We scrabble through a sea of digital foam, pawing at the sand, trying to get at what lies just beneath. The rocks that we can chew, the things with substance! And yet, we remain on our knees, our skirts soggy around our thighs, scraping, scraping, always scraping! What are we doing here? screams the online video game reviewer, throwing her head back and angling her fists to the sky.
What am I trying to say?
Through the length of this entire project of mine, this attempt to write about video games, I have always been worried about one thing – novelty. What am I actually adding to discourse? To the field of online game criticism? The things I publish on this website, I thought, were initially swinging between two genres of article – solemn, serious analysis, and loveheart-eyed praise. If you go back to some of my earliest articles – which I would not recommend – I would wager that those articles do come off a little formulaic, particularly when it comes to analysis.
To start slinging wet, sandy mud around, I think that video game criticism is in a strange place when it comes to my perception of it. I have spent so many years immersed in game studies and critiquing game design that there feels like very little new under the sun. Novelty is impossible, which means it is an impossible goal for me to kick for. I can’t, simply can’t, identify any new pivot point that doesn’t connect in a thousand special ways with other people’s research. Which of course means a lot of research, meaningful research, but slow research. This is how academia works.
Which means when I look at video game criticism online it has to be something special. I don’t just want a purely objective analysis about the cause, the function, of a video game and its mechanics. The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask DESTROYED me, here’s how, and so on, and so forth. There’s a level of distance in a lot of game reviews and criticism, and especially in that kind of review or analysis an evident edge of cynicism. Such cynical attempts to cash-in can’t be faulted for those who need to make a living; those purely hyperbolic, substanceless essays are probably a natural consequence of making a living on the internet.
But I think people are interested in emotional subjectivity, honesty, the idea of a person shining through. In an age where my own articles are being scraped and regurgitated through thesaurus-using AI bots, it is naturally heartening to think of alternatives. Consider instead a human woman, a real live breathing womanly being, pouring sweaty woman-hours into the creation of an aggressive video game recommendation. I think this demand for subjectivity is a trend that has long been growing on the internet in general. As I have worked to distance myself from the idea of online content creation as a thing that must be done to satiate quotas, or to prove my own original thinking, I have discovered that interpreting my own thought, feeling, and emotion is far more important. At least, it is for me.
As I turn back to writing for this blog, I look at some of the work I did previously. I find it a bit empty, a bit trying-too-hard, in a way that I think any writer can relate to. You know when you think you’ve written the next Ozymandias and you go back to it a week later and think it’s the modern-day equivalent of William McGonnagall’s poem about his parents’ temperance. I think, going forwards, I am interested in writing that has purpose and actual enthusiasm behind it. What that does to my output, I’m not sure. As I’ve discussed previously, my voice does not agree with me, so you can tell clearly that video essays and streaming games is not something I enjoy doing as much these days, now that I am no longer willing or able to hide from the problem of my own embodiment. And that poses a new and fascinating challenge for my prose, which has always been the most honest extension of myself. How can I write for a new era, for myself, for longevity and life?
I remain interested in the question of digital and critical poetics, the choices that people make as writers, thinkers, and analysts. What should criticism on the internet actually offer people? It should not merely be a place to switch off, should it? I hope you would agree with me when I say no, it should not. It should be a place to roll your eyes, to disagree, to agree, to laugh, to nod, to yell, to wonder what the fuck the reviewer is going on about when she opens a piece with pawing through the sand for rocks to eat. I’m looking, it turns out, for texture. I am looking for pieces with bodies, bodies to dissect, to touch, to be fascinated by, to embody. Pieces to nibble on, chew on, crack teeth open on. Criticism should be an encounter, a video game encounter unto itself, but not one of those boring repetitive grinding random encounters in old RPGs. No, I want game criticism to be Fear and Hunger boss battles – to the death!
Academic pomp is a very easy thing to pick up, and I’m afraid it attached itself like a limpet to my nervous system, and became a part of all of my writing for a while there. The dark expectation that everything be, not joyless exactly, but rigid. Methodical. Well-researched. Yet I am not an academically pompous person outside of the situations where such things are required. I am a delightful mess that enjoys bad jokes and stupid figures-of-speech. So why should that not be represented in the blog going forwards?
To that end, one of the things I will be doing as I proceed is discussing my game writing, creative projects. Whether I connect this video game analysis project to my wider games, artistic projects, and so on, remains an open question. But going forward, I want this blog to be an honest reflection of myself. I want to showcase writing that steers clear from the formulaic, that dares to be weird and metaphor-filled and, dare I say, a bit wobbly at times from my sheer excitement and enthusiasm. I am a breathless writer, I think, and I want my game analysis and criticism to have that same excitement built into it. I want games and game criticism written by people. No-one else besides you can write a particular encounter with a particular game in a particular body, after all – only you can prevent bad game criticism!
Whether this project shall continue to hold water, I am not sure. But I paw through the dirt, the sand, in the search for rocks to grind my teeth on anyway.
