Last weekend I did another TWIVGB for Critical Distance. Kris Ligman hasn’t been feeling all that well and I suggested she hand it off to Katie for a week to relieve some stress and get better. Well, I ended up being the only non-busy person this weekend and now Kris is bleeding from her face. But I’m not going to talk about that here. Just wish her better and move on to something that occurred to me during last week’s curation.
Due to one thing and another I didn’t get all the suggestions from the week dumped on me until Saturday evening. So, I had to plow through them as quickly as possible while taking in what I was reading. No skimming in other words. It didn’t help that my upper torso and back were in massive amounts of pain due to the concert I went to the previous evening. The pain began affecting my eyesight by blurring my vision. So yeah, it probably wasn’t good that I was in charge of the weekly curation. That, in a nutshell, is why it was late. Then I began thinking on was this even a good TWIVGB. I used to be really good at doing this. It’s one of the reasons Ben asked me to take over for two weeks in the first place. I used to be able to tell a good piece worth putting in the round up and what wasn’t. Over the years the community has stepped up its game so much that we are plateauing on a level of quality that once used to be the exception. Many of the pieces linked to at the beginning of the endeavor probably would be given the time of day now.
Then we enter the question of what is worth curating and why. Are we making a snapshot of the week? Are we basing the choices on the relevance, the quality of the prose, the reaction and discussion it might have spawned, the quality of the ideas? Or is it somewhere in between all of those. This probably should have been something I dealt with before doing the 2011 TYIVGB, but frankly that was a project I just wanted over by the end of it. No matter how you slice it I much prefer 2010 edition as a work unto itself than 2011s. Maybe it was expectation, maybe it was a rise in quality that blurs everything together. If everything is good, then nothing is really.
This is too big a concept to deal with in a single post, but mainly I want to focus on what struck me with regards to the issue of relevancy and reaction. Last week the debate that sprawled across the critical sphere on twitter and on the blogs was that of used games sales and what the publishers are doing the combat them. There were plenty of posts, but I only linked one. The Rock, Paper Shotgun piece on whether we own our Steam games or not. This was a huge topic for the week, but none of the writing on it was that exceptional or noteworthy. It isn’t an easy topic to write about (I know I tried and failed) and given the current climate some really bizarre and frighteningly mainstream thinking needs to be curtailed, but does that mean we curate it? Is historical importance enough in its own right for us to link it?
We, the editors of Critical Distance, were debating what exactly TWIVGB and Critical Distance are for, or rather what their direction is. The podcast got pulled into it as well. The short of it was, none of us knew or were quite on the same page. Critical Distance had some vague ideals of archiving and pointing out good critical pieces because the community was scattered and disparate, not even knowing the other end of the sphere existed. All of this was way back in ’08. Now 4 years later we haven’t defined it much beyond that. Each element being trial and error. The podcast itself was because Randy Ma and I wanted to be on a podcast. I revived it for that same reason. Now 5 episodes into my tenure I have to face what exactly do I want and can I do with it.
I get the feeling had Kris persevered through this weekend and done TWIVGB it would have been a very different list than mine. I’m thinking if Katie had not been busy, it would have been different as well. While I’m not unhappy with it I find myself dissatisfied because I’m not sure. Hell, here’s a piece by Kirk Battle that I really liked and even suggested when Kris was still going to do it. I cut it because I didn’t know if it was enough about games even tangentially to fairly include it. Then of course I couldn’t even do anything interesting with the TWIVGB itself because it was late and I was in pain. Kris liked its matter of factness, but I think I should have tried and gone with a football motif or something. We can’t do this every week no matter how easy it would be.
I know someone will think I’m putting way too much thought into this and worrying over nothing, but if I and the others didn’t TWIVGB wouldn’t be worth looking at. I was once asked who we thought we were to curate and declare something the best. We are the people who do it and worry about doing it well.
PS. Seriously I need podcast ideas. I only have one recording left before I have to make new ones. I thought about a behind the scenes sort of interviews with the different editors about how they do TWIVGB. None of us are the same and knowing the people behind them may help people understand the roundups and what to expect when a certain person does it. Please, I need help.
