By Logan Crowell
The Internet has been extremely successful in making things seem bigger than they are. If you judge by the Internet, you’d probably think film criticism, amateur and otherwise, is a healthy and thriving hobby that a large portion of society partakes in. We know that’s not really true, with most of society paying to see movie sequels where the only thing new are the articles that have been taken out of the title. But the Internet is still full of highly-read film, TV, music and literary criticism. Much of that criticism is good criticism. Decades of slowly evolving art criticism have finally given birth to a world where a large number of people do engage in meaningful discussion, by reading or writing, on a daily basis.
It seems strange, then, that the most technological of all entertainment forms, video games, has almost no criticism to its name. There are thousands of sites devoted to writing about games and hundreds of thousands of people talking about games, but almost no one is doing so from anything resembling a critical perspective. There’s the occasional exception, but most game writing is either industry analysis or qualitative reviewing (usually amounting to some variation of “EA (Electronic Arts) is evil” and “I can’t move and shoot...FAIL”). Video game criticism, as a form, just doesn’t exist.
Do a quick Google of “video game criticism” and the evidence is compelling. The first page results show one site devoted to the type of game “criticism” which spends its time praising the realism of alligators in Resident Evil 5, and nine sites lamenting the lack of quality in video game criticism. The first result, one of the lamentations, is Chuck Klosterman’s essential Esquire piece, “The Lester Bangs of Video Games,” where he concludes “there is a void, but there is still time to fill it. Somebody needs to become the first significant Xbox critic, stat.” It was written three years ago. We’re still talking about the alligators.
Now, to be fair, there absolutely are exceptions. Articles can be found that delve deeper, usually analyzing the game creation process or phenomena like sexism in gaming (Kotaku is especially good for these pieces). Video game reviews are also really good. They’re by far the most useful of all the functional media reviews. If you want to know what exactly a game contains and what does and does not work, you can’t do better than video game reviews. They’re a shopper’s best friend.
They’re useless, though, if we’re interested in something more, something deep and meaningful. A functional review is fantastic before I go to the store but largely useless after I’ve played the game. Unless I’m looking to disagree with someone or have my own feelings reinforced, reviews are best had as an appetizer. Good luck finding that post-game dessert.
But why do we even need game criticism? Because criticism enriches art. There’s something rewarding about watching a film, reading a piece of criticism, re-watching and the film and feeling like you get it. Likewise, there’s an immense pleasure in being a critic and unlocking a complex piece of art. Criticism is an empowering form. Which brings us to the main question: If criticism is so great, why is there no great game criticism?
This is initially a hard question to answer, largely because there’s no one place to lay blame. The blame lays everywhere, from the community to the industry to games as a medium. Game criticism doesn’t flow as naturally from film criticism as film criticism did from literary criticism. There’s a hurdle to overcome, because our interactions with a game are not the same as our interactions with film or music. The malleability of a gaming narrative makes it difficult to analyze in a traditional way. This requires extra effort. Criticism has to be forced out; there will be no Caesarean sections for game criticism.
This is where we encounter our first problem: the gaming community. In order for there to be game criticism, there has to be someone willing to work on it. That requires the gaming community to show an active interest in criticism as it develops. That interest is sorely lacking. Why? The easy answer is audience. The average gamer is a male between twenty and forty and he plays Grand Theft Auto and Halo. This is a stereotype, but even with female friendly consoles like the Wii, the majority of active gaming is being done by the male demographic. These are the kids who grew up with Super Mario. I’m one of them.
The Halo set, if we dare call them that, aren’t exactly prime targets for analysis. They’re largely equivalent to the mythic “average moviegoer” or that juicy TV “demo.” If they don’t want to read criticism, then it’s hardly surprising that hardly anyone wants to write it. Even the most selfless critics want some kind of audience.
But, this is the easy way out. Blockbusters can be discussed in meaningful ways. Blade Runner, initially a failure but now seen by millions, has a thriving fan community that tears the film apart and finds incredible secrets hidden inside. Academic works have been written about these fans. And yet, gaming fans seem different. A quick browse through a gaming message board or the comments section of a gaming blog, will show a strange preoccupation with brand loyalty and a tendency towards the type of qualitative arguments that reviews rely on. Discussions on the level of the meaning of humanity, a Blade Runner staple, rarely show up.
This disparity seems to have two causes. First, the gaming community is disadvantaged. Film fans have a massive body of criticism to model themselves after. When the internet came along, film criticism was already fully developed. Gaming criticism is a blank slate. It seems disingenuous to disparage “lolomfgisuck” or “xxXX_Insanities_Birth_XXxx” for not creating a new form of criticism. Second, the interest of fans is largely reliant on the games being produced. We can’t blame fans for a lack of serious analysis if the industry itself isn’t taking itself seriously as art.
(“Are games art?” is an entire discussion, or more, in and of itself. In lieu of that discussion, I’m just going to dismiss the debate outright. I’m not a fan of low or high art distinctions, and I’m also extremely leery when engaging in any type of “art” and “not-art” classifications. If games can provide an experience that is meaningful, either as entertainment or something deeper, I’m willing to engage them as art. I also suspect that after a decade or so of serious game criticism, we might see this debate become a relic of a naïve earlier age.)
