The Apparent Anti-Intellectualism of Gamer Culture

[EbonBehelit]

I'd say it's more pop culture in general being extremely anti-intellectual of late. Gaming is popular now as well, and thus inherits a slice of the pie.

 

[MrCalavera_v1legacy]

snip

snip

It doesn't help that the "review" appears in Metacritic either. The people who frequent Metacritic probably are the ones with the least patience towards such analysis.

What's interesting, they do criticise modern rating system and how iflated it tends to be(Which i generally agree with. Numbers summaring reviews are bullshit.) in this article: https://killscreen.com/articles/note-reviews/. Then, they rate DNF with whooping '-1000' score. I dunno, does that mean all the numbers there should be treated as a jab?

And a small digression: In the bigger picture i don't like how "serious" game criticism tends to put gameplay element aside . After all it's what differentiates this branch of (pop)culture from other, like books, or movies it so much aspires to. I think games should've stand on their own legs as a medium if you want them to be perceived than more just a mere copycats of "higher" art-forms.

 

[Fox12]

Dark Souls is a game that needs time to sink in. It won't tell you almost anything. It's too subtle for that. Instead you have to figure things out on your own.

It also understands that brevity is the soul of whit, and that writing isn't good because it is long. Dark Souls says what it needs to say, and moves on. It's more about implication anyway...

If it hardly tells you anything, how do you know that anything is actually implied, and you're not just creating a wholecloth narrative out of an Inkblot?

The details are scant, not non-existant. Besides, if you find a wounded character inside a building, surrounded by rubble, and there's a hole in the roof above his head, and there's a giant monster on the roof, then you can probably piece together what happened. Also, the director has confirmed certain details.

All it takes is a very basic understanding of how symbolism works : )

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

I always love to see how many gamers get absolutely infuriated and indignant over game critics daring to critique a game in a way they personally disprove of.

Given how many gamers demand that video games be treated with "respect" and viewed as a "mature form of art", it's confusing that a significant portion of that lot will then turn around and say "just focus on playing, stop thinking about the other stuff too much". Mature media is examined from a variety of angles; a discussion about the lighting and camera angles of a Transformers movie is just as valid as to whether they got Optimus Prime's coloration wrong, and we can talk about historical themes reflected in Game of Thrones just like we can talk about how our favorite character died horribly.

But apparently wanting to examine anything about games aside from what happens when you press X to not die somehow "sucks the fun out of it".

 

[John Markley]

It's the kind of hypocrisy in which gamers say that games are art so that they're not exempt from anti-censorship laws but scoff at the notion of anyone treating them like art.

If Kill Screen were treating games "like art," they wouldn't be capping off their exploration of a game's deep themes by giving it a numerical rating on a scale of 1 to 100. ("Hamlet: Compelling meditation on mortality and obsession, marred by patriarchal assumptions and boring Fortinbras subplot. 78/100.)" If Kill Zone chooses to adopt the trappings of a review, something to help consumers decide if a game is worth their time and money, they deserve to be criticized for delivering an ideological lecture instead.

And it is hardly "anti-intellectual" (if that term even means anything at this point) to dislike art criticism that focuses around attacking something because the critic disagrees with its politics disagree with it's politics. If somebody wrote an essay about how Apocalypse Now is bad cinema because its negative depiction of the Vietnam War is unpatriotic and plays into the hands of the commies, that would not be considered good film criticism by most cinephiles.

And now I have to ask: why is it that video game reviews aren't allowed to talk mostly about narrative and or provide in-depth analysis of the work and it's themes? Why does this stigma against anything but the most clinical, bare-bones, just-the-facts, gameplay-only reviews even exists?

If I wrote a review of Wagner's Ring cycle that was mostly complaining that it doesn't follow actual Norse mythology very faithfully and declared that it wasn't worth listening to because of that, rather than talking about music, that would be a very poor opera review. Even if my criticisms of Wagner's treatment of his source material was accurate and insightful, it would STILL be a very poor opera review.

 

[Hair Jordan]

Since this places values and attempts to persuade in emotional terms, I'd hardly call it intellectual. It's a polemic piece. As is this thread....

The OP asked if gamer culture was anti-intellectual.

You responded as though they asked whether or not the article was an example of intellectualism, as it formally relates to epistemology and rationalism.

Anti-intellectualism refers to a class of people - intellectuals - not opposition to a specific branch of philosophy.

