General Custer

In this episode of Dialogue Tree, Eric Brasure interviews Ben Abraham, co-founder of Critical Distance and ex-curator of This Week in Videogame Blogging. In this interview, Ben discusses founding Critical Distance, the curation process, inclusivity, transparency, the pressure to write quickly about new games and a whole lot more.

(Originally broadcast July 23, 2012 through Second Quest.)

Contents

02:00 “We had this conversation in an IRC chat room over a few weeks…”

03:10 “No one really had the… temerity, I guess, to put their hand up.”

05:50 “[Michael Abbott] was only really able to do that because he was on sabbatical for a year.”

09:50 “Some kind of institutional support has been really key in the really prolific game critics…”

14:50 “I mean, it blew my mind.”

15:50 “It can be really isolating, I think, just toiling away, writing stuff and having it be read by almost nobody…”

17:55 “…because it meant that whenever anyone disagreed with me it became quite personal.”

20:30 “I got really, really sick of it. I’ll be completely honest, I never want to do another one ever again.”

22:45 “We’ve had our share of controversies over the years.”

23:30 “It looked just like another dudebro club.”

30:50 “We love linking to new pieces about old games.”

38:00 “…a lot of critics who have picked up the tools and started playing with them…”

41:20 “It’s really interesting that a sports site has included lots of videogames writing as well.”

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References

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