Theory

[icycalm]

So this is the guy who wrote that stupid Working for the Man article we ridiculed a while back. He is respected among game journalists because he uses a lot of words whose meaning he doesn't understand, and also because he has written for The Guardian and other mainstream publications.

And he is of course a complete moron.

Exhibit A: Believe it or not, there's a quote of his in the current edition of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. How a videogame journalist managed to get himself published on the second page of one of the most important works of philosophy ever is beyond me. But anyway, here it is:

'Beautifully strange... an icy, gnomic, compact work of mystical logic.'
Stephen Poole, Guardian

And of course it's all empty verbiage, because to call the Tractatus a work of MYSTICAL LOGIC is to have failed to understand the slightest thing about it, seeing as THE WHOLE POINT OF THE BOOK is to explain why LOGIC and MYSTICISM are two ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE THINGS.

Oh well.

Moving on, here's Exhibit B:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2007/mar ... ies.france

That's an obituary of Baudrillard written by him for the Guardian. And, actually... it's not at all bad. I can tell he hasn't really studied the man's work and therefore doesn't understand it, but then again the same is true of all the people who wrote obituaries for Baudrillard. His article is anyway better than the Economist's, where the asshats set out to make fun of him.

So, ummmmm, okay, Exhibit B was not really all that bad after all.

So this Poole guy is certainly unique among games journalists. You'd think that something worthwhile would have rubbed off on him from all his book reviewing antics, but apparently the only thing that did was a taste for rare words. Now all he needs is some rare thoughts to go with them!

Here's his blog:

http://stevenpoole.net/

I'll be visiting it whenever I feel like making fun of someone.

[icycalm]

http://stevenpoole.net/trigger-happy/edge-120/

You might say that in a really good murder simulator the actual murder is the icing on the cake. Some levels in Hitman 2 can demand as much thought and imagination as a tactical sim like Rainbow Six, and however many people you choose to whack on the way to your goal, the final kill evinces not a mere psychopathic thrill but a serene sense of accomplishment.

"Not a mere psychopathic thrill."

...

And what exactly IS a "mere psychopathic thrill?" Would he even know it if he felt it? Don't you have to be a psychopath to experience a "psycophathic thrill"? Isn't that the whole point of using the adjective "psychopathic"? Shouldn't we perhaps be a bit more careful with our use of words so that we don't end up writing nonsense half the time?

Remembering the furore over Hitman 2’s depiction of Sikhs and the game’s subsequent withdrawal for recoding, one is reminded that a naturalistic style always has political implications. And it remains to be seen for how much longer the ante of realism can be raised in the murder simulator before we begin to find it more distasteful than pleasurable.

Who is the "we" here? How hard can it be to realize that the answer to this question depends on the "we"? Soccer moms, for example, ALREADY find it distasteful, while people like me will NEVER find it distasteful, no matter how "realistic" it becomes. There -- question answered. Was it really that hard?

[icycalm]

Meanwhile, even though he ends the article on a moralizing note (always a good way to end an article about games -- it makes you look intellectual), and even though half-way though it he tries to gloss over the importance of violence, by way of the already-cliched-to-hell-and-back "problem-solving" argument ("we don't play games to blow off heads -- we play to solve problems"), he STILL pretty much admits that he prefers violent games to simple problem-solving ones, because of -- guess what! - the violence!

Hitman 2, indeed, cleverly dramatises the visceral payoff of increased naturalism in its own training level, where the player is taught how to use the game’s garrotting device, the fibre wire, on a scarecrow in the church grounds. Practising the movements required on this stuffed dummy is a purely mechanical exercise, but the first time the player does it “for real” - perhaps on the urinating guard outside the mob villa - something has changed. A bloody rush of power to the head, a feeling of accomplishment and smug oneupmanship: the guy never knew what was coming to him. Without the visual realism this would be merely a formal puzzle, like the disappointing VR missions in MGS Substance. In the world of Hitman 2, it becomes a kill.

So Hitman 2>MGS VR missions because of violence -- and puzzles be damned!

So what is the lesson to be taken away from all this?

That you can gain more understanding of videogames by reading message boards frequented by 12-year-olds (who are at least honest enough to call a spade a spade), than by following the floundering efforts at insight of any number of pseudo-intellectual journalists.