It seems as though you're attempting to make the convoluted argument that intellectuals are supposed to be free of ideology, lest we label them polemicists.

Speaking of which, you're throwing around the word as though there's anything that prevents an intellectual from deploying a polemical argument. That's absolutely ludicrous. Many of our important thinkers, particularly in the realm of ideology and the sciences, have fundamentally relied upon them.

For example, the logical positivists, THE definition of rationalistic empiricists (you know - intellectualism), commonly argued in polemical form, due to their utterly intolerant refutation of anything remotely deemed to be metaphysics. Good luck with that foot in your mouth.

"It doesn't matter what you say you think, I know what you actually think, and you're perverse for thinking it" - Truly, this is intellectualism in action.

The author of the article made no statements about the mental contents of another person. He's making the rational argument that an artist's intent isn't necessarily relevant to an artwork's sociopolitical importance. Your paraphrasing is misleading, at best.

 

[briankoontz]

A basic reality of hegemonic culture and politics is that it's invisible until it's made visible. Those who support the hegemony want it to stay invisible. What the OP misdescribes as "anti-intellectual" is rather an attack upon describing the ideology of a work of art.

The call for "gameplay/graphics ONLY!" in descriptions of games is a desire to suppress any attempt to describe a game's ideology, or meaning.

It's no surprise that there's a strong hegemonic position among gamers, developers, and publishers, given the large degree of wealth of these people relative to the global average. Gamers just as appreciators of other forms of art are not *random* - production and consumption of art are activities for the wealthy.

There's another path that hegemonic supporters can take - instead of suppression they can engage in propaganda. In fact, this is precisely what they WILL do if their suppression fails. But as any propagandist can tell you, it would be better if he didn't have to do anything at all for his political purpose to be met. Suppression is their first reaction to an attempt to make visible the ideology of games.

 

[Areloch]

If I go onto an product on Amazon and write a long review of the product explaining that the design of the chair heavily implies that it promotes socialist and communistic policies and the designers should take responsibility for that, I don't think many people would find that a useful review when attempting to buy the product based the fact THEY plan to actually sit in it.

Good to know that I could just call them anti-intellectual as a counter-point though.

 

[sonicneedslovetoo]

snip

Have you seen any reviews that are exclusively about the lighting angles in the transformers movies? Or I think more relevant to Killscreen's reviews have you seen any reviews that explicitly omit talking about some part of filmmaking such as acting or sound design because the reviewer doesn't think they add to the conversation? I think there is a world of difference between saying "we are writing reviews to focus on excellence in storytelling and largely we try not to focus on gameplay"(which Killscreen doesn't say for reference) and straight up saying:

"We like to stay away from the word "gameplay." Kill Screen?s primary concern is the interaction between games and culture, and so that's what our reviews hold a game to task for: how it reflects and responds to the world around it."

Because that's explicitly what they say about their reviews, they even go on to say "Describing "gameplay" doesn't often add to that conversation". which can easily be taken to mean that they don't think gameplay can add to a game in terms of artistry. I don't think they can be taken seriously if they don't think that gameplay can add to art. Especially with some games like Spec Ops; The Line or Undertale where gameplay and story mix like they do.

For reference here is the link that I am quoting from, it was also posted elsewhere in this thread:
https://killscreen.com/articles/note-about-our-reviews-policy/

Also even if there were "reviews" that focused exclusively on something like the CGI in a movie or something like that they would likely be labeled as opinion pieces and the author would hopefully have the decency to avoid giving the entire movie an arbitrary score based on that.

 

[Strazdas]

somone claims to write a reivew but instead writes political posturing without actually reviewing the game. no wonder people are pissed. Yes, there is anti-intelectualism in gaming. it comes from people as the author of the piece you linked to. these people are, willingly or not, destroying gaming media.

It didnt talk about mechanics. got called out for not talking about mechanics. thats all there was to those comments. and they were right, if you write a review you MUST talk about mechanics. otherwise you are just shit reviewer and shouldnt do reviews.

"We like to stay away from the word "gameplay." Kill Screen?s primary concern is the interaction between games and culture, and so that's what our reviews hold a game to task for: how it reflects and responds to the world around it."

Then they are not reviews. They are personal blogs at best and political soapboxing at worst. The one linked in OP being the latter.

