Polish designer Adrian Chmielarz is a man who has split gamer opinion right down the middle.

I guess? I would hazard a guess that most people don’t know who he is, except when he writes another shitty hit piece blasting a game critic. Most people outside of game criticism circles simply go “Who?”

On one hand, his playable output is widely revered.

Widely revered is both an unsupported observation, and arguably incorrect. Painkiller is just alright in hindsight, Bulletstorm is great but relatively obscure, and the rest of the games he’s worked on are straight up bad.

These are, of course, personal opinions. But describing your interview subject, a guy most people have never heard of and whose games are cult hits at best, as “widely revered” is disingenuous. You’re letting your personal affection for the guy slip through.

He’s gone to war against Anita Sarkeesian’s Feminist Frequency blog for its claims that The Witcher 3 was racist and sexist

You mean he wrote a bad article attacking a feminist critic for daring to do feminist critique.

and taken shots at Polygon for what he sees as the site’s failure to actually love the medium it’s covering

You mean he wrote a bad article slamming a book excerpt.

He grew up in a communist dictatorship, and is currently addicted to Destiny.

One of these things is not like the other, and both of these things are totally irrelevant.

And he’s also, in my opinion, one of the best video game critics around.

I don’t know about you, but a guy who gets mad at women and minorities for daring to criticize games is not somebody I would label as “one of the best video game critics around.” Adrian Chmielarz is a misguided developer, at best. At worst, well.

Some actual best video game critics include: Danielle Reindeau, Rami Ismail, Kris Ligman, Jenn Frank, Tim Rogers, John Brindle, Lana Polansky, Austin Walker, Tauriq Moosa, and many others. These are people who dedicate their lives to writing thought-provoking, educational, important works of criticism that see games as something truly special.

To call Chmielarz “one of the best” is to reduce the hard work of so many people to nothing, all because…

By dint of being a games-maker, rather than a paid-up journalist, he’s able to be completely honest with what he sees, rather than sometimes sugarcoating the message so as not to piss off publishers.

…he’s not being paid to be a critic.

This is one of the stupidest fucking things I’ve ever read, especially considering it was written by a guy who was probably paid to do this interview. Literally any decent critic does not sugarcoat their message, especially now that the enthusiast press has mostly divested itself from the whims of publishers. The people at Polygon or Kotaku or Rock Paper Shotgun or wherever do not need to butter up publishers any more, because the medium has grown so big that publishers no longer have that kind of control.

It’s not the mid-90s any more, where publishers literally controlled magazines. There are still a few publications that are, perhaps, unrealistically effusive towards games — looking at you, Game Informer and IGN — but the big third-party names generally are not.

Furthermore, this is a pretty disgusting way to delegitimize games criticism as a profession. The notion that you are somehow suspect because you accepted money for labor is an insidious and frustrating view of the arts that refuses to go away.

Chmielarz is not somehow more ethical because he’s railing against women on his own free time. If anything, it makes him more despicable.

He also has no qualms about flirting with controversy. My guess is he does it deliberately, but I think that’s healthy.

Is it really so healthy to stir up mobs against critics? I don’t think so, but if you like a culture of fear, I guess you might consider it healthy.

If you’ll allow me to pull yet more milk from the leathery teats of modern cliché, Chmielarz might not be the critic we want right now, but he’s definitely the kind we need.

Seriously? This is getting creepy. So far I haven’t read a single word by Chmielarz. All I’ve read is you singing his praises for yelling at Anita Sarkeesian and Phil Owen. I thought this was an interview.

When he writes, he does so in one of two general directions: there are his pieces on the socio-political talking points surrounding contemporary gaming culture, and then more straight-forward design essays. But it’s the latter that can cut closer to the bone of the video games industry. “I guess it’s surprising to some, but it’s the game design [side] that’s often about the provocation,” he tells me, “and it’s the socio-politics that’s about the facts.”

You literally contradict this in the next paragraph.

Of course, it’s the pieces on politics, such as his Feminist Frequency article, that provoke more “napalm”. But why is that, exactly? “The reason is simple,” Chmielarz explains. “I believe that humans are inherently, irreparably biased creatures who remain biased even when they are aware of their own bias. Myself included, of course.”

First off, you contradicted the thesis of this paragraph in the paragraph immediately before it. Good job.

Second, Chmielarz’s response here reads like a smug self-satisfied high-schooler who thinks he’s outsmarted his literature teacher. Meanwhile, the teacher has their head buried in their hands, wondering how it is that this kid can be so fucking stupid. It’s a fluff sentence that means nothing, both with and without context. A meaningless adage used to make a bigot seem smart. By acknowledging that everyone, even you, is biased, you position yourself both above bias and above those you consider biased. It’s the easiest thing to call out as an interviewer, and you don’t. Why not?

