I don't know who this child belongs to, but I fully endorse the expression on his face.
A few weeks ago I was linked to this blog entry on Insomnia. At first, I felt compelled to write a response to it, but so ridiculous was the article that I couldn’t come up with anything beyond “What. The. Hell?!”… because how exactly are you meant to respond to such irrational, misogynistic vitriol?
I was able to ignore it for the most part because it was all too crazy for me to take seriously, but it kept being brought up in conversations that I had with friends and other game writers. The people I spoke with all voiced their frustrations at the piece not so much because they disagreed with the ideas in Kierkegaard’s rant, but because he did it in a way that now makes it impossible for anyone to criticise a female game writer without being associated with his hideous diatribe.
There are valid criticisms to be made about everyone’s writing, and there are plenty that can be made about the writing of many of the women who work in the industry. Not everyone is going to like Leigh Alexander’s work; not everyone is going to be a fan of Tracey John, and there will be people who don’t like Nadia Oxford’s writing. There will be people who find me intolerable. I think all writers should be kept in check and be called out when they’re doing a particularly bad job, but Kierkegaard’s method isn’t the right way to do it. If anything, he has been completely counter-productive because now, anyone who has legitimate criticisms of well-known female writers like Leigh Alexander won’t be able to voice their thoughts without conjuring thoughts of Kierkegaard’s needlessly abusive and highly sexist opinion piece.
So that’s one small step forward for Insomnia in their page hits for this month, and one giant leap back for games writing. Thanks, dude. You’ve ruined it for everyone.
Pffft. That idiot does not speak for the industry and he most certainly does not speak for *me*.
As the saying goes, please don’t feed the trolls.
That’s a ridiculous article. I can’t even be bothered reading all of it, just reading the sentence referring to women as “hobags” is just disgusting, which isn’t even a word anyway (nice work, male writer).
I dunno. I just think this dickhead should be ignored, and let him go back to the hole he quite obviously lives in. He’ll only ruin things for everyone else if we actually acknowledge what he’s said. I certainly won’t be.
I really wouldn’t beat yourself up or worry about any long term consequences from that piece. The thing reeks of ivory tower madness and lack of proper application of rhetoric. If someone does nothing but read books and philosophy without actually bouncing around in the real world, they eventually create this drastically simplified world-view where everything can be explained by dead old men that lived centuries ago in totally different cultures. The madness part being the illusion that what they’re describing is actually valid.
So rest assured, if you post something really insane or out of line, people will merrily speak up. I certainly will anyways.
My mind was slightly blown when I first saw that article. I found it more amusing than anything else, because I can’t seriously fanthom the fact that anyone could have possibly agreed with it. It was more like looking at an exhibit in some bizarre museum than reading an actual piece of games journalism. I think it’s the sort of piece that does such a good job of picking itself apart through its own sheer stupidity that there’s barely even a need to reply to it, like trying to correct the racist old man who sits in the corner at a nursing home and tries to tell you “all them black folks is communiss”.
Firstly, if anyway ever visits a site with as terrible design as that features (white text on black, you’re shitting me?!), the MacBook Pro has a really neat feature you may not be aware of. Hold Ctrl+Option+Command+8 and the screen will INVERSE. Yep, built in function. Enjoy, Tracey.
I’m not commenting on the other article. It doesn’t need further attention.
I almost feel bad for being the one who referred to you in the first place.
But at the same time, I felt I needed to draw your attention for the exact reasons you just wrote about.
The guy was an absolute fuckwit, but he also removed the ability for sane people to be critical of female writers.
I have to say I was thoroughly sickened when I was reading his article, he had some valid points to be honest on the said journalist but the way he phrased it in such a sexist asshole manner pretty much destroyed any credibility he had in his article. I read over the forum thread and its utterly ridiculous how he defends his sexism and even defends racism with the most retarded arguments I have ever seen. To be honest I’ve never even heard of his site until today but from his article and posts he must be one of the biggest pricks I’ve ever met.
