Video Game review
Thanks for your Apr. 24 article on the Video Game Club at VCU. I liked how you kept it simple and stuck to what we were saying. A good article lets the story speak for itself, and the quotes from our members were the majority of the article (this is as opposed to the article in the Richmond Times Dispatch, which stuck in parts about “windowless rooms” and “trenchcoats”). I can’t really explain how much it means to get a report without all of the stereotypes. That you quoted Naomi, one of our few girls, was a good choice to get out there that games aren’t just for boys. Thanks for that.
However, there are some opportunities which were missed with the article and coverage. One is the front page picture. While being an very identifiable video game, the NES Mario 1/Duck Hunt is not what the VGC is focused on. We mainly lean toward competitive gaming, with fighting, strategy, sports, shooting and puzzle games being those genres. While a good cover, plenty of other pictures could have been used to better effect. Putting faces to the club would show that our club is very social, and/or using one of our games of focus as a cover would have attracted players of that game to pick up the paper.
Secondly, there is no contact information on joining the club in the article. We were pleased to have an article being done on our club to attract publicity, but any interest the article may have generated is soon lost when the reader has no contact information in order to join the club.
Last is the “Video Game Club Sponsors” box of grey next to the article. I’m really not sure what this box means. Perhaps this is an attempt to list the events the VGC has hosted, but the wording and the box makes one believe that sponsors is a noun (its usual application) and that those games are sponsors of the Video Game Club.
That would be incorrect. Listing that those were events we have hosted in the past along with the dates would have been beneficial. As it looks in the paper, it’s just confusing and means nothing. I’m the president of the club, and it confused me.
All in all, thanks for the article, I enjoyed our interview, and we hope we can receive more press in the future. We will be sponsoring two tournaments next year (one in the fall and one in the spring), and we will be looking for new members. Hope to hear from you soon.
Thanks,
Robin Palm
President,
Video Game Club of VCU