[Blue Lion]

To me pro reviewers tend to be too positive and "indie" ones are too negative. I actually tend to see what people are talking about. Threads and memes and other things on the internet are a good indicator on if a game is good. Tough to find small gems though, but big name reviewers aren't touching those anyways.

[Luis Dias]

If you're going to start watching Zero Punctuation, I'd advise picking the oldest game on his list you didn't particularly like.

I'm gonna watch his mass effect 2 video coz I'm that maso.

[AtomicClucker]

Welp, if the idiocy of the GameJournoPros leak reveals, the general consensus among gamers is that we jumped ship to citizen Youtube.

A number of game journos were complaining about AngryJoe and Totalbiscuit, but it should be no suprise the "Gaming Media," has pretty much gone the way of the Dodo in the wake of Youtube, twitch.tv, and streaming. I stopped reading many gaming review sites because I found more relevancy from Let's Play commentary, Totalbiscuit, and the satirical yet rewarding antics of AngryJoe.

And the biggest death knell that was declared when Games Media attempted to assassinate their own audience with those stupid "Gamer's are dead" articles that popped up like the plague. The death wasn't even gamers, it was the death knell of the traditional gaming press as we understood it. My reasons for declaring such are pretty opinionated, but it comes down to the fact that game's media not only became less about games, reviews, and providing services that a consumer would find helpful, they decided they could dictate the course of the conversation with neither the tact, nor the wit.

Scholars they are not, artists they wish to be, but properly, writers they will never be.

It should be no surprise that despite claims of "scholarly" discourse, that we find a number of "progressive" sites focused more on politics than the spirit and culture of gaming. Though I try to remain factual and even neutral, I no longer read Polygon, as an example, because the editors and reviewers have gotten so full of themselves they've decided they can start waxing poetic like Noam Chomsky, but lack the eloquence, verbatim, and most cases nuance.

It's essentially trying to spout artistic nonsense without the actual visual medium to back it up and the critical process of objective criticism.

But with Youtube, we have "reviewers" and "critics" we can relate to; they still bear a strong link with their viewership, and it's that "link" which has made them relevant.

[Mr. Vega]

Welp, if the idiocy of the GameJournoPros leak reveals, the general consensus among gamers is that we jumped ship to citizen Youtube.

A number of game journos were complaining about AngryJoe and Totalbiscuit, but it should be no suprise the "Gaming Media," has pretty much gone the way of the Dodo in the wake of Youtube, twitch.tv, and streaming. I stopped reading many gaming review sites because I found more relevancy from Let's Play commentary, Totalbiscuit, and the satirical yet rewarding antics of AngryJoe.

And the biggest death knell that was declared when Games Media attempted to assassinate their own audience with those stupid "Gamer's are dead" articles that popped up like the plague. The death wasn't even gamers, it was the death knell of the traditional gaming press as we understood it. My reasons for declaring such are pretty opinionated, but it comes down to the fact that game's media not only became less about games, reviews, and providing services that a consumer would find helpful, they decided they could dictate the course of the conversation with neither the tact, nor the wit.

Scholars they are not, artists they wish to be, but properly, writers they will never be.

It should be no surprise that despite claims of "scholarly" discourse, that we find a number of "progressive" sites focused more on politics than the spirit and culture of gaming. Though I try to remain factual and even neutral, I no longer read Polygon, as an example, because the editors and reviewers have gotten so full of themselves they've decided they can start waxing poetic like Noam Chomsky, but lack the eloquence, verbatim, and most cases nuance.

It's essentially trying to spout artistic nonsense without the actual visual medium to back it up and the critical process of objective criticism.

But with Youtube, we have "reviewers" and "critics" we can relate to; they still bear a strong link with their viewership, and it's that "link" which has made them relevant.

Yo, if you're still around here in five years, I'm going to repost this proclamation and see how funny it looks in hindsight.

I love that you think progressive critics aren't already flooding the likes of Youtube. It's not enough for you to think we're wrong, you have to believe we're stupidheads with technology too to be satisfied?

