This essay is just as important as the other one by William Plank I posted today, though not so much in what it actually says but in what follows from it and is left unsaid. For that reason, it is also much easier to understand.
However, none of that is important right now. What's important right now is the following passage, and especially the part of it I've emphasized:
William Plank wrote:The rodeo in the American west even exhibits the tendency, especially in break-away roping, where the lariat releases after the rider has shown his skill, but the animal does not have to be thrown -- a "decadent" proposition as a result of the disappearance of the frontier. When a culture, a movement, an institution or a scientific theory reaches its end, there tends to be a great emphasis placed on technique, on performance, rather than on production or the explanatory value of the theory. Fredric Jameson has written in The Prison House of Language that the last days of a theory are characterized by more attention being spent to adjust the theory so that it will remain valid than on applying it. Decadent literature emphasizes style and technique over content. In roping, it is the technique, the form that counts, not the capture of the animal.
If you think about the New Game Journalists, at any rate the more competent and more prominent among them (Tim Rogers, Kieron Gillen, Eric-Jon Waugh, et al.), and consider how much value they place on the style and literary value of a game critique -- instead of its actual competence as critique, i.e. what it actually says -- you should be able to see the connection.
I will elaborate on this in a future article. The gist of it is that what is considered cutting-edge game criticism today is decadence pure and simple. A symptom and at the same time a necessary byproduct of the retrogression of video games, among other things.
P.S. Note that the present essay contains far more important insights than the above -- insights, moreover, which are also very pertinent to video games. For the time being, however, I would like to draw people's attention to this particular point.