Before I knew more about the editors behind TWIVGB, I was doubtful of its process. Now that I know more, I’m even more suspicious — but for different reasons. However, I mostly trust the people who run it and figure y’all will work it out — or you won’t. Either way, I’m seeing more good material floating around on Twitter than I ever do in the weekly list. (I also have some questions about how large a role Twitter plays in all this too.)
Podcast ideas, eh? I ran a podcast for a year and we couldn’t get through ideas fast enough. You could interview indie developers about any number of things. You could put together a panel to talk about an article from TWIVGB. You could, as you mentioned, get the editors together to talk about the process. You could pick a subculture of “gamers” and look at just them. One of my favorite episodes I was part of was on the economics of games and how and why they break — you could do that too. You could look at the history of a genre, the history of a series or even the general trends of aesthetics across the years.
Twitter plays a big role, sometimes. It’s very fleeting, but we use it to get post suggestions and most people most of the time do not help. We see a lot of the good posts flying around twitter too and sometimes we miss them. We have to sleep after all. I’d be more interested in hearing about your previous doubts and your doubts now. We are on the inside and are clueless to how this is all viewed. We can only guess.
Thank you for the podcast ideas. I have gotten some of those before, but it’s the problem of getting them set up as well. Many of the suggestions I’ve gotten are just too big for me to tackle. That and I need approval for any topic. Thank you for your reply.
Additional: I don’t know how this will make you feel about our methods, but I forgot to say this in the main post. http://ontologicalgeek.blogspot.com/ This is a blog that has been operating for two years, I never knew about him in all that time and I wish I did. Quite frankly he is one of the best bloggers out there with clear and distinctive writing. I don’t know how he escaped notice for so long. So I say this to everyone out there, if you are writing and you think it is interesting TELL US. We wont know you exist unless you do so.
Let me just say that most of my frustration comes from the fact that I’ve been writing on my own blog for over five years and, during the period I ran a podcast, we recorded a couple days worth of content (50 episodes). However, as is increasingly becoming typical, I’m not known to the general community — not to mention that the podcast I did is gone from the Internet now. So, take what I say with buckets of salt. It’s become frustrating to me to have to keep re-introducing myself over and over again the last few months.
As far as TWIVGB is concerned, I’ve been following it for a few years now. Early on, it was a delightful place of super interesting writing that I was missing across the various gaming blogs. Now that I have been subscribed to most of the blogs that are frequently mentioned, I’m seeing a trend of the same names every few weeks. It often seems like it’s friends mentioning the work of their friends. Which is not bad, per se, but means that the material mentioned tends to part of a larger group.
Don’t get my wrong, I like TWIVGB. I’ve become a bit worried though about how much it has become the de facto judge of video game blogger quality. In order to matter, it seems, you have to be on the list. And, to get on the list, you usually have to know someone who was either A) previously on the list or B) contact the editors in some way. Over the last year, with TWIVGB on Game Set Watch (before it shutdown) and Gamasutra, it has become the singular gatekeeper for writers who are not being payed to write — and often the way to make that transition as well.
My doubts, then, are not over being overlooked — honestly, most of my stuff is crap — but wondering what is being left out and ignored. When I see a link from TWIVGB that leads to a post that is only two paragraphs, I wonder about its worthiness to be included. Then again, when I am sent to thousand of words of rambling nonsense (e.g. me), I also begin to doubt that it was worth my time too.
What is the future of TWIVGB? What is its purpose? Is it a snapshot of material worth looking at or an attempt at capturing the discussions of the week? I feel like, if the pursuit is the conversation, that it will always be inadequate. Many ideas have a very long tail and some of the best posts, I’ve noticed over the years, come weeks or months later when a topic is revisited after many different takes have been posted and discussed.
