From “Lara Croft” to “Silence we play”, “Libé” at the heart of video games – Libération

Not only was the newspaper the first general media to open its pages to the world of video games, it also immediately viewed them as a cultural and artistic object rather than a commercial phenomenon.

“It is the first time since the Stone Age, when bipeds began embroidering legends around the fire in the evenings, that a fictional character with an identifying and addictive purpose comes straight from the computer cauldron.” Classic tragedy and Soap operaThe novel and the comic, not to mention the heavyweight Hollywood studios, now have a new competitor, not just in the race for dollars but also in shaping the collective imagination: a mutant born in the genetic lineage of video games . » It’s July 26, 1997. Robert Mitchum and James Stewart have just disappeared, One piece takes his first steps in the jumpet Release dedicates its cover to Lara Croft, “the new immaterial Eve”. Cause for worldwide excitement, with fashion designers and U2 snapping up parts of the gaming icon Grave robbers. More Libe not only takes note of the commercial phenomenon and the future revolution it outlines for the culture industry. The magazine also talks about the work for what it is, its plastic qualities, its dramaturgy, its technique. The cover of the newspaper has since appeared in all French video game stories as a sign of nobility and recognition of video games beyond gaming circles and the specialist press.

The journalist in the culture department, Olivier Séguret, was around thirty years old when he discovered what was then generally considered a medium for teenagers. A night full of magic Metroidon Nintendo NES, before getting with the first Playstation and completely succumbing to it Grave robbers. As he grabs the video game and installs it on the pages of Libe, he does it with the eye and methods of the film critic that he is. A break with the approach of the specialized press – especially that of the 90s – which looks at video games through the prism of consumer tests, evaluating the quality of graphics or sound while others evaluate the handling of a vehicle.

From the very beginning, the idea was not to separate video games from other registers of the sensitive, the beautiful, and the arts. While he recognizes his own qualities. The gesture establishes a tradition Release (and spread elsewhere, to Inrocks (for example), where the question of the legitimacy of video games as art has never really arisen. At that time the editorial team was Libe She rarely, if ever, plays video games (slightly more so these days), but she trusts her journalists. To talk about video games in the ’90s is to address an established, popular practice whose sustainability proves that it is no longer just a flash in the pan, as we might have believed in the late ’70s: video games in the general press This means, first of all, reporting on movements in society and culture, on practices that are largely foreign to the newspaper’s readership, in a language that everyone can understand.

The case is all the more delicate because video games are by nature an art of hyper-commerciality, inextricably linked to the state of technology and the conditions of their production. Critical language must be combined with a necessary presentation of the state of the industry. Release This happens in Olivier Séguret’s weekly column “Moi, jeux” and in the podcast Hush, let’s play, where for 16 years weekly updates on industry news have mixed with a critical dimension practiced in the nature of the debate. The exhibition is a rare place of plurality, although the situation has hardly changed in around thirty years. Release As with the rest of the general press, although video games have found a permanent place in most newsrooms, they are not institutionalized to the point where there are multiple specialist journalists.

It’s this shared space that counts We play silenceparticularly open to journalists from other editorial teams Release will best reflect the explosion of the independent scene and the diversity of video games, torn between blockbusters with budgets of hundreds of millions of dollars and solo creations.

If the idea of ​​approaching video games in the same way as another artistic field persists, the discourse will continue to evolve. We have learned to be wary of, for example, a fun industry that hides great brutality. Gamers, during the Gamergate episode and the resulting waves of harassment against YouTubers. Companies that come under scrutiny particularly through behind-the-scenes investigations at Ubisoft or video game schools.

If there is a fight for video games, it is a general fight that must be waged to preserve critical spaces that have been undermined by the press crisis and the emergence of a discourse of streamers as influential as they are impressionable.