It’s Not Coming Back
Interlude: The Failure of Game Critics
Interlude: The Other Failure of Game Critics
Interlude: The Failure of Game Critics
the broad tent
Most game critics are hacks. They have nothing to say, no ideas outside their mundane circle of gaming. They repeat, and repeat, and think that repetition is their own. Insofar as they tell the truth, their truth is small, dull, and stale. It’s the truth of the pedant. The truth of compliance. The truth of leave me alone.
Hackdom is of course a broad tent. You’ve got your fanboys, your hobbyists, your escapists. Your ‘objective’ reviewers, your consumer advisers, your spec hounds. Your people pleasers, your twitter cheerleaders, your industry bootlickers. Your never hate a game philosophers, your games are hard to make sympathizers, your but some people like it! tsk-tskers. You’ve got old critics who’ve given up and young critics who’re getting there. You’ve got so many internet professionals and professional apologists. The tired, the self-censored, the players of the game. None mutually exclusive. All guardians of the status quo.
intimidation, appreciation
Red Dead Redemption 2 makes particularly clear that binding these scattered hacks together is a common thread: intimidation. They are so intimidated by this dumb game. They tremble before its graphics, its details, all the excesses of its story and characters. They tread lightly upon the legacy of Rockstar, upon its gameplay traditions, upon all the hallowed ground of AAA gaming. They bow before gamers and their expectations, before their peers in the industry, and especially before their own inner fandom, their love of games, their need for them, which tolerates no dissent. With Red Dead, it’s like the rough beast of videogame rot took form in a single game. Any reasonable person would look upon it and despair. But game critics, they only nod, cower, yield. It’s 2018, they say. This is our god now.
This intimidation is not limited to the tent. It also goes for those few critics who aren’t exactly hacks. They lurk at the edges of hackdom, subtweeting to their own cliques and welcoming the critic label. Where hacks have nothing to say, these critics do but won’t say it. Hacks tell their tiny truths fairly straight, but these critics won’t even do that much. They couch any troublesome truths in acceptable gamerese, outline all possible caveats, neuter any rhetorical force, maybe dress it up for their academic buddies while they’re at it. Suddenly everything is ‘messy’ or ‘complicated’ or ‘full of fascinating contradictions’. Sure, they’re ‘frustrated’, even ‘disappointed’, but they’re still rooting for the game. And always with due deference to their audience. It’s not for me but it’s cool if you and it’s totally just a taste thing now don’t get me wrong now I know what you’re thinking now I’m not saying that, y’all.
If these critics have one unified response to intimidation, it is simply: appreciation. They appreciate what a game’s trying to do, appreciate what it’s going for, appreciate that it even got made at all. This is what passes for game critic enlightenment. They think they’re being broadminded. They want us to see things as they do, from their perch. They have their big britches on now, no longer down in the dirt with the player.
But even their lofty appreciation is compromised. It’s not just the natural appreciation one might have for a complicated media object. It is mandated appreciation, required appreciation. By their profession, by the discourse, by the fans. And by their own fandom too. These critics are often just as fannish as the hacks, but they’ve learned better how to hide it. They’re subtle fanboys, intellectual fanboys. They’ve got nuance for miles, their ‘appreciation’ just a high-minded form of hackery. Even when there is little to appreciate, as with Red Dead, they still manage to reach the same tired conclusion: aren’t games wild? Aren’t they these crazy, contradictory things? Never: you know what? This game truly, deeply sucks.
2013 revisited
None of this is new. If you’ve been around games criticism at all, this is so familiar as to be almost invisible. Just the way things are. The problem is social, it is structural, and it is personal. Even with the increasing diversity of games critics and journalists over the past few years, little has actually changed. Gaming is still dominated by know-nothings, social media is more toxic than ever, and the economics of writing on the internet are crushing. It’s little wonder that escapism, fandom, and comfort still rule how we talk about games.
And so, when a game like Red Dead Redemption 2 comes along, it can feel inevitable that critics will fail its test. Just as they did five years before with Bioshock Infinite. In many ways, 2018 was even worse than 2013 when it came to the critical response to the year’s biggest con. 2013 critics may have pulled their punches in the aftermath of Bioshock Infinite’s worshipful reception, but at least they showed up. At least they did the work, albeit with kid gloves. 2018 critics couldn’t even be bothered to do that. They snarked on twitter amidst prerelease hype, started letter series and then abandoned them after one round, rightfully went after Rockstar’s labor practices but never brought any of that to bear on the game itself. I thought for sure critics would have their knives out as the crunch stories emerged, especially for a game of such extravagant, purposeless detail. But turns out most critics don’t actually have knives for videogames themselves. Only spoons.
