Ed Smith and I have had our differences over Twitter. With bylines on VICE, Waypoint, IBTimes, Kill Screen and more, he is an outspoken games critic who does not consider himself a games journalist. Unafraid to lob invective at game culture and its participants, his tweets have often raised the ire of gamers who see him as yet another ultra-progressive columnist attacking the hobby. Personally, as someone who considers himself a fan of games and game culture, I have also found myself disagreeing with this style of attacking readers, which seems to be in fashion among games writers nowadays. After reading a new controversial tweet of his I decided to reach out to him and have a deeper conversation than Twitter’s 140 characters would allow. I still disagree with much of what he says, but I respect that he is willing to defend himself, rather than closing all access and withdrawing to an echo chamber, as is the case with so many in the games industry (hi, Katherine Cross!).

We conducted the interview over email over a period of several days, and there is little to no editing done to the responses. Ed is from the UK, so you’ll notice he uses the Queen’s English while I use the much superior American spelling.

Brad: First, I was wondering if you could tell me a bit about your background and how you got into games writing?

Second, in one of your tweets you say you’re a critic and an editorial writer, not a journalist or reporter. So it is your view that critics and columnists aren’t journalists? Why is the distinction important?

Ed: First I should say I don’t think anything I wrote on Twitter was the least bit controversial. I was measured and the expectations I have of games, game criticism and game critics are very humble – opinions like mine seem contentious only because of the incredibly low standards at which this culture operates.

As for your first question. I’ve trained in writing since I was a teenager. Between 16 and 18 I studied English literature, English language and comprehension. At university I studied film, art theory, essayism and criticism. After graduating in 2011 I began writing for various free, non-accredited websites and blogs whilst working as a laborer to pay my bills. After a year or so I optimistically wrote to Jenova Chen, who had just directed Journey. Our interview formed the basis of my first paid commission, which you can read here (I daren’t, as I can’t stand to read my own work, doubly so if it’s more than two months old). After that, and before it turned into a terribly written, cowardly rag, I started writing regularly for The Escapist. At the end of 2012 I took a job as a staff writer at a publication called International Business Times UK. After a year, I left and became freelance, which I remain today.

Your second question. I have no business telling other people how they ought to describe their work – whether they want to call themselves journalists, or critics, I’m not interested. Personally, knowing that I haven’t trained in journalism,having worked alongside several journalists, and reading writers like Lisa Belkin, J Anthony Lucas, David Simon and Andrew Rawnsley makes me uncomfortable to call myself a journalist. I do not possess the knowledge, of journalistic law, syntactical precision, etc, or the complete skill set to call myself “journalist.” Also, I am not interested in reporting. I studied the arts – I write interpretations and subjective essays. That’s what I enjoy. That’s what I think gaming needs a lot more of. That is what I do. I don’t consider criticism a lesser pursuit than journalism. I wonder why people may be offended, or questioning, of my decision to call myself a critic and not a reporter. To me it’s straightforward. Videogames are human expression. The industry, the trade and the history may be reported, but to approach something so abstract and humane with objectivity and dispassion, as I think “journalism”, of the kind many people seem to think is lacking in videogame reporting, would connote, is absurd.

In short: I trained to be an art critic, not a journalist. The business of journalism is not the business of emotively and subjectively discussing human expression, just as criticism is not the business of reporting the news.

Brad: Certainly this next tweet was controversial, and by that I mean many people disagreed with it. You recently said that “gaming culture as it stands needs to die and I’m happy to attack it.” Could you define the aspects of “gaming culture as it currently stands”?

Ed: Many people agreed, and would agree with it, also, so I don’t find it controversial.