Tracey, you don’t need to worry about people holding back on female writers due to the dickless wonder, people are not so retarded as to link sexism with any criticisms against female writers plus the ones who always do are always laughed at.
Mind my language but he really is a douchebag and don’t dwell on this and just move on and ignore that sad prick
I really feel the need to put this thing on a slab and dissect it. So here we go.
The problem is that some of the quotes he published, which, when out of context (I’m not sure if they’d be the same in context, haven’t looked up the full articles yet) looks to be quasi-intellectualism. This quote from Heather Campbell on Street Fighter was what struck me.
“The other thing that Street Fighter did successfully was gestures — what I mean by this is that the moves were a psychological metaphor for what was happening onscreen.”
Kierkegaard does go about it in the wrong way (in the same way that blowing up a car that cut you off is considered the wrong way of dealing with it), but I have to agree with a lot of people. Some of the gripes he raises are legitimate, but people automatically take him less seriously and treat him more like a misogynist toddler throwing a tantrum the louder the yells things.
Kierkegaard’s problem is that after he thinks he has utterly destroyed the competition for a particular crime, he thinks it gives him license to act the same way. Behold his thesaurus-fueled bullshit!
(Ripped from the forum thread on Insomnia about this article)
Smithers:
“Why did you decide to make it such a personal, some might even say childish attack?”
Kierkegaard:
“[...] As for my attack being childish — what can I say? I am indeed a child. I keep forgetting how old I am, or how young I may yet become. ///I am more childish than anyone, and yet at the same time — and because of it — more serious than anyone else could be./// Seriousness and childishness are far from opposites, you know. ///Common people think they are, but they are not. Etc. etc. I could keep going on about this for ages./// The main point to take away is that, ///just as extreme happiness goes hand-in-hand with extreme sadness, so does extreme seriousness go hand-in-hand with extreme childishness.///”
You see what he’s doing here? Do you see? He seems to think that making a valid metaphorical point is the same thing as spouting complete bloody lies. “…just as extreme happiness goes hand-in-hand with extreme sadness” What in God’s name? He tries to sound like some kind of wise, learned person but he just comes off, to me, as some whiny teenager with a chip on his shoulder about women.
And don’t even bother trying to mount any sort of counter-argument on the forums. The whole thing is one big circle-jerk of regulars who all have one hand on the next guy’s dick, and the other on Kierkegaard’s. This post on the first blasted page of the thread sums it up WONDERFULLY:
JoshF:
“Hilarious. I suspect the lol thread will fill with lots of fat virgin white knighting soon.”
Yeeeeah. Any sort of calm, reasoned opposition to this bloke’s rubbish is labelled INVALID by the masses on the forum and YOU, yes you!, will be personally banned by Kierkegaard!
JimmyJames:
“What is with all the sexist slurs? You’re throwing around “slut” and worse when you would never (I hope) use similar racial epithets.”
Kierkegaard:
“[...]I also banned you because it is clear from your other comments that you are one of those people (usually Americans) who use words like “sexist”, “racist”, etc. as if they were insults. Such people are beyond instruction (and hope) and would not last here long, so I spared both of us the aggravation.”
I guess really I’m just doing what he wants us to do, and that’s talk about it. I agree with some of what he says, just not the angry, emotional, ALLCAPS way in that he’s presented it. If he put forward a reasoned argument that didn’t just SHOUT EVERY SINGLE WORD AT US then maybe the people who did not necessarily agree with him would have been more kind.
Tl;dr Writer stupid, cannot present argument intelligently; loses audience because of it, don’t bother trying to discuss this on their forums
I was really offended by this article. I stopped reading after a few paragraphs, but then I went back and read the whole thing.
The problem I have is that he’s criticising a few female journalists, but he’s then applying those criticisms to ALL modern female journalists. I can see why he would be frustrated at a select group of female game commentators, but to then take complaints against four people and apply them to everyone is moronic and unfair.