I want to be careful and not paint all game developers as financially motivated, as I doubt the ratio of financially- to artistically-motivated developers is not that different than in the film industry. Most people, whatever their primary motivation, want to make something good. They want their work to be remembered. But gaming is a much less individual-driven medium than even other collaborative art forms like film or television. The average cost of games, at least until the XBOX Live Arcade/Apple App Store era, was exorbitant. Most games were developed by large companies. They were, by and large, blockbusters. There are indie games, but their average consumption is far less than many indie films. There are no second-run consoles focusing largely on indie games. Games are funded by big companies, and by and large, big companies care about money.
This severely disadvantages a game critic. Not only is the auteur theory rendered almost useless, but the industry is the equivalent of a library full of only Steven Spielberg films. There are brilliant gems, many of them rich and meaningful, but the general intent is one of entertainment. For every Schindler’s List there is a Lost World, while Sansho the Bailiff is nowhere to be found. There is great potential to analyze Spielberg, but his films often work on a mostly surface level. The advantages of engaging Spielberg critical are not as profound as the advantages of engaging Mizoguchi critically. (I should add this isn’t a qualitative statement, both filmmakers are indispensible to the medium.)
Likewise, as much as I love Super Mario Bros., the game doesn’t instantly lend itself to criticism. There are interesting discussions there, but my replay time is enhanced very little by a study of feminist archetypes in the Nintendo classic. It’s an interesting topic, but the Koopas don’t care. Many games do attempt to contain a somewhat richer intent, but by and large, these games are concerned with play experience and not theme. The men and women of Bungie may aspire to create a commentary on humanity and war, but Halo’s success is measured by enjoyment per frag, not intellectual stimulation. This cause isn’t helped by foul-mouthed teenagers who render the multiplayer experience nearly unbearable.
The industry needs to mature past these tendencies for criticism, if it develops, to thrive. Developers need to step up their game. While this seems unlikely - the current model is a cash cow - there is some motivation. The biggest boon to the “violent games corrupt our children!” argument is the relative lack of purpose to game violence. The more seriously games are taken, especially if taken as art, the less the industry will have to defend itself. There will still be battles, as we see in the film industry every so often, but the argument for games would be stronger. Everyone would be better off if people saw Grand Theft Auto as a comment on violence in society and not a murder simulator.
Which brings us to the one hurdle of game criticism that we cannot actively change: the nature of gaming. Auteur theory is not the only critical tool that falls by the wayside once the secret gaming weapon, interactivity, is introduced. The minute you give control to the player you encounter a plethora of problems. Roger Ebert went so far as to say, rather naïvely I think, that “art seeks to lead you to an inevitable conclusion, not a smorgasbord of choices.”
The problem with interactivity for a critic is that it defies traditional criticism. Most of our critical tools are geared towards analyzing a given text. The text may be of any of a number of varieties, but the text is, usually, the text. We can touch it, watch it, read it and analyze it. It may not be easy, but by and large, it is consistent. The blue key will always be the blue key, whether we comprehend its meaning or not. Mario, however, won’t always grab the same mushroom or play all the same levels. Niko Bellic won’t always beat up prostitutes. The text is ever-changing. Somewhere, physicists are laughing; quantum mechanics have finally found their way to art. Nothing is anything anymore. Instead, everything might be something. Or nothing. Or both.
We can’t simply ignore interactivity, either. Looking at story, character and design while ignoring interactivity would be akin to analyzing a movie based solely on the script; the entire point of the medium would be lost. To make it worthwhile, we need to analyze what the game allows the player to reveal. Be it a revelation about a player’s own tendencies in a given environment or a deeper thematic connection through immersion, game criticism needs to address how the player plays.
When we do this, we begin to lose interest in the artist and begin gaining interest in the player. There is little use in asking “What is the artist saying?” and every use in asking “What has this game helped me to say?” That type of change defies most notions of criticism, which is why gaming demands new forms. Our old standbys aren’t good enough any more. Game criticism needs us to go one step further.
Is it any wonder, then, that game criticism has taken so long to develop? The community is stuck in a Catch-22 of supply and demand, while the industry is being given little motivation to challenge the minds of its audience. Add to that the need to develop new techniques just to begin work, and it’s somewhat surprising that there’s any game criticism at all, however feeble. It’s hard. It’s different. It’s demanding.
So, if we’re serious about game criticism, where do we begin? I think if we’re going to give it our best shot, we should start with the games that take themselves seriously, games that challenge the player. There is value in Mario and Halo, just as there is value in Star Wars and Indiana Jones, but if we want more Sansho the Bailiffs we need to engage and reward those who attempt to reach those heights. Games such as Jonathan Blow’s brilliant game-deconstruction-as-game platformer, Braid, deserve serious criticism. Games that offer something more when understood on deeper levels will prove criticism, however hard, worthwhile.
