These strips never go down well, but I’ve always been a fan of Hanlon’s razor. I accepted quite a while ago that the vast majority of writing about games isn’t aimed at me, or people like me. It’s aimed at a rather vague idea of the modern consumer of games. To wit: The kind of person who likes Assassin’s Creed. The kind of person who doesn’t really care if a franchise is treading water as long as it provides a baseline of entertainment for a reasonable amount of time compared to its price. The kind of person we used to call “the casual,” before idiots who didn’t quite understand the concept of irony started using it as a genuine insult. As a result, it doesn’t surprise me when mainstream reviewers like games I hate or hate games I like. It doesn’t even annoy me, to be honest. The haughty, holier-than-thou, hardcore gamerness of Erin is just as much a poke at, well… people like me, as it is the masses who make up the AC fanbase.
The frustratingly common insinuations of journos being “on the take” only serve to distract from what I think is a more pressing problem; The growing disconnect between traditional games journalism and, for lack of a better term, “core” gamers. But hey, maybe I’m just part of the system, man.
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