Pixel Critics

To massively oversimplify things (as tend to happen in blog posts), book criticism can be divided into two parts: the author’s choices and the reader’s reactions. When writing about film, things get a little more complicated: the critic has to write about the choices of not just the writer and director, but also of the editor, the actor, the cinematographer, the composer, and the entire creative cohort behind the film, in addition, of course, to his own reactions as a viewer. Making this more complicated, we in critic land have no way of absolutely knowing which choices were made by which creative director: Was this shot given its steely tint by Spielberg or Kamisnki? Did Philip Baker Hall choose that line reading, or was it given to him by P.T. Anderson? What’s more, the choices made by the various filmmakers are, in some ways, informed by their reactions to the choices of the other creatives. Things get muddy rather quickly, but nevertheless, it’s the job of the critic to sort through the sprawl of choices and reactions to figure out how those interactions mix with viewer responses to create sensory experience and meaning.

Knowing this, how might one approach criticism in a medium that places heavy emphasis on non-linear interactivity—specifically, video games? Via the internet’s most formidable battle rapping, brown raging blogger, the man known only as “Reihan,” we’ve got at least one suggestion from Esquire’s Chuck Klosterman:

What makes video-game criticism complex is that the action is almost never static. Unlike a film director or a recording artist, the game designer forfeits all autonomy over his creation—he can't dictate the emotions or motives of the characters. Every player invents the future.

[snip]

Video-game criticism should be going … toward the significance of potentiality. Video games provide an opportunity to write about the cultural consequence of free will, a concept that has as much to do with the audience as it does with the art form. However, I can't see how such an evolution could happen, mostly because there's no one to develop into these "potentiality critics." Video-game criticism can't evolve because video-game criticism can't get started.

This is something I have considered before, and I think that Klosterman is generally right. A video game critic wouldn’t just write about the choices of the game designers and the player’s reactions; he or she would also write about the choices made by the game players. What’s signified by the choices that are available? How do the options built into the game allow the player to shape his character, to win or to lose or, with the open ended trend we're seeing in games like Grand Theft Auto, to simply exist? If film critics are essentially Calvinists--everything is preordained!--then video game critics are the Wesleyan-Arminian open theists--not even the creator knows what's going to happen.

And of course, as a highly visual, painstakingly designed medium, the choices made by the game creators would have to factor in as well, as would the reactions of the player—and, possibly, in a multiplayer game, the reactions of other players as well.

Klosterman worries about the problems of marketing video game criticism too. Although I don’t buy Michael Dougherty’s somewhat elitist, overly pessimist take (he must be a Siegel fan), I’ll admit that there’s probably not a major overlap between serious gamers and regular readers of thoughtful criticism. Even smart gamers don’t tend to intellectualize games the way rock music or film fans do, so there’s a bit less of an impetus to find an outlet to publish something that doesn't really exist yet.

Still, I think that as the gaming generation grows older and gaming becomes more ubiquitous amongst those outside the young, bored, and hip set, we’ll see some softening in this area. More importantly, though, I think that good, strong writing—clever, stylish prose bursting with wit and insight—will help develop the market for smart, game-based criticism. Despite Klosterman’s odd thought that whoever pioneers this will get rich (only a writer for a glossy like Esquire would naturally assume that a critic could rake in the cash—if only!), there’s almost always a market for fun, frivolous writing.