Gaming culture is childish and timid. I find it disheartening that games like Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, Inside, Braid, Dear Esther and so on are lauded as high art. They’re simplistic. They’re infantile. They want as little to do with the lives of actual people as possible. Gaming culture is too pleased with itself. Games that are even slightly contrary are praised beyond all proportion – The Last of Us hits the emotional beats of Blood Father, an 80-minute Mel Gibson thriller, and it’s talked about as if it’s a masterpiece. Such masturbatory self obsession, this need for games to be something that all the world loves and acknowledges, stems from a pervasive insecurity: too many people working in and buying games have their sense of self and personal success tied to videogames. If videogames are good, they are good, and vice versa, so lame work is exaggerated and genuinely challenging and confrontational games – Actual Sunlight, Off Peak – are ignored, because they assail the idea that games are just lovely and because we like them we are lovely, too. If an emotion can’t be easily defined and compartmentalised, then in it, gaming culture has no interest. Advancement and increased sophistication has been conflated with technological progression. Instead of maturing, games “age” via meaningless graphical improvements and distracting new toys. There is a determination across gaming culture to remain as children, to pursue fun and escapism as creative goals wholesale, rather than making any room for work that makes one feel intimidated and smaller, as great art should. And all of this rotten rubbish is made to sound – by sycophantic critics, effective marketing and players all too eager to spend their hard-earned money on ascribing to the gamer image – like it’s good, like it’s worth our time. If this stuff went on and we challenged it, that would be one thing. If it went on and we ignored it, that would be another. But to watch all of this ludicrousness and to then say it isn’t ludicrous, it’s beautiful, it’s wonderful, games are magic and if you don’t agree it’s just because you don’t understand them, and we don’t care because we’re gamers and we know better, is just pitiful. The passive aggressive narcissism and the willful, self-justified and self-justifying rejection of outside influences and opinions need to die. The childishness needs to die. The idea that idle fun is as much an artistic achievement as human drama needs to die. And chiefly, the final results of all this incestuousness – the ugliest products of gaming culture’s refusal to listen to anyone, or to grow up properly – sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia and blithe unquestioning of contemporary society, needs to die. and die hard. After that, games need to return, and as something that a grown adult, with life experience, who reads books that don’t have dragons on the cover, can learn something from and feel something complex for. If anyone finds anything I’ve said there controversial I can’t imagine they know much about the history of any artistic culture.

Brad: It sounds like much of what you’re defining as game culture comes from game critics themselves. This insecurity that you talk about, for example, seems to always come from columnists questioning whether video games are art, whereas most gamers, myself included, don’t really care if outsiders see gaming as art or not.

And isn’t “fun” an art within itself? What makes games different from any other medium is their interactivity. Why isn’t fun as much an artistic achievement as human drama? If I just want drama, I can tune into any number of excellent TV shows. Games might not yet be able to give us the drama of, say, The Sopranos, but The Sopranos can’t give us the sheer fun of a DOOM or Overwatch.

Ed: No, the insecurity comes from the games. Surely you can’t watch, for example, the end of the 2013 Tomb Raider game, which in the credits thanks all the fans for sticking by the game-maker for years, or read the disclaimer at the beginning of Black Ops 3 which says the game is a “labor of love” and “we wouldn’t have had this opportunity if it wasn’t for you, so thank you,” and tell me videogames, from the inside, aren’t afraid of what people might think. I don’t think there is a definition of art (or if there was that games should wiggle to fit it). But gaming culture is this awful paradox, wherein games are absolutely pandering to the people who buy them, totally inconsiderate to the people who don’t. They are insecure and obsequious but also unwilling to do anything to better themselves. They want acceptance. But they won’t reach into the wider world. They are cowardly, then, by many definitions.

Installation art can be interactive. Even the process of interpreting and considering a movie, a novel, a song is impassive – anything thought provoking is interacting with you, and you with it, in some way. Perhaps physically affecting the outcome of something is what makes games separate, but what’s your point? Just because games have something about them that other forms do not, it doesn’t make them more interesting or better, or magical in some way that excuses them from interrogative criticism and high standards.

It’s strange to me, because I often hear that “if you don’t like games, why bother writing about them?” Yet I’m the one saying games CAN have the drama of something like The Sopranos, if they try, and you and others will say they cannot. So who really is more optimistic about games? I don’t think there is a limit. But I won’t idly cheerlead for what already exists. Why should I?

