GERALTITUDE

As the age of internet dawned on us, the possibility of concrete truths began evaporating - for all mediums. Games are the hardest hit (mostly) because there never were many truths in the first place. All the critical truths (the hero arc, known affects of structure X or language Y) that exists - and are known in the mainstream - about literature, film or television, are almost all exclusively derived from or are versus Old Pre-Internet Truths.

(To avoid writing 10,000 words about how OPITs came to be, consider the simple difference between knowledge being physically contained in a book or building. Then consider a world where knowledge is permeable & cannot be owned. In the first world, doesn't it seem obvious that we would defer Right/Wrong Critical Anaylsis to the Physical Holders of knowledge and the very buildings where that thought was allowed to take place? And in the new world... well, why the hell would you ever defer Right/Wrong to anyone?)

So, because games came up in an age of Liquid Truth (vs Solid Truth, naturally) there was never a ground to build on. An examples of an rare old truths is that "games are software".

Hence, it will take FUCKING FOREVER for everyone to get the memo that games are art, for example. In our world today anyone anywhere can post a story/blog with their thoughts and there is no central authority, to, basically, laugh at them/call them incorrect, which is the cornerstone of all criticism: authority.

So while literature and film and television have decades (or centuries) of writing which is still held up as an "Ultimate Truth of the Medium" that all writing about those mediums can be measured against, that just doesn't exist for us in games. Add on that, as a society, I think we are less and less interested in Solid Truth.

So, as time goes on, expect Liquid Truth to infiltrate the other mediums too.

But will it ever exfiltrate Games? TUNE IN NEXT CENTURY TO FIND OUT!