And yet, amidst this general abdication, a few critics did show up. Jess Joho showed up. Dia Lacina showed up. Jed Pressgrove and Heather Alexandra and Steven Scaife and Esther Wright showed up. Even youtubers NakeyJakey and Dunkey showed up. It may be surprising that Dunkey, who is primarily hilarious and doesn’t even call himself a critic, is actually a better critic than most who wear the label. But he is. He’s brutally honest, he’s consistently insightful, and he channels the frustrations and delusions of our inner gamer voice hysterically. And unlike so many critics in 2018, when faced with a complex, intimidating game, he showed up. He did the work.
the goty of others
It’s more than just Red Dead. Look at critics’ games of the year lists and the failure become clearer. It’s not just the presence of RDR2 on many of them. It’s also the games around which there developed this loose consensus of greatness. Take the deeply mediocre God of War. This reboot was the kind of pure blockbuster title critics could really get behind. Gimme them graphics. Gimme that good axe feel. Gimme that big bad bald beardy daddy. Show us just a sheen of maturity and self-awareness, but no real change, and it’s all good. AAA for effort.
Or consider those handsome indies that kept showing up on lists. The rigid and rather boring Celeste, a meticulously designed but backward-looking platformer. The absorbing but orientalist Return of the Obra Dinn, which, once the mystery is solved, adds up to very little. Into the Breach and its fantasy of a solvable world, if only you’re methodical enough. Its nightmare of perfect information, contingency whittled down to a nub, in many ways the opposite of what 2018’s best game achieved. And even the sweet but slightly bland Florence, with its unearned, frankly ridiculous ending.
It’s not that individual critics can’t like these games or even have powerful experiences with them. My own best of the year were not all outliers. The problem comes with the way critics often talked about them. And especially how they framed them. They said: this year was terrible. I needed comfort, I needed a win, I needed escape. And not much else. You could have retitled many of their lists: My Favorite Distractions, or Back on my Bullshit, or Best Blankets. We learned that Into the Breach was manageable. Celeste and Florence were encouraging. Return of the Obra Dinn made them feel smart. God of War made them feel powerful. Which, sure, we need sometimes. It’s true 2018 was wretched. And yes adulthood is exhausting. But is that all you got? As a critic, even as a player, is that all games are to you, hideouts and bandaids? It’s got to be more than that. But even in year-end ruminations, that more never seems to come.
Read them again and it becomes clear that most lists, like the critics who wrote them, have no real ambition. They provide a shallow gloss, a few personal connections, and that’s about it. They are sober, measured, if enthusiastic at moments, but always reasonable. And I’m left thinking: where are the claims, the big, crazy claims? These are your games of the year. Do they inspire you so little? Games are wild, right? So where is your wildness? Our individual experiences with games can pull at something deep and primal inside us. Which, given voice, can sound a little crazy to others. This is the normal experience of being a person among persons. But if nothing you say ever sounds a little crazy, then what are you doing besides perpetuating the status quo?
your nonsense
One critic started his own list by explicitly refusing to say anything at all about ‘games in 2018’. He claimed to respect the reader enough not to “peddle my own nonsense.” What?? Then why am I reading this? Why shouldn’t I just close the tab and find another list? I am here for your nonsense. For that deep, personal jaggedness that might cut against the smooth facade of GOTY discourse. Nonsense is risky, sure. Any critic might reasonably doubt their own nonsense, fear it isn’t good enough. And maybe it isn’t, yet. You might be dismissed, mocked, rebuked. You might even be wrong.
So be wrong, motherfuckers. Like really, really wrong. I’ll take your foolish personal vision over the received wisdom of the gamer crowd every time. I’m so here for it. But no, game critics are absolutely terrified of being wrong. Especially the high-minded, professional ones. Online life doesn’t make it easy, and anyone who’s not a straight white cis man is given far less leeway, but it’s not only that. It’s a deeper fear of wrongness within us. I know it because I feel it too. And that fear, given sway, makes game critics not just boring or conservative. It makes them wimps. It makes games criticism the most bloodless, toothless criticism around.
your worst
That fear also makes games criticism radically incomplete. Because it’s one thing to be wrong about what you praise. It’s quite another to be wrong about what you censure. That’s when shit gets real and gamers attack. And so, critics give us prudently affirming year-end lists. Undisguised videogame cheerleading. Happy endings to shit years. Even though this paints a completely false image of videogames. Gaming is full of bad experiences, overflowing with them, and we have to talk about them too. Our boredom and anger and disgust deserve a place right beside our delight and wonder and contemplated love. When you refuse to engage the full range of videogame experiences, you deny the full range of players’ humanity as well. You make games merely a refuge from the world, and ourselves. You make gaming about winning.
But videogames are not about winning. And only talking about great games at the end of the year makes you seem desperate. What are you so afraid of? What’s lurking there in your worst? Thorny politics? A failed fantasy? Time lost forever? Is it a dark reflection of yourself? Or a con you want to believe in? Maybe just some undigested negativity? Or is it a lack of courage to even go there?
End-year lists are treated as a disposable form, but they don’t have to be. They are time-bound, yes, but so are games, and so are we. So you embrace it, this mutual ephemerality. You dispense with recommendations and congratulations and instead feel, really feel, what’s left to us, thrilling and miserable both. If you’re curious about Red Dead Redemption 2, by all means play it and see what you think. I spent $8 to rent it for a month, and I don’t regret facing its con. I share my evaluation because my experience was powerful, memorable, and horrible. It was an undeniable part of my gaming narrative in 2018. And a clear counterpoint to my game of the year.
