Two videos, one cup

Hot isn’t it?

Last week people were having some quite annoying arguments about criticism in games. It might partly be to do with this long video essay.

I did watch all three hours of it in the end, and I think it’s pretty good. It’s entertainingly made, explained some boring things about the past of TTRPG design and highlighted a particular approach to game design which is a bit crap. It took a decent swipe at Root The RPG and for good reason as far as I can tell. It’s a book without heft and weight and seems to be there just for the Kickstarter.

Vi engages with the text of the work, and indeed, the meta-text that is the play that the text creates. Vi seems to suggest that there isn’t really a way of attributing play to the rules – at least, not in a very strict sense in the way a board game might – and instead this being something entirely (?) apart from the rest of our understanding of the game.

It poses the question of what can we even critique when it comes to games.

As someone who has provided a lot of criticism of ttrpgs over the years I can only add this: in all circumstances in games writing and reviewing we are reviewing play – the generated element, the vapour of action which rises above the board or above the table. And then we may look to attribute the parts of the rules or the text of the setting or adventure as to why play happened in the way it did.

It’s why, I think, it’s mostly GMs that review games, rather than players. Because they’ve read the text and they’re the only one implementing the rules and setting as written.

(Or because of the way it’s written. Because I think that’s one of the things that’s being discussed in Vi’s essay – that there is a belief out there that game rules are to be followed exactly and to deviate is to do it wrong. Which is obviously wrong in itself and those who believe that are usually socially maladjusted and not much fun to be around. It misses the point of games at all. There is a threshold where ‘taking it seriously’ does effect how fun the game is, but it’s got nothing to do with whether the rules are perfectly implemented. There is a misunderstanding in some of the hobby which assumes that people can’t make choices of play at the table and indeed, shouldn’t. It’s clear to me that every game is interpreted by those playing it, just as a novel is imagined in the mind or poetry is performed differently at home.)

I wonder what player side reviews of games might look like. The Rolled Standard reviews games after each of their actual play series – and maybe we get a glimpse of it there.

This aside, it turns out I love a three hour video essay when presented as thoughtfully as Vi’s. I only really would want this for bigger ideas which include the kind of roaming tour through a few ideas and texts. But it gave me chance to think properly about most of the things being said – which I can’t say is always true of things I enjoy on the internet.

Similarly, Tim Clare, who has a massive reserve of compassion, enthusiasm and interest in games has started his own YouTube channel. The first video, about Joraku, a trick-traking area control game sees Tim take us on a tour of this seemingly brilliant Samurai game with a deft hand. Tim manages to do something here that we rarely see in the gaming space which is intelligently and entertainingly explaining how to play the game while telling us why it’s good and how it’s personally effected him. Tim manages to make the understanding of the game’s rhythms part of understanding whether it feels good to play, or if it will bring about some change in you (which I guess is what we’re asking of all art, right? ‘Go on, change me, I dare you.’)

Tim’s channel with be worth subscribing to and sharing around, so if you have the means to boost one of the best voices in games at the moment, do!

Lads, my car is megadead. As such I would like to remind you that I am available for hire as a games writer, kickstarter consultant, or general writer-for-hire. I’ve doubled the money a designer made on their KS once because of my feedback on the actual page, which is pretty much my only sort-of testimonial at the moment. I’d love to write an adventure for your game, design a solo mode for it,

I also have games you can buy.

Next time I hope to write up some more thoughts around how games are themselves metaphors and how I link them to literary theory. Or I might send something fun instead, like the intro to our next game…