That’s a great question. I’d say both. The more massively appealing the game, the larger its potential audience. However, in 2017, I asked Jeff Kaplan why he kept insisting that Overwatch wasn’t political. His insistence on that line, which aligns with some people’s calls to “take politics out of games,” made it feel…

Most recently, Red Dead Redemption. I get that it’s huge and beautiful and all that, but it’s not grabbing me. I never finished the first one, barely got into the second. 

Happily.

Souls/Bloodborne. Can’t stand them.

It’s both. I do think the team believes in representing the world as it is lived in, where people of many different backgrounds exist, but you also can’t deny that it makes them a ton of money. That’s capitalism baby.

Arkham Knight. It’s perpetually hounded by complaints about the Batmobile stuff and the initially terrible PC version. But I liked the Batmobile stuff and, more importantly, the game has some of the best writing (the Joker stuff) and most enjoyable gameplay (peaking with the two-character combat routines) of the…

In journalism—clear, concise, and accurate work. Thoughtful analysis and contextualization.

Rhythm! Good writing is like music. You can feel it as you read.

My least favorite part of a console cycle is the first year. The games are seldom good and everyone’s arguing about boring specs. I prefer the latter half of a console cycle when developers know the hardware and are focusing as much as possible on their creativity. 

Read newspapers, read writing about journalism and about good writing in general. Elements of Style is a classic for good crisp writing.

Yah

No--I’m always going to be thinking a hell of a lot about all media I consume. This job just lets me write those thoughts for an audience. It has changed the way that I think about playing games in a more insidious way. If you play games with me, there’s a high chance that I’ll at some point say “is it okay if I write…

Do you find your ability to enjoy games is lessened when your job asks you to think about them critically?

Are you unionized?

A N T H E M

Seriously? The Outlaw Josey Wales isn’t on this list? BRIAN. WHAT.

Honestly, I think providing an explanation might go a long way toward shutting up some of the, “I don’t understand what the problem is” people.

I’m a big fan of Rogerian theory in argumentative practice—the core idea being that we all agree, at some point along a line of ideas, that a given thing is important. It’s how…

Sure, Arthur’s pretty cool, but he’s no Travis Touchdown.

Nick’s piece made a lot of great points and I don’t think it’s inconsistent with this blog in any way.

So a sort of Uncanny Valley corollary for video games in which the realism of the environment highlights the unrealism of the NPCs and makes them more profane in comparison