I’ve been moaning about not reading enough since my early
teens, which now means that I’ve not read enough for more years than those when
I actually read enough. Although, it’s been so long since then that now I’m not
really sure if I ever did do the thing that I think I don’t do enough of now.
Which might explain my inability to construct an inviting opening paragraph,
not that two lines really constitutes a notable introduction anyway.
Instead of reading those ‘books’ - or anything else for that
matter - I did fun things like drinking
and having barbeques in places adolescents aren’t allowed to have barbeques. I
started smoking cigarettes, listening to loud, obnoxious music and learned to be
‘intimate’ with women. I played video games and attended house parties. I
sometimes read reviews to find out what video games to buy, and then I played
video games. I expelled a wide array of bodily fluids in an even wider array of
socially-unacceptable places. I saw a friend receive a blowjob in the middle of
a garden party. I consumed bodily fluids that weren’t my own. I saw the
aforementioned friend receive blowjobs in public on a number of other
occasions. I shit myself multiple times. I did all this while still at school,
when I should have been reading and expanding my mind, and to what end?
There doesn’t appear to have been one to tell the truth. I finally started reading for pleasure again when I bought one of those kindle things. It neatly removed my major misgivings about books; namely their cost and weight and replaced them with good old digital ingenuity. I went back to games writing when I realised the people doing it were now saying more than ‘buy this game because it is pretty good’ or ‘don’t buy this game because it is pretty bad’. It seems though that lots of the most interesting things being written about games are produced by people who didn’t spend a decade of their youth doing stupid and ultimately fruitless ‘shitting’ about. Not that I assume the things featured weekly in compendiums such as Critical Distance are being written by housebound boffins without a solitary human experience to rub between them. Quite the contrary actually; they highlight how stimulating being a ‘well rounded human being’ can actually prove to be.
There doesn’t appear to have been one to tell the truth. I finally started reading for pleasure again when I bought one of those kindle things. It neatly removed my major misgivings about books; namely their cost and weight and replaced them with good old digital ingenuity. I went back to games writing when I realised the people doing it were now saying more than ‘buy this game because it is pretty good’ or ‘don’t buy this game because it is pretty bad’. It seems though that lots of the most interesting things being written about games are produced by people who didn’t spend a decade of their youth doing stupid and ultimately fruitless ‘shitting’ about. Not that I assume the things featured weekly in compendiums such as Critical Distance are being written by housebound boffins without a solitary human experience to rub between them. Quite the contrary actually; they highlight how stimulating being a ‘well rounded human being’ can actually prove to be.
I often find pieces of genuinely well-written games
criticism intimidating, which puts me in an awkward position. I am the first to
agree that games, as a readily flourishing medium, deserve to be treated with respect
and discussed intelligently and with a reasonable degree of depth. At the same
time, however, when presented with writing fitting this very description I sometimes
find that it goes a little over my head or even worse, I simply don’t really
‘get’ what the author is trying to say. This is, of course, entirely my own
fault.
Part of the problem is that I’ve never really enjoyed formal academic writing on the arts, in so much as I find it to be somewhat at odds with its subject matter. Art of any kind elicits a different response from whoever consumes it; at least I feel that conclusion can be safely drawn. It is the pervasive idea that references to past theories and interpretations somehow makes a writer’s opinion more intellectually valid that really rubs on me, as it did all the way through my degree. I see it more as a test of character than of genuine intellect; being able to read and select appropriate citations is not particularly difficult, actually being bothered to do so is where the real discipline lies.
I am in no way, though, saying that all worthwhile writing about games is bogged down in the trappings of stuffy academia. However, it does seem that the more rigidly a good piece about games adheres to the academic template, the more admiration it receives. This is fine I suppose, but I can’t help but think that games aren’t quite like any artistic medium we’ve encountered before – however much that sentiment has already echoed throughout history – and that it can’t be satisfactorily covered by existing paradigms.
I want to make it unreservedly clear that I really enjoy reading in and around the blogs featured on Critical Distance and the wider internet world. I just wish it wasn’t all so - well - serious so much of the time. I find it a bit tiring and have to take a break after a couple of articles, so sweaty does my brain become from all the exertion it needs to go through to keep up. Again, my fault I know, but surely there are authors of note writing about video games from a slightly different perspective? I’ve not been following Critical Distance for years and years, but it certainly does appear to lean heavily towards scholarly writing by design, leaving other approaches a bit in the cold. (Blogs of the Round Table is obviously a bit different.)
