I catch a bit of good-natured flak sometimes from readers who say I'm slummin' it when I post on Destructoid. And admittedly, the haphazardly drawn line between useful editorial and random, subjective opinion -- complete with attention-whoring stunts -- sometimes makes me cringe a bit and hug my career, promising it in whispers that it is all right, I will make the bad man go away. But dare I say I'm... seriously amused, and even a touch impressed, with their latest?
It was a bit of a sad week toward the tail end. Granted, I know nothing first-hand, and like everyone else, can only speculate wildly, but it sure looks like two people -- one, a game journalist and the other, a game developer -- got fired for criticizing something. Yuck.
My most recent Aberrant Gamer was about what I perceive as an escalation in hostility in the game audience; perhaps this hostility is actually echoing across the board amid the uneasy love triangle of game companies, press and players. I dug the assertion in this GameSetWatch article that game critics, knowing they can do no right, are becoming a bit lazy. If they score too high, they're cashwhores and sellouts; if they score too low (i.e, anywhere below a 7 for any game, ever) the vocal mob of mouth-breathers is going to crucify them in a flamewar, questioning their qualifications and their fitness to write reviews. It's really hard to do good work for an audience you know you can never please; I would not disagree with the assertion that a few game critics out there are feeling a little fatigued, if not outright passive-aggressive.
I think maybe reviewers have been unnecessarily harsh, actually, or maybe more unforgiving with their scores than usual lately, in general, as if in an act of defiance of the three-point-curve and the pressure from advertisers and psychotic gaming fanboys. In defense of those psycho fanboys, though, when I recently asked in my column if gamers are becoming more heatedly anti-social, I theorized that they have lately felt just as frustrated and resentful of this three-way stand off as writers do.
As that GameSetWatch article points out, the games press is less necessary. I really do hope we are approaching a breaking point with all this business lately, because I'd embrace an era wherein all of those identical fifty-post-a-day, cool-to-be-cynical blogs are weighed for what they are -- fan communities -- and there is actually a place for, y'know (gasp!) content and distinguished writing about games. Maybe then we'll quit asking when the industry will get its Siskel & Ebert, its Pauline Kael, its Lester Bangs or whatever, because, y'know. Content. I can't wait until it's all about the content.
In other news, perhaps it's a bit of fatigue on my part, too, that's to blame for the fact that I really am not getting all that into Galaxy or Mass Effect -- I love everything about Mass Effect except the actual gameplay, so I continue to press at it in the hopes that it's my sometimes awkward, inexperienced use of FPS controls on the 360 -- read: shitty aim -- that's to blame (but come on, Mass Effect's control scheme is bizarre, is it not?)
I continue to be amazed by the genius of Galaxy's design and implementation, but the experience also continues not to have any impact on me at all. You can eat up those little planets in two bites, and then they're over and done with, never to be seen again and having made no stamp on the memory. But it's Sunday, I'm tired and possibly a bit burnt out at the moment, so I won't go so far as to say that my opinion on either title is my final one.
