So I read "WTF Is Wrong With Video Games?" and wanted to write some things.

Excellent blog post @marokai, your restraint here is commendable. I probably would have fed him to the dogs in your place.

The thing that always makes me the saddest is that every time someone wants to critique video games they jump straight to narratives. Surely, if you want your work to stand out as a source of serious criticism, you would talk about the one thing that your chosen medium does that nothing else can emulate, right? We all know most video game stories aren't going to stand up to the works of Proust or Scorcese or whomever, telling us this solves nothing and helps no one. However, you could read a million books or watch every film ever made and never be able to fully describe the feeling of jumping in Super Mario Bros. It is an experience almost completely unique to video games. But no, lets complain about how using two pieces of glass for a shiv is completely unreasonable.

Also, I've been trying to find the through-line between the chapters and am completely stumped. The American Dream one just throws off everything.

Word.

@marokai: God, that was so good, you have totally made my day. Fantastic work and surprisingly constructive criticism. I'm sure there's a better book somewhere in this premise. Of course that would involve someone actually understanding the industry and suggesting ways that it could improve; a lot of writers seem good at the pointing out what's wrong part, but tend to stop short of finding ways to fix things.

@hippie_genocide: How many of her articles have you read? It reads like you've only read her "controversial" articles. She's written tons and tons of articles about games and game culture that are positive, don't let the false narrative created by Gamergate and the likes about her color your view of her too much.

I'd recommend her Kindle book Breathing Machine, which is about growing up with video games and the internet. I found it to be really good.

Would you say the same about movies, which is an entertainment medium too? Movies have decades of history of criticism. And there's always criticism of Hollywood in regards to the lack of black actors in big movies, of the roles women over 40 get etc.

Games is a young medium that still to a large degree hasn't moved past the "just for entertainment" part of its evolution. But with the democratisation of dev tools you're beginning to see a lot more games that aren't just for entertainment, but are made as a way to convey a personal story, to make you think or something similar. There was a good short discussion about that on The Bombcast when they talked about Beginner's Guide. So while it'll still be an entertainment medium, you'll also get more and more other experiences. And that will be written about more and more, not because people have forgotten how to have fun or anything like that but because people find it interesting. I personally find it interesting to read criticism from time to time that isn't just IS THIS FUN? or DOES IT PLAY GOOD?

We probably want different things from games criticism and discussion about games. That's fine. I just find it silly to try to imply that writers and fans who like to focus on other aspects of games than you do have somehow forgotten how to have fun.

This is about your very general statement and not this specific book, which doesn't sound very good.

@amyggen: Like I said in a prior post, I haven't read anything by her in a couple years at least. I stopped before gamergate was really a thing I want to say but can't be certain. Mostly it was her contributions to gamasutra or just random dumb shit on twitter which I've long since unfollowed. Not that I want to condemn anyone for posting dumb shit on twitter, lest I be judged myself. If she's recently done more positive things that she's passionate about then good for her and her readers.

@hippie_genocide: The point is that she's always done a ton of that stuff, it's just that people tend to ignore that. Also, no one should be judged by their Twitter. If I did I wouldn't love Justin McElroy nearly as much as I do.

98 years ago, some French dude signed a urinal "R.Mutt", labeled it "Fountain" and achieved international recognition. I think we're past deeming things "not art".

@amyggen: I always found the argument of comparing games to movies kind of weird. Movies aren't games and games aren't movies. They have similar end goals but the journey to get there is quite different in how it defines your enjoyment of the end product. A movies main goal is to convey a story to a static audience. You have no input whatsoever, you are simply there to sit and consume it. Every single second of the movie is crafted by the director to evoke some sort of feeling within you and, in a good movie at least, there is no filler, no dead air, every minute matters. Games are an interactive medium. Obviously the biggest difference between games and movies is that you get to be an active participant of the story. The other big differentiator is that unlike movies, games don't need a story to still be a great product. Geometry Wars can be played for hundreds of hours without a single iota of story and it will still be a fun and entertaining game.

