The proximate cause for this rant is one of the few sessions I attended at GDC, run by N'gai Croal, about game journalism. I won't discuss the session (which was moderately interesting), but instead the conflation by the panelists, from sources as diverse as Kotaku, 1 Up, Game Informer, and MTV of "reviews" and "criticism."
Surely these are people who should know better.
There's virtually nothing we can point to today as "game criticism." And we badly need it.
During the panel, the participants mentioned both Pauline Kael and John Simon, historically important critics of film; neither seemed to understand that neither were reviewers, let alone journalists.
A review is a buyer's guide. It exists to tell you about some new product that you can buy, and whether you should or should not buy it. A good review goes beyond that, and suggests who should buy it, since not everyone enjoys everything. (E.g., A romance novel may be very fine of its kind, but is quite unlikely to appeal to me, since it is not a genre I enjoy.)
Thus, Ebert is, ultimately, a reviewer; the net result of his discussion of a work is a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Mind you, he is also an informed and intelligent watcher of film, and his discussion of a movie frequently veers in the direction of criticism; but he is not being paid to write critical works. Pauline Kael was.
Criticism is an informed discussion, by an intelligent and knowledgeable observer of a medium, of the merits and importance (or lack thereof) of a particular work. Criticism isn't intended to help the reader decide whether or not to plunk down money on something; some readers' purchase decisions may be influenced, but guiding their decisions is not the purpose of the critical work. Criticism is, in a sense merely "writing about" -- about art, about dance, about theater, about writing, about a game--about any particular work of art. How a critical piece addresses a work, and what approach it takes, may vary widely from critic to critic, and from work to work. There are, in fact, many valid critical approaches to a work, and at any given time, a critique may adopt only one, or several of them.
Some valid critical approaches? Where does this work fall, in terms of the historical evolution of its medium. How does this work fit into the creator's previous ouevres, and what does it say about his or her continuing evolution as an artist. What novel techniques does this work introduce, or how does it use previously known techniques to create a novel and impactful effect. How does it compare to other works with similar ambitions or themes. What was the creator attempting to do, and how well or poorly did he achieve his ambitions. What emotions or thoughts does it induce in those exposed to the work, and is the net effect enlightening or incoherent. What is the political subtext of the work, and what does it say about gender relationships/current political issues/the nature-nurture debate, or about any other particular intellectual question (whether that question is a particular hobby-horse of the reviewer, or inherently raised by the work in question).
If I'm not clear on this, the set of questions in the previous paragraph are not intended to be an exhaustive list of all possible questions that criticism can address; criticism can, in fact, address any set of questions of interest to the writer (and ideally, to the reader) that are centered on a particular work of art.
The most important word in the last sentence is "art." Criticism is about art. Reviews are not about art; you can review anything. You can compare brands of butter, you can review detergent, you can review the hand-jobs given you by different whores. Reviews are simply about whether something is worth the money, nothing more and nothing less.
And you can, in fact, write criticism on these self-same subjects, as strange as that may seem. Criticism on the subject of butter might go into the techniques used in butter-making, and the effects produced thereby, and the passion brought to their craft by particular small-batch artisanal butter makers. Criticism about hand-jobs might begin with interviews of the whores involved, and their motivations, and to what degree they enjoy giving pleasure and to what degree they simply want their clients to come so they can move to the next one, and the effects of specific finger placements at different times in the process. Criticism about detergent -- well, you've got me on that one, but I'm sure a writer that was passionate about the subject would find something more to say than "Brand X is better than Brand Y, for the price."
The point is that a critic has to take his subject seriously, as an example of art, or at least of craft; and take seriously as well the intentionality of the creator, and the importance to those who experience the results of the results, and the impact on how they think and feel. Reviews don't go there; they give you three stars. Good or bad, that's all that reviews are concerned about.
Criticism understands that "good" and "bad" are just the surface. What's more important is why, and how, and to what end.
Have I made it clear now? Reviews are the inevitable epiphenomenon of our consumer society, writing to help consumers navigate the innumerable options available to them. They can be well or poorly done, but they are nothing more than ephemera. I'm sure the newspapers of early 19th century America ran reviews of the novels of James Fenimore Cooper; they are utterly forgotten, and should be, because by nature they were of interest only to the readers of the newspapers of the time. Contrariwise, Mark Twain's Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses is still considered an examplar of literary criticism.
