Like Patrick, I’m afraid I may have a litany of negativity here…. I’m also very frustrated with so many people returning to Bogost. Why? Is he literally just the first person they turn up when they start doing research? Where’s the solid reason to rely on Bogost for anything?

Mark Mullen’s lamentation of a master critic (to rely on Klosterman! really!) really got this off to a cracking poor start. Sure, if you’re looking at mainstream gaming media, there are fewer name reviewers… but only at the very limited time Mullen was surveying. Yahtzee Croshaw was the central name only for a span of a few years; before then, there were some Name Reviewers at IGN (before they scattered to the winds), and find me a mainstream “gamer” who doesn’t know Jeff Gerstmann and I’ll eat the hat of your choosing. But the rise of YouTube and video reviews birthed a lot of personalities who exist solely on their names, and with the spread of Let’s Plays, we are getting “feelings” about the games, even if they’re performative and sometimes ridiculous.

But the consumerist breakdowns is what many gamers want. Those who don’t, or who want different games, go to people like Brendan Keogh, Cara Ellison, Leigh Alexander — also big names in different spheres of gamers. So I have a hard time accepting what Mullen is saying here because I feel his early arguments fall apart before they even begin. There are so many models for what he wants (and better models than Klosterman, egads).

As for Johnson and Colby, I get their early anecdote — I know games studies can feel overwhelming to people not involved in them. I’ve talked to folks about it! But that’s also because games themselves are overwhelming and I think it’s ludicrous to ignore a media and cultural powerhouse in the classroom. Otherwise, this feels like an extended argument with someone who just wants to preserve the teaching of writing for writing’s sake, as though the field (and writing itself!) isn’t constantly changing. And once they start talking about games and teachers making assumptions? The writing felt so empty, as though “games” could be replaced with, I don’t know, goats, and the chapter would be the same. Meh.

Miller’s Zelda piece was fascinating, but Zelda also feels interchangeable here, chosen because the author felt like choosing Zelda over another fantasy experience. I’m not sure it actually does the job it sets out to do. The premise, absence “yay, Zelda!” is rather thin.

The chapter on WoW as class-focus was by far the most interesting to me here, not least because we discussed that earlier in this semester with Neverwinter as a possibility and it was fascinating to see it play out, but I am disheartened by the assumptions made in designing the class in regard to female students. The study, limited as it is, is very useful, but what are we going to do about these things, as teachers? The end of this chapter seems to lead to more assumptions, rather than solutions, with the idea of who has what gaming literacies and that women’s and men’s will always be different.