That was one of the funniest interviews I’ve ever read. Nigh on useless yes, but laugh out loud funny. Thanks for sharing, wouldn’t have read it otherwise.

Steerpike is totally getting a special Link Drag entry when he eventually caps the series with an epilogue. I’m still waiting…

(I considered making an awkward joke about Polish immigration in Britain and how making a distinction between British and Polish accents was now moot but I thought it would come off like a BNP supporter rather than banter.)

I take it Gobi’s point is partly that Bissell is going to be the only game critic a lot of non-gamers read and, as such, he should try to be less exclusionary, but can Bissell argue that he didn’t sign up for the job of Ambassador to Nongamerdonia? Dunno. On the elves vs. dwarves thing, one argument you can make is that it’s possible to do excellent work while using clichés, and that clichés may even be necessary as a jumping-off point. But reading Steerpike’s Dark Souls Chronicles, it was striking how much mileage it got out of a fantasy story that wasn’t dwarves-and-elves. Still, I guess Bissell really doesn’t much justify the “careworn template” line at the end, except insofar as he doesn’t like PC high-fantasy RPGs.

And it seems unfair to pick on the British accents in something that presumably was originally in Polish.

I don’t want to comment too much on the specifics of Gobi’s article – because I’m pretty sure there are plenty of statements that, if examined, could be shot down. The line you highlight, for example, is one I would have personally edited out. The thrust of the piece is kind of interesting although I’m not sure that this ideal of a profound, sagely game critic is really possible due to some of the factors I mentioned in the comments on Gobi’s piece.

Eric Brasure also added that Bissell is writing for his particular audience and that, in itself, is not a bad thing. This is closest, I think, to a proper takedown of the essay. I’m not much of a fan of Bissell and the recent “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Shooter” didn’t help. I know he’s popular and can certainly string together a great sentence. But is he really anybody’s go-to guy for the lowdown on new releases?

I just noticed this (came by it on Google although just noticed it is up on Critical Distance): On New Games Journalism which also comes out and says Bissell is bad games criticism.

(And yes: elves and dwarves have become a great cliché. But on the other hand, I think most players of the The Witcher games would dispute this is a serious problem.)

“Perhaps the white male human has trouble relating to dwarves and elves” — really? I’m torn; to some extent I want to genuinely question my assumptions and consider whether dwarves, elves, and other nonhuman characters allow for some sort of subversion of the typical white protagonist, since they aren’t even human. But mostly I want to snark about how comfortably ensconced in whiteness the tired old tropes of high fantasy usually are. (I think I’ve seen one work in which the dwarves were African-American.)

And leaving racial politics aside, surely we can agree that elves and dwarves are a honking huge cliché? Once I got super frustrated by yet another YA novel with standard dwarves and elves and went looking through an encyclopedia of mythical creatures for some inspiration. Tentative conclusion: Most mythical creatures are snakes.

Amanda – I often wonder that whether Train would have affected me, too. Probably not so much. Yet nowadays I often feel guilty if I ignore context. If collecting points is equivalent to shooting the infirm in a game, and I manage to ignore that, then either it’s a really bad game that denigrates its own context or I end up feeling like a monster.

Typically, the FPS genre does a bang-up job of dehumanising your enemies; it tries to turn them into shiny gold coins to be shot. They work so that the context only goes so far. Shooting is okay. Don’t worry, it’s only a game. OMG! LOOK OUT! YOUR GF HAS BEEN KIDNAPPED! KILL THEM ALL!!!!

What Scalzi is saying is a little skewered by his assumption of what people want. Opportunity, happiness, ease. But, these are only some of, and the most guttural, of human needs. What if someone’s life goal is to simply be a good person? To see as much of life as possible? To raise a family? To reach spiritual enlightenment? To travel the world? On these higher (debatable, I know) planes of existence, wealth simply tends to make easy, or even serves as burden. Man, I never thought I’d be spouting what I read in Ishmael.

Otherwise, as a straight white male (oddly, where I live, that’s the hated minority), I still have to agree with it.

On Passage: What you’re talking about was actually the strongest part of the experience for me. The moment she died, I panicked. I had dawdled and wasted time. I stood there, for a few moments, and wondered where I was heading. I had wasted OUR time, I only just realized, and I had Killed her. She had been subject to my whim, she had placed her trust in me, and I wasted every ounce of it. I was too stupid to realize it, not until the very end.

After that, I scrambled wildly, trying to make up for my sin. I wanted to show her one last place, but all I could show her was a wretched old man on his knees. I only ever made her cry, I thought. We both died in a dreary brown background, and we couldn’t even be together then, because I had left her behind. Because I so wanted to make it up to here, I had only left her behind.

And, yes, I too apologize for hijacking the comments.

Along the same lines, I found myself wondering if Train would “work on me.” I think that a big part of the Train experience is probably the fact that it’s done in a live multi-player situation. I think, even after “the reveal,” I probably wouldn’t actually be hurt badly by loading little pegs in to a car. But I probably would feel a strong pressure to perform feeling bad, lest others in the room think I’m a sociopath. Of course since I already know the spoiler, I don’t really know how it would genuinely affect me at all.

@mwm: Just to fill you in – Amanda slated Passage on Tap-Repeatedly recently. There are different ways of reading Passage and in Amanda’s version it borders on offensive. I’m not going to argue with her, her take is perfectly valid. What I did (and likely others) was ignore a number of the mechanics/implications in the game which left me with something sadpanda.

On the referencing side of things, all I can say is that once the Electron Dance traffic started going up, I developed an aversion to writing from the hip. Some statements have been torpedoed – or deflected – as a result of reviewing the arguments of others. A Theoretical War was plenty different in the draft outline. In fact, it was meant to be more a single post opinion than a three-part “historical review”.

Oh, and as regards Passage’s quality, (not that you I feel compelled to argue with you about). I think that, as long as someone can earnestly see what the game is saying, it’s hard not to get swept away. It’s not that it’s trying to convince us of something, or that it wants us to change our ways of thinking. It’s simply retelling something that’s very… grand, and truthful. If someone is made to look at something like that and look at it squarely, the game has made its impact.