One of the leitmotifs of my life in recent years has been my progressive disengagement from from the hobbies that once completely dominated my life.
Up until maybe five years ago, I was still a devoted console gamer and took an active interest in the tabletop roleplaying hobby. I still game every week and I still play Football Manager and the odd console game now and again but I don't buy new console games and I don't really buy tabletop RPGs anymore either. I just no longer have any serious interest in "the scene" or what's out there because, by and large, what is out there is not what I want to be out there and rather than wail and gnash my teeth and get banned (again) from forums devoted to my previous hobbies, I've decided to disengage from the hobbies but maintain an interest in an almost dispassionate manner. Like a former punk turned corporate accountant occasionally creeping round the "Punk and Metal" sections of a record store, I like to know what's going on but I don't care enough to spend any money or time on the actual products of the hobby. I have my tastes, those tastes are not shared by the majority of people in the hobby... so sod them.
In fact, you can see this very same thought process in my recent engagement with the fantasy community. I like fantasy in principle but I hate most of the stuff that gets published in practice and so I end up insulting all the people who are actually quite happy with the state of modern fantasy.
I don't think I'm alone in these feelings, but I do think that some people are better at harnessing that gradual sense of growing disgust and frustration than I am, allowing them to use said harnessed goblins for good rather than evil. Ben Croshaw is one such hobbit.
Ben started animating his sarky reviews and putting them on YouTube back in July but has more recently been signed up to do it exclusively for The Escapist, an online gaming magazine that is never quite as clever or as edgy as it should be given its decision to take a step back from the cut and thrust of press releases and in-game video footage and look at gaming as a whole from a more lofty position.
This gave birth to what is now being referred to as Zero Punctuation, which sees Croshaw provide a new review or opinion piece every Wednesday. The results are, as you'd expect from the early videos, systematically funny and insightful. Croshaw carries with him the worldly weariness of someone who has been playing videogames for decades and is more than a little annoyed at the fact that the game playing experience really hasn't evolved all that much since Paradroid on the C64. The case in point is Sony's much hyped Heavenly Sword. For months now, this game has been seen as the killer app that will take Sony's under-performing PS3 and launch it into the mainstream, turning it from hideously over-priced white elephant into the must have console in the same way that the PS1 and PS2 were for their respective generations. In fact, such has been the hype surrounding this game that it has become sort of like an article of faith in the tiresome console wars that seem to oppose one lot of witless cretins against other bunches of witless cretins who all hate each other because they've decided to purchase three slightly different boxes of electronics allowing them to play games on their TVs. Of course Heavenly Sword is a great game... how could it possibly be otherwise? the review sites are, by and large, no help in this respect.
Refreshingly, Croshaw has risen above the hype and puts the boot into the game (as did the less informative but also sarcastic inside-the-tent-pissing-out Penny Arcade) as well as most other modern games that pretend to be incredibly intelligent and challenging while in fact struggling to rise above the level of playing with army men. This is not needlessly pointing fingers and laughing, Croshaw's opinions and sentiments clearly flow from a deep-rooted love of certain kinds of videogames. His tastes were clearly forged, before gaming became a mainstream hobby and before gaming turned its back on more intelligent and challenging genres such as the adventure game, which has all but died out now with the possible exception of the Nintendo DS which has a few point-and-touch-screen adventure-style games.
Croshaw is an interesting figure as his style is similar to that of Charlie Brooker, a man who started out as a videogame journalist only to eventually find a home for himself saying horrible but funny things about other people's artistic output. But as rude as Brooker can be about some programmes, he also clearly deeply loves certain kinds of television that don't get made anywhere near as much as they should.
To get to the meat of the point I'm hoping to raise, these kinds of critics walk an interesting line. Both have a following because what they say tends to be funny and true. However, the world of game fandom is much like that of postmodernist debate; truth is very much an optional commodity. Successful sarky critics tend to survive by virtue of choosing their targets quite carefully so that they always appear to be inside the big "fan of quality stuff" tent pissing outwards in the direction of the "things stupid people like" tent. In the case of Brooker this means that he's very good at kicking people when they're on their knees. He rarely goes for a big target and if he does, he tends to come down in the middle saying "it's enjoyable but this particular bit was really silly" as he did with Torchwood. In fact, if you look at Brooker's pieces that aren't related to TV you find a pattern of writing about... well... bland crap. In fact, he pretty much admits as much here.
Croshaw has started well by taking aim at hugely hyped Bioshock and Heavenly Sword but it will be interesting to look at a) how widely his videos end up being watched and b) whether he can continue making hay with the biggest and most popular game releases on the block.
The question posed by the likes of Brooker and Croshaw is this... how far can you push a negative review? when does "unrelenting deconstruction" turn into "unhinged ranting"?
The answer is that I suspect that there is no clear line but that if you start to worry enough about how your work is received then lines start appearing everywhere. I think the day you start seeing those lines is the day you need to start examining your intellectual honesty and your priorities. Brooker has long-since passed the point and is now musing about his lack of principles but Croshaw has yet to reach that point and long may he avoid seeing those lines.
"how far can you push a negative review? when does "unrelenting deconstruction" turn into "unhinged ranting"?"
How far? Probably when it stops becoming even remotely useful as a negative example ("please don't make a game like this, ever, or I'll be forced to drive to your house and tie-dye your cats"), or even just funny, and simply turns into pouring mean-spirited vitriol on whatever comes into view because it's there to be dumped on.
Posted by: Serdar | September 18, 2007 at 04:13 AM