(To divert by the way, it is an utterly unfair critique, and ignores Cooper's manifold literary virtues; one may point out that in Samuel Clemens's era, Cooper was widely considered America's greatest novelist to date, a position Mark Twain later supplanted. The essay can also be read--as it rarely is--as a calculated, and highly effective, attack on a literary rival, and as such, should be treated with far less respect, and far more skepticism, than it normally is. There: In the space of a paragraph, I've written an effective critique of a work of criticism.)
Similarly, there would be no point today in writing a review of Ultima IV, since it is long out of print. A useful work of criticism, however, is entirely conceivable: discussing, perhaps, its role as one of the first games to consider the moral implications of a player's acts, and to use tactical combat as a minigame within the context of a larger, more strategic title. Such an article, well-written, ideally with an understanding of the influence of tabletop roleplaying on the development of the early western CRPG, and of the place of this title in the overall shape of Richard Garriot's ouevre would be of interest to readers today, even if they'd be hard put to find a way to buy the damn game. And it might find a place in anthologies and studies of the 20th century origins of the popular medium of the game, going forward into the indefinite future.
The truth is that, for the most part, we don't have anything like game criticism, and we need it -- to inform gamers, to hold developers to task, and to inform our broader cultural understanding of games and their importance and impact on our culture.
We need our own Pauline Kaels and John Simons -- and we need to ensure that when they appear, no one insists that they attach a damn numerical score to their writing, because that is wholly irrelevant to the undertaking of writing seriously about games.
And even in a more proximate matter, we need those drudges called reviewers, despite the meager pay they receive, to think more seriously about critical issues, too. Why should a review of an RTS which doesn't understand the historical evolution of that genre and the place a particular work holds in the spectrum of previously published RTS be considered of the slightest interest?
Now here at Play This Thing!, we do not view ourselves as "game critics," at least in the high sense I've ascribed to the notion here. Our remit for writers is simply "find a game you like, and write something interesting about it." At the same time, we also don't view ourselves as reviewers; we're here to point to games we think are interesting, not to tell you what's good and what's not. And yet that very approach frees us from the jejune constraints of "reviewers;" we need to tell you that something is interesting, and why, not give it a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. As a result, our writers do, I think, get closer to real criticism than the writers on most sites -- each in our own individual way. Thus I tend to take a pedantic approach, with references to the history of the form and the place of works in that evolution; the99th tends to talk about theoretical design ideas and indulge in hip-intellectual verbal pyrotechnics; and EmilyShort tends to talk very much about design intentionality.
Even if we do not, in general, produce true criticism--which is almost always in essay form--we are still viewing the works under question from an inherently critical stance.
Would that anyfuckingone else in gaming did so. And would that other publications thought it important, or even interesting, to foster the critical analysis of games, rather than yet another scored review.
And that, I think, brings us to our close; but I cannot stop myself from pointing out a few things, which are inherent but may not be immediately obvious.
This post is an essay. It is an essay in the form of a criticism; the critique is that of the failure of our writers about games to take a critical and analytical view of the works they write about, and of their failure to make a clear distinction between "review" and "criticism," which are, in fact, very different beasts. It is, if you will, a critique of game criticism.
And a thought in conclusion: Would either Pauline Kael or John Simon have ever allowed their criticism to suffer the indignity of having a numerical score attached?
And would their work have been improved if they had?
That's all very nice, but...
First, I think it's unfair (to say the least) to disparage Roger Ebert for writing reviews instead of criticism. He's perfectly capable of writing criticism, and he's perfectly capable of injecting the kind of critical perspective that you're talking about into his reviews. He writes to fill a newshole of a specific size, and he writes about specific movies, but his review of (say) Werckmeister Harmonies is not any less insightful or useful than J. Hoberman's.
But more to the point: You need to recognize that Pauline Kael did not burst onto the scene in the world of 1970s film criticism because some clever boots thought to issue a manifesto and rouse a slumbering world unaware of the possibilities of the medium. She was a person in the grip of a deep passion about movies, and a gifted mind and a talented writer, and she had the great good fortune to cross paths with a national magazine whose editor was intensely interested in publishing evocative and innovative writing irrespective of its length.
No such venues even for film criticism exist today. That's the first thing you need to deal with.