So when games like the Beginners Guide or Everybody's Gone to the Rapture get released you tend to wonder if the author chose the right medium for their vision. Beginners Guide is kind of like a minimally interactive, narrated tour. Is that game making the best use of it's interactivity? What are you gaining by walking from one point to the other that you couldn't otherwise gain from simply watching this unfold on it's own? Is the act of walking around these unfinished worlds so enjoyable that it was essential to give you that freedom of movement? Would it perhaps work better if it was just a narrated short movie instead? Dev tools are indeed empowering young game makers to create new and unique experiences but I don't think they are always best suited to actually be games. Whats the point when the end product is starting to stray so far from the core concept to the point of being unrecognizable as a game at all?

Lastly I never claimed that those who like other things than I do forgot how to have fun. I'm all for different genres and quite frankly don't really care what others are playing because it has nothing to do with me (for the moment). However I do think that people/critics who start to pick apart every aspect of every game are starting to lose a bit of perspective. When we start to have in depth discussions whether Lara is "too pretty" in the new Tomb Raider or how the Witcher 3 doesn't have hispanic dwarves I start to think maybe that constructive criticism is missing the forest for the trees. Or maybe it's just writing for the sake of writing itself. As @grantheaslip mentioned, a lot of these articles resemble stream of consciousness writing more than anything else. I don't know, I don't think my idea that we should concentrate on the gaming aspect of games as is that outlandish.

Let me reiterate that if people want to go hog wild writing super detailed exposes about a wide range of topics that have nothing to do with the actual act of playing a game, that is their thing and I'm not trying to stop anyone - after all no one is forcing me to read any of it. I simply think in this pursuit of trying to validate the medium as more than "just games for kids" we have moved slightly away from simply enjoying them in the pure sense of the word because everyone got so wrapped up in trying to analyze them instead.

Thanks for that great post. Will be gifting this book to friends just to annoy them ;-)

@humanity: I never compared games to movies, I just said that the film medium too is mainly an entertainment medium, just like games. But that hasn't stopped people from analysing it from all angles. And I don't really see how we have moved slightly away from "simply enjoying" games, there's still plenty of that out there, often from the same writers who at others times try to dissect a game or write about the culture surrounding games. Another medium I like, books, have almost infinite amounts of criticism from a number of publications, but I would never say that people have moved away from enjoying books because of it. I just don't buy that argument at all.

And you ask "Whats the point when the end product is starting to stray so far from the core concept to the point of being unrecognizable as a game at all?" Well, games as all other mediums evolve. A lot of people enjoy walking simulators, me included (didn't like Rapture though), and even with as little interactivity as there is in many of those games I really think video games is the best medium for those kind of experiences. Same goes for the visual novels you're beginning to see more and more of now.

@amyggen: Well I mean you are inadvertently comparing games to movies when you bring up the comparison. Regardless, if you enjoy those "walking simulator" as you call them then that is fair, to each their own of course. But why is it the best medium? Rapture especially underlines the point that without a solid gameplay foundation to stand on, the moment your story loses any sort of momentum the whole thing falls apart. Rapture could have been a really interesting animated short, but in the end it was a rather dull game where the plodding gameplay part of it was actually detrimental to the enjoyment of the story portion. I mean I get it, I absolutely agree with you that games evolving is a good thing. Who wouldn't agree with that? But however we want to dance around it, some of these things are inherently not games - you could say they've evolved past the genre into a category of their own. In my opinion player control alone does not automatically brand you a game, but that is a whole different conversation not related to the topic at hand.

Leigh Alexander had a really interesting article, wonderfully written, where she complains about Bioshock Infinite basically being a videogame. ( LINK ) It's a great example of dwelling on details to the point where you can't enjoy the big picture. To go back to movies and books for a second.. Yes, plenty of articles are written about both. Plenty of wonderful plot analysis and such. The difference is the tone of those articles. You don't get a whole lot of editorials asking why Frank Herberts Dune didn't have more dark skinned characters represented in his fictional world. The critics in those mediums tend to concentrate on discussing the works themselves, rather than trying to dissect how they adhere to current social norms. How many book reviews have you read where a characters attire played a pivotal role in the critique?

