
Great article! Saw this book in a bookstore and definitely got the vibe of "thinks it's inventing games criticism" lol
This collection doesn’t hurt anything; it is more evidence of what we already knew. Everything frustrating about this book can be found on almost every videogame website in existence. None of us are talking to each other. There are a lot of reasons for this, and some of them are even good, but goddamn, it is sad.
I still find it weird that essayists and game journalists don't have like a separate yearly conference that isn't GDC that is kinda academic based.
There are definitely ways this is weird and wouldn’t be impossible to organize, but I think the principle reason it hasn’t happened yet is that none of us have any money lol.
I thought this was very well articulated. The point about the lack of communication and dialogue in games writing really hits. I know theres no money writing about games but its also so quiet. Coming from academia citation and referencing isnt just about plagiarism its putting work in context.
It’s tough… I do think the other dynamic here is that hard and soft plagiarism is common in games crit, as it is in basically every other field of writing. We don’t want to talk to each other, but some of us are perfectly happy to steal. Worth reading Yasmin Nair on this! https://yasminnair.com/the-plagiarism-papers/
i literally took a class in games crit in college like 15 fucking years ago and we had a whole textbook of essays.
it isn't even the first games essay anthology called Critical Hits! https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/32970071