Burned by Friendly Fire: Game Critics Rant...well, part of it

I just read about this panel today, and while a lot of it was interesting, I found myself insulted by one speaker, and befuddled by another. Unfortunately, I can't find a transcript of it, so I won't even bother linking to anywhere that talks about it. It's out there, you can find it easily enough.

Let's first start with the speaker who insulted me. Heather Chaplin is her name, and I don't care to ever hear it again. I don't know anything about her, and I've never read anything she's written before. But from all the lengthy quotes I did read from her, I just don't care to ever read something by her ever again. Sorry. Her whole schtick was about how the industry is full of adolescent man-children who only use games as a way of acting out power fantasies. Apparently, men who make games aren't men, because they make games with violence and sex. While I'll agree that I'd like to see some of our focus trained on other, different kinds of games, the fact still remains that other, different kinds of games exist. They're there, whether or not Heather Chaplin wants to, or is able to, see them. What about Shadow of the Colossus and ICO? What about Braid? Bioshock? Heavy Rain? I guess they don't count.

And she says we don't have our Citizen Kane. Um, ok. There's several problems with that statement. First - and I've said this before - games aren't movies. There are fundamental differences between the mediums that, while some valid comparisons can be made, make shit like spouting off about games not having a Citizen Kane sound just plain idiotic. For every Citizen Kane that a studio produces, how many 12 Rounds do we have to put up with? It's a shitty comparison, plain and simple. I could argue that games journalism doesn't have their Walter Cronkite, but I would see that as discrediting the loads of people who go to work every day to report about the games industry. I actually do think that games journalists need to figure out some way to stop relying on publishers and PR departments to get all their information, because, I would imagine, and it's been talked about before, they have to meet certain criteria to gain access to a game. That's bullshit. You see what Heather has done to me? I'm going all over the place now.

The focus of my anger is with her babble about developers "not being men." Who is she comparing them to, first of all? Secondly, who is she to make that comparison? She talks about neoteny, which, according to Wikipedia, is "the retention, by adults in a species, of traits previously seen only in juveniles (a kind of pedomorphosis), and is a subject studied in the field of developmental biology." Now, I don't need to be an expert in neoteny to understand what she's getting at. Man-children. She's not just attacking the games that developers make, but them as people. And by extension, she's attacking the people who buy and play said games. I don't think I should be made to apologize for playing and enjoying Gears of War. And I also don't think my enjoyment has anything to do with her so-called "power fantasies." I play the game because it's fun. Period. That's what games are all about, or did she forget that in all her serious, world-changing journalism classes? I also happen to read a lot on subjects such as religion, politics and philosophy. But we'll just ignore all that because I like to play shooters. Whatever. And by the way, nice job calling out immature men on their infantile ego-stroking power fantasies, and then ending your rant by saying "What do you want to be, a Chihuahua or a wolf?" Durrrhhh.

David Jaffe has a fantastic response on his blog.

Another speaker on the panel was Adam Sessler, and I have to preface this with the fact that I think he's great. Sessler's Soapbox is the greatest thing on television. That being said, his talk was about Metacritic and why people rely on it so much. Again, I don't have a transcript, but I'm pretty sure I understand what he was talking about. Basically, either Metacritic should stop using scores to aggregate rankings, or people should stop using Metacritic as a barometer. Either way, the problem honestly comes down to people like him, and every other magazine and t.v. show that ranks games. If there were no scores on reviews, there would be no Metacritic. It's that simple. There's not really much else to say about that, because it really is that easy to figure out. If you would stop putting scores on games, Metacritic would just go away. So let's get that train moving, if you would.