I like to read articles about games that make me consider the unexpected ways their mechanics and themes intersect, and which explore that space thoroughly by engaging with non-game media with similar themes. A critical exploration of cultural output that is designed to research, inform, and speculate.
Naturally this is completely futile, because nobody who is high up in games media has read a book.
TGQ and sb were both composed of IC forum refugees, huge venn diagram overlap. Most of the TGQ people have drifted away from sb since though
idk if games lend themselves well to reviews anyway. A gameplay video tells you what the game will be about for the entire playthrough. All you need to know from there is if people liked it or didnât, so you can assume whether it keeps its quality all the way through. That makes game reviews more like album reviews than a movie or book, where you canât always see where things will go from a preview.
Felt like around 2010 lots of game developers were running blogs, and maybe everyone who wanted to start one has said what they wanted to say.
iâm slightly exagerrating here, but this seems almost like judging whether youâll like an album by reading the lyrics of the songs on it. youâre missing out on the most important part
When I say âaboutâ Iâm talking straight gameplay. 5 minutes at an arcade machine with a coin gives you a good impression of the game and in most cases that holds true today. If I enjoy a preview of a song and its album isnât considered âbadâ, thatâs all I need to know to make judgement.
Iâve been meaning to try to get more into game writing. I started a little blog a couple years ago for reviews/essays on small/free games (because I think that space needs some real writing that goes beyond feedback), but I didnât quite accomplish what I wanted to and burned out when things at work got more intense.
Design Reboot was pretty good. I think that was the name of it? The author wrote a long âHereâs some ideas for what would have made Clive Barkerâs Jericho betterâ article that I really liked.
I think in general you often see more attempts at progressing the form of games criticism on platforms like youtube now because
A: the visual element means critique can more easily elide the sort of promotional/descriptive nature of a lot of games writing
&
B: thereâs a clearer path towards monetization with patreon, etc. encouraging stylistic difference & building a smaller dedicated audience rather than an all-encompassing look at âgames mediaâ. (emphasis on a unique âvoiceâ)
I also think that the fact that youtube sort of obligates a visual means that the delivery requires greater thoughtfulness in how it incorporates the visual, if you arenât describing whatâs happening on-screen, what are you talking about? Youâve got Tim whoâs always sort of emphasized a maximalist approach, and whoâs video content reflects that, a slew of information visual & auditorially. Youâve got slower approaches from people like Noah Gervais-Caldwell, whoâs video content is often sort of extraneous to his sort of storytelling-style beyond a rough contextualization of what heâs saying. Or channels like Facefullofeyes, where itâs a heavily edited video that emphasizes the visual elements of both mediums.
i can usually tell from a gameplay video if the game has anything utterly repulsive to me, but i really donât think gameplay videos are are a good way to learn all that much
Yo who are these new posters dropping these bomb ass posts, welcome welcome
Because I always toy with following the latest social media content production trends (defunct letâs play youtube channel, participating in podcasts, becoming delinquent in producing a podcast) I too have thought about the whole âthoughtful video essayâ form of criticism, and increasingly I have begun to realize that my voice is not unique (except literally obviously) and honestly I just donât have anything to say that hasnât already been said by at least one of the people who has >10k twitter followers are >100k youtube subscribers. I am aging into my obscurity and it is becoming comfortable.
Your video where you finish the collectibles and reflect on Tomb Raider was essentially a video essay and the perspective was at least heterodox and knowledgeable about the series in a way that very few (no?) other reviews at the time were. The games press turned on those games with pop critical theory later but yours is a rare example of critiquing the Unchartedlike form as well.
I am baffled at the conventional wisdom that Naughty Dog and similarities to Naughty Dog are ordinately good.
Joseph Andersonâs presentation and vocal delivery is dry but he did the work of showing by comprehensive record that Mario Odyssey is a bunch of Bethesdian bullshit wallpapered with Nintendoâs worst Disney instincts.
As I said, Iâve toyed with it all.
Also this is ironic because I am sb Naughty Dog fanboy #1. New Raider just totally sucks at it, as does everyone who is not Naughty Dog. And even Naughty Dog sometimes (UC4 wasnât really good, it is beginning to creak under the weight of its own expectations and I have very dire predictions about Last of Us 2).
I guess more what I mean is that my opinions on videogames have more or less calcified over the last decade or so and they bore me to think about. I could polish up some classics (the EQ vs. UO MMO design binary, COD4 is our generationâs Full Metal Jacket) and make some kind of more or less slickly produced youtube video thing but Iâve written about these topics 100 times on sb and uuggghhhhh.
More to the point I havenât seen or played a videogame that has really lit a critical fire in me in, years probably? Probably more a function in how busy and therefore lazy Iâve become than the actual state of videogame development in 2020, which has slipped more and more out of my grasp due to creeping senility. Thereâs probably all kinds of new games that are pushing all kinds of boundaries and redefining whatâs possible in the medium and etc but I havenât seen any. They can all be effortlessly slotted into critical spectra the general forms of which we were all talking about when we were literal children.
Joseph Anderson personally reneged on a deal with a friend of mine, fucking him out of commission money for streamlabs animations and shit, so he is my sworn enemy.
Also his criticism is the most plodding, pedantic, empty-headed surface-level read that is only possible by a person who doesnât have any intertextual interests outside of genre fiction. I find him grating in the worst way; a smug dipshit who bloviates for an hour on what can be condensed into a 500 word essay, without any of the humor or pacing that would make such a thing bearable. Also, consistently the worst opinion on everything.
This isnât against you or anything Doolittle, just relating my thoughts.
As for YouTubers in general, I feel like thereâs basically no good ones that I watch regularly. There are a few whose opinions I greatly respect (like Chris Franklin) but I talk to them instead of watching their content. Video critiques are brain poison; they require way more work than an essay to be good and thereâs so much bullshit out there from Johnny Teenager wanting to become an IGN influencer that getting noticed is next to impossible.
Words forever.
i do write about games on my blog, and i did an article for pc gamer a couple years back. games writing is something i would like to do more of, but then i remember that pretty much everyone in that scene hates me because i dared to get mad at people calling me a r*tard over an article i didnât write and harassing my friend into homelessness over a tweet she didnât make, so now i have a general distrust and distaste towards a lot of games writing so ÂŻ_(ă)_/ÂŻ
For Odyssey specifically there was value in doing the capture and editing of showing how many moons are stamp tool dopamine pellets and I think he was the first to it
Fuck people who stiff on payment, tho, that sucks
i actually donât know why anyone would watch a video on the internet
to go back to the inciting complaints about video games as lifestle brands, I was very annoyed last year when i saw every fucking game website was writing evangelion takes
that said, i donât read any website a lot, but i do occasionally click a link on twitter when something is making the rounds with certain cool people, and some of those articles are good, and i feel like kotaku hosts more of those good articles than any other mainstream games site
when i was putting lots effort into writing about games (like my indiecade series was so in depth and great) a fellow games writer pal said âyoud do well in videoâ and its like. um have you looked at me i want to be a crotchety homely old crone hiding behind their prose not deleting a thousand comments about how unfuckable i am
also it was really backhanded bc i felt like i was writing from a unique perspective etc i thought i had value blah blah
if i was cis amab id absolutely do tons of videos
i did get frank lantz in a vine saying âdaphny is better than me at setâ but i cut it off so it sounds like heâs saying sex so maybe i am better at video