Brad: I wouldn’t argue that games cannot reach the drama of a great TV show. Where I think the division comes in here is in our perception of where games are at currently. I think games have unlimited potential, but they’re already in a spot where they are pretty great. Back in February you wrote a tweet that I strongly disagreed with, where you said, “‘I’m proud to be a gamer’ is the new ‘I’m proud of dedicating most of my leisure time and disposable income to absolutely awful shit'”. That, to me, is a pessimistic view. When I look at gaming I see the people crying at the death scene in Final Fantasy VII. I see that moment when you pick up that random guitar in Bioshock Infinite and Elizabeth sings with you. Or the well-crafted drama of that KotoR 2 scene that cuts between the jedi and Kreia. In other words, aren’t there already plenty of moments to cheerlead for?

Ed: You only need to look at my byline at any of the publications I’ve written for to know that there are plenty of videogames, and moments in videogames, that I enjoy and admire. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be enough for a lot of people – unless you are ubiquitously celebratory and blithely praising of all games, or generally willing to let games off the hook, you have made an enemy of the internet. Criticism of games is good for games. As you might tell off a child for poking their finger at an electrical socket, calling games out when they are bad, and doing so expertly, is a special kind of love and respect. I don’t think games need cheerleaders. They make plenty of money. They have plenty of fans. They are going nowhere. Of course, if you like a game by Ubisoft, Treyarch, etc, absolutely you should say so and explain why: Doom and Mafia 3 were my favourite games of this year, Black Ops 3 last year was wonderful. But the companies which make these games do not need me, or you, or anyone, to defend them on their work merely on principle. If I think something is good, no matter where it comes from – independent, mainstream, whatever – I will say so, and argue for it. But I won’t say games, in general are worth cheerleading for. An individual videogame might be and often is. Videogames, simply by virtue of being videogames, are not. If you are interested in defending and marketing an entire industry, you should work in PR. I’m a critic. I’m not here because I love games, without them having to prove themselves in some way. I’m here because I love writing and I’m fascinated by games.

Brad: It’s a common argument that criticism won’t affect games, but it seems to me that it certainly has an impact, and often not for good. GTA V was banned from Australian Targets because of feminist critique. BioWare has clearly accepted the progressive feminist critique of its games as it went from having boob armor in Dragon Age Origins to mocking boob armor 5 years later in Dragon Age Inquisition. What if I like boob armor in my games? What if I like killing hookers? Shouldn’t I be able to criticize the critics when they seek to change things that I think shouldn’t be changed? Personally, as a games writer and not necessarily a critic, I consider it part of my job to point out when critics get it so wrong and why their reasoning is flawed. Maybe that will lead to better criticism.

Ed: It’s interesting that you use the word “progressive” as a pejorative.

Considering the invective directed at women both in the gaming industry and our respective societies in general (if you would like examples I can give you dozens both from the news and my personal experience) I think the criticism of GTA V and Dragon Age: Origins that you mention – I’m personally unfamiliar with the latter game – are part of a valuable effort to change people’s perspectives on sex and on gender. If part of that effort means campaigning to have some armour removed from a videogame, and the armour then being removed, I think that’s a small price to pay for something so worthwhile – you’d have to be a person of dismal values to prefer boob armour, in Dragon Age, over young women being able to enjoy and feel as if they are respected by popular culture.

I find it pathetic, the determination to hang onto these childish, seedy little things. Do you understand what it sounds like when you ask “what if I like killing hookers?” I doubt there are many reasonable adults who wouldn’t find that sentiment, if not risible, demonstrative of exactly the immaturity and nurse-maiding in games that I referred to earlier. That people dare to argue for something like killing prostitutes in Grand Theft Auto under the rubrics of freedom of speech and freedom of expression is perverse. Freedom of speech is a noble pursuit. Wanting to be able to murder prostitutes in a videogame by contrast is the basest, most worthless cultural battle I can imagine – and all it demands is for things to stay as they are, and for games to not respond to outside and marginal voices, and once again for a moratorium on games’ capacity to change and grow. By all means criticise my criticism, but if that is the best you’ve got then as soon as you finish speaking, the conversation is over. Give me a good reason that anyone should respond to such petulant crowing.

