February 7, 2006

[Politics] The Reason Behind "The Worst Game"

GamePolitics linked to one of my posts this morning, and I wanted to explain my motivations behind doing that post.

First off, I wanted to demonstrate how something that the vast majority of Americans see with little to no ill-will could be shown as essentially a force of evil by using carefully selected data points and taking those data points out of context.

Second, I felt that as game developers, we have been on the defensive for too long. We're in the middle of a culture war. We're holding a mirror up to society, and society is attacking the mirror like a bird that doesn't recognize its own reflection. If we are to win this battle, we need to go on the offensive.

While the general consensus in the gaming community is that if we wait for the gamers of yesterday to turn into the decision-makers of tomorrow that the problem will go away, our opposition is out there every day making ill-informed and poorly thought out arguments that on the surface sound logical, even though the arguments have more holes in them than a sieve.

So, I thought what better way to go on the offensive than to start out exactly like our opposition and attack one of their sacred cows?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I see your point here, but why take the offensive against another game developer? Is this some torch you're carrying for a certain gaming genre? Do you just not like football?

If you're truly trying to get the light shone away from the gaming industry, why not point fingers outside said industry? This whole argument seems counter-productive...

Michael Russell said...

I was pointing outside of the game industry, in a manner of speaking.

While there are football video games, the game of football is what I was pointing at.

Anonymous said...

Ah, I misunderstood. Thanks for the correction.