[This week, our partnership with game criticism site Critical Distance brings us picks from Ben Abraham on topics including why spoiler warnings might be unnecessary, sexism in L.A. Noire, and more.] Hello! Welcome to another episode of This Week In Video Game Criticism. It's been a busy week for the blogosphere, which has seen some heated but reasonably productive discussion. But we'll get to that. First, the loveliest thing I've read all week (indeed, the loveliest for some time longer) is 'Games Saved My Life' which is a collection of essays and stories organised by Ashley Burch (of 'Hey Ash Whatchya Playing' fame). They tell tales of salvation through games, featuring stories like this one in which "Morgan McCormick, a transgender gamer, talks about how video games were an essential part of her ability to accept herself and her identity as a woman", and in 'Game Therapy' "Greg Kaperski credits Final Fantasy 8 as the only thing that helped him come to terms with the death of his first love." This is brilliant, moving stuff. Joel Jordon at Game Manifesto writes an extensive essay on 'The Anticapitalism Allegory of No More Heroes'. Steven O'Dell is celebrating 25 years of Metroid by discussing games in the series in some detail, and this week he looks at some of Metroid Prime's Magic Moments:
"These moments are small in comparison to the majority of the game, but they stand out because of their clever use of subtlety and implied storytelling; their demonstration of just how successful the transition from 2D to 3D actually was; and because of the way in which they compel you to keep on playing through the allure of exploration and discovery."
Daniel Vuillermin writing this week for the Australian Gamer site has a piece on 'The Psycopathy of Violent Videogames'. Here's how he sets up the discussion:
"I have killed tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands. I can't remember what most of them looked like let alone their names. And I couldn't care less. Such a state of detachment characterised by a lack of empathy, guilt or remorse is symptomatic of what is broadly termed psychopathy yet it is also what gamers often experience when playing violent video games. But they're just pixels right, so why should we care?"
A pair of posts from PopMatters this week: "In defense of spoiler warnings" by Scott Juster looks at a recent study out of UC San Diego that investigated the nature of spoilers and found that such warnings may be unnecessary as "giving away surprises makes readers like stories better". Juster's take on it is that
"If anything, the study illustrates the difficulties of trying to empirically measure enjoyment and the dangers of imprecise definitions of pleasure. Video games, perhaps more so than any other medium, are defined by the exploration, discovery, and the learning process. Because of this, spoilers often detract from what makes video games special."
And then if that weren't enough contention for you, G Christopher Williams goes on a lengthy spiel about 'Why Videogames Might Not Be Art'. But before you jump to conclusions, Williams takes a very thoughtful approach, identifying some real gaps in the argument against 'it's just a game', and drawing on the history of aesthetics and aesthetic philosophy to bridge the gap between pure subjective response and rock-solid facts:
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