2318: Rebooting in Progress

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You may recall a while back I decided to reboot my “sister site” to this blog, MoeGamer. Having now spent two months with my new format, I thought I’d revisit the idea here for the benefit of those who haven’t checked in on it recently.

Essentially, my thinking behind MoeGamer’s new format was to forgo the scattershot approach that games journalism and criticism today typically follows, and instead have a laser-sharp focus each month: a single game, or perhaps a series of games. Over the course of that month, I’d post a series of in-depth articles, each of which focused on a specific aspect of the game or series. By the time the month was up, there’d be a complete, substantial amount of writing about the game in question for readers to enjoy at their leisure, with the content remaining relevant long after it was written.

This is part of the problem with modern games journalism and criticism, and part of the reason it’s so trapped in the clickbait quagmire that ruins it so much. The ever-present need to produce timely content to meet embargoes and line up with release dates means that games that often deserve better don’t get the attention they deserve, and some games, as we’ve seen in the past, get a writeup of no value whatsoever, consisting entirely of the writer in question doing nothing but mocking the game and the people who like it without demonstrating any real evidence that they’ve bothered to try and engage with it on anything more than the most superficial level.

As I noted in my previous piece, though, because MoeGamer is a personal site that I write as a passion project, I’m not beholden to the fickle whims of advertising revenue and I have no obligation to bait people in with provocative headlines and articles about the creator of Minecraft calling someone a cunt (which, for what it’s worth, he was perfectly within his rights to do, as the person whingeing at him was being a cunt). Instead, I can explore games that have proven meaningful or interesting to me; games that are worthy of discussion. I can be positive about them, too, highlighting the things they do differently or particularly well and giving people reasons to check them out rather than, as so often happens with reviews today, reasons to avoid them.

The positivity thing in particular is something I feel strongly about. There seems to be a perception in a lot of modern criticism that you’re not doing your job properly if you’re not tearing something apart or telling it things it should do better. While there is value in this sort of criticism at times, it’s very easy to start reaching for things that are of little relevance to the work as a whole. Polygon’s infamous review of The Witcher 3 that complained about the lack of black people in a world inspired by Eastern European folklore is a good example, as is any writeup that bleats about sexism in an anime-style game without demonstrating any evidence of having explored the characters’ backgrounds.

Personally speaking, the kind of writing about games that I like to read is positive in nature. Games that changed your life, games that had personal meaning, games that elicited emotional responses, games that people haven’t heard of but should absolutely definitely positively check out. It is eminently possible to remain positive about things and still write interesting, compelling content, and it has the pleasant side-effect of creating a positive atmosphere around the articles, too, which encourages discussion and anecdotes of what the work in question means to other people. (There are exceptions, of course, as with most things on the Internet, but most people I know seem to respond far better to positive, enthusiastic writeups than ill-informed, poorly researched pieces that tear things apart unfairly.)

So that’s what I’m doing with MoeGamer. So far I’ve covered Senran Kagura Estival Versus and Megadimension Neptunia V-II. Next month I’ll be tackling Dungeon Travelers 2. Beyond that, I have a whole shelf full of games that I’m very interested in exploring in this level of depth, and I hope at least some of you enjoy reading my thoughts on them.

2211: On “Burn in Hell, Yarny”

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A videogame called Unravel will be released tomorrow. It may be a good game, and it is certainly a good-looking one, with a soft focus and hazy depth of field; tree leaves rustle convincingly and thick snowflakes pile up as the camera pans ever right-ward. It appears to make use of this tactile world for a series of physics-based puzzles, like moving rocks to get up on ledges and creating makeshift vines with which to soar across little ponds. These may be very clever puzzles, building toward a resolution that is very satisfying, but I will never know, because I will never play Unravel, and that is because its protagonist, a little red yarn-man named Yarny, can go fuck himself.

This was the opening to an article from Kill Screen, a site that originally positioned itself at the very spearhead of “new games journalism”, boasting both a print magazine and an online component that would offer something a little different from the usual consumer advice/PR/news, previews, reviews cycle that most games-focused sites had provided up until that point.

I remember Kill Screen launching; it was actually at the first PAX I went to — I even still have a copy of their “Issue Zero” that I picked up at the show somewhere. It looked like it was going to be a great read, and a bold new frontier for games criticism.

Look at that opening paragraph again. Look at the last half of the last sentence.

“I will never play Unravel, and that is because its protagonist, a little red yarn-man named Yarny, can go fuck himself.”

