I love L.B. Jeffries’ writing. To me he is one of the most eloquent and hardest working in our field. And to my knowledge does it all for free. He has also described himself as the angry young man of game criticism. Last year he turned his critical eye towards the idea of the video game critic. He explored critics from other mediums and then looked back at what we as game critics could learn from them.
Personally I’ve tried to take some of these ideas as base point to work from, but even then I don’t think anyone has gotten a methodology that works to encompass the player’s input. Somehow there is just more to video games that we haven’t tapped into yet. His latest piece does repeat a few things, but it provides some sense or guide to where we should be moving ourselves.
I’ve complied his writings on the subject below. The comments also have some interesting discussion as well.
Banana Pepper Martinis
Samuel Johnson and Video Games
PopMatters
Does Video Game Criticism Need a Lester Bangs?
The New YouTube Game Criticism: An Interview with “moviebob”
Whoa, thank you very much. Just for the record I do get free stuff, The Escapist pays for the freelance work, and there are other perks. But no, there isn’t a steady paycheck or anything like that.
You should have let that free thing go. It makes you seem more altruistic.