I get that everyone has verbal ticks, odd ways of speaking and verbal cliche's that we cling to or use without even realizing it. I know that if I were on a microphone for an extended period of time, I would probably do and say a number of things that people would have a problem with.
I do wish, though, that patrick would stop leaning on the word "interesting". He uses it probably ten times as much as anyone else at giant bomb, which is probably twenty times more than anyone I've ever met in real life. The problem I have with the word, personally, is that it comes off as a crutch word.
"This game has 'interesting mechanics'"
"This game 'did a lot of interesting things'"
"This game 'looks really interesting'"
WHY? Why any of that? It's a word that doesn't communicate any actual information and is just a substitute for saying "I approve of". Which, honestly, is not why I visit Giant Bomb or any other gaming site. If I wanted to know if a game is good or not, I'd read a review, and in that review I'd want someone like Alex who is good at explaining WHY a game earned his opinion of it.
Potential alternatives could be things like "this game has x mechanic that looks like it could be fun". "X game has y story element that seems unique and makes me want to know what might happen next" "X game features y scene that looks exciting!"
"Interesting" is a hipster term that puts every game at the mercy of trying to impress one's lofty and not easily impressed tastes. Saying something is "interesting" is as though one is gracing it with their notice for mere moments and if it doesn't make the most of them, one is going to unleash the full weight of their hipster criticism on it. But as a reader and a listener, I want to hear ABOUT the game. If some part of the game makes you respond to it, WHAT part of the game, and HOW did it make you feel?
There is no shame in saying something is fun, exciting, interesting, exhilarating, charming, scary, mysterious, or any other adjective that actually commits a personal feeling behind an opinion.
here's a link to a "bad writing blog" talking about how bad the word interesting is.
Here's another writing blog addressing the overuse of the word interesting.
"The most recent victim of overuse and misuse (take your pick) is the word interesting. It’s overused because its become a go-to filler word when we become too lazy to use something more precise. It’s misused because we often hide behind it instead of saying what we truly think and feel. During a short story writing class I took in college, our instructor would rail on us if our only feedback to another student was that something about their writing was interesting. His point was that this statement was essentially useless because it didn’t provided the author with something tangible they could use to respond to and improve their work."
I could also link about 10 pages that list the word "interesting" in the top 5 most overused words in the english language, but that's just overkill.
I write this because, more than any other editor at Giant Bomb, Patrick talks frequently about wanting to get into the nitty gritty of games and why they succeed or fail. He even expresses an interest to play bad games through to their completion just to analyze why they were unsuccessful. Ultimately, though, if the post-mortem of those games is discussed with words like "interesting" or "uninteresting", it becomes impossible to communicate any real knowledge gained from the experience.
Log in to comment