Needless to say, I do not feel the same way about Kill Screen as I did when it was first launched. I hadn’t felt the same way for quite some time, to be honest, since its take on intelligent criticism had started to veer rather too heavily in favour of heavily ideological-based arguments rather than actual analysis of the art on its own merits — a scourge that the entire games press has been afflicted with for the past few years — but this article today has cemented my feelings.

What I did want to talk about, though, is the staggering hypocrisy of some people — within and outside games journalism — when censuring this article, and it most certainly has received almost universal censure from all angles. Deservedly so.

The key thrust of the article is that the author has no plants to play Unravel because he doesn’t like the look of it. He doesn’t like the look of the protagonist, and he doesn’t like the fact that the game looks like it’s going to be a narrative-centric, emotional experience that emphasises artistry (in the traditional sense) over game design.

You know what? Those are perfectly valid reasons to not want to play a game. There are lots of games I don’t want to play because I don’t like the look of them, because I don’t like that type of game, because the subject matter doesn’t appeal or because I know people I don’t like love them. Rational or not, pretty much any reason you can think of not to play a game is an absolutely valid one from your own personal perspective: we’re already living in an age where it’s literally impossible to play every single game out there, even if all you did all day every day was play games, so everyone, consciously or not, has their own set of selection criteria for what they put on their plate at any given moment.

What isn’t okay, though, is then picking on something that 1) you confess doesn’t appeal to you and 2) you admit you have no intention of playing (and therefore speaking from a position of authority on) anyway — and then writing a critical article about how it’s symptomatic of everything wrong with modern gaming. The author has some fair points — that some developers believe emotional manipulation of the player is an end unto itself, and that this isn’t the same as creating something truly artistic — but they are completely invalidated by the position of ignorance from which he is speaking: he’s criticising Unravel and games like it without any knowledge of what they’re actually like — he’s speaking on the basis of assumptions, not taking the time to research it for himself.

Where else have we seen this happen? Oh, right, with pretty much every niche-interest Japanese game released over the last few years. We’ve seen series like Senran Kagura berated for having boobs in them, but little to no discussion of their more progressive aspects such as homosexuality, sexual kinks, forming friendships across ideological barriers and accepting people for who they are. We’ve seen my longstanding favourite Hyperdimension Neptunia all but rejected from any cultural significance for being “hypersexualised” and having characters that both possess breasts and breathe, with little to no mention of the series’ perpetually on-point satire of games and game culture, excellent writing and characters strong enough to carry games in a wide variety of styles. We’ve even seen people branding the “Amie” feature from the Japanese version of Fire Emblem Fates as “creepy” and expressing pleasure that it had been removed, despite displaying no understanding of its context, either in-game or within the Japanese cultural context of “skinship” or “naked association”. And I could go on. For pages.

Sound familiar? Why, yes, in all the above cases, the critics of these titles were speaking from spectacularly ill-informed, ignorant positions — in some cases not even playing the games, or barely playing them for more than a few minutes in the instances where they did bother to boot them up at all — and, thus, were speaking from a position where they were unqualified to offer meaningful, trustworthy criticism of these games. And yet because games journalism is very much a cult of personality, people who didn’t know about these games already take these critics’ words at face value — assuming they’re a high-profile critic like Jim Sterling, or at least from a site seen as “reputable” (i.e. big) by the masses — and don’t bother to question them. And this leads to these games being pushed further into the niches they’re already in, and to a lot of people missing out on experiences that they may well find themselves pleasantly surprised by.

The worst thing it does is contribute to the overwhelming air of negativity and cynicism that pervades modern games writing. Many members of the press are extremely burned out on the increasingly penny-pinching tactics of triple-A publishers — day-one DLC, preorder incentives, platform-exclusive content, betas-that-are-not-betas-they’re-demos-that-you-can-only-play-if-you-preorder — and this causes the exhaustion and cynicism to infect their explorations of anything that might be just slightly outside the norm. Oh, sure, there’s plenty of indie darlings that get elevated to “gaming Messiah” status — Undertale, The Witness and Firewatch all spring to mind in recent months — but poor old Japan repeatedly gets shafted by people who, like the author of the Kill Screen piece, have no intention of exploring them in sufficient detail to provide adequate comment and criticism on them.

Life is too short — and there are too many games out there — to waste time on negative articles about “why I don’t like this” or “why I don’t want to play this” or “why this doesn’t appeal to me”. So why does it keep happening? I’d much rather read a games press that is more positive in tone: willing to criticise where appropriate, but where the thing first and foremost in every critic’s mind is the celebration of this amazing, growing, constantly changing medium that shatters cultural borders into something the whole world can truly understand and enjoy together.