We also need to really take a good, hard look at what interactivity means to individual games. It rarely functions the same way. We need to examine the player’s role in a story, and we need to be willing to offer different analysis for different players. The more we engage the interactive aspects of a game, the greater our toolset will be. If we’re starting nearly from scratch, then we need to dive in. If interactivity is our bane, then the more quickly we turn it into our boon, the better. Interactivity is what makes games special, and it is almost certainly what will make game criticism special.
Ultimately, though, we need to begin. We need to stop asking why there isn’t game criticism and start writing some. Maybe it will fail to distinguish itself. Maybe few games are ready for serious critics. We still need to try. If we don’t, then someone, sometime down the road, is once again going to ask why there isn’t any real game criticism. Meanwhile, the rest of us will be off discussing how realistic the alligators are.
Next time: A deeper dissection of Braid and what it has to say about interactivity.
Logan Crowell has a degree in film from York University. He is a lifelong gamer who has written for both print and online media.
Friday, April 24, 2009
The Alligators Have Good Graphics, Vol. 1: Beginning Game Criticism, Vol. 1
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34 comments:
There are quite a few instances of game writing that look at games in a critical light beyond the usual graphics/sound/gameplay areas, but these sources aren't the mainstream sources.
One of my favorite sources for this is Rock Paper Shotgun (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/), a British site run in the spare time of four men. Most of the posts are of the news variety, but their "reviews" (usually under the "Wot I think" heading") try to dissect what games really are and the nature of play.
As for a good discussion of "games journalism" as a whole, look at Shawn Elliott's (now-possibly-defunct) blog, where he has the first two parts of a game journalism symposium up:
http://shawnelliott.blogspot.com/2008/12/symposium-part-one-review-scores.html
http://shawnelliott.blogspot.com/2009/02/symposium-part-two-review-policy.html
If you know where to look, video game criticism is alive and well.
Ben Abraham, Clive Thompson, Duncan Fyfe, Iroquois Pliskin, L.B. Jeffries, Leigh Alexander, Michael Abbott, Michael Clarkson, Mitch Krpata, Richard Terrell, Shawn Elliott.
Just off the top of my head, sorry for the many more I'm sure I missed
I love this post and the points it brings up.
And I think it's interesting to consider how different the blockbusters of the video game world are compared to the cinema blockbusters, especially in this and the last generation of videogaming.
Generally, the films that make the most money won't be the films that are critically hailed or remembered for all time. And quite honestly, aren't the best films either. (The Dark Knight is an exception, not the rule.)
However, the best/most critically acclaimed videogames tend to be the blockbusters and sell the most games; see Metal Gear Solid, Halo, Final Fantasy and so on and so forth.
I totally agree with you that there needs to be the same kind of depth involved in game criticism as there is in film criticism, because I believe that as much effort goes into the ideas, symbolism and developments in some videogames as is seen in film and it's definitely worthy of that kind of observation, I think.
Overall, a great article! Thanks for writing it!
Great to see this blog broadening their horizons. I'd recommend gamecritics.com for their decent dissection of games as something more than just interactive entertainment.
The real question about video game criticism is why hasn't it already evolved with the industry itself? Videogames have been around long enough to create all manner of gaming lexicons both broad and small (ask any first person shooter fan about a red barrel).
I'm a bit uneasy about starting your review off with Braid. It's complete separation of story and gameplay tell more about videogame's past than it's future.
I see your point in identifying the component of interaction as a major aspect not only for video games but for substantial critical responses as well. Games are, if nothing else, an offer of communication. Between creator and player, of course, but more so between creator and "society". And right now, this offers is not appreciated. Not by the established press in their feature pages, not by the majority of "critics", and not by the majority of players either. I agree with your implicit suggestion that (in the sense of a discourse) only the critic can be the one who first has to accept the offer. Press a key to start.
Nice piece. While I would certainly agree with A. Scagnelli + enandrews that there do exist a good batch of writers who are already beginning to try and do a lot of what you mention, I can't say that I'd disagree with a lot of the points that you've brought up. (Also, many thanks for sidestepping the dreaded "art" question. That sure is stale fish). I think all of the problems that you mention for the budding game critic are serious ones, and interactivity is certaily the key one. Personally, though, I would add in the problem of time, as I think that the long play nature of the medium is amongst the biggest barriers to the broad scope a good critic needs to do great work.
Still and all, this is a good start and I look forward to reading more of your work in the future.
I think one of the problems with developing a viable video game criticism is that there is no good vocabulary for thinking about video games as a medium. They're not really narrative, even if they have narrative elements, and they're not really examples of fine art (i.e., images, pictures), though they have elements of that, too.
Someone (I think in one of the "games-as-art" discussions on Ebert's site) compared video games to architecture, which is an interesting analogy: A cathedral is a work of art you can look at and admire, but to really understand it you have to go inside and walk around, have an interactive experience with it. Everyone will have a slightly different experience of an architectural piece, but a good critical analysis will take this into account.
So maybe we have to look at the "architecture" of a video game in starting a discussion about its aesthetic and artistic ambitions, successes, and failures. Playing Civilization is very different from playing Super Mario World, but there are reasons why this is so that get to the heart of what both games are about.