And would you please – anyone reading this who has ever claimed that allowing boob armour or the murder of prostitutes in Grand Theft Auto represents a victory for freedom of expression – please live up to the journalistic and critical standards that you seem to know so much about and honestly say what you mean. This has nothing to do with freedom of expression. If freedom of expression were your interest, you wouldn’t complain to me about the presence of games which represent exactly that, and you’d recognise free expression when you saw it. So I will respect you more if you say you want boob armour in videogames because you use it to masturbate. Don’t tell me game critics are taking away game-makers’ right to free speech. Tell me what you’re thinking: “if things keep going this way in a few years I won’t have any videogame women to pull myself off to.”

Brad: It’s not that progressive is a pejorative, it’s that progressivism – particularly of the far left variety – is the ubiquitous ideology among all the major gaming sites with The Escapist being the one exception. I’ve argued for quite some time that this homogeneity is a problem, because gaming media doesn’t really represent the vast and diverse world of gamers anymore, does it? The millions and millions of gamers out there don’t all ascribe to intersectional feminism, do they?

I’m a fairly middle of the road, left-leaning guy, but I think it’s the height of arrogance to think that women can’t enjoy games with boob armor. I played Star Wars Galaxies for a year or two, and that game had a huge variety of clothing options (probably too many, it ran like crap). Women comprised a significant portion of the player base – it’s rumored that they even outnumbered men – and nearly every woman I knew in that game preferred more revealing outfits. Women in my guild turned down armor for bikini tops. Your brand of progressivism, which, as i said, is shared by nearly every major gaming site, seems oddly judgemental and puritanical. My more centrist, libertarian sensibilities make it difficult for me to understand how one person can judge another as unreasonable or immature because they like violent, sexy, irreverent entertainment. It seems to me an awful lot like the moral panic of the 80’s when people were concerned that Dungeons & Dragons would turn their children to devil worship.

Killing hookers in GTA isn’t a victory for free speech, to me. It’s a victory for fun. One part of GTA Online that I’m surprised isn’t more controversial is the convenience store hold up, where you can point a gun at a store clerk and rob him. If you yell at him into the mic, he moves faster and your chance of a safe getaway increases. So here I am, a guy over 40, who studied philosophy and writing, who doesn’t own a gun, who was taught properly by a strong, amazing mother to respect others and mind my manners, sitting at a computer yelling, “give me my damn money!” at a convenience store clerk in a video game. And he even responds and tells me to stop yelling. It is utterly absurd and ridiculous and hilarious and fun. Why shouldn’t gaming indulge such fantasies, especially since there’s no provable harm to society? We’ve not exactly seen a hooker killing rampage by sociopathic gamers.

Would you agree with me that a particularly leftish progressivism is the dominant ideology among the major gaming sites? Do you think it’s a problem that this progressivism is not representative of gamers?

