be very useful and it will continue to be so as I write future articles about the gaming industry. If you visit the website linked in the title of this review, you will see that the Videogame Style Guide is available in two formats – free for download as a pdf file, or purchasable as a published book. If you write any articles at all, you should at the very least download the pdf and give yourself a starting point in learning the correct forms and terminology to use when composing articles, as they will greatly increase your chances of having your articles published by the myriad of news journals available to the gaming community.

Last evening, the ACM SIGGRAPH Vancouver chapter celebrated its fifth birthday with a presentation given by world-renowned visual artist Syd Mead, which was followed by a special screening of BladeRunner: The Final Cut, a movie which features many aspects of Mr. Mead’s fantastical work.

Mr. Mead began his presentation by letting us know how much he likes Vancouver, and noted how much the city had changed since his last visit, which was during Expo ’86. He then went on to cover the various points of fantasy artwork – the why, where, and how of what we humans like about the fantasy genre. In simple terms, fantasy artwork simply takes familiar parametres and translates them into a new experience, pulling the viewer into a new world of possibilities.

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