Exclusive Ram Raider Interview

In a time which celebrates fame, success, stupidity, convenience and noise, here is the perfect antidote, The Ram Raider, an anonymous blogger enraged by the vacuity of ‘new games journalism’ and the industry in general. The Ram Raider is ‘a gaming journalist looking from the inside out, wondering why all the joy has been replaced by bollocks'. His ‘quaint little rant site’ was set up in March 2005 as a means to vent his spleen ‘about the games industry, and all that is evil and ridiculous within it.’ Some will argue that all his adolescent anger and sweary angst is simply too easy, too shallow and too dull to warrant attention.

But they’d be wrong. Scratch the surface and you’ll find that beneath all the amusing profanity and creative harassment is a blog with relevance, humour and, yes, at times, the word ‘cunt’. The Ram Raider is a crusader, a man who likes nothing more than to puncture the inflated ego of pretentious journalism:

New Games Journalism is little more than an excuse for the writer to talk about themselves first, and let everything and everyone else be damned…if you write about yourself, you’ll alienate your readers and end up as one of the bunch of self-deluded pricks who waffle on about fuck-all in shite like Edge.

And that’s him being nice. God help those poor, feckless berks who really push his buttons. Because once the Ram gets Raiding, you’d better take cover...

Digital Gigolo: Before we begin is there anything you’d like to get off your chest? Anyone in particular who’s been making your blood itch?
RAM Raider: There’s not enough room on the net to list half of what makes my cock weep blood. The worst of it gets spurted across my Twitter feed.

Digital Gigolo: ‘Ram Raiding’ is defined by Wikipedia as ‘a variation on burglary in which a van, SUV, car, or other heavy vehicle is driven through the windows or doors of a closed shop, usually a department store or jewellers shop, to allow the perpetrators to loot it’. Your pseudonym suggests a ‘fuck you’ approach to who you criticise and damn the consequences. Is that a fair description?
RAM Raider: It’s a fair description of my style, as one of its objectives is to lay down some honest criticism without any blowback. But the real reason I chose that pseudonym is less interesting. It’s a slightly weak play on Random Access Memory (hence why I always capitalise the RAM part) which probably made perfect sense at the time I came up with it. Trouble is, I have little memory of that occasion.

Digital Gigolo: The cuddly world of Pokemon is a far cry from the acerbic rants of The Ram Raider. So why on earth have you chosen the protagonist of Pokemon Snap on the N64 as your avatar?
RAM Raider: Like the name, it wasn’t premeditated – I made a quick choice when the blog registration process asked for a picture. I have a soft spot for the sunshiney idealised world of Pokemon (less so for Nintendo flogging the shit out of it by re-releasing slight tweaks of the same game for over a decade rather than rewarding the faithful with something new), and the photographer lurking around in the turdy undergrowth seemed appropriate without being too recognisable a character. It’s worked out well, as people seem to associate that picture with me more so now than with Pokemon Snap.

Digital Gigolo: Pretentious journalism is clearly a bugbear. When did you first feel the rage surface? Can you pinpoint the article/magazine/journalist that finally caused you to snap and give birth to The Ram Raider?
RAM Raider: The blog was sired by a plethora of hateful events, such as getting severely bollocked for mentioning that I wasn’t impressed by a game that the mag I was on was paid to feature on its cover, but there’s one period in particular that sticks out in my memory. I’d been commissioned to write a massive preview for one of the major mags, and had been given something like a week to research and turn around about fifteen pages full of new releases. I had to source exclusive screenshots and quotes for each title I was covering (God forbid I should actually be sent to play any code) – considering it was one of those pissy supplements where you have to squeeze three or four games into a page, it was a fucking nightmare.

At least it would have been a mere fucking nightmare, rather than the raging shitstorm it turned into, had the PR scum I had to liaise with to get the assets from been able to do the unthinkable: their jobs. A few of them were great, and were more than happy to secure free positive coverage (thou shalt not speak ill of a game in a preview – it’s the law) for whatever they were hawking in a major mag with (then) excellent circulation figures in exchange for nothing more than a screenshot.

But this was obviously far too much of an ask for the majority of the screaming pricks who either ignored me, or lied directly to my fucking face about getting the assets to me. My editor really didn’t want to use screenshots from GamesPress, so a load of the pieces I wrote were spiked and I got paid about half of what I should have got. All because these anus faces couldn’t deviate from whatever fucking spreadsheet they’d been given that month, or what the fuck ever. Cunts.

Digital Gigolo: You seem to hold a particularly persistent grudge against Future Publishing who are routinely hectored and always on the receiving end of your nastier bouts of criticism. Edge, in particular, really takes a battering. Do you think Future is to blame for the decline in the quality of videogame journalism? You did, after all, award Nintendo Official Magazine (a Future Publication) the ‘Worst Magazine 2008’.
RAM Raider: Not all the blame’s on Future, but they take a pretty large portion of it. Things were better when Dennis were still in the industry and there was healthy competition in the shape of CVG v GamesMaster and PC Zone v PC Gamer, but now Future’s too much of a monopoly. The distribution of “exclusives” has become too artificial, and is there to principally serve advertisers. Readers are barely an afterthought now, which is probably why they’re all fucking off to the internet. There’s a lot more to it than that of course, such as issues of standards, but that’s for another day.

Digital Gigolo: Do you work for Future?
RAM Raider: They feature heavily on my CV.