Ed: The millions and millions of people who play games may not ascribe to left-wing ideologies and nor do many videogame creators – understand I don’t mark this as a criticism, but Call of Duty, as an example, is thoroughly on the right. Enough people who play games clearly do feel represented by left-wing ideals that gaming publications are staffed by them, and also able to survive and thrive. These writers are not pretending to be something they are not, in order to enrage gamers or drive numbers. They are left, perhaps feminist, play games and they write. There is no great conspiracy to homogenise the voice of the gaming press. If you’ve noticed a ground swell of these kinds of articles in the past few years, it’s because videogames are experiencing a cultural shift, in general. It’s a natural, invisible process – roughly comparable to the transition from, say, representation to abstraction in painting, or the end of the prestige pictures in France and the rise of the Nouvelle Vague in the 60s – that happens without any meetings or behind-the-scenes declarations of intent. In the 1990s, games were ubiquitously male and Right. People have matured, tools have become easier to use and new distribution channels have opened up and now a wider variety of voices are able to be heard. Games that lean to the Right or are disinterested in feminism, or actively repelling of feminism, will not go away. I think there will be a leveling out, in the next few years, whereby the Left and feminist “movement” in games will stop sounding, to you at least, petulant and invasive, and become a crucial part and accepted part of gaming culture. During the transition, I can understand how it seems forceful and deliberate, and like a scheme by some group that wants to take the videogames out of your children’s mouths, but every single artistic force in human history goes through changes like these, and I’m so relieved it’s (too slowly for my personal liking) happening to games. I imagine it would be nice, for some people, to explain this tectonic shift as part of a decision by a shady cabal of media elites: I think the childishness engendered by games, which I’ve referenced throughout this conversation, inflames people to play pretend detective and form treehouse clubs to spy on the neighborhood. It must feel cool, to imagine yourself leading a battle against a shadowy political cabinet. But it’s make believe. The push back against women, diversity and general change in videogames just illustrates the illiteracy of too many videogame players when it comes to art. Read film, theatre, music and art history then tell me the process of political and representational change is the result of corrupt media elites, and that it’s going to make games less honest and less profitable.

As for your second point, women are free to enjoy whatever useless, sexist shit in games they choose. I’m not a libertarian – I think the insistence that so long as I’M alright, everyone and everything is alright, is laughable and odious. Particularly when it comes to art and entertainment, I’m a snob and an elitist, and I think a person who has training, education and better understanding of a subject ought to be listened to. Personally, I enjoy nothing more than being humbled by somebody who knows more than I do. It was THE most thrilling experience I had, when I arrived at university, thinking I knew all there was to know about movies, and getting schooled by world-class experts. Again, I think games have emboldened their audience to not pay attention to anyone or anything except themselves and their own desires. Games tell us we are the best, the hero, the one who will change things – we are the centre of the world. And it gets into people’s minds. And they stop listening, because they think their talk is more important. I don’t think it is exactly the job of the gaming press to simply reflect opinion and kowtow to readers. It is the job, of any critic or editorialist, to lead opinion – to use her expertise to inform her readers. To be blunt: I know more about games that most of the people who read my work, which is why I’m comfortable saying what is and isn’t good. The fact that sounds arrogant is just indicative of the sorry state we’ve gotten ourselves into, whereby an expert can’t assure her audience of her expertise without being booed. If you hired a plumber and the plumber said “I don’t know everything about plumbing, so can you please help me?” you’d think them a bad plumber, and wouldn’t trust them. But when it comes to reporting and criticism, the opposite is true, and we’re expected to follow our readers rather than the other way around.

And obviously anyone who thought Dungeons and Dragons would turn their child to devil worship was foolish. My point is that art ought to be challenging, and playing to existing, sexist stereotypes isn’t challenging. It DOESN’T turn anyone to anything – it encourages them to remain the same. That’s the problem.

I love videogame violence (and have written as much many times over – it’s my main focus, in fact). And I love mayhem and bloodshed and the reckless abandon games encourage. However, I don’t understand why you’d insist on twinning all of those things with non-Left or non-feminist, for example, stories and politics. If I took GTA V, the exact same mechanics, the exact same game, except now you play as a woman, killing men, would you enjoy it just as liberally, or do you require the presence of a certain kind of real-world compact, a certain variation of characters and story, to have fun? Is it the spectacle you like or the politics? I think it’s the other side in this ongoing debate that are the moral puritans. They don’t want women, they don’t want homosexuality, they don’t want competing ideologies, or ideologies at all. A lot of people who come to me with questions like yours claim to be anti censorship, while in the same breath arguing that certain types of games are “not games,” or otherwise trying to discredit and remove things that they find objectionable. Do you see the flagrant hypocrisy?