The second thing you need to deal with is much bigger, though. There's a reason that even the greatest games don't exert the kind of fascination that even minor movies do. They exert a fascination, but it is different in both degree and in kind, and that difference is at the heart of this question.
I'm sure you've read Clifford Geertz's "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight." There you will find as elaborate a critique of games and play as you could ever hope to ask for. And it's quite obvious from what Geertz describes that the game itself is not important. Here is a game that is the linchpin of an entire society, and it couldn't be less sophisticated: at heart it's just animals goaded into killing one another. What makes it important isn't the game; what's important is how the provides a structured context for social engagement. The social engagement, not the game, is where all the meaning comes from.
In Sally Mann's collection "Immediate Family" there is a nearly perfect photograph of a game. Her three children are on a porch in summertime. There's a big two-liter bottle of Coke on the table. The three of them are playing Sorry! One sister has taken a card out of her hand, and she is caught ostentatiously laying it down on the board in front of the other. You can see in this photograph exactly what the arguments between these two little girls will look like when they're middle-aged women.
This moment could not exist, at least in that form, without the game. And yet there is nothing, nothing at all, about Sorry! that is worth writing about.
We are living in the midst of a fantastic burst of creativity and sophistication in the world of games. If you went back in time to, say, 2000, and tried to convince people that one day hundreds of thousands of eager buyers would be lining up the week before Christmas to spend $180 for a game that could only be played if you had at least two people willing to sit down behind the fake guitar and fake drum kit that came with it, they'd say you were crazy. But who among those hundreds of thousands of people will, or should, care about Rock Band's antecedents in Parappa the Rapper?
Is that knowledge important? I think it is. It's important the way that Gulliver's Travels is a lot funnier if you know who Jonathan Swift was fighting with when he wrote it, which is to say: to a very narrowly specialized audience.
I love games. I'm like the guy in the old joke who goes to see a psychiatrist because he likes pancakes. "That's ridiculous," says the psychiatrist. "There's nothing wrong with liking pancakes. In fact, I like pancakes myself." "Really?" says the guy. "You should come to my house, I have trunkfuls!"
But I think games suffer if we try to burden them with expectations that they cannot carry. It's like the science-fiction-IS-TOO-real-literature affliction: arguing that Lewis Padgett is the equal of Flannery O'Connor obscures the very real joys of golden-age SF by shoving them into a suit that isn't cut for them.
Video Game Scholarship
When you say
for the most part, we don't have anything like game criticism, and we need it -- to inform gamers, to hold developers to task, and to inform our broader cultural understanding of games and their importance and impact on our culture.
I can't help but think that a whole body of writing already exists and that body takes seriously questions of themes and implementation of video games. The issue is that most gamer and developers don't care.
One place such scholarship can be found is Game Studies which even has an article about Ultima IV concerning some of the issues you raise.
The reality is that like television, film, music, and any other area of artistic and commercial endeavor, most people don't want to think a whole lot about it. That is what scholars do and if you're interested in that material, you might take a look at what scholars have to say about it.
The True Nature of Criticism
The author of this piece is so close, but doesn't quite hit it. The real purpose of criticism is to define how a particular piece fits into the popular culture, how it compares to other pieces of a similar type, whether it adds or detracts to our overall cultural experience, and what it might mean for the future of the form, regardless of whether it's a book, music, painting, game, or what have you. The best critics are those who have a strong enough grasp of the culture to make these kinds of distinctions, and to point them out intelligently and coherently. And, in fact, the author is wrong on one major point, because reviews ARE criticism. The terms are interchangeable--reviewers of books in major newspapers, for example, are critics, at least if they know what they are doing.
I think the real difference lies between professional criticism and customer comments, or at least customer-oriented comments. This is the fundamental difference between, say, a review of a book in the New York Times, and a comment about the same book on its Amazon.com page by a reader. It's true that rating something four out of five stars is not a critique, it's a comment. Self-published authors, to take one example, often make the mistake of referring to customer comments as reviews. They are anything but.
I applaud the notion of criticizing games as if they were an important part of our culture, because they are. But in order for this to happen, we will need to have a body of individuals who are well versed not just in gaming, but in our modern culture overall--and I don't just mean Britney Spears. Do such people exist? I don't know. I hope so, but the fact that this author in particular doesn't really seem to have a true grasp of the nature of criticism suggests not.
a demand for a small market
I have my doubts just how popular game criticism would become, but judging by the ever increasing college offerings in game design, I think you're on to something. Publish or perish, you know. I, personally, would like to read some examples of game criticism. Games are growing tremendously at least as diversions, but their interactivity makes them (qualitatively?) different from more traditional art. How do we handle this? The roles between creator and viewer/participant blur. This seems to imply a similar blurring in the roles of critic and participant. I hope more participants on this blog investigate this issue.
