Hell yeah, appreciating criticism is not (IMO) primarily abt finding critics you agree with but finding critics who stimulate yr thinking, deepen yr appreciation and get you to think about works or art forms in new ways, even if the way there lies thru disagreement and anger.
https://twitter.com/jamescamien/status/1321213767443775488 …
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Carolyn Petit Retweeted James Camien
I admit I haven't followed Yahtzee's work in a long time but a crucial element of good critics to me is that from their love of a medium and their personal convictions can come intense dislike of individual works. (Pauline Kael is the gold standard here.)https://twitter.com/jamescamien/status/1321215790734020615?s=20 …
Carolyn Petit added,
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Replying to @jamescamien
You may have already seen this but here's a piece I wrote late last year about some of my hopes for criticism's future that references Kael's work:https://medium.com/@carolynpetit/ruthless-individuality-criticisms-past-and-hopefully-its-future-d1ffbf3bb2c8 …
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Replying to @carolynmichelle
Carolyn I loved this! Thanks! One question: why is it that games criticism is this way? Things aren't this bad in lit crit! My initial thought was something like "VG crit is maturing"... But would a better explanation not be that capital has a particularly strong stranglehold?
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Replying to @jamescamien @carolynmichelle
Capital has a strong grip here, the argument would go on, because of the enormous investment involved in a AAA game. No such concentration of investment in novels! Maybe you get the same sort of bad criticism wrt blockbuster films?
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Replying to @jamescamien
Yeah, this is definitely an oversimplification of some culturally complex issues though in a sense there is also an almost banal simplicity to it, I think. For so long, the dominant voices in games crit were quite homogenous, and while many had integrity, the business model...
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Replying to @carolynmichelle @jamescamien
...for websites, with preview coverage and ads and being "Entertainment for Men" and so on, allowed many to see them almost as an extension of gaming PR rather than as an actual cultural apparatus. The uniformity of perspective allowed for many players in the hegemonic group...
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Replying to @carolynmichelle @jamescamien
...to see their own tastes, as reflected by most critical voices of the day, as "objective," even though of course there's no such thing. So now, we've got an uphill battle to fight to work toward the dismantling of perceived "objectivity" and a greater range of perspectives.
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Replying to @carolynmichelle @jamescamien
meant to say "critical apparatus" not "cultural apparatus" in that second tweet
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Also thanks for reading, glad you enjoyed it!
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Replying to @carolynmichelle
No thank you! I imagine decoupling critics from industry is all the harder for not having any historical wells to draw on - industry is perfectly content being able to predict games' "objective" critical appraisal, and will well-fundedly fight to maintain the status quo.
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