You don’t have to love everything. I certainly don’t. But how about we think about keeping our mouths shut about the things we hate, let the people who do love them enjoy them, and we focus on the things that we love, too. Doesn’t that sound much nicer than “I have no intention of playing this game because I don’t like the look of the protagonist”?

(Oh, and for the record, I have no interest in playing Unravel either; Braid and Limbo were enough to put me off arty platformers for quite some time. I would not, however, dream of attempting to offer criticism on it having not played it — and I wouldn’t even feel comfortable commenting on Braid and Limbo because I don’t feel I played them enough to be well-informed before tiring of them. Now, I’m off to go and play some disgusting degenerate pervert Japanese role-playing games and probably fap myself into a frenzy in the process. Or perhaps just enjoy the things I love rather than bitching about things I hate and have no intention of trying to enjoy.)

1325: Focal Point

I’m sure any writer pals reading this can probably relate, judging from some things I’ve read recently: it is infinitely easier to focus on negative things than it is about positive ones. And those negative things absolutely dominate your thoughts, almost completely obliterating any good work the positive things might have done.

Let’s take an example. Recently, I wrote a lengthy article about “otaku games” — that particularly misunderstood aspect of Japanese gaming where people who don’t play them constantly judge them as being nothing more than pervy fanservice. To be fair to their opinion, there often is a fair amount of pervy fanservice in them, but it’s pretty rare that is the sole or even the most important part of them. Check out the piece here.

On the whole, response to the post has been very positive. I’ve been very happy to hear from a lot of fans of Japanese gaming who thanked me for giving a reasoned, rational take on the subject — with input from people who are actually involved in bringing these titles to the West — and for treating both the games and their fans with respect. I’ve had people tell me it’s a wonderful article, compliment me on covering something that other sites don’t bother with (or take the more common “This is Bad and Wrong, LOL JAPAN” stance on) and generally express a very genuine-feeling sense of appreciation for something I worked hard on.

So what do I find my brain focusing on? The guy who tweeted at me saying “TLDR” (seriously, that is pretty much one of the most disrespectful things you can say to a writer, especially when they’ve worked hard on something — try giving some constructive criticism or, even better, actually engaging with the points made in the piece), and the commenter who complained about me “not talking about the game” in my Tales of Xillia review and lambasting me for promoting an “incest simulator” in an article about visual novels. (Said “incest simulator” was Kana Little Sister, an incredibly moving work which I’ve written about at length in a number of places on the Internet; to refer to it as an “incest simulator” in a distinctly Daily Mail/Jack Thompson-esque way shows an astonishing lack of understanding, my keen awareness of which was what inspired me to write the “otaku games” piece in the first place.)

I wish I didn’t feel this way, but it made me feel somewhat better to read this piece over on Hookshot, Inc recently. Here’s what was, for me, the most pertinent part:

“Reader feedback is, in many ways, wonderful. It pulls writers down from pedestals and/or ivory towers, and it democratises a whole medium. Every voice is heard, and charlatans are uprooted. A culture of reader-fear has, arguably, been fostered – but ultimately people raise their game, and those much-suspected dirty deals are (by my reckoning) far less likely to occur today than they were five years ago.

“The problem is that all this is incredibly unhealthy for writers with… what you might call an ‘amiably complex psychological disposition’. I’m one of these people (it’s hugely common in my field – and indeed any creative arena) and I couldn’t even count how many of my working days have been ruined by an angry person venting steam beneath a piece I’ve written. The black dog starts barking, and your creative mojo runs away.

“Sure, the trolls are generally a minority – but when your mind has been built to concentrate on negativity rather than happy, happy, joy, joy (and you work at home, on your own) then comments threads are a mental plague pit.

“As a writer – what can you do about this? Well, you can start making your review scores more conservative for a start. Oh, and you can definitely avoid rocking boats that contain angry devotees of certain platforms, genres and franchises. Oh, and how about excising all humour for fear of miscomprehension from angry dullards you’ll never meet?

“OMG HANG ON GUYS OUR COLLECTIVE INSECURITY JUST BROKE GAMES WRITING.

“So basically: say what you want to say, and suck it up. There’s no wrong opinions, only a lot of people who think you should be fired for having a right one.”

I was simultaneously surprised, delighted and slightly depressed to read that. I wish it didn’t have to be that way, and I wish it was possible to train oneself to be more like, say, Jim Sterling — someone whom I greatly admire for his no-nonsense attitude and at least outward appearance of having thick skin. (For all I know, Sterling might finish his day job and cry himself to sleep over the torrents of abuse he receives on a daily basis, and I wouldn’t blame him if that were so — but I somehow doubt that’s the case anyway.)