I’ve also seen several feeding frenzies happen on Twitter lately as a link gets mentioned, commented on and then logged for later. By the time it has made it to TWIVGB, it seems to have become old news and the discussion has run its course. Unless you are constantly on Twitter, you miss out. Which, of course, raises its own issues.
I don’t know.
I really enjoy the games curation that you do, but I would like if more posts and people were included per TWIVGB. On some level, this comes from the fact that I think I do smart work (that I have tweeted at Critical Distance a few times) that isn’t mentioned. I have to imagine that happens to quite a number of people every week, and it is sad.
I also think it would be great if the word “critical” was a little better defined by Critical Distance. It seems like every week I get to read two or three really smart articles and then at least one article of the “the is what game worlds are like” variety. I think there is a lot of well-researched, brilliant work out there, and I would be a lot happier to see that instead of a 500 word vague treatise on video game design.
Otherwise, don’t be down on yourself. You do great work at that site, and I enjoy reading it every week.
I don’t know if this is the case, but I feel I have to correct this notion just in case. I wrote for the one week I listed. I am not in charge of TWIVGB it’s direction or the week to week curation. I was in charge of the filtration for only the one post.
But to the rest of your comment. I’ve heard these before. I’ve heard people bring up the discordant nature of having some deep articles and then smaller vague pieces make it in. I can’t respond to this in the abstract. From our end every piece that goes in is worthwhile for one reason or another. I would need an example in order to discuss the relative merits of inclusion of a piece. If there are any in the linked TWIVGB from this post, point it out and I will do my best to explain my reasoning. I really cannot do the same for other weeks since I don’t know their minds.
On your first point, we are getting there. Over the last few months I’ve noticed a wider net of posts and authors making it into TWIVGB in part thanks to the growing number of bloggers and thanks to Kris Ligman’s massive reading list which from what I can tell outstips my merger RSS reader. Just this week she went through 6000 posts before getting it down to a short list of 100 and then down to the final links that appeared in the post. I don’t do a count, but I don’t think I come anywhere near that in a week. What I do know is that the internet is big, much bigger than what even Kris can accomplish. I’m also sure that it isn’t enough. We miss things, it’s the nature of the beast. I can barely keep up with my weekly reading, let alone searching out new blogs/essays/writers. I’m sure there is a lot of well researched well written work that we haven’t included or just don’t know it exists. Some of the best posts in the last few years I’ve found by complete accident that I couldn’t not repeat.
Also, while I’m on this tangent @Dan the reason the same authors come up over and over is because they are that good. We don’t look at a work’s name so much as the work. If the same person keeps coming up in the lists its because their work is consistent. Though as a whole it is not happening as much as in years past. The sphere has gotten larger and people are written more infrequently, but I do remember a time when a week didn’t go by we didn’t include L.B. Jeffries, Micheal Abbott etc. It’s just how things roll. You write consistently good and interesting work and you will end up on multiple TWIVGB.
Back to the point at hand. If your work didn’t get featured, then all I can say is first: did we know it existed? I can almost guarantee this is the #1 reason why an individual piece isn’t included. #2 If we do know it existed and you said you submitted it to the twitter feed, than I an tell you it made it to the short list. But beyond that, everything becomes relative. We can’t have a 100 link TWIVGB, so where is the cut off. It is down to the individual author.
In years past it was much easier. If a piece was suggested it was included. Only good stuff was suggested so it became a correlation. Also, even with much looser standards weeks never really deviated much from the average of 20 a week. I hold the all time record of most links in a single week and it was only 32. As time has gone on this no longer was the case. I wrote a piece over two years ago on the first week that this happened and the realization made me have to write about it. Things have only become more exasperated from there.
I’ll stop here. I have more to say, but that will have to be a post in its own right.
Awesome, thanks for the reply. For some reason, I thought you were the person who was doing the curation now–I remember the curator changing around the new year, and I thought it was you. Sorry about that.
Everything you said is reasonable, and I agree with you that there are limits to what can be put in the list. At the end of the day, TWIVGB is a great thing, and it suffers from archive fever like anything else. I really respect the work that is put into it.