 

[Skatalite]

Well Dark Souls has always seemed to me as a good example of a game that is often misjudged. There is a steam review of Dark Souls 2 that sums it up quite neatly. It goes as follows: Bearer... Seek... Seek... Lest... From what I've played of Dark Souls 2 (which was the first 70% and the first 30% twice, I've watched my roommate play the rest), the strenght of that game was it's gameplay, and secondarily its theme and atmosphere. The dialogue was cringeworthy and pretentious, the story was barely there and whatever themes it has are still mostly explored by killing things and walking into various death traps for 40 hours which is far longer than the story and themes require to be shown. I certainly didn't see any 'deep philosophy' and most of its thematic strength started to wear thin after twenty hours. I've seen various analyses of Dark Souls and unless Dark souls 1 is very different from Dark Souls 2 (and the first couple of hours where damn near identical to Dark Souls 2, I didn't play it after that) I think the narrative elements of Dark Souls are not nearly as important to the game as people tell themselves. Had the gameplay been ever so slightly less engaging, then I doubt it would have had anywhere near its popularity.

Right, Dark Souls 2. You've been playing the wrong one.
It's got a bit more polished gameplay, but it's really lacking in everything from story to writing and atmosphere (exact same thing happened with the Bioshock games now that I think about it).

 

[Elijin]

That article is magical because it condemns the game for silently creating a political narrative of waging war on the poor, while simultaneously leaving out anything that conflicts with the story the article is telling. Without going in depth, the two forces which make up the 'ultimate bad guy' in The Division are a multi-billion dollar PMC, and Division agents themselves, corrupted by the unchecked power they were given.

So while I wont comment on the broader issue, I can certainly get behind that article getting a negative reaction since it blatantly misleads its audience.

 

[nexus]

Yeah, stellar review right there. I really came away with a greater understanding of the game. I've played the game for over 20 hours, and there are many things which this writer lies about or just fails to understand. Your job as a Division agent is not to "kill the poor looters trying to survive", rather it is to find evidence of the bioterrorists responsible for the outbreak, and to eliminate other terrorist elements who are literally going around burning everyone alive. In the meantime, you are tasked with helping people receive food and aid - and you routinely pass by "looters" who are not considered threats. You also routinely give supplies to the needy.

Furthermore, the charges laid on the story that the Division is just some form of statist propaganda, glorifying totalitarian agencies is nonsense. The plot goes on to show that the Division is flawed, and has too much power - a topic routinely discussed throughout the game's narrative, challenging the notion of federal agencies with unlimited power.

This pretentious writer just comes off as a subversive, insufferable communist puke using an unrelated medium to espouse his destructive agenda. As does the inflammatory OP starting with the presumption that his way is the one way, and everyone else is just 'anti-intellectual' and 'doesn't want to understand'. Nice kafka trap, you'd definitely be given a top supervisory role in a fucking gulag.

 

[NPC009]

Personal observations:

-It seems to me that 'too political!' is not a reason to dismiss a review, but a means. The actual reason to dismiss it is that's a negative review. Many (vocal) people don't like it when the things they like are critised, because they feel it's an attack on themselves. "Critic thinks the portrayal of women in this game is sexist? But I like this game! He's saying I'm sexist! Self Defence Mode - Activate!"

- Anti-intellectualism works the same way. By demanding the critic only talks about gameplay and such, they believe the critic can be forced to be objective and arrive at the same conclusions they have. The fact that enjoyment of gameplay is still something personal and subjective is conveniently ignored.

-Some people feel that, once you put a bad score underneath a review, the game becomes tainted. I think Gamerankings/Metacritic played a huge role in the development of this mentality. A negative review is no longer just a negative review, it's a scarlet letter the game will have to carry with it always.

So basically, a bunch of people don't want the game to be judged in fear of themselves being judged along with it. Self-preservation gone wild by means of extreme denial. And that sucks, because people with this attitude don't want to discuss games, they want to shut discussion down as soon as someone says something they're not comfortable with.

As for the review mentioned in the OP:
-An intellectual response would be: I don't agree with this analysis, because [insert story elements and role of gameplay mechanics here]
-An anti-intellectual response would be: OMG! Narrative/agenda/politics! Bad critic! Bad!

So, yeah, the whole trying to shut down discussions, which is what you see in the comments, it nort particularly intellectual and the people responding know this. It's their way of protecting the game they like, and above all, themselves.

