Thank god. I was waiting for the professional, witty, and intelligent response to that article and now it's here. Kudos.

So glad you liked it!

Scalzi over at Whatever talks about the same issue:

http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/004301.html

--simon

I wonder if a result of all of these conditions is that people don't see how the state of gaming can and does reflect and influence society in the same way that music and movies reflect and influence society. Editors probably aren't comissioning glossy 10-page critques because they assume their readers just don't care. But I'm sure the intelligensia cared little about music and movies until they realized how these forms of art reflected society like any art form.

Maybe there's something else to that, as well. Video games aren't art in the obvious way that movies and rock-and-roll are; Video games sit oddly between sport, art, and techno-fad, and thus, people and editors simply don't know how to classify it. Can't possibly have any relationship to what's happening in the real world then, can it?

I'm not very familiar with other game critics, but you've clearly found a way around every one of these problems, and have evem managed to make pointed social commentaries out of video game columns (such as The Walrus piece) along the way. Perhaps Clive Thompson is the Lester Bangs of video games; people just haven't recognized it yet!

ahahhah! Well, I don't write anything like Lester Bangs ... he had such a superb and intense prose style. But I'll accept the compliment!

The point about the difficulty of classifying games -- "Video games sit oddly between sport, art, and techno-fad" -- is particularly acute. Games get reviewed in entertainment pages and technology pages; they're sometimes opined about on the op-ed pages. But oddly, they're never written about in the sports pages, which is where they arguably most germanely belong. Although even there, they'd be slightly out of place, because the sports pages are where we read about the exploits of famous athletes; when we play video games, in contrast, we are the athletes.

Until there's a reasonably broad understanding about ludology, and the idea that play is an incredibly hard thing to architect -- and a deeply meaningful human activity -- there will be no seriously good criticism of video, and perhaps more importantly, no readership that understands what those critics are saying.

To wit: One of the biggest problems gamers themselves have is because they've never been taught about ludology, they themselves lack any way to describe what it is they like about their games. Instead, they talk about how the game is "immersive," or "more immersive than a movie" -- or how it's cinematic, except you can, y'know, take control of the movie and "control the narrative", etc. etc. And the funny thing is that none of this is usually actually even factually true. There are virtually no games in which you can seriously change the narrative outcome of the game. And calling something "immersive" is a weirdly meaningless compliment: Poker, sunsets, driving a car, eating a good meal and playing with a hamster are all immersive activities. And so journalists and critics pick up on this language -- "immersive", "interactive", "control the narrative", etc. -- and repeat it, despite the fact that it's all pretty meaningless and/or just plain wrong on a descriptive level.

The thing is, gamers do, on a gut level, know why they love their games: Because they create little systems that give them a set of goals that are teasingly hard -- but not impossible -- to accomplish, and the thrill of navigating those systems is almost narcotic in its delight. It's also enormously fun simply unravelling how the system works: Achieving mastery over the game (its controls, its landscape, etc.) is a treat. And we love arguing about whether the rules that govern the game are fair or smart or well-designed -- whether that's the play in the steering wheels on a Warthog, the relative power level of the final boss in Kingdom Hearts II, or whether the puzzles in the latest Tomb Raider have gotten too easy as the series attempts to pull in a new generation of newbies, or why the A.I. governing Alyx's behavior in Half Life 2 can be both extremely good but also kinda hit-and-miss.

This isn't how we talk about movies, or books, or music. This is closer the way we talk about architecture or sports or psychology or philosophy.

Excellent!

I essentially said Answer B in my Blog on IGN. (link: http://blogs.ign.com/Funky_J_au/2006/06/27/23069/)

Thanks for letting me know I'm not alone in my opinion!

Excellent post, sir. That joke about the "Balsa Wood Weekly" cracked me up!

I responded to Clive's Wired article with this, but he suggested I drop it here to spark some comments too:

Videogames aren't as widely and generically available as music or movies. There is no TV or Radio for video games-- one has to pay, or steal, in order to play a game. A conscious decision has to be made to engage a video game, while music (less movies) can permeate an area without consent. Clive responded with an excellent point:

"Even people who had no interest in the
Rolling Stones at least knew what they sounded like."

I'm not sure that the media translate into each other.

I have looked online but can't find Harlan Ellison's review of a video game (maybe Empire Strikes Back-related?) from the early 1980s.

It became veryvfamous because it was the first negative video game review ever published, and in typical Ellison fashion, it was strongly negative. I remember reading it, maybe in one of his collections.

I also think that blogs have an advantage because they don't have any obligations. Gamespot reviews read like consumer reports -- how good are the graphics, how long does the game take to complete, is it fun, etc -- so that the reader can make an informed decision.

Bloggers aren't obligated to describe every aspect of the game, they can just talk about what they think is most important, which often says more about the game than mainstream reviews.

An example, and some of you must have heard of this, is what they're calling new games journalism (I suppose this is what Clive is hinting at by asking for gonzo journalism)

Read it here:
http://www.alwaysblack.com/?p=10

I warn that it has some offensive language in describing the conduct of an online foe. If you can tolerate it, it may be the most rewarding game review you'll ever read.

I don't see any reason why mainstream publications can't start printing these kinds of reviews.

Phillip, I'd love to read that Harlan Ellison review too! If you find it let me know ... love to blog it.

Pimp, yep, that story is a famous, famous one in gaming journalism. You're right -- freed of commercial commitments, bloggers can take liberties in style and format that many mainstream media outlets (perhaps mistakenly) assume they can't.

Lovely column ... but I see something in yours that was also done in Chuck's ...
"And personally, I can't wait to read him."
The Lester Bangs of gaming could be a woman columnist ...
Although the programming of G4 or the self-proclaimed gods of gaming would hate to admit it, women are playing just as much and demanding a place in the artform ...
Just a thought ;)