Roger Ebert as critic
Roger Ebert is probably capable of playing reviewer or critic. But he cheapened himself and widened his name as just a critic with his TV show, which is reviews, not criticism. I paraphrase Pauline Kale in saying that I give it a thumbs up because I liked the acting is not criticism. Reading and studying criticism is an active pursuit; watching television is a passive pursuit; watching television on PBS is a passive pursuit that makes you feel good about yourself.
It's already being done...
As other users have pointed out, places like Game Studies have been established and growing for years. Added to that are hundreds (if not thousands by now) of scholarly critical articles scattered across dozens of locations on the Web and in various academic journals. This has been going on since at least 2001.
Books, too. Good ones.
If you want something that's generally less based in academic/theory-based writing, but that still takes strong critical approaches to games and gamine, try The Escapist. Also in this vein is Leigh Alexander's blog.
I'm frankly surprised that you would have missed this work - it's nothing new.
The purpose of criticism
Jonsey515 writes:
The real purpose of criticism is to define how a particular piece fits into the popular culture, how it compares to other pieces of a similar type, whether it adds or detracts to our overall cultural experience, and what it might mean for the future of the form, regardless of whether it's a book, music, painting, game, or what have you
Those are all useful kinds of criticism, but don't forget representations of race, gender, and class; psychological crit (often but not necessarily centered around Freud); economic determinism (often but not necessarily centered around Marx), and close reading (such as Don Knuth's detailed analysis of the Crowther/Woods version of Adventure http://www.literateprogramming.com/adventure.pdf, or Jeremy Douglass's excellent analysis of Shadow of the Colossus -- among several other games http://jeremydouglass.com/dissertation.html).
Whether a work is successful is certainly worth discussing. Even Play This Thing is presented on the assumption that a game discussed on this forum is worth playing -- see the apologetic footnote Costikyan added to his negative review of the "serious game" ICED. But it's perfectly appropriate to recommend a work (or to say "play this thing") in order to discuss its flaws.
James Portnow has a good essay on the differences between playing for fun and playing to learn, which emphasizes the advanced mental processes that lead to writing critical essays rather than the quick checklist that a reviewer needs to cover. http://gamecareerguide.com/features/473/playing_to_.php
John Hopson, writing for Gamasutra, argues that the games industry only values a narrow kind of academic research:
By the way, if the research doesn’t include specific practical recommendations or a measurable impact on the final product, don’t bother trying to sell it to the industry. From the average industry professional’s perspective, there are only two things of value being said in a research presentation: the recommendations and their predicted effects. Everything else, the background research, the brilliant theoretical breakthrough, the clever development of the ideas, falls on industry ears like the “wah wah” noises made by Charlie Brown’s teacher.
Hopson's formulation of what counts as worthwhile research is depressing in its candor, but it does explain the mercenary mindset of a busy professional who does not share the academic's joy in knowledge for the sake of knowlege. (There are, of course, scholars who study the therapeutic effects of personal writing, or the psychological impact of various texts and genres. And my own school offers an excellent MA program in writing popular fiction, which is in fact geared towards the needs of students who want to write their own historical romances, fantasy trilogies, sci-fi epics, etc.)
Hopson also criticizes scholars who choose to write about older games, or games that aren't top sellers -- without, perhaps, realizing that it generally takes months to write an academic article (since most of us also have plenty of teaching to do, and we often have to wait until the summer break to do our serious writing), and then the peer-review process also takes time.
Thank you, Greg, for bringing up this issue in this forum.
well
The most of the essays on gamestudies are not critiques of games as works of art. They are trying to create a legitimate academic field covering all the aspects of gaming with a multidisciplinary approach.
