On Being Gross
So, Zero Punctuation. It’s a hit. And I’m not jealous. Really. Why would I be? Because he shot into superstardom while so many of us freelancers and reviewers plod along, unrecognized, waiting for even one reader to post a comment that mentions us by name and spells it correctly? Me jealous? Nah.
Ben Croshaw – I had to go look up his actual name (take that!) – writes and animates Zero Punctuation, and not only do I think he’s a great watch, I think he’s a boon to the entire business of game reviewing. He may even elevate the practice of writing about games. But there’s a caveat.
Yes, he’s funny, he’s knowledgable, and he’s crass. We should follow his lead on at least the first two things. The problem is, many new critics – they’re probably registering at blogspot right now – will only follow the third thing: they’ll think that crass is the new crit, that being gross is the way to get attention. The key to Croshaw’s importance is that he’s gross – but being gross is not, by itself, a good idea.
Dick jokes are an easy sell – think of Bill Hicks, promising to his audience that he’d throw some dick jokes at them after one of his long-winded genius spiels about the one central consciousness that is God, and what Reagan’s doing to fuck it all up. But they are funny.
The game crits business actually needs more dick jokes. There’s a school of thought among gamers that game reviews should be really boring and objective. When I see people argue with the grade on a review, or complain because we spent half of a BioShock review talking about the themes and politics behind the game and none of it talking about the plasmids, they tend to say that game reviewers should be factual and “objective.” We should be like Consumer Reports or Olympic judges or some other body that will sit, blank-faced, in front of a piece of software and evalute it in purely technical terms.
That would be really boring. I got tired of the “are games art?” argument a long time ago, but I’m ready anytime to have the “are games just software?” argument – and I think that’s an argument we’re losing. Too many people who make or purchase video games think of them in the same general camp as Microsoft Word or Adobe Photoshop, as something that’s defined by its requirements document and the execution of its project plan. At some point, you have to switch to thinking of it as an intangible, sui generis work of art that came into the world to unscrew your head from your neck. This has been the baseline for rock music, but it’s strange for game developers – just read their interviews.
Making dick jokes really helps you cut out the chaff: “I’m not the kind of guy who’s going to benchmark this game against 10 different configurations. I make dick jokes.” Yet that just clears the air for what really matters in the review. I have to hand it to Croshaw and also to Penny Arcade that they write great reviews by going straight to the heart of what they like or dislike about a game. Once you make it clear that you’re not pretending to be Consumer Reports, you can drill down to the points that matter. I think Penny Arcade is probably better than anybody at finding the most important argument for or against a game and making it simply and succinctly. And they do it in an entertaining way, as does Croshaw. It’s probably no coincidence that these multimedia presentations are more compelling to gamers than our dull old text-only reviews, but that’s another issue.
Okay, so that’s the upside to dick jokes. The downside? People don’t realize that they’re not the point of the piece. Croshaw gets away with it because he actually knows what he’s saying and, in fact, seems bitterly critical toward anything that doesn’t meet his standards; witness the way he takes apart little old Ctrl-Alt-Delete. Another great example? Film critic Mr. Filthy. Yes, he’s filthy, but he’s a great storyteller, and he also knows what he’s talking about.
The problem is, a lot of gamers are – well, let’s just say they’re happy with the dick jokes. That’s why I’m so worried about the future spawn of Zero Punctuation. They probably won’t make videos, they’ll just roll around in the shit. You can even see this in some of the game reviewers getting published today – my favorite example is the Village Voice’s review of The Orange Box, where Gary Hodges starts a piece on one of the most important releases of last year by saying he was worried the price tag would bend him over and sodomize him. (Nobody told him that a lot of the Voice’s audience would pay pretty well for that – check the classifieds.) I actually suspect the Village Voice Media chain runs this style of reviews because they think gamers want this kind of humor. Maybe they’re right.
One last point, though, about what really makes Zero Punctuation and also Penny Arcade work so well. It’s not just that they’re funny, or that they’re informed. My guess is that people love their work and their voices because they’re so relatable as gamers. If you were hanging out and having a game night with pizza and beer, these are the guys you would want sitting on the couch with you. They know more than you do, but they don’t lord it over you. They’re funny and sarcastic, but they love gaming like they have nothing else. And ever since someone decided to take a show for twentysomethings, about twentysomethings, and call it Friends - as in, “if you’re lonely, these are your … ” – it’s been clear that the hang-out factor is paramount.
Being crass has been a review tradition since the Roman Empire. It is a human fact that fart jokes make most people laugh at some point in their lives.