I also worry about a loss, which you alluded to, of "game history." It's easy to watch a silent movie or read an old book, but playing old video games is kind of difficult. I suppose you can track down many old games online, but this is probably only true for the "big" games: Mario, Pac-Man, etc. If I really wanted to review video game conventions from the 80s I'd have to track down and buy an NES and hope I can find some games on Ebay. (I suppose the Wii's online marketplace, where you can download old games, is a way to remedy this, but their selection is only a sliver of what has existed.) My memory of "Yoshi's Island" is just that, a memory. It's not extremely easy to return to that experience and re-evaluate it, but it is very easy to pick up Labyrinth and try to figure out what I liked about it as a kid, how it still works or doesn't, and what it's relationship is to other films of the 80s.
I'd also add to the list of genuine game critics the extremely popular Zero Punctuation and the oft-derided and rather unpopular Tim Rogers. The former needs little introduction, while the latter is a self-indulgent gadfly who gets enough people angry that he must be doing something right, even if a third of his output is borderline unreadable.
Great essay. Really lucid.
I think you miss a trick though, when you say,
"When we do this, we begin to lose interest in the artist and begin gaining interest in the player. There is little use in asking “What is the artist saying?” and every use in asking “What has this game helped me to say?” That type of change defies most notions of criticism"
I don’t think it does defy most notions of criticism. As far as I'm aware, the majority of criticism since Barthe's 'Death of the Author' takes authorial intent to be irrelevant, claiming instead that meaning comes only from the reader.
In this way, video games seem to me to be a kind of quintessential art form, prioritising the gamer’s experience over any other concern by their very nature.
I think this would be a really interesting way to approach gaming theory.
I'm worried that this post and its comments thread will become Ground Zero for Internet games-related dilettantism.
Here comes a little dudgeon:
As someone who spent two years in a Masters program doing critical studies of video/paper games, who's read rigorous and imaginative criticism of video games alone going back twenty years, and who thinks Braid is pretentious illiterate middle-school twattery paired with imaginative but simple gameplay, I feel obligated to point out that you've failed to mention or, apparently notice the active and growing community of people 'writing...from anything resembling a critical perspective.' I'm anything but an academic, but at least namecheck the shit: start with the gamestudies.org crew and spiral out from there, the joystick101 fellas, nick montfort, costikyan's serious writing, Zimmerman's huge Rules of Play anthologies for Christ's sake.
There are shorter ways to say 'I haven't done the reading' and restate the 101-level questions games scholars have been grappling with since we were in high school, Logan.
Here's the best place to start:
"Unit Operations: An approach to videogame criticism" by Ian Bogost
It's scholarly, grounded in diverse philosophy, and it provides a great framework for approaching game criticism.
I will be perhaps a little TOO defensive, since I commissioned this piece and agree with it almost in total. I tend to read about games a lot more than I play them, and this is what got me thinking about the notions I used to spur Logan to write this.
I would say it is useful to point out that there are probably three forms of criticism going on in any given medium. There's the hardcore academic stuff, the consumer-driven reviews and the middleground stuff that occupies a space between plot rehashing and intricate analysis. (To put this in terms of mass-market movie review books, you have David Thomsen's books as borderline academic books, Leonard Maltin's guides as the consumer-driven reviews and Ebert's Great Movies collections as the middleground between the two approaches. Not the best metaphor, but I hope it gives you an idea.) Games criticism has a lot of the first two, and a lot of it is very, very good, but there's very little in that middleground, which is where the stuff that could best engage with the gaming culture would exist.
The folks at gamestudies, for instance, write very dry academic stuff, which is interesting to a student of gaming, I imagine, but is not so interesting to someone who is maybe just trying to better articulate why Halo or Mario Bros. or whatever made him feel and think a certain way.
(At this point, I'll namecheck a favorite site of mine -- grandtextauto.org -- but this is only interesting if you're a.) into text-based games and b.) really interested in how text-based interfaces change the audience's relationship to narrative. This is interesting TO ME, but it is likely not going to interest your average video game fan.)
Klosterman is essentially right when he says games criticism doesn't have a Lester Bangs. It doesn't have a Pauline Kael or Roger Ebert either. Bangs, Kael and Ebert took criticism of their respective media out of the realm of the academic and hooked it up with the traditional review to create something more mass-market. Gaming doesn't have this sort of bridge effect. It's stuffed to the gills with people who can tell you to buy a certain game and why and, on the opposite end of the spectrum, people who can do deeply detailed and intricate dissections of things like play mechanics, game design (sweet Lord, gamasutra.com can go on all day long!) or interactive narrative, but it doesn't have very many successful writers who bridge the two worlds and little notion of a path on how to get there. I don't think the reason the idea that gaming criticism is essentially in a state of stillbirth keeps coming up is because people just aren't reading the right sites. Hell, I'm familiar with a good number of the writers mentioned thus far (and Googled the ones I wasn't familiar with) and, for the most part, their writing just isn't accessible enough unless you've already spent a great deal of time considering the issues involved therein in the first place.
That said, I have basically not played any of the major games of the last several years due to, well, leaving college and having no time, so I will mostly sit out the rest of this debate. Except to say that Braid is terrific.