The criticism that Greg is talking about can be done and has been done for a while in Italy. Videoludica and Ludologica are two series of monographes that analyze certain works in terms of historical value in game history, political implications, relationship with other media and so on:
http://www.videoludica.com/catalogue.php?pag=3&lang=en
Saw the need, chose Art Historical analysis
I am currently completing my Masters of Arts degree in Art History. My emphasis is New Media and my master's thesis is first person shooter game development in the late 1980's and early 1990's, mostly from primary research. My professors aren't even sure it is art history, but I was lucky enough to fine an Art history professor to take the leap, with a Time Arts professor and an Art Education professor with an emphasis in Visual Culture to be my graduate committee. Game analysis is "terra incognita", but needs to be done. Wish me luck, I'll be finished with my thesis in a year.
I call WTF here. I read
I call WTF here. I read plenty of game criticism.
There's academic analysis: ( http://nickm.com/twisty/ ) There's discussion of game mechanisms and how they evolve or don't through a genre: ( http://tleaves.com/category/games/ ) There the Zero Punctuation guy, who gets airplay because of his razor precision pinning games in the context of what you've played and why. It's not because of the dick jokes. Okay, not *just* because of the dick jokes.
I've been writing analysis of graphical adventure games for more than ten years. I don't think I'm *totally* missing the point. (Self-pimp links: http://eblong.com/zarf/gamerev/ http://gameshelf.jmac.org )
If you had started out saying "Game criticism needs to overtake game reviewing in the mainstream media," I'd be right with you. But "There's virtually nothing we can point to today as 'game criticism'" ? Wrong decade, dude.
Andrew Plotkin -- http://eblong.com/zarf/home.html
Here is anyfuckingone else
You really can't get any closer to "the role of games in society at a particular point in time" than this: http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/36460
We have criticism. The
We have criticism. The problem is that most of it is bullshit tangents that no one could possibly find relevant, largely due to the critic somehow lacking the wonderful cognitive check that allows the rest of us to internally query: "Who fuckin' cares?". This usually stems from them not knowing what the hell they're talking about in the first place. "Aesthetics and Technique in Interactive Fiction and New Media"? Blow me.
Anything not in that category is probably stuck on some cookie-cutter blog that's impossible to navigate and/or is prone to wasting 50% of the screen with empty space that should've gone toward making the content more readable.
It's there. It's just that it's either a tedious wankfest for the author or is impossible to find on its own. Pretty much like indie games.
It's like Casual/Hardcore... a spectrum.
"you can review the hand-jobs given you by different whores."
Had to clap for that.
I think some of the mentions of game criticism, like that Gamer's With Jobs essay on Guitar Hero in Best Buy, are more so than what we do, but I'm trying to find the balance between honestly laying down what a game is doing and what it means and not being a pretentious flake. I actually try to thread some criticism into the last paragraph of my Jay Is Games reviews as well, which are certainly reviews (and I've been called out for trying to make them anything other.)
It's a spectrum, like some games are Peggle and some games are Dwarf Fortress or Passage, trying to find a nice perch somewhere between those poles of Review and Critique.
But yes, we absolutely have to raise the bar. It affects our overall medium. A higher cultural cache for games increases the odds of investment going to more interesting games, which in turn raises the cultural cache. Criticism is the torque factor for disseminating the more interesting work to the public.
Damn it, rbr
...you said everything I was going to.
PS - Pancakes!
It is worth looking at the
It is worth looking at the scholarship here, I agree, but there's also room for a range of other kinds of critical writing. Criticism of craft can be quite interesting and is usually better written by practitioners than by outside observers, I find; it's fairly common in the IF community. (I go on about this a bit longer here.) And there's also room, I think, for general essays about game ideology, but not couched in academic language -- which some people, for good or ill, find inherently off-putting.
Stop Marginalizing My Discourse!
The less academic writing the better, methinks. From what I've seen, it is employed largely for:
1) Padding out the size of papers.
2) Name-dropping and peer logrolling.
3) Pathetic wanna-be emulation of the technical writing present in mathematics and the physical sciences.
4) Camouflaging how little insight, originality or expressive ability the "scholar" actually has.
there's a double negative in
there's a double negative in the fourth paragraph. neither neither. don't write like such a ponce if you can't be bothered to learn some basic grammar...(in b4 learn to capitalize first word of every sentence)
There's so many fallacies in
There's so many fallacies in that essay I don't have the time to go over it all (for example, it's fallacy to say because reviews are often about things other than art, that they cannot also be "about art" at the same time. Some things aren't one-or-the-other in their nature.). You command the language well but your critical thinking skills are a major weakness. You should go into politics, haha.
