Fun with insomnia.ac

It is not my intention to answer here the chief question of game criticism (though I will be answering it eventually...) -- it is my intention to explain the workings of the mechanism by means of which it becomes perfectly possible to evaluate games (i.e. review them), and to evaluate them well, without this answer. For, on the face of it, without the answer such evaluations should be impossible, since it is the answer that would provide us with the criteria on which to base our evaluations. And yet all of us have hitherto managed to evaluate games just fine -- we know very well what we like and dislike, regardless of whether we are capable of explaining, of articulating why; and a game that we like more than another is, naturally enough, as far as we are concerned (-- and that is ultimately all that we should be concerned with --) a "better game".

But how does one evaluate without criteria? the very notion is self-contradictory! -- This is yet another philosophical question of the first order (they seem to be everywhere these days!), though unlike the first one I posed a very easy one to answer: "The same way one has always done: by instinct."

At this point I will take a break from the proceedings in order to bring up on the stage and introduce an adversary. I am afraid that, much like Baudrillard, I too am always at my best "when challenging an adversary"; otherwise, like him, I tend to lose some of my sharpness. Fighting against phantoms can be tiring (besides being ultimately pointless), and while shadow-boxing has its uses, every boxing coach knows that live sparring is the best kind of training for a fighter (not to mention the most enjoyable!), and the same holds true for thinkers.

So today's adversary will be Charles J. Pratt, professor of Game Studies at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. Mr. Pratt has recently done me the honor of including one of my essays in the curriculum of one of his postgraduate courses. Unfortunately, I am not certain I should take this for a compliment, because the rest of his curriculum is mostly terrible, not to mention that he places my essay in a "New Games Journalism" context, which couldn't conceivably be any further from where it belongs. This mistake is equivalent to regarding Nietzsche's writings as socialist or Baudrillard's as humanist (both unforgivable mistakes which have of course been committed and continue to be committed) -- but that's academia for you: If a mistake can at all be made, they will be sure to make it.

So I will now proceed to attack the only academic who to my knowledge has so far taken me seriously. To accusations of ingratitude or tactlessness coming from onlookers I can only shrug and answer with Nietzsche: "to attack is with me a proof of good will, under certain circumstances of gratitude. I do honor, I confer distinction when I associate my name with a cause, a person: for or against."

So what mistake worth challenging has Mr. Pratt committed, aside from lumping my Arcade Culture essay with the naive babble of the NGJ crowd? He has made an extremely misleading attempt to summarize the various so-called "modes" of critical thought based on which, in his estimation, people evaluate games. The article itself may perhaps be worth reading, for one can sometimes learn just as much from incorrect theories as from correct ones, but it is so full of the most grievous misunderstandings, of the greatest blunders on the most fundamental concepts, that it would be an odious business to comment on it in detail. If I was grading it I would be obliged to use, not a red pen, but a red brush.