I hear you gatmog, and I can accept that from gamers at large. Though I reflexively distrust any movie fan who has never seen Casablanca, I’m not going to rant about your average Netflix guy who doesn’t know who Bogart is. Same with games. You never played Starflight? Fine.

And now-ism is ingrained in all entertainment media. It’s about what’s new, what’s hip, what’s original. Unless you are a perennial like Michael Caine, Paul McCartney or Sid Meier, you better have something new to show.

But for a game journalist to not know important history in their field of interest? There are probably only a handful of names that are necessary.

And Chris Crawford is hardly an extreme example. Though not as public as Costikyan in his Cassandra act, he isn’t a shrinking violet. He even had an article published in The Escapist last year about why girls don’t like games. (His answer was evolution.)

Too few games based on discovery have captured the sense of, well, discovery. Seven Cities is a landmark that everyone interested in game design must play.

Chris Crawford is one of those guys who is most notable for people who like to read ABOUT games, so… um… yeah, it is surprising if journalists haven’t heard of him.

I think you’re in the minority, though, because the “now-ism” of the industry isn’t a trend that’s going to stop. Things are moving too fast for the average consumer to really care about what came before the flavour of the day. If you told someone a few years ago that Grand Theft Auto was a series that started out on the PC as a top-down clickfest they’d probably laugh in your face. Game design is also following this principle: adapt old ideas and hope people don’t notice. They leave it up to the reviewers to decide its historical relevance (and as you point out, they probably aren’t even getting the whole picture).

This concept of history also has some relevance towards the content of the games themselves: how many people actually care that the Call of Dutys and Age of Empires are based on bending historical events? Well, as it was recorded anyway. The answer is not many. They’re more interested in whether the game is fun to play or not. Which is a fine pursuit, but it almost makes history seem like another fabricated setting.

If we aren’t going to be experts, then we probably shouldn’t be the guys writing or speaking about games and the industry.the industry.