Although I think it's great that you are donating to GiveWell, I should point out you aren't donating "our" money. We gave it to you in exchange for your interesting writing, it's your money.
Video game reviews have steadily drifted away from their core mission, which is to inform me, the potential purchaser, whether this game is worth my time and 60 bucks. I don't need Polygon to be yet another place where some wanna-be novelist flexes their dual English Lit/Critical Studies degrees.
I think this kind of review is an attempt to make game journalism 'serious'. But it's going about it the wrong way. To make game journalism serious you could take the medium seriously and write about it the way we do other media. But that's hard and not very click baity. Instead people like this think they can make it serious by writting about other serious things tangential to the actual game they're writting about. It's a recipe for exactly this kind of tortured, reaching article in search of something 'problematic'.
I barely play video games (Stardew Valley has been the entire gaming experience I desire for, like, a year now), but I watch all of Tim Rogers’ obscenely long video game reviews. Just, damn, somebody capable of having fun with the medium, who isn’t pretending not to be overinvested, and is therefore willing to approach games with a sincerity this kind of PC nonsense can’t touch.
I do think there’s insecurity among many progressive content-creators - people who produce content, for companies, for money - because they know their trade is fundamentally shallow and capitalistic (not an insult! there’s nothing bad about getting paid to review video games!), and feel a self-inflicted pressure to show that their work, too, is part of The Cause. I see this a lot in comics creators and YA author drama, too - people who feel really guilty about Not Doing Enough To Fight Evil, who instead of actually *doing* anything just re-narrativize so the thing they hope to make money creating is now an integral part of the great struggle. I think it contributes to how tired and boring and fake this kind of content feels to read.
Long ago, we reached a fork in the road where gamers could become child soldiers brainwashed into violence, or they could become an irate and sensitive bunch of preachy, paranoid weirdos. I'm still mulling over what would've been the better outcome.
The Polygon article sounds like the intellectual masturbation of bored humanities graduate students. I recognize it, having been one (albeit a long time ago).
What kind of broken hearted, small souled person looks at war elephants in a video game and jumps to "that's racist!!" instead of "omg WAR ELEPHANTS!!!! AWESOME!!!"?
I think we're in a self-deflating cycle when it comes to game narratives where game writers are less and less willing to take big risks (I would be surprised if the new Mass Effect had a character defend an ethically-dubious kind-of-genocide when ME2 had TWO of them) which makes the overall quality worse and that lower-quality writing leads to more thinkpieces desperately trying to find outrage which leads to even worse and more risk-averse writing. I hope I am wrong but it sure feels like "serious game with ethically-impure characters" is dying out.
Polygon is good for ranking Mario Kart Double Dash!! tracks and not much else. Jesse, I encourage you to discover Mark Brown's Game Makers Tool Kit. He doesn't veer into social issues beyond the briefest of asides. Mark does focus a lot on accessibility, but one that is helpful in the spirit of gaming and not preachy at all. His work is solid from a production standpoint as well.
Does anyone else feel like outlets publishing things like this game review is uncomfortably exploitive of the mentally unwell? Obviously it depends on the thought process of the editors, and I have no way of knowing whether they're brainwashed, intimidated, or greedy for clicks. But it feels like... genuinely *wrong* to publish the disordered thinking of someone who clearly needs therapy? It seems completely lacking in compassion to be approached with this piece and not at least try to have a gentle talk with them about where their mind is at? It seems messed up to go so far as to profit off it?
I guess because it seems to clear to *me* that this person needs help, my mind really wants to say greed and cynicism has to be the motive here. It seems unlikely intimidation is a factor: This author has not written anything else for Polygon, so it's not like it was an awkward situation where an existing contributor suddenly went off the deep end and could could feasibly cry bigotry in a tweetstorm if their piece got rejected. And if they wanted social justice cred, they were undoubtedly pitched other social justice-y articles that had more merit. So that leaves greed or brainwashing. But do publications get *that* brainwashed *that* quickly? This is a level of tiresome reaching that would get pushback even on Tumblr. I'm not saying that ignorantly, I've used Tumblr for a long time.
I can't be the only one who is disturbed that there's a system of incentives for outlets to find the most unwell people with a passable proficiency with language and milk their disorder for money, right? We focus a lot on disdain for the writers themselves, and I get that; they have free will, they ultimately choose what to believe and who to devalue. And we focus a lot on the pressures put on outlets by extremists, and I get that especially with outlets that cover the news and politics. But when it comes to stuff like this, I'm more interested to know how much of this is top-down cynicism. Jesse's question, "Who is this even for?" highlights the greed motive for me, because it's hard to fathom this being anything other than exploitation of the sincere perspective of a disordered person for clicks. Progressive gamers may think it's nice to have same sex romance options, or decent female characters that aren't just eye candy, but they are largely not into this garbage.
I don't know where the line ought to be drawn with these things, but I think we'd all agree it would be unethical of outlets to start publishing manifestos written by schizophrenic people who haven't done anything newsworthy, right? It would be clear that it's a grab for clicks at someone's expense, because they know that it has no substance or value for their readers, and its only function is to rile them against someone who is unwell. Madness reliably agitates people.
