Writing a review

The next challenge: 600 words for a review of anything. It could be a restaurant, film, book, anything.

I started putting together a list of things I might review. Travel related? Grand Cayman as a tourist destination. Stingray City. Or maybe something I bought. Gear Fit 2 (not really interesting). My VFR 750? Or a game, perhaps. Destiny 2 (big “No” next to this one) or The Last Guardian.

Destiny 2 it is then.

Two things about this exercise. The audience – console gamers tend to be young and male, especially around the first person shooter genre. Our class, the readership of this article, are a little older and female, so aren’t likely to play mainstream games (although the proportion of female players is on the rise). I’m about to try writing an article for an audience who won’t be interested in the subject.

Second, while considering my mixed feelings about D2, it occurred that in order to say whether D2 s a good game or not, I needed to consider what constitutes “good” in the context of a game – what actually is the point of games? – which led me completely astray and left me wanting to write a piece about the place of gaming amongst other forms of modern day entertainment.

I might still write that one.

What did I learn?

First things first. Proof reading. When I read it to the class I immediately spotted a few bad edits. Our tutor told us in the first lesson that the only way to spot problems is to read the piece aloud; I guess I had to see that first hand to really get it.

If you’re going to use a personal intro, tie it into the rest of the article. The speech at the start isn’t connected to anything else in the piece. I started with a moment of my life, then left myself out of the rest of the text. Left everyone out, for that matter. Despite Destiny being an MMO, I could have been talking about a single player RPG.

And finally, don’t try to write 2 things at the same time. Stay focused. The review and the place of games idea are both worth writing. They’re also worthy of their own space. Trying to compress two ideas into one short essay doesn’t do justice to either.