some thoughts on criticizing good games

I feel like as strange gaming diaries has progressed as a series, I find myself more ferociously critical than I am celebratory, which isn't what I envisioned these writing exercises as being like tone-wise when I started. I'm not trying to make a Thing out of elaborate takedowns of years-old independently developed darlings, it just so happens that a lot of the games I played back in 2023 (and am thus spending 2024 catching up on) were games that left me feeling kinda frustrated!

and there's something liberating to the acknowledgement of the fact that a game that's well developed with clear love and passion can nonetheless still bungle its narrative themes in a way that leaves it ultimately unremarkable in an emotional register, or else contain some questionable decisions that don't impact the work on a holistic level but linger like a bad aftertaste in retrospect. it's important to be able to say that games that were good and that you enjoyed the whole time you played them still said things that you don't agree with!

honestly, I'm entirely uninterested in ever saying anything to the effect of "this game is good" or "this game is bad". that's not what I go into anything about media, be they my video essays or my writings, trying to operate under. what I know is my feelings and my ability to draw interesting connections between things, and so when a game makes me feel a lot of things—or when a game that I expected to make me feel a lot of things doesn't or makes me feel different feelings than I expected—that's what seems significant to me. it's inevitably a foundation that hinges on my personal experiences and beliefs, but then, isn't that the entire point? isn't that the only means by which anyone can communicate anything with any meaning?

this is also why, despite anything I might have to say about a game in one of my diary entries, I still rigorously include every single relevant link possible to the creators of these games at the very end. I want anyone reading my suite of opinions to be able to experience the thing I'm talking about for themselves so that they can engage with my writing on equal footing. I love a good multi-hour long hbomberguy video essay as much as the next person, but there's something so frustrating to me about how the popularity of those videos overlays itself over any thought of the game to succeed them. I've been meaning to play new vegas for myself for a while now, but it feels very difficult to do it without the specter of harry brewis (and trans girl stereotypes, but that's a whole other enchilada) looming over me. I never want my work to supplant the experience of engaging with the media yourself, because if such a trend continues, then art becomes something to be consumed only the privileged and enlightened, which creates justifications for placing it further out of the common person's reach, and I just can't abide by that

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