Personally, I like his piece about Polygon, linked above, in which he criticises author Phil Owens’ issue with The Last of Us requiring four scissor blades to make one single shiv. (That, and with the fact that the piece is written by Owens and can be seen to advertise a book by Owens, titled WTF Is Wrong with Video Games.)

Let me stop you there, and maybe help out your reading comprehension with a nice screenshot.

It is a book excerpt. It is a portion of the book republished on Polygon. How is this so hard to understand? Have you literally never seen how publishing works in the real world? Did you get mad all the times the New York Times did the exact same thing?

This is information literally anybody who took two seconds to read the full intro would understand.

Owens calls the crafting in The Last of Us a “bit of blatant absurdity”, which is like an underhand, soft serve to Chmielarz, who subsequently applies Owens’ wonky logic to other mediums: “…and don’t get me started on the books. Why are most of them artificially divided into sections (so-called ‘chapters’)? Why are they presented in a code we need to decipher… so-called punctuation?”

First off, for the love of god stop with the Chmielarz fellatio.

Second, that particular excerpt makes zero sense, both in your piece and in Chmielarz’s. Chmielarz, in fact, doesn’t seem to understand Owen’s finer point, which is that games often have poorly-designed systems which serve little point to the mechanical or narrative as a whole. It’s a pretty important point to make, and while Owen makes it with his typical crass bravado, maybe you should try actually reading his work and thinking critically about it before judging it.

Whether you agree with his politics or with his shooting of fish in a barrel, to me this is the kind of critical voice, and bullshit filter, that every industry needs.

Why are you constantly editorializing Chmielarz as a genius? You’ve only excerpted a single thing from one of his supposedly great articles, and it made no fucking sense. So far, the only reason I have to think Chmielarz is somehow good, within the context of this piece, is because you’ve repeated it like four times.

There’s an old writing adage that I hate to evoke here, but I’m doing it anyway: show, don’t tell. So far you’ve done nothing but tell me that Chmielarz is great, and precious little to show me why, except to say that he “went to war with Anita Sarkeesian”.

I don’t just hate this piece because it’s a puff piece about one of the most toxic people in games, I hate it because you refuse to actually do your basic journalistic or authorial duty. If you actually showed or explained some of your points about Chmielarz being secretly the best, I’d be at least okay with this piece from an editorial standpoint. As is, it’s a fucking disaster, both topically and structurally.

I’m certain that there is more great games writing out there than ever before; it just gets lost in the flood of pieces that exist primarily to represent #content.

Really? Do you not read Rock Paper Shotgun? Unwinnable? Paste? Killscreen? ZAM? Giant Bomb? Literally any major gaming publication besides Game Informer and IGN?

We’re in a games criticism renaissance right now, fueled by the desires of critics who refuse to bow to the whims of either publishers or the public, and you are telling me that it doesn’t matter because IGN put out some fluff piece?

“There’s barely any actual journalism,” is Chmielarz’s opinion. “It’s mostly PR replays, clickbait and wrapping Reddit posts in a nicely coloured ribbon.”

The fact that Chmielarz believes this, and you published it completely unchallenged, is an indication that both of you have no fucking clue what you’re talking about.

Posting about controversial subjects is not clickbait. That is a particular style of headline writing used to draw attention to an otherwise tepid piece.

Modern game sites do not do “PR replays”. The most they do is publish trailers, which most people are interested in.

While some sites do repackage Reddit posts (notably Kotaku), it’s within the context of reporting on gaming as a community.

These are all things you can find for yourself by spending the smallest amount of time researching the publishing habits of major game publications. Do you not fact check? If so, maybe you shouldn’t be writing interviews.

“A big problem for me is the fact that most gaming websites don’t really have any personalisation,” he continues. In this modern world of synaptic overload from the always-on news cycle, and the algorithmic time-traps of social media and Netflix, the need to offer something that really connects with readers somehow is crucial.

The running theme of this piece is that the author refuses to critically examine or engage with Chmielarz’s statements on any level except worship. Literally none of these statements have been challenged or contextualized or examined critically, which is what a good interviewer does, even for an interviewee they like. All the author has done is give Chmielarz a podium while vigorously sucking him off behind it.

“You go to a site and most of it is something you have zero interest in, like ‘Halo 5 adds Harry Potter Quidditch Mode’. I am sure there are people out there who were shaken to the core by the news, so the existence of it is not an issue. The fact that I wasted a few brain cycles and seconds reading a headline that does nothing for me is an issue. Not that I know how to solve it.”

Chmielarz’s complaint here is that sometimes sites run content he does is not personally interested in. It’s literally the most childish complaint you can muster against a news site. Once again, completely unchallenged.

