This week in Video Game Criticism: From political correctness to Spec Ops' cowardice

"How desperately inadequate it seemed to me, when I heard the news of his death, that my memory of Mando automatically catalogued itself into a list of the games we played together: Goldeneye, Diddy Kong Racing, Zoombinis. It just seemed ridiculous. How could his diligent brilliance, his active occupation with questions of human suffering, be so reduced by anecdote? Am I so petty, so self-involved? Of course not, I tell myself. Why should my memory of him, whatever its context, be any less valid others? […] I don't think anyone here would contest that the connections forged by videogames are real. But Mando's death has forced me to look closer at what it was that made those times playing Goldeneye special, worthwhile, and I think what it comes down to is nonverbal communication. […] As Mando and I grew comfortable with our games and each with other, we became capable of communicating with action: we both knew Goldeneye's maps by heart, so the irregularities in our ever-repeating movement through them could be interpreted as subtle aggressions, playful invitations, calculated feints. 'Play' is a language you learn to speak over time, with all the opportunities for poetry that 'language' entails."

"BioShock admits, and Spec Ops retreats from, the complicity of the designer in the glorification of and lust for violence. This follows a rich tradition of one-sided blame, to be sure. Movies, comics, rock and roll, gangsta rap, and (of course) video games have all been blamed, sometimes simultaneously, for the decline of civilization and morality. These attacks ignore the role audience demand plays in the creation of popular art in a capitalist system. It is no better, however, for someone to spend years creating horrors and then bash the audience for having the temerity to experience, much less appreciate, them. It is, instead, an act of cowardice, an attempt to turn blame outward, without examining the parts of the structure that implicate the creators."

"We need fewer Bissell imitators. Ninety-nine percent of the readers of this blog know exactly what I'm talking about–cloying attempts at being smart, shallow readings of games to find some meaning that "speaks to us all," and assertions that, yes, Final Fantasy VII actually is the best game of all time. The way we get out of this pit is rigor. We have to play games and actually pay attention to how they are structured. We need to understand how they are assembled. Most importantly, and this should be the takeaway, I think we need to realize that games are not places where we let ourselves run wild so we can write about it later. Is the value of a game really only in what we, as individuals, get out of it? Or is there something to be said about the game itself, the way it operates, the way it plays itself?"

"[In] games, as well as comics and other male-dominated nerd arenas, the business model leverages risk aversion against a habituated, narrow audience. It doesn't favor experimenting to try to give these people newer, smarter things. More importantly, neither do the traditions of geek culture, which is founded in misunderstood people prizing their special escapes from the uninitiated, keeping sacred the spaces that make them feel powerful. For most people, this is their identity, and if you tell them you want to change it in any way they are going to fear losing their power. It's not surprising that issues of privilege get tangled in the morass."

"[What] is cute about the 'save creativity!' angle is how much people like Colin are protecting incredibly old, entrenched attitudes. There's a push against how video games deal with sex because it is incredibly UNcreative. Scantily clad women with no other purpose than to be so? What is creative about that? There is nothing creative of our western culture appropriating and exotifying other cultures, we've been doing that way before free speech was written into law. Or the glorification of a war we had no business initiating as another excuse to shoot brown people? Something tells me that's not the 'fresh' Colin is looking for. The people that Colin's article represent don't want anything to change, unless you consider figuring out how to get a girl as close to naked as possible without financial retribution creative."

"[The] idea that everyone will be offended by someone is akin to just throwing your hands up in the air and saying we may as well not to anything and just let things be. There is a certain person for whom this is a viable response, and it is typically a person to whom the market is advertising. Even if it is in an increasingly puerile and stock manner. For people who are not represented fairly or equally, it is not just a matter of being 'offended,' it is a matter of desiring a more rich landscape. Leaving that to the free market might sound good, but unless a desire for better and more is expressed, companies, who are typically conservative in how they want to spend money, will continue pumping out the formulae they feel are safe."