The good critics are tired.

Critical Distance, a blog that has been compiling video game criticism for over a decade now, has the slogan “where’s all the good writing about video games?”

That slogan always bothered me. I know I’m not supposed to take it too seriously, and yet I find myself entirely too German not to, because the implication is that the good video game writing is hidden. There are two different meanings to the word hidden in this case, of course — one is that the online cycle of articles simply moves too quickly for you to catch the good writing before it inevitably gets replaced on whatever page it’s being hosted, but also, that it’s not happening where people would “typically” look, on the big websites like Kotaku or IGN.

In the end, I can begrudgingly accept that two things can be true at the same time, that great writing can get lost or missed and that there are people who write great things that don’t fit with a lot of standard media coverage and thus have to happen elsewhere, independently. I guess I just dislike the idea that good criticism is hidden because I see so many people fight for it every day. There are editors who fight for games to get a spotlight at the Game Awards, only so a game made by a multi-million dollar conglomerate can take its spot, and that’s without even starting the infinite discussion about what constitutes a “true” indie game again. There are editors who juggle magazine space for pages, half pages, columns, just so someone can tell you about a game they’ve enjoyed, and then there’s the idea that the way we review games is broken, that any good criticism gets destroyed by putting a number at the end because that’s all our audience ever cares about.

I don’t think anyone phones their reviews in, simply because you sit in front of a game for hours upon hours to make it for embargo, and you don’t want to tank all that work on the last metres, so to speak, when you get to the part of it that people actually see. But the good criticism, the diverse writing, the points not represented by 35 white men with the same side profile and similar gaming tastes, is, like so many other things in this industry, being eaten by the industry itself.

This coming January, I will apply for unemployment, as I, like so many other people in gaming, have found myself with an ever-dwindling amount of opportunities. I’m not saying this to elicit pity, but I’ve decided to take this step over constantly pushing and pushing for what is an unsustainable way to live, and when it comes down to it, an unfair reward for my talent and years of experience. I don’t blame (all of) my editors, freelancing is and has always been difficult. When I started out, I found multiple blogs like the one I’m writing right now, and mine won’t be the last.

But I’m writing this, not to turn anyone off criticism or even to commiserate about the state of the industry with me, these are all well-known factors. My point is much more simple — to do good work, you have to be well. I have been in the lucky position that I worked at a place where for years, I had a permanent sport to write about almost anything that caught my eye. Designing for empathy, revenge narratives, romance, I got to look at all of it, and I was further lucky enough to see the gaming industry address and represent more people — people of colour, non-male people, queer identities. There is change, and that change is good, even when there are tidal waves of shit washing over everyone.

The problem is that being a minority, and let’s assume that the “good critic” is also a minority, takes a lot of energy. You can make your points and make them well, but you will have to explain and re-explain yourself at so many points. Good writers have a holistic view, and unfortunately that means that they look at a lot of bad and heartbreaking things to put the art we enjoy in context. They also look at a lot of nice things, but it takes a lot simply to keep looking at the world, sometimes.

I’ve had a job that let me provide criticism I’m immensely proud of, and then that job was taken from me for pointing out an issue only minority writers face. Sometimes, no matter how normal it is to lose jobs as a freelancer, the way you do is also endlessly tiring, barely a sentence after years of working together, no help to move on. If you want your good criticism to survive, you must be ready to do it yourself, no matter how many people enjoy your work, and that can grind you down.

Having an opinion that regularly runs counter to that of your peers can grind you down, no matter how important it is. Existing in a world where you look at everything whereas someone else has the privilege to only look at games from inside their bubble, entirely unused to the feeling of not being the target audience, is exhausting.

There is also the pressure of supplying something that’s thoughtful, once you’ve gained a reputation for it, when it can be equally exhausting sometimes to have an opinion on a game at all. Looking at everything means being painfully aware of all the versions of this world in which games could not matter less, and honestly, I think that’s okay, because not everything has to be about me. I keep coming back to an incident during the early days of the pandemic, when a colleague said to me “don’t worry, we are now some of the few people who can still deliver fun and entertainment to people, this means our work is more important than ever.” I’m sorry, but shut up, it’s perfectly fine for games to matter exactly nothing in a world anxious about a disease run rampant.

Of course there is a chance my colleague felt just like me and told himself what he had to in order to keep working, because no matter what happens in the world, capitalism has left no space for us to simply exist and grieve everything that is happening. But I and people like me have spent years putting all of themselves in games to the point of severe burnout, because we love them and believe in them, because we want them to be better and wanted to be there when it happens, and we did all that while for years, the world did an entirely separate thing to our hearts, our minds, our bodies and our identities, from George Floyd to hate against trans people, war and our own struggle to keep going.

I don’t know who I am without games, but the thing is, I don’t know who I am in games, either. I know I love them, and I know I want to continue to try and make them, but I feel like the current I constantly have to fight in order to make that happen has caught me. Maybe I’ll just drift in it for a bit.