[AtomicClucker]

Welp, if the idiocy of the GameJournoPros leak reveals, the general consensus among gamers is that we jumped ship to citizen Youtube.

A number of game journos were complaining about AngryJoe and Totalbiscuit, but it should be no suprise the "Gaming Media," has pretty much gone the way of the Dodo in the wake of Youtube, twitch.tv, and streaming. I stopped reading many gaming review sites because I found more relevancy from Let's Play commentary, Totalbiscuit, and the satirical yet rewarding antics of AngryJoe.

And the biggest death knell that was declared when Games Media attempted to assassinate their own audience with those stupid "Gamer's are dead" articles that popped up like the plague. The death wasn't even gamers, it was the death knell of the traditional gaming press as we understood it. My reasons for declaring such are pretty opinionated, but it comes down to the fact that game's media not only became less about games, reviews, and providing services that a consumer would find helpful, they decided they could dictate the course of the conversation with neither the tact, nor the wit.

Scholars they are not, artists they wish to be, but properly, writers they will never be.

It should be no surprise that despite claims of "scholarly" discourse, that we find a number of "progressive" sites focused more on politics than the spirit and culture of gaming. Though I try to remain factual and even neutral, I no longer read Polygon, as an example, because the editors and reviewers have gotten so full of themselves they've decided they can start waxing poetic like Noam Chomsky, but lack the eloquence, verbatim, and most cases nuance.

It's essentially trying to spout artistic nonsense without the actual visual medium to back it up and the critical process of objective criticism.

But with Youtube, we have "reviewers" and "critics" we can relate to; they still bear a strong link with their viewership, and it's that "link" which has made them relevant.

Yo, if you're still around here in five years, I'm going to repost this proclamation and see how funny it looks in hindsight.

I love that you think progressive critics aren't already flooding the likes of Youtube. It's not enough for you to think we're wrong, you have to believe we're stupidheads with technology too to be satisfied?

No, I think it's a critical flaw in understanding the methodology of criticism. That flaw is a critical understanding of theorem that builds criticism, not so much "good" or "bad."

Game critics need to perpetually ask themselves what they think builds the foundation of solid criticism and commentary. In a sense, the criticism and critic should be aware of one another. That's why I agree with an increasing number of gamers and critics in the elimination of numbers in traditional scoring methodology. Unless one is explicitly looking for technical prowess, then critiquing artwork requires more than just numbers and if they want to push it higher, then it requires knowledge normally outside the realm of gaming.

[Mr. Vega]

Can we at least stop the equating of old monoliths like IGN and Gamespot sucking at the teat of AAA corporate advertising cash and writing the blandest articles possible with freelancers and semi-freelancers like Alexander (many of whom were making the same points years and years before any of you took notice and offense at them) who make no money (really, they don't make jack **** doing what they love) having the gall to think games have grown up enough that they can do what film and literary critics do? To suggest these two issues are one in the same is to be completely dishonest.

[AtomicClucker]

Can we at least stop the equating of old monoliths like IGN and Gamespot sucking at the teat of AAA corporate advertising cash and writing the blandest articles possible with freelancers and semi-freelancers like Alexander (most of whom were making the same points years and years before any of you took notice and offense at them) who have the gall to think games have grown up enough that they can do what film and literary critics do? To suggest these two issues are one in the same is to be completely dishonest.

Well, the problem is many critics want games to be like "high art,", but to understand that "high art" is a pretty stupid line to use. I spent a good portion of my BFA criticizing, dissecting and destroying my fellows (and them, me). Very quickly the line of "high art" disintegrates when the sober realization that art is about use of materials, design principles, and its relation to the viewer. Games are an artistic form of expression, and perhaps its time we adopt abstracted thinking into our normal technical and very anachronistic methods of reviewing it.

As an artist, and pseudo-critic, I realize that perhaps we bark up the wrong tree in believing what art "should be" rather than understand as "it is."

I tend to do both abstract and realistic work, and the more I think and dissect games, I'm beginning to understand that as an artistic medium, we need to "drop" this futile intention of "maturity" and perhaps that our notions of maturation are the problem to how we approach it.

[Mr. Vega]

I tend to do both abstract and realistic work, and the more I think and dissect games, I'm beginning to understand that as an artistic medium, we need to "drop" this futile intention of "maturity" and perhaps that our notions of maturation are the problem to how we approach it.

When I say "grown up", what I mean is the medium is big and established enough that we can finally decide we don't want all reviews to treat games like any other consumer product. And try as you might to deny it, all we're hearing from your camp is how unhappy you all are with the gaming media as consumers. "It's a consumer revolt! A consumer revolt!" Pardon me when I say this, but **** that ****. I want me some interesting, personal, well thought out perspectives on the stuff I care about for my reading material. You didn't answer my question btw.

My FAVORITE thing is people who play the consumer revolt card while using a Fight Club avatar. I've run into that a half dozen times. That is the absolute best.

[Flipside]

It has to be borne in mind that every review is subjective, I get more concerned about a reviewer who will forgive a failing rather than attack it because it makes me suspicious.

For example, a comment like 'Multi-player can be difficult to connect to, but no doubt these teething problems will be resolved' always make me think that the review is no longer a summary of what the game is, instead it is a summary of what the developer wants it to be.

That's why I tend more towards negative reviewers I suspect, I'd rather think 'well, I was warned[/i] if the game turns out to be a disappointment.

[AtomicClucker]

I tend to do both abstract and realistic work, and the more I think and dissect games, I'm beginning to understand that as an artistic medium, we need to "drop" this futile intention of "maturity" and perhaps that our notions of maturation are the problem to how we approach it.

When I say "grown up", what I mean is the medium is big and established enough that we can finally decide we don't want all reviews to treat games like any other consumer product. And try as you might to deny it, all we're hearing from your camp is how unhappy you all are with the gaming media as consumers. "It's a consumer revolt! A consumer revolt!" Pardon me when I say this, but **** that ****. I want me some interesting, personal, well thought out perspectives on the stuff I care about for my reading material.

My FAVORITE thing is people who play the consumer revolt card using a Fight Club avatar. I've run into that a half dozen times. That is the absolute best.

Well, without players, a game is nothing, unless "nothing" is meant as a subversion of how we understanding the gaming-player relationship. And no, I'm not talking any GG ****, the potential flame war is not worth destroying this thread. But I'm quickly establishing that if we want games to be taken seriously, perhaps its not the games that are at fault, but our perception and reception to it. To understand something in the "artistic" sense, you've got to change how you perceive and react to it. Great games still have flaws, so do great movies. We call them great because they pull off strong execution that "pulls" it altogether, and generally we lampoon bad games and movies because, because they don't have enough cohesion to pull them together.

Now, why am I calling out some game critics? Well, pet peeves aside, but it's because they're trying to say "what" games should be, now I'm saying its time to ask "What could they be?"

The more we want to call games art, the more we need to be willing to accept what they could be. Doesn't necessarily mean it'll be a good game though and yes, criticism does exist for that very reason.

[Mr. Vega]

For example, a comment like 'Multi-player can be difficult to connect to, but no doubt these teething problems will be resolved' always make me think that the review is no longer a summary of what the game is, instead it is a summary of what the developer wants it to be.

Which is something you won't see among essays by "progressive" critics, because what they write about has nothing to do with that stuff! Unethical reporting and conflicts of interest with publishers have nothing to do with indie writers writing in an openly subjective manner about what in the medium that interests them. The biggest absurdity of this whole controversy is that so many people are demanding we take it for granted that the two are related, almost as if the former issue is being used as a "shield", enabling them to attack their real target, which is the latter "issue".

[Mr. Vega]

Well, without players, a game is nothing, unless "nothing" is meant as a subversion of how we understanding the "gaming-player relationship", whatever the hell that means.

I didn't know critics giving their heartfelt personal perspective on various issues in gaming is an attack on the gaming-player relationship. I didn't know that the proper rebuttal to a post pointing out that there's a very big difference between a "consumer" and a reader/player/filmgoer, and that maybe it's 100% ok that more and more "journalists" (really, even if much of journalism is itself inescapably subjective, to not call them critics is to do them a disservice) are writing to us as players instead of consumers, is to respond by saying that this is somehow destructive to the "gaming-player relationship".

[Flipside]

Whilst I do not doubt that there is a conflict of interest when developers are advertising on sites (see what happened to Jeff Gerrstman), I agree you cannot lay the blame at the feet of 'professional reviewers' as an entity, but the problem is that these organizations have created the very situation they now face, of people not trusting some reviewers because of the behaviour of their managers.

I suppose the long and the short of it is that you find a couple of reviewers who you can use as a compass, watch Yogscast or someone play it, maybe Google it and see what the general consensus is, you can usually get a pretty firm idea of what to expect if you are thorough.

[Mr. Vega]

Whilst I do not doubt that there is a conflict of interest when developers are advertising on sites (see what happened to Jeff Gerrstman), I agree you cannot lay the blame at the feet of 'professional reviewers' as an entity, but the problem is that these organizations have created the very situation they now face, of people not trusting some reviewers because of the behaviour of their managers.

There is not a monolithic brotherhood of "professional reviewers". The writer who has the biggest bullseye on her back, Leigh Alexander, is a dirt-poor semi-freelancer. The biggest publication she writes for, Gamasutra, doesn't even write for "consumers" - its main audience is the developer community. Her best stuff is posted on her own blog. The vast majority of progressive critics who Atomic despises with such vigor simply don't live anywhere near the center of wealth and power in the gaming media. You will never see her, or anyone like her, end up in a photo like this. But if AC acknowledged and admitted this he couldn't score points by falsely lumping in all the critics he doesn't like with incidents of actual corruption fueled by AAA publisher money.

And yes, if you haven't already guessed, I was a fan of hers long before this all started. The idea that a girl who can't stop writing gushing personal pieces about her favorite games (MGS3 above all) being at the forefront of some anti-gamer assault is absolutely hilarious if I weren't so tired of the abject stupidity and ignorance involved.

[AtomicClucker]

Well, without players, a game is nothing, unless "nothing" is meant as a subversion of how we understanding the "gaming-player relationship", whatever the hell that means.

I didn't know critics giving their heartfelt personal perspective on various issues in gaming is an attack on the gaming-player relationship. I didn't know that the proper rebuttal to a post pointing out that there's a very big difference between a "consumer" and a reader/player/filmgoer, and that maybe it's 100% ok that more and more "journalists" (really, even if much of journalism is itself inescapably subjective, to not call them critics is to do them a disservice) are writing to us as players instead of consumers, is to respond by saying that this is somehow destructive to the "gaming-player relationship".

Well, I don't ingraine my personal beefs into my art. And every review is subjective. Hell, Totalbiscuit did a video making it clear that there's no such thing as a "non-subjective" video. Now I share a space as both a critic and a producer, and even to an extent as a consumer. The problem is that a small number of critics have decided that they can assume the role of a "producer" without the actual work involved. I heavily frown on this sort of mentality; they don't produce games, but then attempt to dictate what subject matter, and to an extent, the viewership, should be acceptable. Now understand, as a critic, we can criticize whatever elements we don't like, but that doesn't preclude us from counter-criticism, rebuttals, and perhaps re-thinking out positions.

Criticism needs counter-criticism to function fully. And frankly, with Games Media, counter criticism has slowly started to make itself felt. A little bit late, but its about time it happened. Eric Kain of Forbes was pretty solid on this, but he's been spouting this for quite some time: in order to be an art, perhaps the criticism has to function like artistic criticism instead of a one-trick pony.

Though, in defense of the notion of the consumer: Games are a consumer product, also, a modern form of "Pop Art." Games need players to function in their full artistic form, without players, the game ceases to exist as its intrinsic value. Without a player, a game is no longer a game. Without out that critical component, game theorem as art ceases to function.

[karajorma]

This discussion turns away from gamergate or it *gets* turned away.

You two can choose which.

[Mr. Vega]

Though, in defense of the notion of the consumer: Games are a consumer product, also, a modern form of "Pop Art." Games need players to function in their full artistic form, without players, the game ceases to exist as its intrinsic value. Without a player, a game is no longer a game. Without out that critical component, game theorem as art ceases to function.

I foster Golden Retrievers for a North Texas rescue organization. I've been doing it for 4 years and I've personally fostered over a hundred dogs with my now wife. I've been to enough Meet-and-Greets for potential adopters to meet my dogs to be able to pick out red flags immediately as we start talking. You know what my single biggest pet peeve is with some of the people who come up to talk to me? When they start looking at my dog like it's a piece of furniture. Checking it for dinks and scratch marks, wondering how many miles it has on it, comparing it against the others like they're holding up a ****ing spec sheet as they're looking it over. I see that look on their face and I'm ending that conversation as soon as I can. If you want my ****ing dog, if you want to even think about getting a home visit set up, you're going to look at my boy with eyes of love. You're gonna say hi to him and love on him and ask me what he's like like he's an actual living thing with emotions and wants and needs that you want to give him. My dog is not a thing for you to purchase.

I don't give a **** about games because they're wonderfully nice products to have. If that's all they were, I wouldn't be here staying up late arguing about them. They are a form of artistic expression, and like all art, they have an interplay between the art itself and the viewer/reader/watcher/player. That is NOT the same thing as a consumer, just as a work of art is not a "product". If they are also the other thing, that is incidental to why we care about them. The game critics I like don't pander to those who, like you, demand that they stick to an incredibly narrow subject matter even as they claim they are trying to enforce their own views on everyone else. They seem to be the only ones who actually understand and embrace the inherent subjectivity of art in games, the actual, in the moment interaction between the game and the player that produces the things that we actually care about. Reading their articles has considerably increased my enjoyment of certain games by showing my something I hadn't thought of myself. And as for looking at social issues in games, god forbid they think their chosen art form of study be used to talk about, however obliquely, the actual world they live in. You know, like every other art form in existence.

Just admit you don't see games as anything more than products, accept that the critics you don't like aren't looking for you as an audience for that reason, and we will all get along much better.

[AtomicClucker]

Well, I'm trying to argue theory, not GamerGate.

Games are entertainment - and a consumer product. That doesn't say it can't have soul. In fact, it does, but a game is still a consumer product that is produced and sold for a profit, at least by one definition. Games can be made for free, others are made explicitly for political purposes and exactly function as propaganda. And what's so wonderful about it? A game is only a game when someone is playing it. There's a uniquely disturbing truth of gaming being an inherent consumer product, even if its free or not made for sale: it's still distributed with the intention of being played.

That's the beauty I love about gaming. It is our true interactive art form. Even performance art pales in comparison to that majesty of interactive compulsion. No other medium has managed to pull it off like gaming.

However, I do give two ****s about games as an actual artistic medium, and more than ever, I'm starting to call out its need for a mature, intellectual framework to guide us into the next evolution. Whether they be producers, critics, gamers and yes consumers, it's about high time we start demanding the same intellectual frameworks that enshroud the other arts. A critic can be a critic, but well nuanced and versed critic? That's why I'm calling for. We need our scholars, we need our historians, and most importantly, we need to build a mature framework. But the Old Guard can't provide quite like Youtubers, which should be interesting to say at least. Totalbiscuit and AngryJoe scholars? Yes, it sounds ludicrous at the get go, but to an extent, it's something that we may need to consider down the road.

Edit: Well, the problem is that your viewpoint on games as art is lacking in plurality. I've always viewed games as a consumer product: but a product can be a work of art, it can a singer of souls, and it still can be sold for a buck. I feel frustrated that critics try to divorce it of this notion, which, I hate to say, reveals how little they understand of actual artistic theory.

But I'm going to shut up before Kara hits me with a banhammer.

[The E]

But if you are calling for a diversity of opinions, doesn't that also require the existance of opinions you disagree with?

[karajorma]

The argument about Leigh Alexander was getting too close to GG territory. The rest is fine.

But to be honest, I'd rather see the argument return to Cobra's original premise that reviews are too negative these days. It says something that several people have help up Zero Punctuation as good reviews when they are almost always negative in tone.