Halverson has left the building

Posted by Gary Hodges at 7:02 PM Apr 09, 2008

Issue 76 of Play Magazine marks the end of an era: Dave Halverson, a fixture in the games journalism biz for a little more than 15 years, is relinquishing his title of Editor in Chief. Though he’s quick to reassure:

I’m promoting myself to Publisher/Creative Director so I can pursue growing the Play, Geek, Girls of Gaming, and Play Japan brands; finally trying my hand at manga (yes, I have two in the works) and spend more time doing feature work in addition to my infamous “Dave game” reviews.

...yet reading his entire Letter from the Editor (entitled “Now you see me…”), the tone is distinctly swan song, with much reminiscing on his career and thanking everyone who’s been along for the ride.

If you follow game mags, Halverson should be a recognizable personality; yet given the nature of the mainstream gaming press it’s likely few or none of Play’s competitors will mention Halverson’s “passing”, regardless of how noteworthy. Fortunately, I’m not mainstream gaming press, so I’m not worried about violating mainstream gaming press decorum, or burning in mainstream gaming press hell.

I nearly met Dave a few years ago. When I say “nearly”, I mean: I saw him with a group of people at a bar/restaurant and ruined the rest of my meal brooding over whether I should go up and introduce myself.

I easily could have. It was a casual atmosphere, they were one lousy table over, and I could tell they were just bullshitting – no sensitive, confidential talk that would be interrupted. I even knew someone at his table, providing an easy excuse to walk up and say hi, then casually segue into an innocent “Oh my, you’re Dave Halverson! I didn’t even see you sitting there, a-ho-ho-ho!”

But I didn’t. I just sat there, intimidated, barely able to make conversation with my friends and opting instead to throw huge quantities of beer down my gullet in the pursuit of a good, mopey buzz. When I first noticed him, I wanted to walk over and say hello; by the end of dinner I was terrified my acquaintance in his party would drag him over to meet me.

I was starstruck, because in my little gaming geek world, Dave is a celebrity. So much of a celebrity, in fact, it overshadows the fact I’m really not even a fan.

* * *

I discovered Diehard Gamefan, Halverson’s first EIC gig, when I was in high school, and fell so completely in love with it I gladly braved Phoenix’s early 90s-era public transportation system – which was, long story short, fucking atrocious – to secure myself a copy each month. This involved sitting at bus stops in 110-degree heat, transferring three times to get to the single odd bookstore I knew carried the mag, and spending the 90 minute ride chatting with my fellow commuters: hobos, drunks who’d had their licenses revoked, and drug dealers. (As one with a backpack stuffed with pot and a knife explained: “There’s no chance you’re gonna get pulled over for a bad taillight on the bus!” I quietly shit my pants the rest of the ride.)

It was worth it. Not as contrived as Nintendo Power, not as mainstream as EGM, not as kiddie as Gamepro, Gamefan had something most mags today don’t: a distinct, clear voice. A recognizable perspective, a characteristic approach to the pastime. A personality.

Gamefan’s voice, obviously, was Dave’s – often in the most peculiar, schizophrenic of ways: of the magazine’s psuedonymmed reviewers, a full three were Halverson himself : “E. Storm”, “Skid”, and “Takahara”. Not only would all three personas sometimes weigh in on the same game, each alias would give his own score.

Yet even among the non-Mr. Snuffleupagus reviewers, there was rarely dissent; instead, heated debates over whether a game deserved a 91% or a 97% seemed far more common.

Thus one of the biggest complaints about Gamefan, Halverson’s self-described “infamous Dave game reviews”. Today, the community handwrings over the so-called “7 to 10 scale”; in Gamefan’s case, it was a 90%-100% scale. Games weren’t just praised, they were publicly fellated; written of breathlessly as if every piece of entertainment software in the history of mankind thus far was mere preamble to this singular gaming moment you Simply Must Experience.

(Halverson brings this same enthusiasm to his interview style at Play, where developers are slathered in so much of his effusive, over the top gushing I often find myself squirming on their behalf. Compare Dan Hsu’s infamous approach, where interviewees are interrogated as if they’d been caught rifling through his wife’s panty drawer at 3 in the morning.)

Then there was all the unseemliness. For one, Diehard Gamefan’s reviewers seemed devoted to cultivating throbbing gamer lust for obscure Japanese import titles above all others – titles that, coincidentally, could be purchased through Halverson’s mail-order venture, the Diehard Game Club. Sometimes the pitches were overt, practically demanding certain games be purchased on sheer principle (the principle typically being “send a message to publishers that there’s an audience for this game!”) – a call to arms that seemed out of touch to me, being that I made $5.10 an hour at Subway and couldn’t really afford to buy Virtual On for the Sega Saturn just because it gives Dave a geek woody.

Still, I bought every issue. I still have boxes of them in my closet, lovingly packed away with the other nostalgic knickknacks from my gaming biography. And every once in a while, I still pull them out and flip through them. I regularly disagreed with Halverson – just as I regularly disagree with him now when reading Play – but I still read his stuff, cover to cover.

Why? Because Gamefan was the first mag for enthusiasts, by enthusiasts – before I even knew what an enthusiast was, or that I was one in the making. It, like every mag Halverson headed up, read like a fanzine, its unrestrained passion for gaming mentoring me in what it meant to be a Gamer. And though some of the games it decided to shower affection on were odd, more often Gamefan was shouting from a soapbox about truly great games that were slipping through the cracks, games the other mags couldn’t be bothered with.

Take Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, a game largely ignored up to and even after its release, only since described as one of the greatest games of all time. While other mags were mostly ignoring it in favor of Mortal Kombat 4 or some such bullshit coverage, Gamefan was devoting pages and pages to a mere preview of SOTN. (Below are thumbs, also a good example of Dave’s style.) It was beyond enthusiasm: it was fetish, with frame-by-frame screenshots as if from a porno, kindling lust for a game that can not - will not - be resisted.

In short, Dave was nuts about games. But I was nuts about games. And though I often thought (and think) he was (and is) full of shit, I recognized we were of the same tribe. And I can always spare $5 for a fellow tribe member, especially the one who introduced me to the tribe in the first place.

It will be interesting to see what Play is like from here on out. It will be interesting to see if it takes on a new voice, if a new personality becomes the magazine’s pole star (if so, my vote goes to the great and greatly underutilized Heather Campbell).

In any case: take care, Dave. I never bought Virtual On and your interviews read like groupie sex, but I’ve hung on every word. And if I spot you again someday, I’ll be sure to actually man up, shake your hand and tell you that.