Part of the problem is that I’ve never really enjoyed formal academic writing on the arts, in so much as I find it to be somewhat at odds with its subject matter. Art of any kind elicits a different response from whoever consumes it; at least I feel that conclusion can be safely drawn. It is the pervasive idea that references to past theories and interpretations somehow makes a writer’s opinion more intellectually valid that really rubs on me, as it did all the way through my degree. I see it more as a test of character than of genuine intellect; being able to read and select appropriate citations is not particularly difficult, actually being bothered to do so is where the real discipline lies.
I am in no way, though, saying that all worthwhile writing about games is bogged down in the trappings of stuffy academia. However, it does seem that the more rigidly a good piece about games adheres to the academic template, the more admiration it receives. This is fine I suppose, but I can’t help but think that games aren’t quite like any artistic medium we’ve encountered before – however much that sentiment has already echoed throughout history – and that it can’t be satisfactorily covered by existing paradigms.
I want to make it unreservedly clear that I really enjoy reading in and around the blogs featured on Critical Distance and the wider internet world. I just wish it wasn’t all so - well - serious so much of the time. I find it a bit tiring and have to take a break after a couple of articles, so sweaty does my brain become from all the exertion it needs to go through to keep up. Again, my fault I know, but surely there are authors of note writing about video games from a slightly different perspective? I’ve not been following Critical Distance for years and years, but it certainly does appear to lean heavily towards scholarly writing by design, leaving other approaches a bit in the cold. (Blogs of the Round Table is obviously a bit different.)
I think my biggest problem though, if I’m being honest, is
with myself and those choice years I spent pissing all over things and laughing
at dick jokes. In his response to Chris Lepine’s The Day the Music Died Alan Williamson noted that people simply
don’t respond to articles published in Fiveout of Ten magazine, the quarterly he features in and edits. Quite simply
put; I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing so. They are better than me and I have
no place commenting on, never mind critiquing, their work.
I pitched Alan once, it was terrible. I’d been writing about games for about six months (haha) and getting a decent response on forums and the late Bitmob.com and thought I was about ready to step up my game (haha-ha). That experience taught me that no, I wasn’t in a position to think I was any good and especially any good at the more professional/social parts of games writing. I’d imagine a lot of the people who would like to, but are not starting a dialogue with the authors in Five out of Ten are in a similarly self-deprecating position.
Here we have people writing intelligently about games, albeit a little too stuffily for me on occasion, creating thought-provoking copy and seeing things in games I’ve never even fathomed. Then we have me; an individual who fell out with intellectualism in favour of mindless juvenility, who has only recently begun to again give mind to anything in any depth, never mind video games. Simply put; I don’t feel comfortable interacting with the ‘proper’ writers because I don’t see myself as one yet and so don’t feel ‘ready’ to start a discourse with them. Though neither am I simply a denizen of the forum-lands, where conversations rage like wildfires and can swing from pleasant to not-so-pleasant in seconds. I therefore find myself in, as I said earlier, an awkward position; I am neither - and this may well be gross oversimplification - 'highbrow' like the writers I read, nor 'lowbrow' like the wider internet crowds I’ve rarely fully understood. I reckon then, that modern games blogging might benefit from a midbrow where topics are discussed smartly but not too smartly, in depth but not too deeply; essentially, like you would discuss them - but more like me.
I pitched Alan once, it was terrible. I’d been writing about games for about six months (haha) and getting a decent response on forums and the late Bitmob.com and thought I was about ready to step up my game (haha-ha). That experience taught me that no, I wasn’t in a position to think I was any good and especially any good at the more professional/social parts of games writing. I’d imagine a lot of the people who would like to, but are not starting a dialogue with the authors in Five out of Ten are in a similarly self-deprecating position.
Here we have people writing intelligently about games, albeit a little too stuffily for me on occasion, creating thought-provoking copy and seeing things in games I’ve never even fathomed. Then we have me; an individual who fell out with intellectualism in favour of mindless juvenility, who has only recently begun to again give mind to anything in any depth, never mind video games. Simply put; I don’t feel comfortable interacting with the ‘proper’ writers because I don’t see myself as one yet and so don’t feel ‘ready’ to start a discourse with them. Though neither am I simply a denizen of the forum-lands, where conversations rage like wildfires and can swing from pleasant to not-so-pleasant in seconds. I therefore find myself in, as I said earlier, an awkward position; I am neither - and this may well be gross oversimplification - 'highbrow' like the writers I read, nor 'lowbrow' like the wider internet crowds I’ve rarely fully understood. I reckon then, that modern games blogging might benefit from a midbrow where topics are discussed smartly but not too smartly, in depth but not too deeply; essentially, like you would discuss them - but more like me.
Maybe call it Kidz Korner or something similarly fitting, I’m sure that would sit perfectly with the current tone of Critical Distance.
This was written in response to Critical Distance's July Blogs of the Round Table. The other (better) entries into the debate can be found below.