(I fear this makes no sense. I need sleep.)
Well worth a look if you get the chance before your braid post.
http://www.critical-distance.com/2009/04/22/braid/
For some more critical thinking collections you can checkout Michael Clarkson's series which he's compiled for Bioshock, Prince of Persia and Fallout 3.
http://mwclarkson.blogspot.com/search/label/critical%20thinking%20compilation
Todd: in response to your looking for a middle ground between dry academic stuff and the more popular press work, it seems much of what you're looking for would be sort of what Girish Shambu talks about for film in his "narrative synthesis" piece recently. I think this would be a interesting target to aim for, myself...
http://www.girishshambu.com/blog/2009/04/narrative-synthesis.html
With the caveat that I’m not a gamer and have never thought to seek out video game criticism, this is a fascinating and educational read – both the post itself and the discussion thus far in the comments. A few thoughts ...
This was somewhat alluded to above, but I think it’s worth being explicit about the fact that the time and money obstacles of video games stand in the way of not only the critic but the consumer of criticism. In other words, I imagine it’s difficult to generate a passionate audience for video game criticism if most gamers wouldn’t have the time or money necessary to evaluate any unfamiliar “art” themselves. With a film, I can read 25 reviews telling me it’s horse shit and still decide it’s worth the $8 and two hours of my time to find out for myself. For that modest investment, I become part of the discussion. Without that, I’m on the outside looking in. (My apologies if someone make this observation above.)
Also, while I agree with the idea that the interactivity that is the hook of gaming needs to become part of the criticism, I wonder if that’s possible. The art-or-not debate or the fixed-vs-liquid ‘problem’ are irrelevant in a scenario in which I’m so consumed with doing that I can’t criticize anything beyond the task at hand. For example, in recent years I’ve played a few games of Guitar Hero, and when it’s my turn I see nothing but the notes I must play. To appreciate the full vision of the game -- the images around the task -- I need to watch someone else play. So that’s yet another obstacle: a critic is perhaps best served by watching someone else play the game in addition to playing him/herself. OK, just another hurdle, right? On the other hand, if the elements of the game around the task itself don't present themselves to the person playing the game, do they matter? Are they there?
As I said earlier, I’m out of my element in discussing this topic, so maybe I’m ignorant to obvious answers or counterarguments, but it's interesting to ponder.
Regardless, I enjoyed the thoughtful piece and subsequent discussion. Nice job.
Video game criticism? I'll in the basement, listening to jazz records. And trying to stop Theo from stealing my hoagies.
This is a great topic and I'm excited to see THND expanding here.
The Escapist magazine was founded to provide a smarter venue for talking about gaming and was an awesome publication for the first 2 years. They published in a beautiful magazine PDF format (http://pdf.textfiles.com/zines/ESCAPIST/) but abandoned this at the start of their 3rd year. They focused on gaming more than games but obviously specific games were a big part of that discussion.
I really recommend reading those back issues, as there is some excellent stuff. You'll want to avoid reinventing the wheel as well.
why is Tim Rogers so hated? his essay (or maybe I should say "love poem") about Metal Gear Solid 2 is one most beautiful pieces of writing about art I've ever had pleasure of reading. just wonderful.
Anon: Tim Rogers is hated because the distended length of his reviews oftentimes just isn't justified. Several of his year-end wrap-ups are basically novel length. Man needs an editor. It's also hard to get a read on whether he seriously means anything he says, and I've heard that sometimes he just makes up some of his anecdotes about meeting such-and-such game designer. Having said that, would anybody else writing about games say something like this?
We’ve said before that, once you learn scales and all the barre chord shapes, learning to play the guitar is like a high-rise office building with a light switch in each room and a broken elevator: take the stairs up, open a door, enter the room, turn on the lights, exit the room, close the door, go to the next door, repeat until you feel safe becoming famous. Light switches in an office building is a compelling concept if you’re a man, and alone, with a thousand and one nights to spare before the showdown; watching someone else turn on the light switches for more than five minutes is terrifying. Have you ever had a neighbor with a seven-year-old just starting out on the violin? It’s like that. Metal Gear Solid 4, in its overwrought conclusion, stumbles, drunken, from room to room, flicking some light switches ruthlessly, and blinking others on and off for ten minutes before flipping off the ceiling and slamming the door.
Eventually, the game turned us off to the concept of entertainment in general. Eventually, the game makes us start drinking.
Great article! Iam a gamer myself and generally I agree with all you say. But there is one big problem: most videogames are just not very profound, storywise, like it or not. The reason that most reviews only talk about technical aspects is quite simpel: there is not much more to talk about. There are no characters (let alone supporting characters or character development...) and no stories apart from situations to get you into the next adventure. The worlds one encounters in 90%-99% of the games are alike and are either childish (Iam not talking about mario here!) or juvenile: unimaginative, "dark" fantasy/sci-fi-worlds or urban settings where you have to be extremely violent to suceed. And please don't tell me about any GTA or, say, the "Scarface"-game being a "comment on violence" - that would be trying to read a game (where you always impersonate the and identify with the mass-murdering "hero") like a movie (where you are "outside" the action and can remain kind of "objevtive"). Most popular games, apart from sports or jump 'n run, are extremely cynical. Okay, that could be a basis for analysis - but not a very favorable one for games. I would love to see video games evolve into an art form that can be taken seriously - at the moment, the vast majority is far from it.
