Shadows on the Screen: Why Write High Critique

Last week friend of OLC and SpawnKill.com co-founder and Editor-in-Chief Stephanie Palermo told me that she didn’t understand the appeal in “Games as Art” topics. I simultaneously felt defensive, and well, guilty.

This would be a simple issue if I didn’t respect the work she does as an up and coming journalist. I enjoy her writing. She’s an excellent editor who manages her site and her writers as good as anyone. If only I hated what she did, if only she posed with guitar hero controllers (and nothing else), then I could discount her opinion. But, she doesn’t.

Worse, Stephanie isn’t the only objector. Explaining what it is I do here to people who aren’t already familiar with games critique brings confused looks. “So like, you review new Mario games and shit? Dope!” said one unemployment-receiving trust-fund-kid at a rooftop party somewhere in north Brooklyn. “Eh… more or less. I’m into heavy critique. You know, why does fiction affect us even though we know it’s false, what determines the meaning of a work, on a scale of 1 – 10 how stupid is it to try and review games on a scale of 1 – 10.” He looked a little offended, “…Yeah man, yeah. But man, like, how good is that new Wii thing? So good, am I right?” He might as well be asking Sasha Frere-Jones what he thinks of “this hip hop stuff.”

Even people in my personal life aren’t sure how to handle the sort of analysis I do by reflex. “Can’t you just enjoy this?” or “I’m not sure why you need everything to be about something,” or “You need to be able to separate your art from your entertainment,” or “Isn’t writing about narrative structure in an FPS pointless? No one reads that.” Roommates, ex-girlfriends, co-workers. People I like who don’t necessarily like what I do.

And like I said, I do feel guilty. This is fun. This is easy. I’m not trying to pretend to give an objective score to something hundreds of people spent a year on. I’m not being forced to report how awesome a preview build of a game is, or how many new types of texture mapping it uses, or how they got some B list actor who, no, they swear, is totally a gamer, to voice the lead. I feel guilty because I love this, not because it’s worthless.

So, my rebuttal? You can all go to hell.

Yes, yes, maybe I should be able to turn “off” more. I know you don’t think I should be looking for Derridean dichotomies in new Michael Bay films, but I can’t help it. It’s like breathing in at the point of high tension before the killer strikes, or like bobbing my head to a killer bass line. It’s a reaction. And before you say that I’m only making an appeal to nature, keep reading. My argument hasn’t started yet. That stuff before was just a thing like an apology, if an apology had insults in it. I like my apologies better than yours.

Whether reviewing pop songs or indie games, the critic is crucial. You’re absolutely wrong to think that “high” critique doesn’t serve a purpose in every field, at every moment. The sort of arsty-fartsy, philosophical topics that I (and writers better than me) tackle seem distant. Why should I talk about how Prototype’s post-modern “Web of Intrigue” works to enhance the theme of having control taken away from the lead character (and at some points, from the player)? I wouldn’t rate that game highly, I’m not even sure I’d recommend a purchase. But I do think complimenting it in this way serves a real, concrete, monetary purpose. It effects the medium and the dialog about the medium in the long term, and that’s something that a “7/10, This game would make a great Prototype for a sequel with better controls and graphics!” review could never do.

A critic works to do a number of things. He (or she, but I digress) can be entertaining and witty, he can sometimes do a less stressful but similar job as the investigator, searching for trends and outing corruption. But mostly, he seeks to inform people of his opinion. All sorts of reviews and features land here: New York Times Sunday Book Review, an NPR article on the Detroit music scene, or an IGN video review that will take you for a ride.

A good critic’s writing educates three different types of people: Consumers who are looking to purchase (or just spend their time on) the product or service being examined. Critics, who they affect by introducing new opinions, adding to a lexicon of terms used describing a medium, and shifting the focus of the conversation around. And the artists. Or creators, or craftsmen, or authors, or whatever you want to call them. These people are affected by criticism on a very personal level – we are praising, or killing, their babies after all. If the critic’s goal is to improve the art and entertainment they love, then this is his most effective process. Tell a guy he made the jump mechanics wrong, and maybe next time they’ll be better.

That is the realm of every critic, not just the one like me. But it’s the foundation on which my high flutent topics rest. The reason I will talk unapologetically  about the way the three different radio stations in Fallout 3 work to convey three separate views of “post-apocalyptic” as a setting is because I want more game developers to consider more than a single sound design concept. Or when I, yes, have the games-as-art debate it’s because every time we have it someone is challenged to fix my cynicism with a new argument. Or when I say “There are no fall, Oscar-style dramas in gaming, only summer blockbusters and art-house films,”  I hope someone out there decides to run with it and make a whole game filled with the best, quiet moments of games like Indigo Prophecy. There is trickle down. There is cross pollination. When a game like Flower or Ico innovates, other creators pay attention and incorporate the strides made in those titles into their own. The critic can draw attention to those things which would otherwise go unnoticed, and can make clear positive elements of a work that are normally blurred.

I’m a Pixar fan, but with the exception of one scene I wasn’t very keen on Ratatouille. For those of you that have seen the movie, you probably know what I’m about to quote. For those that haven’t, well, spoilers ahead but it’s worth it. See, there’s a food critic in the film that prides himself on being hard to please, and in the films last moments changes. What he says about criticism is a defense of what we do, and a reminder that even the most obtuse arguments serve a function:

“In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new.”

Philosopher Flint Schier writes in his essay Tragedy and the Community of Sentiment that one of the services an author does when writing tragedy well is to give us access to an emotion with clarity that we would never be able to have while in that state. “…by imaginatively realizing his character, the author has made an experience available to us as it were from within, on the most intimate footing.” No one can speak of desire for revenge with Hamlet’s clarity when they seek revenge, so what Shakespeare does is allow us that catharsis and that psychological exploration without the risk of, well, planning and executing a murder. The critic does the same thing with art. The critic is trained to be in the art without losing himself. He will explain how it is we feel this way and will make us feel in new, supplemental ways.

Criticism is infectious, and is spontaneous, and is a gut reaction everyone makes. It is figuring out why you cry more for Mrs. Goldfarb than for her son, and why you cry every time even though you know what’s coming. It is getting chills when Cobain sighs at 4:40, even though you’ve long out grown Nirvana, and deciding what that means about the way we interact with music. It’s the ball in your gut when you’re taken above the action in Call of Duty 4 and are shooting at dots from a gunship while a guy whispers catch phrases in your ears – and wondering which effect developer Infinity Ward wanted that to have on you: pleasure or disgust. I write high critique because I want to unearth these answers, or at least talk about them. I do that because I want more good things for people like you, for people who say they don’t give a damn.

But you do. You all do. Because you have tastes and hobbies and desires and want to partake of more things you like. If we are consumers, connoisseurs, aficionados; if we are lovers of games and music and film and art and culture; if we ever like anything even a little, even at all, than the critic is our ideal. The critic is our inescapable apotheosis.