[icycalm]

Oh, wow. A moment of clarity:

Perhaps a wargame can never really be anti-war.

http://stevenpoole.net/trigger-happy/snake-eyes/

But not really. It's like the proverbial army of monkeys hammering on typewriters. Most of what comes out will be nonsense, but every now and then, by sheer chance, they'll type out one of Shakespeare's sonnets.

I mean it's not like the rest of the article says anything interesting. And that line I quoted comes right at the end, when the writer is anyway expected to throw out some deep, thoughtful, and perhaps a little paradoxical statement, so as to seem profound.

Well, Mr. Monkey, you finally managed to spew out something profound. The question is: how are you going to follow up on it, if you are not even aware that you wrote it?

[JoshF]

I'd rather read IGN than anything these doofuses write. No pretensions about "the bigger picture," just talking about how fun or not fun it is to play with these virtual action figures and why.

[icycalm]

A 21st century writer, ladies and gentlemen:

Also, a black MacBook just looks so much cooler in the coffee shop, don’t you think?

http://stevenpoole.net/blog/goodbye-cru ... comment-13

[JoshF]

Oh god, he's one of those guys that warms himself by the fake fire in Paneras, absorbing the smooth adult contemporary, checking out the teenage girls sipping on latte also trying to appear sophisticated. There's no hope!

[icycalm]

So in this page you can see all the stuff he's doing for the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/stevenpoole

He basically does to books what game reviewers do to games:

Writing in the Dark
20 Dec 2008: Review: Writing in the Dark by David Grossman
A rare example of writers speaking truth to power, says Steven Poole

A Lust for Window Sills
20 Dec 2008: Review: A Lust for Window Sills by Harry Mount
Skittishly meandering and yet delightful, says Steven Poole

Notes from Walnut Tree Farm
20 Dec 2008: Notes from Walnut Tree Farm by Roger Deakin
A book made up of little narrative masterpieces, says Steven Poole

The Other
6 Dec 2008: Review: The Other by Ryszard Kapuscinski
Steven Poole enjoys the celebrated Polish foreign correspondent self-imposed exile

Stop Me if You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes
6 Dec 2008: Review: Stop Me if You've Heard This - A History and Philosophy of Jokes by Jim Holt
Holt very agreeably browses through a few historical joke-books and surveys the main philosophical theories of comedy, writes Steven Poole

The Writer as Migrant
6 Dec 2008: Review: The Writer as Migrant by Ha Jin
The examples of other exiled writers are scrutinised with a critical sympathy in this trio of limpid essays, writes Steven Poole

The mischievous oracle
15 Nov 2008: Review: Quantum by Manjit Kumar
A brilliant guide to quantum physics impresses Steven Poole

Magic Moments
8 Nov 2008: Review: Magic Moments by John Sutherland
From Tarzan to Brecht, Steven Poole finds the learned professor conducts a pleasant tour d'horizon of his youth

So he basically loves everything, and all he has to do every time is find different adjectives to express his admiration for every shitty book that comes out. Seems like nothing has changed in the world of book reviewing since Orwell's time!

http://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/r ... sh/e_bkrev

[icycalm]

Okay, yeah, I think I am done with this clown:

Sometimes, on the other hand, a brand-new book will just smell nasty: almost mouldy, or pungently of glue, or like school chemistry lab. As my experience showed, what wafts from the pages can be just as powerful a time-travel machine as Proust's madeleine. And there's another possibility, too. If smell can influence our romantic choices, might it also influence our critical faculties? As a reviewer, might I subconsciously write more kindly about books whose smell I prefer? I fear I can't rule it out. Could publishers employ parfumiers to give their books a commerical fillip? Perhaps they secretly do already ...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksbl ... raryspirit

Every article, review or blog post of his I read has shit like this in it. I could go on for ever, but what would be the point? Tim Rogers looks like a genius next to this guy. I'd even take Sirlin over him.

[BlackerOmegalon]

I think this guy might be a comedy genius. Smell based-reviewing? If smell did that, I wonder what the nice trips or goodies game publishers send journalists would do?

[icycalm]

"The genres are denied the creative oxygen of interpollination with the wider cultural ecology."

http://edge-online.com/blogs/teenage-kicks

[icycalm]

Note also the utterly absurd alarmism that the piece ends with:

"The result isn’t so much a cathedral as a mausoleum. The acoustic is deadening, and soon the oxygen will run out."

lol yes. "The oxygen will run out." Because all those millions of kids who love these games (meaning us) will soon presumably die or vanish or some shit.