1. The gaming industry is very young. Remember, films took quite a long time before they were taken seriously.
2. I think the main thing that video games excel in is atmosphere. I could never see a movie or novel being as intense as Bioshock or Silent Hill. Even a movie set in New York doesn't give you the same feeling as driving around Liberty City in GTAIV. There's just something you get out of playing a story instead of watching it. But, it's hard to discuss atmosphere.
3. For every great film, there is still a ton of crappy romantic comedies and story-less action movies.
http://sexyvideogameland.blogspot.com/
http://www.gameset watch.com/column_the_aberrant_gamer/
http://www.gamespite.net/
http://www.brainygamer.com/
http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/levelup/
Try these to start with. We're not as sophisticated as other media can get, but we do have some thoughtful people doing good work.
Also, I know it's more known for Zero Punctuation these days, but http://www.escapistmagazine.com/ has some really good content. Especially some of their back issues; start reading around issue 10 and there's about 60 issues worth of the best game criticism on the planet.
First, thanks to everyone for your comments. Todd had warned me to expect few comments initially so I am more than thrilled to have so many people jumping in so quickly.
I’d also like to thank everyone for the recommendations you offered. Many of those sites I do read frequently. There were, however, some new ones as well.
One thing I would like to make clear is that my essay is not intended as an attack. Like Todd said, I am pondering a specific type of criticism. One thing I tried to do was make clear my admiration for game reviews and game journalists. I was sincere in my praise for functional reviews. I also think very highly of the industry coverage. I tried to emphasize this in my second paragraph but I see now my final sentence there was in error. My flippant parenthetical there didn’t help. What I intended was to be flippant towards the ensuing discussion, not the work being done by journalists.
One thing I did not address at all, something Wax picked up on, is theory. I don’t consider Rules of Play or Unit Operations to be criticism. I should have added theory into my second paragraph as there is a very healthy amount of game theory given the medium’s age. What I am interested in looking at in this essay, however, is the type of criticism I mentioned in my opening paragraph. I had hoped a brief picture of the type of film discussion we see would make it clear what I consider criticism, but I see it did not.
I would not take a thing away from theorists and I completely agree that a critic needs to be involved with theory to be successful. For the type of public discussion that a significant number can participate in, however, pure theory is not overly helpful. It needs to be disseminated which is one of strong criticism’s primary abilities. I’m really glad Christopher posted that link to Girish Shambu. It details exactly what I mean by criticism.
Now, there are obviously some very good critics out there saying some interesting things. But their approach tends to be overall. They write about games not a game. One of the things film criticism does so well is discuss films in the larger context. Game criticism tends to discuss the larger context and throw in a few game titles as examples. One thing I loved about GameSetWatch’s recent Resident Evil 5 racism examination was that they actually used the entire game for their evidence. It worked beautifully.
One position I don’t agree with someone is Jonny Robson’s too-serious complaint (http://www.snappygamer.com/2008/12/02/the-problem-with-games-journalism-part-one/). He also seems to have a weird definition of journalist and writer (I treat them the opposite). My concern ultimately isn’t that there aren’t smart people writing smart things, but that so few of them are willing to engage the games. They’re all about trends and industry. The games themselves are rarely the focus. A few of you mentioned some reasons why this might be (I loved Tom’s comment about architecture). I do think games offer some unique challenges, but I don’t think they’re impossible to overcome.
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Simon, I think we agree more than disagree. You said:
“I don’t think it does defy most notions of criticism. As far as I'm aware, the majority of criticism since Barthe's 'Death of the Author' takes authorial intent to be irrelevant, claiming instead that meaning comes only from the reader.”
I mostly agree. There is a difference, however. A film is, as I said, mostly consistent. It is left to my interpretation but I am interpreting the same text as you are (for the most part). Our interpretations are where divergence starts. With gaming, the divergence starts with the text itself. We do not experience the same text. In many ways that is an evolution of Barthe’s view.
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Jeremy, I think it’s taking the easy way out to just claim that the industry is young. I hesitate comparing it to film because film flowed somewhat more naturally out of theatre than gaming from any other medium. But, I really disagree with the notion that films were not taken seriously for a long time. I don’t think history agrees with that. I’m also reminded of the Citizen Kane of video games debate. Leigh Alexander put that one to rest rather decisively when she pointed out that the debate’s notion of Citizen Kane didn’t even make historical sense. Film didn’t have to fight nearly as hard as games, which is why I think it’s even more important to just stop arguing over the merit of games and start talking about games. Let the rest follow.
Likewise, I don’t think we’re missing good games. There are good games. There have been good game discussions. Those two elements don’t always match, but they do coexist (why Bioshock was held up as some significant step forward I will never know). Now, perhaps criticism does need time to develop, but I think we should expect a faster development than what happened with film. The conversation is so much livelier than the traditional academic to public dissemination that happened with film. Not to mention we’re all better served the quicker it moves forward.