Obviously we have wildly different views on this topic, but I just want you to know that I understand where you're coming from and I'm not 100% against any game critiques. I think a well written piece about videogames can be both enlightening as well as entertaining. I simply think that the mood in the industry has been shifting to dwell on a lot of details that, to me anyway, seem irrelevant to the enjoyment of the product itself. Of course everyone is different so something that doesn't bother me could be a deal breaker for someone else, I get that, but at the same time I simply can't fathom how something like Quiet's outfit in MGS V for example is enough to "ruin" that game experience for someone. It seems like such an insignificant detail to dwell on but as I already said, to each their own I suppose, in the end I just don't think it does anyone any good.

Great write-up @marokai! It is kind of amazing that this book got any coverage at all considering how under-informed and overreaching it is. I can't imagine it would have seen the light of day in this state if a publisher was involved.

I think there are valid criticisms somewhere in the premises of his chapters, but the actual execution is so flawed and rambling that his arguments fall apart. Maybe this book would have been better served by focusing on one or two examples as a microcosm, rather than trying to take on capitalism, American exceptionalism, racial disparities, design process, and AAA game development practices... especially in 86 pages.

I would love to discuss some of the topics that Owen brings up, but unfortunately his arguments don't look that useful.

He's mocking Dead Space for doing something he thinks is silly and unrealistic but says video games shouldn't be constrained by real world logic, only the logic internal to their stories, which Dead Space explicitly does. What is he even saying.

Dead Space has an in-universe reason for why shooting the limbs works, and never makes it explicit. The way the Marker works is through animating dead flesh, they're more like Zerg than zombies. That's why they immediately die if you disarm them, that's the Marker relinquishing control because it has nothing to attack with anymore.

Phil Owen most of all seems as if he's attempting to make video games easier to be a dilletante about. He seems to want to make games even more shit-out-a-review-friendly, maybe so they can be more like the movie culture that he so admires. The rest of his jeremiad suggests that he doesn't want to be personally associated with video games, and that this journalism thing is a fail state for him. The fact that he doesn't cover anything beyond the most broad genres... I begin to wonder if he's actually writing for enthusiasts or for the more broad populist side that only knows video games from the commercials on the teevee. I could in some way buy that people who are tangentially interested in video games aren't getting to see a very diverse array, but I am interested in games and saying that they're all the same is pants-on-head stupid.

It is weird to say that AAA games are anti-accessibility while also saying they're bland and focus-grouped to hell. That's why they're bland, that's why there's a big arrow at the top telling you where to go, that's why games show you what button to press for contextual items. UI design is an art, but Phil Owen can't find any art in these original media applications that hundreds of artists worked overtime for years to create. But two potheads can shit out a mumblecore flick and that's art, because the story doesn't get interrupted by gameplay.

I've kind of looked through the comments, and the entertainment-not-art concept is mystifying to me. I would like to see a judge watch a person play an instrument and come up with a legally binding standard of where entertainment ends and art begins and vice versa. Art is not merely a refuge for the obscure and the remotely appealing.

Utterly magnificent critique @marokai! You have perfectly deconstructed the supercilious arguments Owen spits out, even giving him far more credit than he is due. Though his constant self-contradiction doesn't really need rebuttal, the points you've raised highlight how inane his belief in the One Holy medium of Film is. Really, if you put this piece out in a book entitled' WTF is Wrong with Phil Owen?' I'd be far more inclined to buy that than the drivel Owen is peddling.

Excellent piece! :)

This was a very fun and engaging read. I've never even heard of this book, and after reading this article, I'm pretty glad that I haven't until now.

It's like a student paper at a build-your-own-major college.

Wow, that's detailed review of the book. Video Games like other media (IE: comics and anime) gets stigmatized. When it gets huge and seen a lot, it's half and half roughly accepted by majority of folks. The side effects of its popularity gain some negative things, too like recent events last year. It's part of the culture. Let folks enjoy however they like as entertainment, as art, as social criticism, etc. We just got to keep doing what we love.