Before he left his post at Ziff-Davis’ gaming publications (namely Games for Windows Magazine followed by EGM/1Up) Shawn Elliott was one of the best journalists in the game industry. His works at GfW Magazine were always some of the most well-articulated and reasoned pieces to be found in the industry. Elliott’s “claim to fame” in the game industry, though, came through his appearances on the GFW Radio podcast where he, Jeff Green, Ryan Scott, Darren Gladstone, Sean Malloy, Robert Ashley, and more held some of the most entertaining and intelligent weekly gaming discussions in the industry.

Now that Shawn Elliott has been out of the gaming press for a while (working as an Associate Producer at 2k Boston) deemed it fit to release some details of a potential game review symposium that was being discussed prior to his departure. Elliott provides topics such as review scores, the handling of casual, indie, and user-generated (?) games, reviewing ethics, and, one of the most interesting topics in my mind (as indicated by my last piece), reviews versus criticism.

Elliott’s entry seems to lament the unrealized potential in the project in its aborted state but, now, it seems like the project is underway. The list of participants includes people like N’Gai Croal, Tom Chick, Dan Hsu, Leigh Alexander, and Robert Ashley, all of which are superb writers who seem, to me, to represent the kind of evolution in game reviewing that I’d like to see be expanded upon. The symposium is a project that I’ll be closely monitoring both to see the participants’ opinions on all of the topics but also, more interestingly, to see the internet reaction to their discussions. Reactions like this one.