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As a final note, I just wanted to address Braid briefly. One of the reasons I want to discuss it is because of the amount written about the game. I enjoy it as a platformer but my interest in it, for next time, is due to the treatment it has received. I also feel it’s important to talk about games that are perhaps more like Mario Bros. than not. One of the challenges of game criticism is trying to apply similar techniques to Tetris and Fallout. I’ve also chosen Braid because it is simple with a traditionally disconnected narrative, but extremely rich in its application.
I hope Braid, as a case study, will make clear some of the points I only touched on briefly this time.
"We still need to try. If we don’t, then someone, sometime down the road, is once again going to ask why there isn’t any real game criticism.This is going to sound a bit snarky, but I'm afraid you're already that guy.
You see, back in 2006 this article asked the same question and made many of the same points. And indeed, many of them remain valid, however, and it's a big however, a lot has changed in the games-criticism space since 2006.
It would be remiss of me not to point out that CLINT HOCKING, creative director of Ubisoft Montreal and general videogame-smart-thinker wrote about the issue as recently as January of this year and actually came to the opposite conclusion. Here's what he said:
"Two years or so ago, I was lamenting the relative lack of game criticism (as opposed to reviews), and apparently at some stage during the long quiet that emanated from Click Nothing, my lament was answered. Not only do we have Tom Francis, but my sporadic last days and weeks of looking around at the game blogging community have kicked up a good number of really awesome blogs.
A surprising number of these bloggers are wicked smart and have been buzzing around like busy little bees making me look like some sort of Salinger-esque recluse at best, or washed-up slacker at worst."He's totally right and he links to a great number of excellent writers. So while there is still a long, long way to go before we reach even anything remotely like the level of acceptance and success that film and literature criticism has, saying "games criticism does not exist" is not representative of the actual reality. We're here, we're just hard to find.
In Hocking's post, he links to a great number of games critics, and another great resource for even more game critics is this post by Daniel Golding of Subject Navigator, who did the hard work of trying to map the disconnected blogs and places where good games criticism can be found.
It's not perfect, however, and I will be the first to admit that we are a hard network to find! Out of a desire to change this state of affairs was born the (still very new) website Critical Distance that I and a number of the bloggers and critics mentioned in the posts linked to above contribute to.
If you don't care for the Critical Distance website, the definitive "go-to" site for discovering this underground network is definitely The Brainy Gamer which has been mentioned already. Spend any time in the comments section of that blog and you'll discover a plethora of writers and critics who love to passionately talk and discuss videogames, often in a highly developed, critical way.
I'm looking forward to seeing what comes out of this series! Bring on the braid analysis. =)
Jeremy: you are right when you say "what video games excel in is atmosphere. I could never see a movie or novel being as intense as Bioshock or Silent Hill. Even a movie set in New York doesn't give you the same feeling as driving around Liberty City in GTAIV. There's just something you get out of playing a story instead of watching it." I agree 100%.
But:
1. why are those atmospheric settings mostly so nihilistic/violent/apocalyptic, basically playing on the same chords all the time, game after game - successfully so, but redundant nonetheless (and x-times more redundant than in any movie genre).
2. You just cannot separate the atmosphere from the story that is being told/that you are playing through. And the stories in those extremely atmospheric games are almost always about killing or suceeding with extreme violence. What is missing in those games, as opposed to any other art form, is the (self-)reflexive (that the englisch expression?) subtext - you may identify with a killer in a movie or a novel, but there is always a point where this identification is questioned. In a game that is not really possible, because you ARE the killer.
By the way: not that the following is really my point of view, but - when one asks why video games are not taken seriuosly as an art form, one can also ask why board-games are not taken seriously as an art form. Iam sure there are board-gamers who will lecture you on how games like Cluedo, Monopoly or Battleship ARE an art form, deserving serious criticism. The answer why there isn't would be: because they are games.
greetings from germany
kai
Oh and: don't get me wrong, please - Iam in no way opposed to taking video games "seriously". As I said, iam a gamer myself. It is just that Iam constantly confronted with the questions and remarks I give above, mostly by "classic" academics, but even by very open minded intellectuals/artists - and thus far I have not been able to find satisfying answers...
Ben, I was extremely flattered to see you had commented. I think the examples you, and everyone else, have been posting are more than worthwhile (including your own site/sites). I'm a fan of a lot of them. I also think I was too blunt in saying there was nothing resembling a critical perspective. Clearly there is. Game criticism might not be there yet, but there is clearly meaningful writing being done.
However, I do think something is missing from that criticism, or at least most of it. There is still a tendency to analyze gameplay form and ignore meaning overall. Gameplay is essential but we run the risk of understanding gameplay for gameplay's sake. Likewise, there is a lot written about story but often it is left with unsaitsfying result (you linked to a fantastic new ending for Bioshock that raised a lot of questions but never really went as far as to analyze what the old and new endings meant thematically beyond the obvious). Game criticism is, in this sense, unsatisfying on emotional levels.
