A Brief Comment On The Mainstream

N’Gai Croal has an interesting post up about the lack of real gameplay information in mainstream game reviews.  Croal discusses the difficulty of effectively writing about games to an audience that knows little about them.  However, the implicit question in his piece is at least as interesting, and maybe more fundamental: what should mainstream writers’ goal be in writing about videogames to a mass audience?

It seems to me that that’s the most fundamental question here and one that needs to be answered first.  In Croal’s conclusion, I think he’s arguing that the major role should be that of educator - to teach the mainstream what games are all about, rather than to provide a critical analysis of their gameplay elements.  Although that seems like a fair conclusion (no point in running before you can walk), it calls into question whether or not such pieces can really be termed “reviews.”  If mainstream writers see themselves simply as ambassadors to the masses, they become evangelists for a particular viewpoint - that games are acceptable - rather than critics, which implies the ability to distinguish and critique both positive and negative elements. 

(This has some obvious downsides.  Games that might really be deserving of a serious dialogue get harshly criticized by people who know little about them, whereas mainstream writers appear to be apologists for titles they may not even think have a lot of merit.  For example, I thought Manhunt was a pretty lousy game - but I still felt compelled to defend its existence.)

Is there another option?  I’m not sure, but I do think its incumbent on the mainstream to clearly delineate for its readership what the intended audience is.  If Newsweek wants to do serious reviews, it should distinguish them from Croal’s often philosophical, analytical approach to the medium.  Similarly, I would hate to see his prose overly watered down through the need to describe how survival horror games function before commenting on the nature of zombies in RE5.