As for your “victory for fun,” remark, as I mentioned earlier, I personally find it fun to be educated, challenged, confronted and told something I didn’t previously know – that’s fun to me. And the implication that videogame fun must always be of this certain kind, the bloody, ugly kind, is a shame. I’d find it much more entertaining if some of the things I usually expect from games were not present or were somehow twisted. I’d find it so much more fun if I felt like the person behind what I was playing had something to say that I hadn’t heard before. That’s fun, to me.

Brad: I don’t believe that there’s any conspiracy to fill games writing with progressives, I think writers simply tend to be more progressive and the relatively small teams that run these websites are absurdly cliquish and hire within their circles. And I think that’s a huge problem that is currently and will continue to bite these sites in the ass.

To your point about expert criticism knowing better, I view that as needlessly authoritarian. You’re a critic, so your job is to criticize the plumbing, not install it. While it is nice to have an expert to critique the pipes, any layperson can tell whether the toilet flushes.

My last question deals with the business, and you may have already answered it. What is your assessment of the current business of written game criticism? You seem to be positive about it, but I wonder if it’s a bit of an endangered species. Most criticism – at least most reviews – seem to be farmed out to freelancers who are often kids willing to write a review for a free game. If they’re lucky they’re paid $400 or a little more for an in-depth review of a game they spent a week playing. Meanwhile, reviews seem to be a loss leader, especially considering a controversial editorial written in an hour can easily generate more hits. Added to that is the YouTube monster, stomping through the landscape. And finally, this homogeneity I’ve spoken about means nearly all the reviews from the major sites emanate from the same point of view.

Do you think written game journalism can break out of this? Or is it currently in that process?

Ed: I wish everyone thought the way you and I do in that regard. It would spare us from this ludicrousness and lead me to respect GamerGate enthusiasts a modicum more.

Rather than cliquish, or at least any more cliquish than any other media industry (believe me, you should try getting hired in television) I think the gaming press simply contains only a limited number of professionals. A lot of the protests aimed at so-called favouritism or cliquishness in this job seem to me more like jealousy and bitterness. The enthusiastic blogger can’t get a paid commission, so starts crying foul of the industry’s ethics and standards.

I make no secret of being authoritarian. Again, I think I know better than most when it comes to this subject, otherwise I wouldn’t dare to start writing about it. I’m not sure why gaming criticism is regarded as a public service I certainly don’t view my articles as invites to a conversation with my readers – they’re rhetorical. When people stop reading and stop paying, that’s my signal to stop. Until then, I am absolutely an authoritarian. If the only thing you need to know is whether the toilet flushes, don’t call me to your house.

I’m not intimidated by the shrinking of print and written criticism. If it dries up completely, I will make money elsewhere. I also have yet to find a YouTube presenter, or channel, and I watch many, that approaches games with anything close to the base level of sincerity and appreciation that demarcates a true critic. The audience might eventually emigrate, wholesale, to YouTube, but critics like me won’t have been replaced – we’ll have been usurped. If that happens, it will be a small tragedy. Videogames need and deserve a better class of coverage than what I currently see out of YouTube (or most of the video work on gaming publications.) As for reviews, they could and should be so much more than they currently are. I won’t sit here and blame YouTube or the short attention span of readers when the writers, very often, are the ones writing themselves into irrelevance. Unless you have something genuine, honest and different to say about a game, and not just the same idle observations made everywhere else – on probably on YouTube a few weeks prior to the game’s launch day – why the hell should anyone read you? Players need to open their minds and stop whinging like babies. Game-makers need to take more creative risks and get their heads into adulthood. Critics need to play more games, understand this culture’s history, imbibe art from all over (again, not just books with dragons on the cover) and start taking their profession and themselves a lot more seriously.

Thank you, Ed, for taking the time to exchange emails with me! I have plenty of opinions about his responses, but it’s bad form to offer them now without giving him an opportunity to respond. Instead I’ll leave it up to you, the reader, to come to your own conclusions about our discussion. Feel free to voice your opinions in the comments below!