This obviously isn't on that level so the calculus can only be simplified so much, but my feeling in my heart when I see this stuff is the same flavor of discomfort. Someone who really sees the world through such a paranoid lens, whose logic is this garbled, is in a sad state, yet editors who publish these people earn a veneer of having done something ethically positive! It may be worth asserting that publishing these people is unethical enough that editors should feel uncomfortable making such a decision. It should not be the sort of sick win-win it is socially right now, where building a stable of suffering people desperate for validation and trotting them out for attention and money is a badge of righteousness.
Having the connection to Tumblr that I do, I've known a lot of writers with profitable identity traits who, over the past eight years or so, went through extremist phases that synergized (as they inevitably do) with the depression and anxiety and loneliness they were experiencing. I've never been so glad to see people fail in their ambitions long enough to come out the other side. In comparison, similar writers I was distantly aware of got jobs writing for places like Vox and devolved into basketcases. Once your worst neuroses are your career and your only source of positive attention, it's hard to ever recover.
I just think it's fucked up. There will always be struggling people willing to do stuff for validation, but editors shouldn't profit from the mentality of scouting talent for a freak show. It's wrong to receive a piece like this and mislead the author to believe it's valid and insightful. Someone has to be an adult.
[Next sentence: “There’s also constant belittling between tribes, who call each other ‘savage’ or ‘uncivilized’ — terms loaded with racial undertones.” Right on its face, this is stupid. Calling outgroup members ‘savages’ or ‘uncivilized’ is just about a human universal, and it would certainly happen a lot in a setting like Horizon Forbidden West’s. Obviously such language can have racial undertones, but the history of humanity is littered with examples of such dehumanization in situations where there are no meaningful racial differences. We’re an inspiringly egalitarian species in that manner.]
The hate-clicks are indeed what keep these things viable, which is why I'm so fond of workarounds like archive.is and 12ft.io, reliably good at letting me glean the content without sustaining it. I get to have the hate, without the click!
This post is about ethics in video game journalism.
Although I think it's great that you are donating to GiveWell, I should point out you aren't donating "our" money. We gave it to you in exchange for your interesting writing, it's your money.
Video game reviews have steadily drifted away from their core mission, which is to inform me, the potential purchaser, whether this game is worth my time and 60 bucks. I don't need Polygon to be yet another place where some wanna-be novelist flexes their dual English Lit/Critical Studies degrees.
Sometimes including minority cultures is appropriation and whitewashing, sometimes not including them is erasure.
I just want these people to produce a Hayes Code of what is and isn't acceptable. Would make things a lot easier.
I think this kind of review is an attempt to make game journalism 'serious'. But it's going about it the wrong way. To make game journalism serious you could take the medium seriously and write about it the way we do other media. But that's hard and not very click baity. Instead people like this think they can make it serious by writting about other serious things tangential to the actual game they're writting about. It's a recipe for exactly this kind of tortured, reaching article in search of something 'problematic'.
I barely play video games (Stardew Valley has been the entire gaming experience I desire for, like, a year now), but I watch all of Tim Rogers’ obscenely long video game reviews. Just, damn, somebody capable of having fun with the medium, who isn’t pretending not to be overinvested, and is therefore willing to approach games with a sincerity this kind of PC nonsense can’t touch.
I do think there’s insecurity among many progressive content-creators - people who produce content, for companies, for money - because they know their trade is fundamentally shallow and capitalistic (not an insult! there’s nothing bad about getting paid to review video games!), and feel a self-inflicted pressure to show that their work, too, is part of The Cause. I see this a lot in comics creators and YA author drama, too - people who feel really guilty about Not Doing Enough To Fight Evil, who instead of actually *doing* anything just re-narrativize so the thing they hope to make money creating is now an integral part of the great struggle. I think it contributes to how tired and boring and fake this kind of content feels to read.
Long ago, we reached a fork in the road where gamers could become child soldiers brainwashed into violence, or they could become an irate and sensitive bunch of preachy, paranoid weirdos. I'm still mulling over what would've been the better outcome.
The Polygon article sounds like the intellectual masturbation of bored humanities graduate students. I recognize it, having been one (albeit a long time ago).
What kind of broken hearted, small souled person looks at war elephants in a video game and jumps to "that's racist!!" instead of "omg WAR ELEPHANTS!!!! AWESOME!!!"?
I think we're in a self-deflating cycle when it comes to game narratives where game writers are less and less willing to take big risks (I would be surprised if the new Mass Effect had a character defend an ethically-dubious kind-of-genocide when ME2 had TWO of them) which makes the overall quality worse and that lower-quality writing leads to more thinkpieces desperately trying to find outrage which leads to even worse and more risk-averse writing. I hope I am wrong but it sure feels like "serious game with ethically-impure characters" is dying out.
My first encounter with this insane genre was, I think, at the AV Club.
