Game Discourse Fails to Transcend Price Tags

Prices for video games keep climbing, and we all hate it. But here’s another perspective: rising prices hurt the role of video games as a piece of art. Mario Kart World cost me 80 bucks, and I’d love to play Donkey Kong Bananza if it weren’t locked behind the 70. Even though I’m incredibly excited for the new Resident Evil, I know it will be in negotiation with my wallet.

What gives me hope, though, are moments like the recent Kirby Air Riders direct, where Sakurai lamented the addition of a second button. It filled me with joy and certainty that game design still carries artistic value. These games shape the popular market for video games, and disregarding that market in your analysis is a big problem. So should the way they transform the market even matter when we examine their artistic value?

I’ve been listening to an incredible German podcast where four experts dissect different recordings of a single classical piece of music. To me, the pieces sometimes just sound like cool tunes, but the four can take them apart brutally in how they intersect with the orchestra’s skill, the composer’s intent, or the conductor’s unique style. That works because music has had centuries to build a strong theoretical foundation for this kind of expert discourse. Guess what doesn't have that?

Some argue that indie games provide that missing “meta” context. And yes, indie games have been incredible, pushing boundaries and tearing through the popular market with stuff like Balatro. But in celebrating them, we’ve blurred the lines. The AA market (games that lack blockbuster budgets but want to be seen as important artifacts still) has further muddied the waters. Many of these games have been groundbreaking, but what’s left is a landscape that makes it harder, not easier, to talk about games as art.

Take Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Made by 33 developers, it’s the game about grief ™, the bee's knees for critics and chuds, the RPG that shows the crusty RPG devs how it’s done. I had a lukewarm response to it. I called it “bedeutungsschwanger”(German for “pregnant with meaning”), and I found the surrounding discussion pretentious and misguided.

I felt similarly back when Stardew Valley released. It’s a game I love deeply, but its reputation as both a one-man miracle project (which is a can of worms we should open more often) and as the poster child of the cozy games ™: games portraying a world that is good and without friction. Not only do people disregard the legacy of the genres Stardew Valley drew from, but is manifested a trend towards games' ultimate value of escape, which now has left us with the boring ass "leave politics out of my games" discussion.

These labels and expectations strip us of meaningful discussions around inventive design, disruptive narratives, or genuine paradigm shifts. Instead, in today’s oversaturated market, we end up praising anything Elden Ring or embracing whatever’s quirky and escapist today.

So what’s the outlook? I think the wave of layoffs across game journalism is at the root of the problem. Game Informer is back, so that's cool! Still, capitalism bad isn’t a solution and strips us of any sense of agency. Here are a few ideas, I do want pushback on:

• Game journalists need to put more effort into being timely and appealing to players. Games are a medium that live in a different context than music, books, or film. Why should players care about your work? Do you care about it? This is the moment for game journalists to speak up and prove their relevance. If your site or app is bad, nothing will change. If I can't find your best work, I won't remember you. That's probably the toughest problem to solve with how shit the industry is, but reaching a big audience or focussing on nurturing a small community is not impossible anymore.
• We need to discuss games less on Reddit. The platform has shifted from topical discussion to endless loops of opinion. Posting on popular subreddits rarely contributes anything meaningful to the discourse.
• We need to reflect more before we share. Sit with what you’ve played. Think about how it informed your real experiences with the game. Write up your thoughts, shape them however you want, and then maybe share and don’t respond immediately. Online culture is way too fast for meaningful reflection.

That's all. I'd love to dig deeper into how especially queer media has always been doing the better job at embracing games as art but still is shit at it. I also feel like game studies as a research field has been making some amazing contributions that still fail to reach the public eye. I recently said that artists need a science communication department, and that's maybe worth thinking about. Even though it's easy to latch on to the quickest thoughts and opinions, I hope for future gaming communities to become slower and more mindful of legacy.