Task - Week Five

Subjective and Objective. Is it terrible that I had to look them up? Personally I think my own writing tends to swing between both, but then I've never been good at assessing myself. I try to be objective most of the time, but often bias or strong opinion can affect things without being noticed. I think that since I did all of the reading for week four, these last couple of blogs have been very different to the ones before them. Must be all that NGJ stuff.

Both have their own values and downsides. On the one hand, objective writing offers a balance of facts, and allows someone to make up their own mind, which can be important. It can be very easy to influence someone with your own strong opinion if you only list the arguments that back yourself up, especially if that person hasn't formed their own opinion yet. So, for example, a game review can create a bias in someone who hasn't played the game for themselves, if it isn't balanced and supports only the negative or the positive elements.

Subjectivity can be more interesting to read, especially if there are strong opinions involved and you've already taken the time to form your own opinion about something before reading. Often someone with a well worded opposing argument will have picked up on things you didn't notice, and can often show a perspective that wouldn't be present in a well balanced argument.

I'd like to think I do both. Objectivity and subjectivity play off of one another. The well rounded argument first of all allows you to highlight the flaws in the opposing argument later, and that makes it easier to justify your subjective point of view.

http://gillen.cream.org/wordpress_html/?page_id=693
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/egrr_550_62798
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/games/archives/game_culture/2005/03/ten_unmissable_examples_of_new_games_journalism.html
http://gillen.cream.org/wordpress_html/?page_id=3
http://shinyshinyshiny.blogspot.com/2006_03_01_shinyshinyshiny_archive.html
http://www.englishbiz.co.uk/popups/objectivity.htm