Interview: Bill Kunkel — The Game Doctor - Page 3

RF: I hate interviewing company reps, there's no bigger waste of time. I've interviewed reps all the way up to VP's. I try not to.

BK: Well, they're just doing their job. You don't expect the company VP to badmouth his company's game, and you can't expect Nintendo to badmouth one of its own games in its own magazine.

RF: Of course not, but it's still lame. What do you think about videogame television programming? It doesn't seem to be working well considering G4 is transitioning into an all male channel a la Spike. Spike is trying to get "into the game" so to speak, too. Again, what's your take?

BK: Spike hasn't had a clue from Day One and probably never will. That company seems to re-imagine itself every year or so. As for G4, they don't have much on to appeal to female viewers, but I think their coverage of E3, for example, is fantastic. If you're into games, I'd be watching G4 — and, in fact, I do watch it a good deal — before I'd read a game magazine. G4 can SHOW me the game; there aren't enough unique voices among today's game journalists. You still have some of the old school people around, but there are too many kid reviewers who have no historical perspective and can't put the games in context. Magazines need hot writers and there just don't seem to be enough of those out there.

RF: Besides yours truly (sense the sarcasm), are there any hot game journalists out there? If so who are they?

BK: Oh there are. I mentioned Chris Kohler, and Zach Meston, of course, and old schoolers like Chris Bieniek who is, in my opinion, largely wasted on a magazine like Tips & Tricks where the most interesting stuff is jammed into the back pages. And again, G4 and Gamer.TV have produced a generation of reviewers who are very good at capsule reviews. Talking head journalism with a lot of hair gel. The people who review games for the mainstream publications, however, are all over the place, from good to horrible.

RF: Chris Bieniek was one of the heads of Videogame Magazine in the 90's, Meston was there too. Meston does Videogame Collector (Meston is no longer with that magazine), now which I'm not too impressed with.

BK: They were the young guys coming up when I was moving more toward other areas of gaming, such as design and consulting. I was sorry to see Steve Kent leave the biz; the world doesn't need more bad sci-fi novels.

RF: That's hilarious. I was pissed when he wrote his farewell in Game Informer, but I respect him a lot. I thought his book was a great companion piece to Leonard Herman's.

Article Author: Rob Faraldi

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