On Cynicism and Disillusionment Towards Gaming

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Confronting her family's critical attitude towards video games, The Escapist's Kelly MacDonald attempts to understand why many take games so seriously in the first place. Along the path to her conclusion, which describes video games as "an emergent art form" that "we are among the first champions of," she briefly touches on the disillusionment of the medium that strikes its supporters with "distressing frequency."
Once or twice a year, mired in the repetitive, cynical profiteering rubbish that seems to constitute so very much of videogaming as a whole, I ask myself that question [why do we bother?]. Cast a relatively neutral eye over our industry - an eye like my aunt's - and it can be difficult to see why anyone takes us seriously. Games are pointless, meaningless and ridiculous; men shooting other men in virtual space in an enormous variety of ways; the eternal quest for the next meaningless shiny thing, or higher number; a sea of sheer, mindless drivel punctuated by the occasional example of something more worthwhile, so infrequent as to be irrelevant.

MacDonald goes on to explain this mindset typically passes once "the next exemplary title arrives to remind us why we love games in the first place," noting last year's Okami (PS2) from Clover Studio as one such game.

Being quite familiar with a constantly shifting view of gaming, I can certainly relate to MacDonald on this matter. For instance, I recently found my interest in gaming renewed thanks to High Impact Games' Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters (PSP), the technical prowess and playability of which led me to pick up a number of other top-notch PSP games I had overlooked.

Chris Faylor was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

From The Chatty
  • reply
    March 16, 2007 7:58 AM

    Once or twice a year, mired in the repetitive, cynical profiteering rubbish that seems to constitute so very much of videogaming as a whole, I ask myself that question [why do we bother?]. Cast a relatively neutral eye over our industry - an eye like my aunt's - and it can be difficult to see why anyone takes us seriously. Games are pointless, meaningless and ridiculous; men shooting other men in virtual space in an enormous variety of ways; the eternal quest for the next meaningless shiny thing, or higher number; a sea of sheer, mindless drivel punctuated by the occasional example of something more worthwhile, so infrequent as to be irrelevant.



    What? I don't undestand a damn thing she said here. What a bloated, self-indulgent writing style - pure crap.

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      March 16, 2007 8:01 AM

      Someone just took an english class!

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        March 16, 2007 8:03 AM

        The escapist's articles are usually in a more "wordy" style - i quite like it.

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      March 16, 2007 8:02 AM

      Translation:
      There's lots of rubbish games out there, and it makes it hard to say to people that games are worth talking about.

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      March 16, 2007 8:06 AM

      There is POV confusion between the first and second sentences. In the first the author is speaking about the problems she is seeing with the industry, but in the second I cannot figure out if she is still expanding on her views or views of a non-gamer like her aunt.

      If it's from her aunt's, then it makes perfect sense tbh.

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      March 16, 2007 8:23 AM

      Yeah, somebody likes to hit the thesaurus. Talk about taking games too seriously.

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        March 16, 2007 9:41 AM

        No, it's her grammatical style you're criticizing. She didn't actually use big or complex words--she just "regular" words together in a somewhat dense style. No thesaurus was involved here at all.

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      March 16, 2007 8:31 AM

      I kinda agree. Abuse of thesauri is a grave offense and can be obnoxious, but this woman does nothing of the sort.

      You've had Remo here for, what? A year and a half now? He not only uses big words, but uses them comfortably. And Steve and Maarten are not retarded either. Jason Bergman is also quite erudite and I am not familiar with anyone else who's written for this site in the past.

      It is high time you stop these pointless knee-jerk reactions to people with vocabularies. Not all people who talk in big words are full of hot air.

      TL;DR: Sometimes I think you're a bunch of stupid assholes, but I tried to be patient and understanding in the long version above.

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        March 16, 2007 8:35 AM

        Thanks Kelly.

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        March 16, 2007 8:36 AM

        To be fair, I thought her writing was a little over-complex in places. Not terribly, or enough to really detract from the article, but still a bit over-complex. That's saying something coming from me.

        That said, I wasn't really satisfied with the way she ended the article. It really felt like she basically said "We should take games seriously because they're a new art form and, you know, we should take that seriously."

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          March 16, 2007 8:44 AM

          It is kinda stupid but that has nothing to do with the way it was written. Maybe the language does mask a bit of vacuousness.

          My key objection is that "serious" is not a concept I would evoke in the context. Being serious about games I would not equate with thinking highly of their potential.

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      March 16, 2007 8:33 AM

      Translation:

      When I see a bunch of knock-off games come out, I wonder why we still play. Our hobby is mostly pointless. Nothing of tangible value is achieved in playing games, though we are sometimes rewarded by experiencing art. Unfortunately, that's a rare event.

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      March 16, 2007 8:37 AM

      I like her writing. I can't believe that you didn't understand. Just because she choose good diction, doesn't mean she's pretentious or wordy.

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        March 16, 2007 8:50 AM

        I'm no literature expert or snob - but the writing just had no flow to it. I had to re-read certain passages and think to myself WTF - and it did come across as pompous IMO.

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        March 16, 2007 9:54 AM

        Yeah, I think I've read an article or two from her before, and I really like it

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      March 16, 2007 8:50 AM

      i suppose you don't read the news posts on penny-arcade for the same reason? tycho is one smart mamma jamma.

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      March 16, 2007 10:15 AM

      I don't see any thesaurus abuse here. What are you guys talking about?

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      March 16, 2007 10:28 AM

      she could probably say the same thing with small words but I can understand her fine.

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      March 16, 2007 11:02 AM

      It's not so much that she uses big words, but rather her sentences are way too long. Long sentences that are full of conjunctions and clauses tend to be hard to read. They also tend to sound pompous. Heck, the last sentence in the example paragraph had 52 words! It could easily be broken up in to at least 3 separate sentences.

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