I have always appreciated reviewers or comedians or frankly people who can play above and below the belt. But I agree that the best reviewers are always love with their subject. As always, a great POV Mr Dahlen.
scott
March 27, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Yahtzee and Penny Arcade appeal to the gaming community at large for the same reason that Kevin Smith struck a chord with kids in the 90’s. They seem like one of us and what’s more, they represent one of the ideal positions of the videogaming everyman. Not everyone can make a game, but everyone has a god damn opinion. The top dogs in that arena pepper their opinions with the F word and make it look real easy to tell a joke. The disconnect happens when the imitators, sick of straight faced criticism from 1up and Gamespot, put too much emphasis on attempts at comedy.
Rest assured, dude, these people will wind up like my favorite aborted movie reviewer, Kill Kill Kill, who proposed a link exchange with me, wrote to posts and then dropped off the face of the earth.
I will admit that I’m guilty of the above charges, though. The ordinary dudes talking about movies/music/games meme really appeals to me and I deliberately approach my own movie reviews that way. I try to be objective but spike graduate level writing with curse words and barely related asides about the positive qualities of Iron Maiden. My only hope is that it comes off as natural and works at the same time.
kwhitemed
March 27, 2008 at 9:01 pm
^^^ By the way, the above is by me.
Bryan
March 27, 2008 at 9:03 pm
I tried checking this in, but it keeps saying: Merge Failed…
http://www.thatsaspicymeatball.com/comments/
Eric
March 27, 2008 at 9:57 pm
Holy Blogsplosion, Batman! This might have to do with my being female, but I find the gross factor — unless it’s really done cleverly — more annoying than relatable. And I’m a snob, so at some level I think I tend to subconsciously discount reviews that are written in too casual a tone.
That said, again, when it’s done *really* well, it’s more effective for me than a more formal, analytical review. The AV Club “My Year Of Flops” piece on Dragon Wars was brilliant, for example.
Jessica
March 28, 2008 at 2:09 pm
[...] On Being Gross at Save the Robot: Every week Kotaku posts a new ZeroPunctuation review, and every week their comment section fires up. Many readers hope to be the first to mark the day Ben Croshaw jumps the shark. Chris Dahlen doesn’t seem worried about Croshaw jumping the shark, but videogame reviews as a whole. Influenced by Croshaw’s gross-out gags, what will come of our future reviewers? [...]
Turkey Sandwiches from March 22-28, 2008 « Hardcasual
March 28, 2008 at 5:56 pm
The sad thing is Yahtzee isn’t even being inventive. It’s the same brand of crassness that has been hashed and rehashed since the birth of the internet; it’s the cheap shortcut, the quickest way to get attention from the most vocal, and in general the least intelligent portion of the gaming audience.
And I wouldn’t worry about game crit being dragged down by people trying to emulate that. Surely, plenty of people will and continually do emulate it, receive massive but mainly braindead audience of raves, and become the next big ugly blot on the internet we’re ashameed of. But the existence of that kinda thing is the reason why people say “there’s no real game crit.”
Sure, people like us have to work a little bit harder and for longer to have an impact and to become recognized to that degree. But I think it’ll happen. Just be patient — it takes a lot longer to do something no one’s ever done before than it does to do something everyone’s done to death, but once it happens it actually has a lasting impact.
Leigh
March 29, 2008 at 9:50 am
You can go back a bit further and see where the trend toward snark and bile about games originated: Old Man Murray. Blame Chet and Erik.
Yahtzee is just doing what they were doing, only with clever animation and faster chat. And if I was a better man, I’d say Valve ends up hiring him too.
steve
March 31, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Jessica, you would’ve liked my dad – he had the same feelings every time I review I’d written that had crass language. But I agree about Nathan Rabin’s film column. I guess the difference is whether going crass makes you come off as clever, or stupid.
Steve, I thought the same thing about Valve hiring Yahtzee, after they flew him out for that visit. (And here I can’t even get Gabe Newell on the phone for an interview, ha ha.)
Leigh and everyone else, I totally agree. Especially with you, Eric. I hope that merge worked out in the end.
savetherobot
April 1, 2008 at 6:20 pm
If it makes you feel any better, I’m not particularly proud of that opening either. But as I’m sure you know, sometimes you’re writing more to an editor than an audience.
Gary Hodges
September 13, 2008 at 3:19 am
Gary, from my time as a freelancer at New Times I actually know exactly what you mean. I should’ve taken that into account instead of just singling out that paragraph (especially after your fantastic Danny Hellman interview on joystickdivision.com). Thanks for stopping by, and for not stooping to my level in your response.
savetherobot
September 13, 2008 at 12:51 pm
No hard feelings whatsoever – especially towards someone who’s been there (I’d love to compare notes sometime). And thanks for the kind words about the Hellman interview!
Love you stuff, by the way. You’re one of a very small handful of people I look to as an example of what game writing needs more of. Keep it up!
Gary Hodges
September 13, 2008 at 4:27 pm