The other thing that’s stupid is he mentions one gaming journo as an example of what all female game journos were like ‘back in the day’. He even says “Oh [name I forgot], where are you now?” Why is he so obsessed with this one woman? Him using her as his sole reference for ‘what female journos were like in the 90s’ without comparing her to any others of the time, is almost as bad as the supposed ‘crackwhore’ who claimed SFIII was the perfect fighting game without comparing it to any others.
Eleanor Eiffe’s ‘Games Wank’ column in Hyper is my fave game-related column in the whole world at the moment. Tracey’s Hyper review of Chrono Trigger is one of the best I’ve ever read (and she’s written lots of other really solid ones). Here are two female game journos who demonstrate a real passion for videogaming and understanding of the industry, yet this uninformed tosser strolls in and argues that the only reason why they have jobs is because they blew Daniel Wilks or something. That is what I find most offensive about the blog.
Also, he conveniently forgets to mention that there are male journolists who are just as stupid and uninformed, if not more so, than the female ones being attacked. How did they get their jobs? Who did they have to blow, huh? Are the heads of IGN, Kotaku and Gamespot who recruit these particular journos gay or something?
I’ve never heard of this site before, and you can bet your life I won’t be going back there again.
Tracey, your blog is your blog and no-one elses. Post whatever the fuck you want to, because you’re ten times the writer that this guy is.
The article on Insomnia is violently offensive, a civil person shouldn’t insult people so much only because they are considered ridiculous, and generalizing from a couple of sad cases to women journalists is just wrong.
However, most of the referenced essays by Leigh Alexander are indeed involuntarily funny, even if one is more open-minded than Alex Kierkegaard: they show a radical lack of understanding of what videogames are and what they mean, and it’s obvious that she bases her opinions on all sorts of bias and hearsay rather than on competence and experience. A couple of examples:
http://sexyvideogameland.blogspot.com/2008/09/simplicitys-bad.html
Nobody in her right mind can dislike a game “as a player” but not “as a journalist”. Writing “I often find it necessary to differentiate my play tastes from what is clearly critically relevant or newsworthy” is an admission that what she writes is dishonestly concerned with “importance” rather than with quality and/or that she doesn’t have any better critical tools than instinctive tastes and first impressions. Maybe insightful criticism is the wrong expectation.
http://sexyvideogameland.blogspot.com/2008/03/ditch-damage-bar.html
“The damage bar depletion death is just another archaic way to measure failure, force the player to restart as a penalty.”
It doesn’t occur to her that measuring failure is perfectly right because the possibility of failure makes games meaningful.
And in fact she doesn’t seem to realize either that what she suggests, permanent crippling (as an alternative to taking damage, dying and restarting), is a more painful way to measure failure or that, as quickly pointed out in her blog comments, most kinds of games would be ruined by such a change.
Is it my imagination, or did you add Sexy Videogameland to your recommended links out of protest towards this article?
@Mr_m
Nup; the link has always been there.
While I’m not defending the rampant misogynism, he makes a large number of valid points, and Leigh Alexander’s work is in large part….not very good. As has been said here already, a lot of her articles show a complete lack of understanding of games design, and even actual criticism. The comments by other people he included are spot on.
Yes, his misogyny is offensive. Does that make what he is saying any less accurate? No, it does not, and what he is talking about is a serious problem that the “gaming media” needs to address.
Alex Kierkegaard has probably thought more about games criticism than anyone else in games “journalism”, and his rants about the state of current gaming media is spot on – http://insomnia.ac/commentary/the_videogame_news_racket/ is an article that sums up a lot of the problems of the current day, and most of his other articles are spot on and well written and thought out.
The reason he bans people from his forum is because they have shown a critical lack of research, and have most probably never even heard of Wittgenstein or Baudrillard. It is entirely possible to have calm, reasoned, civil and intelligent conversation with him, you just need to actually know what you are talking about first. Its’ the same reason actual scientists refuse to debate creationists.