 

[FirstNameLastName]

I always love to see how many gamers get absolutely infuriated and indignant over game critics daring to critique a game in a way they personally disprove of.

Given how many gamers demand that video games be treated with "respect" and viewed as a "mature form of art", it's confusing that a significant portion of that lot will then turn around and say "just focus on playing, stop thinking about the other stuff too much". Mature media is examined from a variety of angles; a discussion about the lighting and camera angles of a Transformers movie is just as valid as to whether they got Optimus Prime's coloration wrong, and we can talk about historical themes reflected in Game of Thrones just like we can talk about how our favorite character died horribly.

But apparently wanting to examine anything about games aside from what happens when you press X to not die somehow "sucks the fun out of it".

It's really not as black and white as you're making it out to be. While there are always people who will be angry no matter what you say, the general sentiment doesn't really seem to be "only focus on the gameplay", but rather, "don't only focus on how your perception of this game's themes align with your own political views." There is room for discussion of a game's themes, story and even politics, but as is clear, a lot of gamers are getting rather sick of all these reviews that read more like a political blog than a videogame review.
Hell, this very site has examples that show people can accept reviews that involve more than just gameplay. Yahtzee regularly reviews the game's story, and even makes mention of a game's political and thematic aspects, and while that has occasionally prompted some backlash on the few times it was more extreme, there's a pretty clear difference in audience reactions between reviews that examine the whole package, and reviews that focus mainly on politics.
That is what pisses so many people off. Not the mere mention of politics in a review, but the almost exclusive focus on politics and ideology. Adding a score onto these types of reviews certainly doesn't help either. Scores can be contentious at the best of times, but when you start scoring the game based on whether or not you think it espouses the right political opinions you really shouldn't be surprised about the backlash. Scores shouldn't be some kind of Inverse Heresy Rating.

Oh, and this is addressed to many others in this thread as well; if you think gamers shouldn't have any right to tell reviewers what they can and cannot talk about in their reviews, why then do you seem to think you have the right to tell people what they can and cannot comment on said reviews?

As usual, the critics have the right to say whatever they want in their reviews, and the viewers likewise have the right to criticize this critic's review in what ever way they see fit (unless it violates the CoC for whatever site this is on, but they can still criticize it elsewhere). And of course, you can criticize these posters, and I can criticize your criticisms, and someone else can ... etc. The right to free speech doesn't only apply to critics.

 

[Level 7 Dragon]

For example, I consider "The Last of Us" one of the most overrated games of the last gen, yet some people think it's the "Citizen Kane" of video games.

That actually makes it exactly like the Citizen Kane of video games if we're being honest. It's an ok movie but it certainly did not age well and wasn't really the masterpiece many make it out to be.

Here's the thing, most cinematographic techniques used today came from the film. When it was released, there was nothing like it. With time it was overshadowed by its decendants.

The Last of Us wasn't a breakthough, it was just really well made. What was unoriginal, but well made? A New Hope.

You don't need to be revolutionary to go into history.

 

[veloper]

Anti-intellectualism doesn't have to be against smart stuff perse, but it is always opposed to smart-asses and pretentiousness.

As for gaming, it's just better to accept that it's cheap entertainment, that may give your brain and reflexes a little workout sometimes/maybe, than to try very hard to look for deep meaning and great profoundness, when there isn't any.

 

[Yopaz]

I don't think it's anti-intellectualism, but rather how we react to negative criticism of things we like and it's not exclusive to gamers.

I was looking up reviews on Youtube for an electric Razer my uncle got me out of curiosity (since I liked it quite well myself I wanted to get someone else's opinion and tips about how to get the most of it) and I found a channel dedicated to electric razers. He had tested it for both wet and dry shave and he showed it in action. He had assessed both how well it shaved and how comfortable it felt. He said that he would not recommend it for those who primarily dry shave, but that it was great for wet shave.

He got so many negative comments about how retarded he was because he was using it incorrectly.

I don't know how many of the comenters were gamers, but it shows that we can react very strongly to any negative criticism, even if the overall review of a product is positive.

Most of my arguments against that article have been covered but let me throw out one more.

Progressives are quick to give slap labels like "anti intellectual" on people who oppose or are just not interested in their arguments. Could it be that some gamers are very much intellectuals only they see the progressives arguments as dumb?

No, we're just not tolerant of opinions.