Hey malgam....
Don't be such a fucking douchebag, ok?
In any case, costik, I think that game criticism is still developing. It's happening - whoever mentioned Leigh Alexander's Blog and the Escapist is absolutely right, both are fantastic sites - but it's still emerging as a viable way to write about games. But it has been done.
The Escapist is good. Leigh Alexander is good. GamaSutra is doing some stuff like that; I am in-fucking-LOVE with their Game Design Essentials series. The GWJ Best Buy Bodhisattva article is magnificent. Johnathan Blow has put together some fantastic lectures on this sort of thing.
But what the fuck do I know, right? Maybe I'm completely wrong. Iunno.
I know what you're talking
I know what you're talking about, but despite common perceptions, that style is not everywhere in scholarly writing, and isn't especially prized, either. The very best scholars write clear and engaging stuff.
To put it another way: academics aren't masochists. We like to see ideas laid out in a way that makes sense. We get bored, like everyone else, reading through endless jargon. Every discipline (yes, even in the humanities) has its own precision terminology and its own customs about how evidence should be presented in support of an argument, but that *can* be done without putting the reader to sleep.
When you see a piece of scholarly writing that is tedious puffery, that's not a sign that the author has mastered academic language. It's a sign that he hasn't.
Water
I'd like to officially pour water on any and all potential flames.
We all agree:
1) Game criticism = Good
2) Too Much Academic Language = Bad
I'd like to add:
Since we can't settle on a game grammar that works, the same may be true of language. The Play This Thing contributors will be double-checking for usage errors in the future, and I'll be doing the triple-check.
The line between review and critique is not absolute.
You know...
Mal and Select... gratuitous ad hominem remarks neutralize whatever legitimate criticism you have towards Greg's piece.
You torpedo'd your own ships.
:)
Fair Enough, Emily
But I remember this kind of obfuscatory, pedantic, jargon-ridden slop as being SO common at my Uni that it was the default mode of academic writing.
You're right; it's not necessary and better writers will have none of it. But whence its near-ubiquity?
Let's agree to hope that Games Crit can avoid it.
since I don't think it's been mentioned
Another blog which explicitly aims for criticism (and gets there sometimes) is The New Gamer. I also seem to recall someone saying that Penny Arcade may be the most prominent example we have of game criticism today. Arguable, but worth noting.
If someone wants an example of game criticism from an academic journal that isn't overflowing with excess academic-ese, I've liked this 'review' of Wario Ware by Chaim Gingold. I think he calls it a review precisely because game culture isn't used to the concept of criticism yet, but there's no sense of "buy this / don't buy this" in his article. Also, Gingold is a practitioner, not strictly an academic.
There are probably many more examples there, I just haven't made time to keep up on them all.
The guys over at
The guys over at http://www.insertcredit.com have been writing high end game critiques for years now. Yes, we need more of it, but it really is unfair to claim that your site is the only one to offer this.
Videoludica books
Explo, the videoludica books look excellent. Any word on translations into English?
Are you serious?
Are you seriously going to argue that Tim Rogers (at insertcredit) counts as high end criticism?
I guess true observers of the videogame art drop the joke "What did the five penised man say to the underwear sales man? These fit like a glove!" then suggest that raping a girl who finds that funny would be a normal response.
I guess true critics go on and on about their vegan burritos.
I guess true critics live out of libraries and internet cafes prior to finding lodging in glorious Nippon.
Haunting the mainstream...
Glad to see so many linking to worthy critiques of games such as The Escapist. And for much of the piece I was thinking "what about the 'new games journalism'?" The almost in-game travelogues that Kieron Gillen etc. pioneered.
There are several issues with these more academic approaches to videogames though.
Firstly, many of them (nearly the entire "new games journalism" cannon and just about everything Gillen's ever written, for instance) are hopelessly pretentious or academic. Sixth form students used to gush about the wonder of Sylvia Plath, later The Cure, nowadays its Ico. We have yet, IMHO, to see truly great writing emerge on games - and particularly importantly - writing that's lively, informed and yet of mainstream appeal. And that last is the big killer.
Kael and for that matter Ebert are relatively mainstream media figures. Perhaps Croal, whose postings at Level Up/Newsweek are fairly literate and critical, is the game equivalent - or the best we've seen so far. But we're a long way away from having something appear in the New York Times that treats a videogame with the same seriousness it'd treat the new DeLillo or Scorcese movie.
