Not The Bees said:
I'm going to tell you why I think the "objective reviews" vs. "subjective reviews" argument is a little disingenuous here.
The HuffPo moderator/interviewer is the first person I've seen, in all of this, to very publicly address the concept of critical lenses, which are essentially well-defined and overtly stated sets of biases (and often based on ideology - more on that below). Recognizing and understanding lenses is very important when consuming criticism. Consequently, I'd argue that any critics who do not willingly and openly divulge their preferred lenses are doing a disservice to the consumer. I'm not saying it's appropriate to staple your ideology to the top of the review, but I shouldn't have to suss out stark biases by researching your past pieces and associations. If your lens(es) aren't clear to me, there's a great chance I might badly misunderstand the criticism because I'm not privy to the unspoken criteria informing it. Such misunderstandings often lead to unproductive and intensely frustrating arguments - a fair characterization of this debacle to date.
Now I think it's pretty obvious that not all lenses are created equal. They vary in quality and function. A lot of lenses are highly exclusionary of alternate points of view, especially those based upon singular ideologies. Third-wave feminism, both as a lens and as an ideology, generally doesn't play nice with the group. It's not crazy about peer review. It's not very permissive of dissent. Identity politics, another lens and ideology, similarly rubs a lot of people the wrong way. Those people are often white and male, but what else do you expect when a ideology systematically ignores, erases, or otherwise shits on a demographic? Their unanimous support? Point being: lenses are useful tools for critics to explain their opinions, but those same lenses are equally useful for consumers in rapidly determining whether or not an opinion is of any value to them.
For whatever reason (and probably several reasons well worth discussing in another thread/post/age), a large group of online video game publications became thoroughly saturated with the aforementioned lenses of third-wave feminism and identity politics. This, in an industry where the predominant lens and criteria for criticism has been simply "how is it as a video game?". For damn near two decades, the games media has been breaking down review scores, or adding and subtracting points, based largely on mechanics, graphics, audio, etc. Themes and narratives and ideologies were sometimes interesting asides, but they weren't figuring prominently into the scores or the mind share. This makes a certain kind of sense; you want to judge your medium by the criteria most specific to and emblematic of your medium. When some more traditional lenses start to crop up, and they happen to be some of the more divisive and inflammatory lenses in existence, is the culture shock really such a big surprise?
I think a lot of the journalists involved in this conflict wanted to inject their personal politics and pet ideologies into games criticism, and that's quite admirable
provided you're going about it in an honest and open fashion. I'd argue this was not the case here. I think a lot of traditional platforms decided to slowly (or not so slowly) shift the overall industry narrative to fit their lenses. Anywhere they met with resistance, we saw heavy-handed moderation and rampant accusations based on the lenses involved. Third-wave feminists encountering dissenting points of view tend to default to "misogynist!", and identity politic'ers similarly resort to accusations of "white cis male scum". Hard not to see irony in that last one, btw; when the truth becomes an insult and a powerful accusation, your ideology might need work.
Games criticism was going to grow up at some point. As the medium became more adept at telling stories, those stories were inevitably going to become targeted, purposed, and politicized. I think third-wave feminism and identity politics were the first lenses to arrive en mass, and they tried to gobble up all the mind share before anyone else could stake their claim. Turns out a substantial portion of the "gamer demographic" wasn't buying what they were selling, and that triggered a rather resentful and self-destructive backlash from those journalists who thought they had the community in hand. Gamers are understandably pissed off because a failed, naked attempt to control narrative is pretty universally infuriating, and every new hit-piece only stokes the fires and widens the chasm. The continued, widening assault on #gamergate is really counterproductive for these journalists. They're going to end up with the exact same audience they would have always had while the people they wanted to convince/convert turn away furious. And furious is far worse than apathetic.
Edit: "lenses" goes a very long way towards explaining how Polygon can award Gone Home a perfect 10 and "game of the year". Viewed through feminist/progressive/identity politics "lenses", Gone Home is a triumph. Viewed through the "gameplay" lens, Gone Home barely meets minimum standards. Now there's nothing wrong with applying whatever critical theory you desire to your reviews so long as you're operating above board and in good faith. I don't believe Polygon are operating in this fashion. I think they're reviewing a lot of games traditionally in order to attract a traditional (read: bigger) audience, and then they're singling out some games for sacrifice/worship based on far less traditional criteria. It's insidious, and a lot of people instinctively reject the incongruity.