Ah well, as Will Porter writes in that excellent Hookshot piece — seriously, go read it if you have a few minutes — the only real thing we, as writers, can do is say what we want to say and suck it up somehow. If we start sanitising our own opinions, thoughts and even writing styles to appease the lowest common denominator in the comments threads, then the world of writing would be a boring one indeed.

#oneaday Day 795: Thick Skin

They say that in order to “make it” in many industries, you need to have a thick skin. To be able to suck it up, take your medicine, be ready for anything. This is particularly true if you do anything that involves facing the public — and especially true if said public is hiding behind the anonymity of the Internet.

I’ve come to the conclusion over the years that I do not have a thick skin. I feel bad if someone disagrees with me and argues their point a little too aggressively. I feel bad if I’m criticised when I don’t feel it’s warranted. And I feel absolutely fucking terrible if someone insults me directly. Basically, I’m a big wuss, and I’ve come to terms with the fact I’m a big wuss, though it doesn’t particularly help me when these situations do inevitably arise at times.

It’s a side effect of various things, really: anxiety, depression, being an introvert. I always like to feel like I’m trying my best at everything I do, and to have something come along and suggest that no, my best might not actually quite be good enough on this occasion can instantly sour my mood, even after a good day. And even if the criticism, argument or insult is clearly complete nonsense. It just feels bad.

My comments on this are prompted by a discussion that @JimSterling was having on Twitter earlier. He noted the following:

Forbes thinks game reviews fail readers because there’s no dissenting opinion. I should tell them what readers *do* to a dissenting opinion. People always blame reviewers being too nice or too close to PR. I think it’s more they don’t want their audience to harass them. We’re in an industry where gamers personally attack people for giving 8/10 scores, but somehow it’s *all* the reviewers’ and PR’s fault. There’s faults and imperfections on *all* sides, but I’m sick of pundits ignoring the bullshit that the game community itself perpetuates.

Jim’s comments brought to mind a particular incident which arose while I was working on GamePro, may it rest in peace. I wrote a news article about a new game which had been produced by students and faculty at an educational institution in America. (I forget which one, and the article is no more, sadly.) Said game was narrative- and character-heavy and was designed to be an in-depth interactive exploration of LGBT issues — a topic area typically shied away from by many developers and seemingly almost completely taboo in the mainstream. (No, I don’t count the nonsensical, ridiculous “gay” content in BioWare’s recent titles which I have a strong suspicion was added purely for marketing purposes. But I digress.)

The game sounded interesting, and I knew from past comments and engagement with the GamePro community that there was a diverse array of people from all backgrounds reading my news stories, so I figured this would be an interesting thing for people to look at — evidence that interactive entertainment was helping to challenge taboos and break down barriers, in short.

The article was reasonably well-received by most commenters, until one thoroughly obnoxious person came along. He’d shot his mouth off a little on the GamePro Facebook page previously, but it was mostly the gibberings of a paranoid madman who believed that debit cards were out to get him. (I’m not making this up.) This time, though, his gibberings got personal. He called me a paedophile, a pervert, a deviant and all manner of other names. He threatened to organise his supposedly huge group of friends (I doubt the honesty of this claim) to do unpleasant things. He harassed me via Facebook, Twitter and the GamePro comments section — or at least he tried to. He got promptly blocked on Twitter and subject to the Ban Hammer I had the satisfaction of wielding both on GamePro.com and its companion Facebook page.

But the damage was done. I was devastated. I’d never had anyone throw such vitriolic, furious, personal attacks at me before. The article itself had nothing offensive in it whatsoever, and it was neither pro- or anti-LGBT, simply noting the existence of an interesting sounding sociological project that involved interactive entertainment. This was seemingly enough to light the fuse, however, and it completely ruined my day at the time.

I should grow a thicker skin, I know, particularly if I want to get anywhere in online media. But I’m just not sure I have it in me. I just want people to be nicer, to be decent human beings. Is that too much to ask?

Perhaps it is. You can’t change human nature, after all, and after many years of observing behaviour on the Internet it’s clear to me that a lot of people turn into complete dicks when provided with the protective shield of anonymity. As someone who was bullied a great deal when I was back at school, I can’t even imagine how difficult it must be for teens these days considering how easy it is to anonymously “cyber-bully” someone.

Or perhaps they’ve just naturally evolved that thick skin I so desperately need over the last decade or two.

Either way, dear reader, go be nice to someone today. And always follow Wheaton’s Law.

