Well, video game “journalism” is … mostly a waste of time, regardless of the source? Note the date here, this sentiment predates GG stuff.
I guess what bugged me, personally, is that this criticism wasn’t coming from someone who actually cared about videogames, such as they are, it was more like a guerilla academic exercise to apply feminist theory to a “space”, e.g.
“Video games were always a part of this project. Video games are a part of pop culture and they were always on my mind. But I spent a lot more time watching TV. That’s always been my wheelhouse. I was constantly coming up with ideas about things that I was watching on TV. But with games it was a little bit different. I didn’t really know what the ‘in’ was there. It was just easier for me to do TV at the time.
“One time, I was writing out a list of tropes and looking at different kinds of media. I was like, oh, there’s a lot of stuff in games. I feel like I should bring games into what we’re doing because I’ve put that on the back burner.
As someone who played a lot of those games, I watched one of the videos and saw that examples were cherry picked, the most slanted explanations were presented as fact (“you must kill prostitutes in this game” etc). I wasn’t at all radicalized and motivated to go riot in the streets by this video, mind you, I just wasn’t a fan of the formula – which I felt was more about an outsider generating controversy and clickbait By Any Means Necessary™ than actual dialog. It didn’t seem to be motivated by “I care about gaming and I want it to be better” from my perspective.
Is there a ton of diversity and choice today in gaming? Absolutely. You can play Slime Rancher, or you can play Mortal Kombat 11. That’s a good thing, clearly, and it’s the path the industry was already on… even in 2014.
The actual best selling games of 2014, though:
- Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
- Madden NFL 15
- Destiny
- Grand Theft Auto 5
- Minecraft
- Super Smash Bros (for 3DS and Wii U)
- NBA 2K15
- Watch Dogs
- FIFA 15
- Call of Duty Ghosts