I think that's down to three factors - two of which we can do little about.
1. The age of the media - most TV commissioning execs, newspaper editors etc. (ie those with some power to yay or nay items in the media world) are unlikely to play videogames. They're time-poor, and of an age where videogames are still viewed as "for kids". Wii is changing that perhaps, slowly. But still, it will simply be years before games are a natural part of culture for newspaper editors, for instance. Therefore, we shouldn't really expect the media to treat games as the same as film or books. Space is not given to games in the same manner, not often in the same supplements - games are, to these people, closer to butter, detergent or even handjobs than they are to ballet.
2. Culture itself has largely shifted away from producing and admiring "criticism". We live in an Amazon customer-rated world. Our media reflects that - long gone are the big reads in magazines, the worthy discussion programmes. Instead we have sidebars, boxouts, Fox News. There are few well-known critics on any media in any media. It feels fairly pointless to bemoan games place in this cultural whirl - and if anything, the bloggers, the Amazon reviewers, the fanboys honing their razor-sharp put-downs are a) perhaps the shape of criticism of the future and b) far more interested in videogames than they are in high arts, the great novel etc.
3. The one we can do something about. Without trying to kick off a whole separate debate, most games are fairly shallow. Now, some games have depth, and some games do merit deeper analysis. And some of those games that appear simple on the surface can be written about in all sorts of surprising and interesting ways. But caveats aside - most games are very simply what they are. They're not complex, emotionally deep or otherwise diverting beyond their very obvious charms - a shooter is a shooter, a racer is a racer, a puzzle game is a puzzle game. The reviewers job, then, is to relay how good a shooter it is, what is unique about the shooter, whether the shooter remains varied and interestingly shooter enough over its length etc. In that respect, games are like detergent - you want to know whether they work, not much more. Reviews are functional. But the same is true for films, TV, books etc. The difference is I'd argue that the proportion of books that bear deeper, more probing critical analysis is much higher than the tiny number of games that are worthy of pulling apart. Until we learn to tell interactive stories in a really rich, interesting manner; until not every game on the shelves has a number as the end of its title, I feel it's not just games journalists that need to raise their game, but games makers too.
Si M
BrainFromArous, it's fallacy
BrainFromArous, the irony is that by your loose definition of ad hominem, you actually ad-hominemed ME. ...attacking my debating skills as a way of dismissing an unrelated point I made. Basically, it's fallacy to suggest because one thing I said was ad hominem (even though it wasn't!) that something else I said must also be ad hominem ("submarine"ing my argument as you put it). And I'm sure it's convenient for you to dismiss my comment as ad hominem exaggeration but I assure you I meant it...not to support my previous statement but simply as a separate commentary on what the author's next steps for improvement should be...not normally an advice I'd give but this was a special case to say the least.
I actually didn't mind the "puffery" of the writing style save for a few spots where it got so poetic it was obtuse. It's certainly not that it persuades me into thinking the author knows what he/she is talking about, but I thought this particular author's use of the language was interesting, and considering it's context as an essay, that's acceptable.
Also, I must disclose that I skipped most of the last third of the essay when I realized the content was flimsy and not going to get any better. I could have read the rest in the time it took to write this but what would be the point?
No Sale, S7
You wrote to Greg...
"You command the language well but your critical thinking skills are a major weakness."
I content that this is ad hominem because we are in no position to judge Greg's critical thinking skills based on this post. We have no idea whether his mind is a steel trap or a howling chaos.
Argumentum ad hominem does not require name-calling; nor does it necessitate malice. It means shifting focus from the argument to the person making it. You started with an on-point rebuke and then got "personal" when you wrapped it up. Ad hominem. That occasioned the aforementioned torpedo comment.
I responded to what you and another person WROTE and the likely backfire effect of taking such an approach. I made no comment about you as a person, a "critical thinker" or any other way.
So... no irony, either.
Game Crit is here. Its a _canon_ that's missing
Ken Wark's "Gamer Theory" (aka g4m3r 7h30ry)is well worth a look.
http://www.futureofthebook.org/gamertheory/
also, Raph Koster's Theory of Fun is in there too.
http://www.theoryoffun.com/
So what if some of the crit comes from the world of game design rather than game play? Work is being done, its just that there's no real canon yet. Its still the wild west.
how about if I sweeten the deal??
