['Quiz Me Quik' was a weekly GameSetWatch column, in which I picked offbeat subjects in the game business and interviewed them about their business, their perspective, and their unique view of life. This time - an enlightening chat with Matt Hestill.]
It’s been interesting reading Michael Walbridge’s series of interviews with prominent games journalists, and Simon Parkin’s recent column on the same subject. It’s really given me pause to think about some of the people I admire in the field; Michael is actually interviewing a number of them. There’s plenty of other people who I think exemplify the great things about games journalism – intelligence, an ability to think critically and a desire to move journalism past its occasional stagnancy in the mass-market commercial field. While a disappointing number of people writing about games are all too satisfied with towing a line of mediocrity, these people are pushing forward and asking, ‘Why can’t we expect more?’
Unfortunately, all of those people were too busy to talk with me, so I contacted my old acquaintance Matt Hestill instead.
You might know Matt from his blog, It’s Matt Hestill, Stupid - a surreal collection of self-obsessive rants and reviews, all written in Hestill’s somewhat underwhelming stream of consciousness style, punctuated with the odd bit of freeform poetry.
Or it was, anyway, until Hestill snapped in late January and deleted every single post because “the comments were just annoying and you people don’t deserve my insight into the games industry anymore so you can all just get fucked”.
“Hey Matt,” my initial email read. “I want to interview you for GSW, man. What have you been up to since you stopped the blog? Are you even still writing? Haven’t seen anything around lately. I thought you were meant to be doing some stuff for 1Up or something.”
“Wallis,” he replied. “Busy always. Here’s the interview’s focus: I am the next evolution of games journalism. The blog was my chrysalis. I was the pupa. Shutting the blog was the pumping of the hemolymph into my wings so that I might emerge stronger and more beautiful; flowering and rocketing. Now I am the butterfly, Wallis. Soon I will fly above the caterpillars of games journalism. Skype me.”
So, it quickly emerged that Matt had recently had something of an epiphany while rereading Kieron Gillen’s reknowned New Games Journalism manifesto. And then reading everything he could find on games journalism’s need for a Lester Bangs. And then reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. And then, the following is what transpired, immediately after connecting to Hestill via Skype.
