Super Mario Critics

Here’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while now: Why is no one writing good, strong cultural criticism about video games? Most video game magazine reviews are redundant and narrow-minded, rehashes of a litany of familiar technical questions about controls, graphics, difficulty, code glitches, and some mysterious factor generally referred to as “gameplay”--otherwise known as "fun." These checklist-style essays might as well be a series of fill in the blanks covering all the usual technical categories and adding an overall entertainment grade. They’re “reviews” in the strictest sense of the word.

Outside of the video game magazines, cultural criticism of gaming is generally limited to outrage from incensed moralists and frilly predictions from dopey futurists. The moralists restrict themselves to writing about how game X’s bloody, violent play is a sign of our culture’s decline and how we’ve become desensitized to graphic violence and why aren’t there laws to prevent such blah, blah, blah. The futurists don’t consider the cultural implications of the games so much as of the various technologies on display. “In the future,” they start (naturally, being futurists and all), and then they go on to tell us how everything from appliances to grocery stores will be more like video games someday after they’re dead and can’t be called to account.

But video games are a massive, booming industry—around $18 billion last year—and they’re quickly gaining on Hollywood as our cultural diversion of choice. Many young men spend more time with games than with movies or television. And yet, with a few minor exceptions in Wired, I can’t recall the last time I read a smart, culturally attuned bit of video game criticism.

In part, it’s because gaming is the domain of linear-minded, technical folks: computer nerds, to be precise. And, though I count many in this tribe as friends, they’re not nearly as concerned with cultural significance as the artsy literary types writing criticism. Also, the literary cultural elites, even their younger ranks, tend to look down on video games—admittedly not a difficult thing to do. There’s an attitude, not entirely incorrect, that games are lower forms of entertainment for the vulgar masses. Even if they’re fun, they’re not true cultural artifacts worth dissecting like movies and music and books. But for a while, that’s how movies and pop music were viewed as well; look how important those mediums have since become.

No, despite the fact that I’m not a heavy gamer—I don’t own any of the major consoles, though I do occassionally play a few computer games—I’m convinced that society will eventually choose video games over film as our dominant narrative medium. Not only do sales figures suggest this, but the growing obsession with personalization and interactivity indicates a shift toward fluid, branching narratives with players at the center. Postmodern culture places individual experience before all else, and that’s exactly the sort of story-style at which video games excel. Yes, gaming is predominantly the realm of younger men, but that’s slowly changing—and those young men will get older.

Maybe this is the place for blog critics to take the fore, or maybe established publications just need to wise up. Let’s see some snazzy writing on the social taxonomy of The Sims, on gender roles in Lara Croft, on the Catholic influence on demon-infested Mars bases in Doom 3. Let’s look at unfettered virtual economies in massively multiplayer games with an eye toward proving or disproving externalities in an unregulated market. Let’s ponder a created virtual world where books lead to new realities created by in-game characters in Myst. Hell, let’s take on racial stereotypes and urban decay in Grand Theft Auto III. The material is there. Now we just need to get some critics to power up.

Surely if The New York Times can pay Manohla Dargis to wax giddy over Colin Farrell's shirtless bod, it can find a critic to start pontificating on the cultural and political significance of blasting demons with a rocket launcher.