Hey again! Long time, no argue. But anyway, check it out.
"we are in no position to judge Greg's critical thinking skills based on this post. We have no idea whether his mind is a steel trap or a howling chaos."
Whether I know enough about him to judge fairly may change whether or not I'm correct about his critical thinking abilities, but CERTAINLY not about whether I shifted focus from the argument to attack the character of the person as a way of supporting my original argument. You left out that end bit about "as a way of supporting my original argument" and it's important. I actually told you already ...ahem..."but I assure you I meant it. >>>Not to support<<< my previous statement but simply as a separate commentary on what the author's next steps for improvement should be." In essence, it's fallacy to suggest that because attacking character instead of issues specifically to support an argument is ad hominem, that attacking character instead of issues is ALWAYS ad hominem. Is it ad hominem when a mother tells a child (s)he is irresponsible? Character is certianly being attacked, but not for the purpose of evasively avoiding the (difficlut to argue) issue at hand while going for the easier character attack to convince whoever is present that she has won the argument. In this case, I was done making arguments and had switched the topic to his future self-improvement. I understand you're used to debating with people who attack character because their point is flimsy, but I don't roll that way.
Next...
You said a couple of truths that aren't really germane since I never said otherwise, but that's ok, I'll assume you wrote it only as general information.
"Argumentum ad hominem does not require..."blah blah
Also...
"You started with an on-point rebuke and then got personal when you wrapped it up. Ad hominem. That occasioned the aforementioned torpedo comment."
Could you not get through one whole post without forgetting that I pointed out to you it's fallacy to suggest that because one thing said is ad hominem that something else said must also be ad hominem. It's as true now as it was then. What else can I say? (Sorry if you're getting tired of the me-pointing-out fallacy theme. But maybe you're beginning to understand that when I said the article was riddled with fallacy that I wasn't just talking crap...I actually read through it, noting fallacy after fallacy, getting progressively perturbed.)
As for...
"responded to what you and another person WROTE and the likely backfire effect of taking such an approach. I made no comment about you as a person, a "critical thinker" or any other way."
Well, I did say "by your loose definition", and I said that puposefully. Did you wonder why? But anyway, no reason to get hung up on that. By the true definition of ad hominem, neither what I said or what you said is ad hominem in the contexts used. Fair enough.
I'd have come back to this post sooner but I didn't have anything but a bookmark to remind me. Anyway, your posts are intelligent enough that I can deconstruct them to understand where you're coming from, and I wouldn't bother if you were just spouting nonsense, for what it's worth. I haven't heard you deny the article was weak so I assume we agree on that much.
Why, My Dear Selection7...
Yes, we do agree on that much.
Also, your point is taken that used too broadly, "ad hominem" would preclude statements which are well inside on-point criticism. That is, "You are a moron" is quite distinct from "You aren't making a lick of sense."
I'd like to see Greg revisit this, actually. Frankly, though, I wonder if the protean and ephemeral nature of PC/video gaming precludes development of the kind of serious criticism available for literature, cinema, etc.
hehe, you've made me smile
But nevertheless, as an afterword, I admit I doubt the author actually lacks the faculties to handle logical fallacies. But I get more irked with disingenuous content than I do with "puffery". ...even more often with spoken word than writing...I would even go so far as to say it's responsible for a lot of today's problems, but that's another argument and not a simple one.
I suppose there's a bit of an implied "the author may be entirely competent, but if this is what he chooses as his end product, is it really a significant distinction". (Did I just make the Forrest Gump argument??)
My original post was more impolitely frank than I usually am, but that was my mood at the time. But you won't, for example, see me calling names on interet forums because I don't get satisfaction out of that. I don't mean the author any further ill will.
Well, then...
Let's just compare each other to Hitler and call it a day.
game criticism
thank you thank you thank you thank you! I have been wading through the shit for almost a year now, trying to find some writing of any fucking worth. I was begining to think i was crazy but you have just voiced one of my main concerns. I guess if you look hard enough you will eventually find what you are looking for.
There are a few other game critics/reviewers of some vague worth though; most notably Clive Thompson who writes for wired magazine and Yahtzee from escapistmagazine who can be ok sometimes. Also just yesterday i came across a site called gamecritics.com whos writers are arguably mor reviewers then critics, but atleast the reviews are decent.
I will send you guys some of my writings in the near future.