Digital Gigolo: Are videogame magazines a dying format?
RAM Raider: The death of mags has been predicted for years now, but it’s still not happened. Nor is it happening as quickly as most people think. The truth is that, my personal gripes about the old boys’ network aside, mags do attract the best writers. The combination of their heritage and the way in which they’re put together means you’re far more likely to find a higher standard of writing when you open a mag than browsing around GameSpot and its ilk. Look at the journos with the most respect, and you’ll see that they mostly have a heavy mag background in common (a few notable exceptions aside, such as EG’s Tom Bramwell).

Add in the fact that you can’t beat a good shit with the latest issue of your favourite mag resting on your lap, and it’s hard to argue against them being around for a fair old while yet.

Digital Gigolo: Is the internet, as opposed to the traditional magazine, now the authority on videogames?
RAM Raider: In terms of pure information about the games, yes. Although the mags are still privy to the best exclusives and early hands-on previews because of their advertising clout, the fact that mags get scanned and info gets leaked by embargo-haters means the net has the upper hand.

Digital Gigolo: People you hate: Ngai Croal (writes for – shock! – Edge), Ben ‘Yahtzee’ Croshaw (Zero Puntuation), Dan Whitehead (Eurogamer). Who, if anyone, do you like? There must be at least one lonesome soul out there who inspires you?
RAM Raider: There’s a distinction between hating someone’s writing, and disliking them personally. Of the three you mentioned, I only actually hate Croal. He’ll never apologise to the Capcom Resi Evil devs for accusing them of using racist imagery, despite bringing the credibility of the games industry into disrepute and devaluing the cause against racism for his own self-love and promotion. He’s incredibly still flogging articles off the back of it to Edge right at this very moment. The sooner that cunt’s out of journalism, the better.

Whitehead went overboard with the bullshit in a review, so I took the piss out of him for it – I’ve got nothing against him personally. As for Croshaw, he sometimes gets a little ahead of himself.

As for who I like, there are a few out there. I’ve already mentioned Bramwell – he’s as solid as a rock and totally unpretentious. Jon Blyth injects so much humour into his work, which you don’t see much of these days thanks to over-paranoid editing (another reason I started the blog, incidentally). I still enjoy reading what Campbell has to say, for all his often misjudged bluster, and Gillen crafts some good stuff on those rare occasions when his flies are done up.

Digital Gigolo: Is The Ram Raider a single entity or a network of cynical and jaded journos? I only ask because you mention your ‘band of merry cohorts’ in one of your posts.
RAM Raider: The blog would sometimes include rants suggested by the few who knew my filthy secret, and Anonymous Knights would sometimes contribute to keep their identities hidden.

Digital Gigolo: Do you remain anonymous for fear of losing your job as a videogame journalist or to prove the point that your blog was created solely to air your genuine disgruntlement with the games industry and not just as a push for personal recognition?
RAM Raider: Anonymity serves both purposes. Many people accused me of starting the blog for self-promotion to begin with, but they were too feebleminded to realise how self-defeating that would be. By staying anonymous and never accepting advertising, I’ve been able to say exactly what I think without any outside influence. It means I can’t personally reap the glory from I’ve written as RR, but I’m truly not that fussed about that side of things.

Digital Gigolo: Has anyone correctly guessed your true identity?
RAM Raider: No comment…

Digital Gigolo: Apologies but it’s time for the obligatory ‘What is your favourite videogame mag/blog/ website/journalist?’ question.
RAM Raider: It always turns my stomach when I see interviewees sucking up to their interviewer for these kinds of question, so I’ll exclude NGamer and anything else you write for in this answer. It’s no secret that my favourite past mag is Amiga Power, and Arcade was fun for awhile. Keeping it current, I’ve got a soft spot for GamesTM. You could count the number of decent gaming sites out there on your bollocks, but I always read Patrick Garratt’s VG247. It throws in some occasionally frank opinion amongst the news, although I think Pat holds back a lot because of the advertising. As for journalists, I’ve already mentioned them: Blyth, Bramwell, Campbell and Gillen.

Digital Gigolo: When was the last time you were shocked by something?
RAM Raider: When I glanced in the mirror this morning. The games industry disgusts me more or less weekly, but I’m never shocked anymore.

Digital Gigolo: You have a facebook fan page, a twitter account and a blog that used to attract over a thousand hits per day? You clearly have an audience. So why did you retire your blog?
RAM Raider: It felt like the right time for several reasons, not least because I felt that it was demanding more of my time than I could afford to give it if the quality levels weren’t to start dribbling away down its own arse like so many mags I could mention. There’s also a limit to how much you can blow the whistle before you realise that most people would rather it didn’t pierce the delusory bubble they’re labouring inside. I don’t regret it, and I’ve kept an online presence for the hardcore. I love them dearly – fuck everyone else.

Digital Gigolo: On a scale of one to ten, how angry are you on a daily basis?
RAM Raider: On a good day, with breathing exercises I can bring it down to a nine. The day I stop being angry about the games industry being ejaculated over the dog’s back is the day I stop caring about it.

Digital Gigolo: What lightens your mood?
RAM Raider: Watching people I hate fail. (I’m joking, of course. Well, maybe half and half…)

Digital Gigolo: And finally, will you, once you retire, let your identity be known?
RAM Raider: I’m sure it’ll happen eventually, but not until I’m good and ready. And when nobody else gives a shit anymore.