Naturally, massive video games will always have interested and engaged players, eagerly consuming all updates, however trivial. But it’s also easy to see things from Chmielarz’s perspective — click your way to a traditional, specialist video games site, and its news feed will usually be stuffed with, basically, Stuff That Doesn’t Matter. At least not to anyone outside of the game in question’s audience. We are assaulted by the cynical monetisation and infantilising mechanics of mainstream games on a daily basis.

I thought this was an interview, not an editorial masking as an interview where you get The Boy Of Your Dreams Adrian Chmielarz to back you up.

You’ve done nothing to support your statements. The only piece you’ve mentioned so far in this fucking travesty of an interview is Owen’s, and you didn’t even understand what he was trying to say.

Do you mind linking some articles you personally find repulsive because they are “Stuff That Doesn’t Matter”? A screenshot list of articles would do. C’mon, please explain to me what exactly you find repulsive about editorial that seeks to include lots of different people in the same tent?

Your whole point is that you don’t like it. Why? Are you ever going to explain yourself?

And while the games industry might be more transparent than ever, it doesn’t always stop to fact-check.

You don’t fact-check Chmielarz in this piece, so maybe don’t throw stones in glass houses.

“Facts don’t mean a lot when you already have a strong view of belief,” says Chmielarz.

The irony of this coming from Chmielarz is fucking staggering, and that you don’t challenge him on it (yet again) is telling. This is what you actually believe, isn’t it?

A case in point is the reactions to E3 2015’s assortment of female leads, when several commentators in the games press declared it the most diverse showing in years. Go deeper and a slightly different story unfolds, Chmielarz arguing, with research on his side, that there were just as many female leads on show a year earlier.

This piece is Chmielarz smugging for approximately infinity billion words before saying the actual truth: that while there were just as many women protagonists in E3 2014, they were more prominently valued at E3 2015.

This is the Chmielarz problem. Sometimes he actually says a thing or two worth actual value. But he buries it behind miles of self-aggrandizing bullshit so as to appear superior. Sounds like the behavior of an egomaniac, not “our best critic.”

But the problem with ‘facts’ is that, “on the contrary, they can ignite a very strong reaction that’s supposed to kill the dissonance those facts created”. So, pinch of salt at the ready.

The strong reaction is because Chmielarz wantonly twists “facts” to fit a particular agenda, even if they paint a different picture. For a great primer on how he does this, I recommend reading this very excellent article on Simpson’s Paradox.

And stopping to question what can be seen as bias-confirming narratives often gets Chmielarz in trouble, especially in this world of Reddit/Twitter-endorsed pitchforkings. “You don’t need that extra press, and thus I think the only people talking [honestly] are people who don’t have it in them not to. People who cannot shut up, even if shutting up is the most logical thing to do. Like, you know, Harlan Ellison.” Ellison wrote: “You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.” That’s something we could all do well to remember.

There is a deep and abiding irony in you taking Chmielarz at face value not just on educated opinions, of which he has very few, but also on internet mobs.

Yet not all who disagree are trolls, and Chmielarz’s writing has a knack of rubbing his fellow professionals up the wrong way too, such as Tadhg Kelly, TechCrunch columnist and industry writer. Bear in mind that if someone of either Chmielarz’s or Kelly’s cachet wrote a public rebuttal of one of my articles, my career would probably wrap up quicker than a Zen Bound pro sparked on Adderall.

Your analogy is terrible, and maybe you should do your duty as a journalist and examine why exactly Chmielarz regularly pisses people in the industry off, instead of uncritically saying “well, he’s just a controversial guy!”

He will often come to a big game months after release, when the hype has cooled and the next 30 “must-haves” are released into the wild.

Literally every major game critic in the field does this. Some talk about games many years after release. Pay attention to the field you nominally participate in.

Will questioning our own biases and dissecting cynical design improve the games we play? Or are we all just gnashing teeth while the majority mash buttons? One thing is for damn sure: the games industry is a more interesting place with Chmielarz around.

I skipped over criticizing most of the end of this piece because it got boring (I read it, I just don’t think it’s worth commenting on), but this here is worth dissecting.

You are ignoring a large, vibrant community of critics to uncritically lionize a guy who regularly sics hate mobs on people who write about games from a historical or literary perspective. The games industry is already interesting enough without people like Chmielarz polluting the water, so the fact that you think he is somehow valuable compared to all the critical voices you outright discard in this very piece is particularly offensive.

This piece could’ve been interesting. I’m actually super interested in Chmielarz’s background, his statements placed within a broader historical or social context, and his beliefs. But that would require you do your job as an interviewer, which is to read between the lines to better understand your subject. Humanizing Chmielarz would’ve made for an extremely lovely piece that I would’ve enjoyed quite a lot.

As is, this piece is a fucking disaster, little more than fluff. It’s the same sort of disaster, albeit not of the same scope, that brought us the SBnation piece about Daniel Holtzclaw.

Danny Wadeson, unfortunately for us, couldn’t see the forest for the trees.