#oneaday, Day 90: Ebert in the Lions’ Den

Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way to affect the senses or emotions. It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression.

– Wikipedia

Roger Ebert gently and gracefully lowered his gazelle-scented testicles into the lions’ den that is the world of video games a couple of days ago. It’s pretty fair to say that he got a reaction. But was it the one he was after?

His contention was that “Video games can never be art”. A strong opening hypothesis. One which has been debated amongst gamers many a time too, with little agreement on the subject. Some feel that yes, games can be art, others feel that no, games can not be art – yet. There are very few people I know who are interested in the world of games – whether or not they think there is currently any evidence of artistic creativity in the medium right now – who would stand up and proudly announce that their chosen form of entertainment will never be art. As Ebert points out in his own article, Rick Wakeman once reminded us that “never is a long, long time”.

So how is Ebert, a respected film critic, so sure on this subject? Well, of course, he’s played some games to back this up, right?

Given the substance of the article, I’m not entirely convinced. He certainly talks about a few games – specifically Waco Resurrection (which I’d never heard of), Braid and Flower. I can’t comment on Waco, having never heard of this game until today, but Braid and Flower are both games that I have played and enjoyed, and I take exception to the manner in which Ebert responds to them – or doesn’t, as the case may be.

When discussing Braid, he mentions the game’s unique selling point – the time rewind mechanic. He even cites the justification for it – the thematic concept of “what if you could go back and fix your own mistakes?” He then spectacularly misses the point by comparing it to cheating in chess… or rather, “negating the discipline” of chess. I agree that taking back moves in chess is counter-productive in developing your own skills, but Braid is a game that is designed around that whole concept. Rather than being a sore loser’s way out, the time rewind mechanic in Braid is a key part of the experience. More to the point, it’s not used purely as a way of avoiding death, as he seems to believe. Instead, use of time and your past self is key to solving the puzzles in Braid, making apt and clever use of the main theme of the story in a practical sense.

It’s his comments on Flower that got me, though. It’s immediately apparent that he hasn’t even played the game at all from this:

We come to Example 3, “Flower”. A run-down city apartment has a single flower on the sill, which leads the player into a natural landscape. The game is “about trying to find a balance between elements of urban and the natural.” Nothing she shows from this game seemed of more than decorative interest on the level of a greeting card. Is the game scored? She doesn’t say. Do you win if you’re the first to find the balance between the urban and the natural? Can you control the flower? Does the game know what the ideal balance is?

“Can you control the flower?” Seriously? I would have thought that a respected critic would bother to actually experience the things he is commenting on before judging them. Flower is one of the most unique experiences there is on a games console – love it or hate it – and it eschews most traditional game mechanics in favour of being a piece of experiential entertainment. The experience you have playing Flower is entirely what you make of it. If you want to play it as a “game” and try to beat the levels as quickly as possible, you can. But most people who have spent any time floating on the wind and listening to that game’s gorgeous soundtrack will agree that there is definitely a sense of narrative to the whole thing. But unlike most games, this sense of narrative is entirely personal to the person playing it. I played it feeling enormously melancholy, feeling an inexplicable sense that someone or something had died. Nothing on the screen suggested that, but that’s what I felt while playing, to an almost overwhelming degree. Others have taken the rather more simplistic – but just as valid – interpretation that “flowers hate steel”.

The problem with Ebert’s comments is that they smack of condescension and arrogance. Ebert is a respected expert in his own field – justifiably so, I might add – and he clearly knows it. Therefore he seems to feel that this gives him the right to judge something which he very obviously knows very little about and has very little interest in pursuing further thanks to his own preconceptions.

Are games art? I don’t have an answer for you, but Justin McElroy’s excellent response to Ebert’s piece raises a very good point – the medium of “games” has evolved so much in such a short space of time that to call the diverse experiences we have with our computers and consoles today simply “games” is a complete misnomer. We interact with these pieces of electronic entertainment for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it’s escapist fantasy. Sometimes it’s role-playing. Sometimes it’s wish-fulfilment. Sometimes it’s a social activity. Sometimes it’s competition. Sometimes it’s to feel an emotional response.

There are as many reasons to “play” as there are “games”, so to damn the entire medium with a blanket statement – “games will never be art” – is misguided and short-sighted. They may not be art now in the eyes of some people, but that is not to say that they will not be in the future. If you take Wiki’s rather broad definition of “art”, listed at the top of this post, games (or whatever you want to call them) are already there.

I will leave you with two tweets from Cody “NintendoTheory” Winn, whom I think sums up the problem with debating this whole question pretty succinctly in the space of 280 characters: