I’m wondering if perhaps Myles Barlow will do a review of the act of reviewing other reviews at some point.

1 star.

It seems that your core argument here is that videogame criticism doesn’t engage with a certain kind of videogame. I agree with Christian—this is demonstrably untrue. I honestly don’t want to dig through my own writing history to prove it; it’s clearly there if you look.

I’m honestly having a lot of trouble trying to find this. Yes, I know that there are some AAA games that do receive critical attention, but a whole heap of them just slide below the radar. In the last few months for example big names like Crysis 3, Dead Space 3, SimCity, Aliens: Colonial Marines and StarCraft 2 have been shoved aside in favour of easier critical targets like Tomb Raider and BioShock Infinite. I’m not saying there’s zero writing about these games, just that they don’t receive a proportionate amount of attention.

Going even further back, I struggle to find anybody seriously engaging with Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 or Borderlands 2 for example. They ARE there, but they’re not well represented. What about Diablo III?

I also think there are a great deal of other games that also slip under the radar. Sleeping Dogs, for example. Sniper Elite: Nazi Zombie Army. Path of Exile. Forge. Defiance. PlanetSide 2. XCOM: Enemy Unknown. And that’s just me being a snobby PC elitist, there are heaps of console-only games that don’t get critical attention. Army of Two? God of War: Ascension? Is anybody going to say anything about Injustice: Gods Among Us?

Some of these are purely multiplayer games, I know — but people play multiplayer games. Don’t they deserve criticism?

In the long view, the balance sheet is still heavily, heavily in favour of the AAA game you claim is neglected here.

I don’t think AAA games are being neglected, rather I think a certain type of game (which often would intersect with AAA on a venn diagram) is being neglected. I think certain types of easy critical targets are being hit, “games which want to be criticised”, and some games which are more easy to categorise as pure entertainment are being ignored.

More personally: I’m having trouble placing myself within this ‘we’ that you keep referring to.

And fair enough! I don’t really consider myself part of this ‘we’ either, but it seemed the most appropriate vehicle to deliver my points.

What I’m really getting at is that I think games criticism has become too focused on certain targets, and has reached a point where people are openly defensive about that. I don’t have any exact links because I’m not some sort of weird stalker, but the dismissiveness and derogatory talk around commenters who criticised the Eurogamer review of Halo 4 was a prime example of this: games critics getting together to put down people who legitimately wanted to know something totally valid.

I didn’t say “something must make a statement to be meaningful” at all, and if someone did say that I would disagree with them vehemently. I said that the invocation of racism and real historic events in BioShock Infinite without actually saying anything is insulting.

Hrm, I do appear to have conflated the two. Fair cop.

I still definitely disagree that it’s insulting to invoke racism and historic events without saying anything about them. I think as historic and thematic elements they’re presented in such a way, as you say, to “illustrate the depths of his racism and demagoguery”. I’m honestly not sure why that’s not enough? I’m perfectly okay with such things being window dressing to a larger story, and I don’t think it’s wrong or reprehensible to use them to add flavour rather than dissecting them in detail (and thus muddying the narrative even further).

I also didn’t say that “a game with violence can not also be meaningful, or that a game with violence is somehow a lesser experience.” In fact, I’ve said the complete opposite in the past. What I said in my BioShock piece was that intelligent thematic exploration is difficult—maybe impossible—when combined with unrestrained pleasure in excessive violence. I chose my words carefully.

Your paragraph that ends with “Yet while BioShock Infinite remains unguardedly enthusiastic about letting players enjoy violence, what hope does it have to be serious about anything?” implies to me a pretty clear condemnation of the idea of violence and meaning intersecting. Perhaps I am conflating “serious” with “meaningful” but it’s not far off.

In any case I’m glad to hear you say that, but the impression I got from your piece was definitely that you were proposing the two to be mutually exclusive. If this is incorrect, I apologise.

Thanks for your thoughts. Just a few points.

1. It seems that your core argument here is that videogame criticism doesn’t engage with a certain kind of videogame. I agree with Christian—this is demonstrably untrue. I honestly don’t want to dig through my own writing history to prove it; it’s clearly there if you look. Looking more broadly, I think it’s there—even dominant.

2. More directly, for so many years, the kind of game you’re talking about—GTA, COD, Halo—was the only game that received any criticism at all. I think it’s actually a little bizarre that you’re chiding people for writing about games like Cart Life and Dys4ia, given that for so long these games either didn’t exist to write about, or were ignored. Cart Life was released in May 2011, months and months and months before anyone—that is, Electron Dance—noticed it (in Jan 2012), and even longer still before the critics you’re talking about wrote on it. In the long view, the balance sheet is still heavily, heavily in favour of the AAA game you claim is neglected here.

3. More personally: I’m having trouble placing myself within this ‘we’ that you keep referring to. I wrote this piece for ABC Arts, which has until recently essentially covered only performing and visual arts and has never before run anything on a mainstream game like BioShock, or COD, or Cart Life, or Tetris, or whatever. Before it exploded online, this article was written and edited for an audience that reads ABC Arts first and foremost: not for a gaming community; and not for a community that had previously read effusive praise (you don’t do it here, but the claims that have continually been put to me over the last few days that I’m part of a ‘backlash’ are impossibly wrong). Before that, I wrote for Crikey. Other than that, I write a scholarly-style column for Hyper, where I’ve also done a handful of features, which I suppose is the strongest claim to me being part of this ‘we’ you put forth. But I write a lot about things that aren’t videogames, too.

What’s more, I’m sure you agree that the games press, and the games critic community (if indeed such a thing truly exists) are not legion, and that there have always been multitudinous disagreements and divergences. There is no programme to get with. The opinions and actions you attribute to this collective ‘we’ here don’t characterize my own thoughts or actions in the slightest.

4. Finally, to the article. I didn’t say “something must make a statement to be meaningful” at all, and if someone did say that I would disagree with them vehemently. I said that the invocation of racism and real historic events in BioShock Infinite without actually saying anything is insulting.

5. I also didn’t say that “a game with violence can not also be meaningful, or that a game with violence is somehow a lesser experience.” In fact, I’ve said the complete opposite in the past. What I said in my BioShock piece was that intelligent thematic exploration is difficult—maybe impossible—when combined with unrestrained pleasure in excessive violence. I chose my words carefully.

Anyway, I’m sorry you found reading my article to be an uncomfortable experience—though frankly, it was intended to be uncomfortable because I think that a lot of the problems of BioShock Infinite demand a deeply uncomfortable response—and I hope you find some clarification in my points here.

I think it’s part of the nature of criticism that the majority of it is going to fall on the media that is great but flawed or flawed but great. That quote about Infinite being street art is great because it really sums up what is wrong about the critique or articles about it. Any sort of standards where you’re writing off a game that isn’t 100% perfect as being unworthy is absolutely unconstructive. I really liked the critical reviews that talked about where Skyoshock went wrong because, compared with the really positive reviews and sales, I think that’ll mean the next game in the franchise is going to be even better. It’ll keep the same innovative and creative location and maybe tweak the combat and themes to react to how people felt about it.

It’s an absolute shame that people’re looking at this critical reading of it and coming away with an opinion that it’s a bad game or an eh game, it’s a great game (Though not my sort of game, I did buy a copy for someone I thought would like it) and all the hard work is in place for the next one to be an even better game.

I think it’s the nature of critique and even journalism that you’re going to get people writing about things that’re contradictory, insightful, inciting or in some sort of grey area. Like you’ve said, people level way more criticism at Bioshock and Spec Ops (Seriously an amazing game) than ‘bro-games’ (Even used ironically I kinda hate that phrase but it does the job) because there isn’t really a lot to say.

You’re totally right that Infinite has gotten way more than its fair share of critique and plenty of people saying what is wrong with it and just glossing over the good parts. I’ve totally done that as well, saying “Bioshock looks great but” and that ‘looks great’ part is, well, the vast majority of the game. ‘Looks great’ means it has an actually creative setting, it isn’t some place in the real world or some historical site it’s something created, fictional and interesting and that’s really worth a lot more credit than it is given.

As for ways to fix it? I’m not really sure, I think it’s naturally going to be hard to encourage journalists who’re really invested in the field to evenly spread their time and critical thinking skills over the full spectrum of games from shit to amazing. People’ll’re naturally going to want to jump into a popular game and show off their analytical skills by grabbing a powerful and deep game and engaging with what it does and what it doesn’t do and I think those’re going to be the articles that people want to read as well.

Personally I’d way rather read an article about why a game is 9/10 and what it needs to be 10/10 rather than why a game is pretty trash when I probably knew that looking at the title.