Something like 'Why does Daria have a thigh gap?'.
Absolutely thundering inanity.
I'd google the exact name of the article, but I chose life that day.
Polygon is good for ranking Mario Kart Double Dash!! tracks and not much else. Jesse, I encourage you to discover Mark Brown's Game Makers Tool Kit. He doesn't veer into social issues beyond the briefest of asides. Mark does focus a lot on accessibility, but one that is helpful in the spirit of gaming and not preachy at all. His work is solid from a production standpoint as well.
Does anyone else feel like outlets publishing things like this game review is uncomfortably exploitive of the mentally unwell? Obviously it depends on the thought process of the editors, and I have no way of knowing whether they're brainwashed, intimidated, or greedy for clicks. But it feels like... genuinely *wrong* to publish the disordered thinking of someone who clearly needs therapy? It seems completely lacking in compassion to be approached with this piece and not at least try to have a gentle talk with them about where their mind is at? It seems messed up to go so far as to profit off it?
I guess because it seems to clear to *me* that this person needs help, my mind really wants to say greed and cynicism has to be the motive here. It seems unlikely intimidation is a factor: This author has not written anything else for Polygon, so it's not like it was an awkward situation where an existing contributor suddenly went off the deep end and could could feasibly cry bigotry in a tweetstorm if their piece got rejected. And if they wanted social justice cred, they were undoubtedly pitched other social justice-y articles that had more merit. So that leaves greed or brainwashing. But do publications get *that* brainwashed *that* quickly? This is a level of tiresome reaching that would get pushback even on Tumblr. I'm not saying that ignorantly, I've used Tumblr for a long time.
I can't be the only one who is disturbed that there's a system of incentives for outlets to find the most unwell people with a passable proficiency with language and milk their disorder for money, right? We focus a lot on disdain for the writers themselves, and I get that; they have free will, they ultimately choose what to believe and who to devalue. And we focus a lot on the pressures put on outlets by extremists, and I get that especially with outlets that cover the news and politics. But when it comes to stuff like this, I'm more interested to know how much of this is top-down cynicism. Jesse's question, "Who is this even for?" highlights the greed motive for me, because it's hard to fathom this being anything other than exploitation of the sincere perspective of a disordered person for clicks. Progressive gamers may think it's nice to have same sex romance options, or decent female characters that aren't just eye candy, but they are largely not into this garbage.
I don't know where the line ought to be drawn with these things, but I think we'd all agree it would be unethical of outlets to start publishing manifestos written by schizophrenic people who haven't done anything newsworthy, right? It would be clear that it's a grab for clicks at someone's expense, because they know that it has no substance or value for their readers, and its only function is to rile them against someone who is unwell. Madness reliably agitates people.
This obviously isn't on that level so the calculus can only be simplified so much, but my feeling in my heart when I see this stuff is the same flavor of discomfort. Someone who really sees the world through such a paranoid lens, whose logic is this garbled, is in a sad state, yet editors who publish these people earn a veneer of having done something ethically positive! It may be worth asserting that publishing these people is unethical enough that editors should feel uncomfortable making such a decision. It should not be the sort of sick win-win it is socially right now, where building a stable of suffering people desperate for validation and trotting them out for attention and money is a badge of righteousness.
Having the connection to Tumblr that I do, I've known a lot of writers with profitable identity traits who, over the past eight years or so, went through extremist phases that synergized (as they inevitably do) with the depression and anxiety and loneliness they were experiencing. I've never been so glad to see people fail in their ambitions long enough to come out the other side. In comparison, similar writers I was distantly aware of got jobs writing for places like Vox and devolved into basketcases. Once your worst neuroses are your career and your only source of positive attention, it's hard to ever recover.
I just think it's fucked up. There will always be struggling people willing to do stuff for validation, but editors shouldn't profit from the mentality of scouting talent for a freak show. It's wrong to receive a piece like this and mislead the author to believe it's valid and insightful. Someone has to be an adult.
Here's a picture of the 1915 Nations of the East sculpture cited in the review. https://csl.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/view/delivery/01CSL_INST/12135879560005115 I'm sure it's wrong of me, but I think it's @&*%$# awesome.
[Next sentence: “There’s also constant belittling between tribes, who call each other ‘savage’ or ‘uncivilized’ — terms loaded with racial undertones.” Right on its face, this is stupid. Calling outgroup members ‘savages’ or ‘uncivilized’ is just about a human universal, and it would certainly happen a lot in a setting like Horizon Forbidden West’s. Obviously such language can have racial undertones, but the history of humanity is littered with examples of such dehumanization in situations where there are no meaningful racial differences. We’re an inspiringly egalitarian species in that manner.]
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5b6672f43c3a5320c2bec900/1533531863232-OFZ4IVNPDWZ8RXGH4ZKI/42433944_1522042132.3414_eXePaH_n.jpg
The hate-clicks are indeed what keep these things viable, which is why I'm so fond of workarounds like archive.is and 12ft.io, reliably good at letting me glean the content without sustaining it. I get to have the hate, without the click!