Apparently, an explanation is in order.
It was October 21st, and I started on my morning routine of checking the multitudinous gaming-focused feeds I subscribe to. Among my favorites is GameSetWatch, the bloggy counterpart to zenithal gaming site Gamasutra with features dynamic mix of round-ups, columnists, and insights by publisher Simon Carless that never fail to stimulate.
Let me qualify that: it never failed to stimulate prior to reading “The Most Egregious Tale Ever Committed to Word Processor”—the latest “Bell, Game, and Candle” column from Alex Litel.
That feeling was provocation from this trash wannabe postmodern fiction guised as being about games; I felt a neoteric assault on my writerly ethos. But expressing such guided outrage is hardly professional, so that is where this Tumblog comes in.
I intended for a constant indignation, because wholesale, writing and reportage about games is garbage undeserving of respect. Other commitments came in that way, and it pains me that I have to write about my abominable inspiration for the third time.
But I do.
His first column of the new year, “A Primer on the Future of Games as Art” perfectly recreated that revulsion. Yes, more trash wannabe postmodern fiction guised as being about games.
This time, the recidivist travels into the future and meets himself in an adventure that needs a fucking deconstruction; if not for the title and intro, I would have had no clue what the hell this was about. (Actually, that may be improvised and misleading.)
In fact, I’d question that it is even a column, as much as it is the recidivist’s rejected submission to some literary journal.
Even more depressing is that in this dour media economy that someone gets away with getting paid for textual onanism, when there are litany of far more deserving, far better writers who would love the opportunity to do a “column” such as this.