This is what I intended when I said people need to start writing. Game writers need to begin a much more holistic approach to game criticism, avoiding the bits and pieces we see so much of now. Especially with interactivity and its relation to the player/story/themes. Game criticism still offers an unsatisfying mix for me, albeit one I love reading.
Well, I would cite Bioshock as a prime example for the cynicsm and the maddeningly limited imagination of video game creators - I mean, look at this game: yet another "dark", and "apocalyptic" world with, oh yeah!, mutants/zombies/whatever that have to be destroyed without mercy. And one of the scientist was working with Mengele in a KZ - how tasteless is that? I might enjoy playing that game. But it is a guilty pleasure. I think the problem is not that there are no writers capable of great vid-game criticism. The problem are the games themselves, which, at this moment, are on the intellectual level of cheapest exploitation flicks...sorry to say. (That is one of the reasons, I think, that vid-game adaptions don't work: you can get the "look" right, but when you try to adapt the story or the "meaning", you are stuck with - hollowness...)
The thing about Bioshock is that while it does suffer from being forced to conform to first person shooter conventions of darkness and gore and zombies and HANDS THAT CAN SHOOT BEES!!?!1!1! it's still a pretty astounding piece of art direction and the story, though I think it's kind of underwhelming in a lot of respects, doesn't totally fall flat on its face like so many game stories do. I don't include the whole game in my personal canon of Pretty Decent Examples of Artfulness in Videogames, but I think the first 20 minutes are probably the most breathtaking thing I've ever seen a game mostly pull off. I say "mostly" because there's a thunderously retarded moment halfway into that twenty minutes where the game expects you, a new arrival in a scary place full of coked up zombies yearning to crush your fucking skull in with lead pipes, to stick a random syringe in your arm with no prior instruction to.
Welcome to the fray, Logan! There really is a lot going on in what's variously called the Brainysphere, the Ludodecahedron, and the Middle Circle.
You might want to take a look at my piece about a very closely-related issue in game-criticism, in the Escapist. Please forgive the shamelessness, but I've been hoping someone would push in that same direction.
@ Rodge: You don't think that piece needs a re-work or follow-up that incorporates everything you and Ian duked out about throughout the Cyberverse? I don't think the original write-up does justice to your ideas or the ideas of your detractors, and mining through the comments section so far removed in time is a bit confuzzling. Also, Doug is at Copenhagen now ;P
@Simon That's fair, I suppose, but I guess I feel that until someone writes up the whole debate (probably shouldn't be me) the debate itself is something I'd like people to remember. I probably should have mentioned that in my initial comment, though.
At any rate, although I feel some continuing regret about the tone (and am glad that Doug is at Copenhagen), I'm more convinced now than I was then that orienting the discipline around design has been and continues to be problematic in that it hangs games' aesthetic claims on formal qualities rather than gamer experience. The design manifesto of a few weeks ago seemed to me to be strong evidence of the presence of this issue. One reason I think we keep having the horrendous "are games art?" debate over and over is in my opinion that game studies, with its focus on design, sets us up to have it forever.
@Logan Sorry to hijack this way!
@ Roger: Maybe I'll try my hand at summarizing it this summer, but I too may be a bit too close to the issue going to Tech and all. Perhaps a point/counterpoint piece between me and one of the younger Brainy Sphere-ers? In any case I agree that gamer perspectives are vital and that my education probably threatens to co-opt them a user-end design research.
My only two issues are that there are quite a few designers now writing in the Brainysphere, and there's quite a lot of talk of design right next to the talk of crit. It's hard for me to understand how I should be a priori less able to understand gamer needs, wants, and experiences just because I've decided to study them full-time for my career. Unless you don't like this shift in the Ludodecahedron?
My final point is that very few people in games studies that I know talk regularly about games as art. It only comes up when we get on the Internet and get pulled into a flamewar. Designers, unless they've been perverted by a desire for fame or money, are typically more interested in good design than high art.
@Simon I think there are enough people working around the game/gamer schism that some sort of formal contre-temps might be useful. I'd be interested in hosting it at VGHVI, actually.
I read the designers in the Whatever-sphere with great pleasure, and my bone-picking is not with them, or with you, or even with Ian or Doug, really. My central point is that in an ideal world, instead of a discipline of game studies, with its inevitable focus on design, we would have a bunch of people in different disciplines, helping to think about games and train others to think about and make them. Design would obviously be part of that, but it wouldn't be at the center.
But we do have game studies, and the only problem I have with its practitioners is what I see as an insufficient attention up to the present (which appears quickly to be changing--indeed Doug Wilson's piece should probably be seen in that light) on player performance and player experience. That the people who are studying those things probably can't gain admission to the discipline game studies is in my opinion a goad toward the creation of different sorts of initiative that might bridge the gaps.
I guess the happy ending is in Logan's post, and in Ben Abraham's efforts at Critical Distance.
@ Roger: I think I'd die fairly unhappy if those were the happy ending. Perhaps the happy second step on a long road to a Promised Land you and I might not be fated to set eyes upon in this life?
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