Honestly, awards are just industry circle jerks anyway (this goes for all awards given in all industries) They’re no more or less valid than top ten lists, but slightly more obnoxious since there is generally a put-on air of importance associated with them.

Also this bit: “My concern is that this flood of lazy work will become all that is available”

Perhaps you don’t ever actually read any gaming media, and so this can be forgiven. Top ten lists are not the root of the problem, or even the largest symptom. You should peruse a newsstand and read some of the gaming magazines available, check out some blogs too. You’ll quickly notice that poor grammar, and even spelling errors are endemic to the gaming press be it print or online. The vast majority, if not all game journalists are apparently uneducated idiots with little regard for the language they work with or even their readership.

Please do not consider this as the technical standard of my writing. There are other articles I’ve published that do a much better job of demonstrating my skill.

I do find it interesting that other journalists are attacking the grammatical mistakes in the article, rather then addressing the actual point that I made.

1) Start with a tight, focused lede. Avoid rambling introductory sentences with too many asides and redundant phrases. For example, “at least one” implies “if not more,” so the latter is unnecessary.

2) Don’t put quotes around phrases that don’t require them, like “new media landscape” and “big sites.”

3) Don’t use non-standard abbreviations (e.g., “24hr”).

4) Smaller numbers can be written as words (e.g., “five” instead of “5″)

5) Don’t mix metaphors (e.g., pipes and piles)

6) Don’t put an apostrophe in a possessive pronoun (e.g., “it’s infant stages”).

There’s more, but those are some big things to watch.

Best of luck with the site. You’re providing good content. Present it professionally, and you’ll earn more respect — and likely more viewers.

The sad truth is that people (at least people that read game blog sites) like nostalgia, and they like lists, and they like light-hearted funny stuff. With an exception made for Bioshock and it’s Ayn Rand-ian philosophies, video games are still not taken seriously as an art by the general public, despite the fact that 50% of Americans play them now. It’s probably the word “game.” Is there a message in Yahtzee? Yahtzee is a game. But it’s such a different monster that, until we can separate video games from other mere playthings, they won’t be taken seriously. And the gaming media isn’t helping either. I booted up my browser today and saw 10 articles that said Olivia Munn is going to be not naked in Playboy again! Oh yay! If only the popularity of gaming would transfer itself into a realm where thinking is encouraged, instead of the world of soft porn.

You’re spot on about Digg though. I tried generating traffic there for a while but it didn’t go so well.

At this point I am content to see my two articles a week go up. Whether they’re read or not I at least put thought into them. Still depressing though!