Review: Gameswipe (TV)

Charlie Brooker seems to be carving out TV shows like they're going out of fashion at the moment. Hot on the heels of You Have Been Watching (a show about which I have Opinions, and about which I wish I had written here when it was more topical) comes Gameswipe (available briefly on iPlayer here).

Gameswipe tries to do for (video) games what Screenwipe and Newswipe did for TV shows and news programs respectively, which is to say, analyse, mock and explain them from an insider's point of view. His previous two "-wipe" products were also influenced by topical issues, and generally analysed recent examples of the areas that they were focusing on, so it seems likely that newly released games will get some coverage too.

I have been waiting expectantly for a mainstream game-review programme to emerge, and one fronted by Charlie Brooker is more than I could have hoped for (since I've now followed him full circle since his days writing for gaming magazine PC Zone). Having watched the first episode, I'm pretty happy with the way things have started out, albeit with a few reservations.

The programme probably suffers from the fact that whereas television and the news are two things that have a mass appeal, and probably pretty equal interest from most age and gender groups, video gaming is only just becoming an area of widespread interest to many people, and even then in some areas far more than others. Hence a programme focused on mass-appeal casual games like Rock Band or Guitar Hero, will risk being too basic for more hardcore gamers, while one with too much emphasis placed on more introverted genres such as MMORPGs and FPSes, would be likely to instantly alienate casual viewers.

The first episode treads this line fairly well, with introductions to basic gaming genres, and examples of how these genres have developed over the years, interposed with celebrity rants about aspects of the industry, but it will be interesting to see how this balance is maintained in future episodes, and whether both ends of the spectrum can be kept interested at once.

One real niggle with the program was that the coverage of violent or objectionable video games - certainly one of the biggest issues faced by the industry at the moment - seemed unfocused and haphazard. There was some mocking of the media coverage, but not enough, in my opinion, of a well-constructed counter-argument. The issue is one which deserves fuller coverage and analysis, and I would have hoped that it would have an episode devoted to it.

Another problem was with the discussion of storytelling in games (again something [from the point of view of a fairly experienced gamer] only touched on very briefly), in which Graham Linehan bemoans the fact that the story-telling in games is never given enough attention by the industry, where minutes before, Brooker had been describing his boredom at the plot-development aspects of a game. Both are different sides of an argument, but I felt the presentation was contradictory rather than balanced.

As a whole, though, it's good to see Charlie Brooker on TV, and it's good to see modern gaming-centric programmes, so despite any negatives, I will certainly be looking forward to the remaining episodes.

Blogathon hi-score: 4