Games Aren't Numbers

Historically, the most critically acclaimed videogames have also sold very well. This is different than movies and books, were often the intellectually elite critics have turned shooting down popular releases into a sport. But within the Venn diagram of popular and intellectual videogames the overlap is enormous. Well some gamers now have taken it upon themselves to see through the veil of popular opinion. My writings can sometimes fall into that category, and the blog Press Pause to Reflect does as well. It's a site full of writing dedicated to thinking (very) critically about videogames. One thing they do is host a community project called Monthly Game Club where anyone can play a game along with their staff and then post their own commentary.

I like thinking critically, overanalyzing things, and writing about videogames, so why am I not interested in their project at all? My disinterest doesn't have to do with the people involved, their writing skills, or anything tangential. It's the games themselves. Lets look at their choice of games so far: Braid, Passage, and Gravitation. These games all have something in common, they were all designed with the intent of making the player think critically. If the game is specifically designed to make the player think then there's not nearly as much worth in critical thinking than there is in the game itself.

Now it is certainly possible to write great pieces on those games (I'd be hypocritical if I said otherwise, as I have written about one of them myself a couple of times) but nonetheless I simply don't find critical responses to such games intrinsically interesting. They themselves are such a powerful catalyst for thought that most of the writing about them is not so much a product of the writer than it is of the game. So you have some great insightful ideas you discovered while playing Braid? Well so does everyone else who played it! (Well, almost everyone.)

Lets be honest here, one major reason why we post this kind of stuff on the Internet is to inflate our egos. We feel special when other humans are reading our great ideas. Well an idea is much greater if it doesn't have to be built upon a product which is already great. This is why I would rather read Matthew Wasteland's analysis of the critically slammed Fuel than Press Pause to Reflect's analysis of Passage.