We chat about videogames and videogame accessories.

I don't think anyone in game journalism actually understands game criticism. Doesn't that seem like a bit of a problem to anyone else? I'm not enough of a cinema nerd to know anything about it, but I would not be surprised to learn that the sort of artistic insight offered in some of Red Letter Media's reviews is sorely lacking in the rest of the film loving and journalistic community. Why is quality art criticism so rare? You either get shallow, ignorant analysis or writers focused entirely on the cleverness of their prose as opposed to what they are actually saying.

As someone who rolls with film nerds, I can confirm that most film review sites are pretty bad.

The thing about reviews is that they occupy a weird space: They're ostensibly functional, as most people read them to find out if they should buy Product (X), but lots of writers just treat them like an opinion column.

I think this is partly because writing good reviews is hard! To fairly evaluate something you have to spend a lot of time with it, and that's tough when you're writing on deadline.

Reviews are always going to be subjective, sure, but that doesn't mean spending time on research isn't important. If I listen to an album once and barf up 500 words about it, that's gonna be a lot less helpful to you than if I spun it several times, saw how it compared to the band's other albums/similar artists, and thought about how it was produced.

I don't even need to link to Pitchfork as a joke Stij because you were already thinking it.

busted