It’s not an accident that my worst and best of 2017 were both tiny narrative games, or that in 2014 Desert Golfing proved such a welcome contrast to Destiny, or that Problem Attic spoke to me after the Bioshock Infinite debacle of 2013. And 2018 is no different. My worst and best are not just an unrelated series of favorites and ‘not my things’. They are full-on judgments, good and bad, in dialogue, no apologies. Why so judgy? Because I am a person, not a stone, not a bodhisattva, not the mythic everygamer. I was alive in 2018, really in it, not floating somewhere above, meditating in the cloud. My hands are dirty, my eyes bleary, my mouth full of fucks. And it is a welcome opportunity, a pleasure really, to say them aloud.
the practice
Of course, to say them well and actually have a worst list, you have to be able to criticize. And most critics straight suck at that. The hacks are obviously hopeless. Their negative reviews are so trite as to make you fear that life really is as thin as they say. But it can be even more painful to watch the intellectual critics try to criticize a videogame. They bend and twist and qualify and sputter, as if the gaming world might crumble upon hearing their true opinion or feeling a little bit of their heat. Oh my, what are you like when you and your big brain get mad? We all shudder to think.
More often, though, they just demur and wash their hands of the whole sordid business. I’m not making this up. One very prominent critic has spoken multiple times about how he avoids voicing negative criticism of certain popular titles and series he doesn’t like. Because he doesn’t want to be ‘that guy’, the asshole, ‘dunking’ on games that other people enjoy. He admits that often he won’t even play games he suspects might put him at odds with the gaming community. This major critic stays purposefully ignorant in order to keep the peace, and his position. And I’m just like: lord, are you actually even a critic?
Criticizing well takes practice. Negative experiences abound but shaping them into strong criticism takes time and attention and repetition. How can you ever do it well if you avoid the practice? Showing up and doing the work, even when it sucks, especially when it sucks. How serious a critic can you be if you regularly call criticism ‘dunking’, that embarrassing word? Is it really that petty to you? When game critics do actually criticize, they tend to just glom onto the easy targets, the broken messes and unfun crapshoots. Which only reinforces traditional gamer values and keeps any threatening criticism in check. ‘Dunking’ on the usual suspects ends up only justifying the status quo. It’s safe, gamer-sanctioned criticism, the only kind allowed.
You might think that for seasoned critics, decades of game experience would acquaint them with real disappointment. But in videogameland, age doesn’t necessarily help. They haven’t actually done the work. Or if they have, they’ve come to regret it. There are a number of aging critics who openly lament the harsh words and critical venom of their youth. They go on and on about the jerk they used to be, as if the confession itself will exorcise their inner asshole. They promise to be different, which usually means a renewed commitment to positivity and light because hey man, life is short.
And I want to say: sure, most people’s twenties weren’t their proudest decade, but could you stop flogging yourself in public for a minute there, buddy? You identified a problem, but not the solution. Our immature criticism is an indictment of immaturity, not criticism. And we mature as critics not by disavowing our former selves but by incorporating them, giving them a seat among our many other selves at a much larger table. Because in truth, your younger selves don’t really go away. And their harsh complaints might be insufficient, but that doesn’t mean they’re wrong.
the whole truth
The inability to truly criticize is a symptom of the wider monologic of game critics. I’ve argued before for diversity among critics, but just as important is the cultivation of diversity within a critic. We speak of our subjectivity in the singular, but the more accurate address is to our subjectivities. The plurality that makes us a person. Contradictory, frayed, jockeying for power, changing with time.
I have so many voices in my head. So many selves within me, even at mid-life. Videogames ignite my plurality, and there are so many ways of being I want to explore. Games provoke me, and I know I’m not alone. But critics who cannot channel that provocation have muted something essential in themselves. Come on critics, let down and give us some of your legion. Stroke our dialogic imagination. Drown us in your heteroglossia. We need your drama, your flair, your darkness, your cheek. Less Critical Distance, more ContraPoints.
This diversity doesn’t just mean endless mixed feelings, wallowing in ambiguity, or a refusal to judge because you can see so many sides. Empathize please, by all means, but don’t deny that you’re still a person, someone who likes and dislikes things, who can investigate why without neutering the original feeling. This too takes practice. It needn’t result in diffusion, a sludge of muddy opinions. It means unmuzzling your wrong voices, hearing them out, weighing them up. It means sometimes letting those rowdier, rustier voices win.
Because without all your voices, how can you tell the truth? Not just a gamer truth, compartmentalized and cordoned off from life, but a wider truth, an unpleasant truth, an unconsoling truth. Not only about games or the world but about yourself in them. An honest critic will not only not lie, that bare minimum, but instead attempt to tell the whole truth. And the whole truth is a vulnerable truth. It is in fact vulnerability that makes full honesty so powerful, and so rare. And it is only the whole truth that can face down a con.
~ April 2nd, 2019
Next — The Best Games of 2018