Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Phil Owen starts his book with a pretty bold claim. In the preface he begins by saying "that inability by the games industry and those in the community, which includes the enthusiast press, to see the big picture stems from a lack of understanding of how all of this works." And then he says "I've seen the general pattern of how games work better than most everyone else, and I don't like it." I'm going to assume when he says "most everyone else" he's lumping in game devs as well as people outside the game industry. Well I just sat down and read "WTF Is Wrong With Video Games" from start to finish, and after a few frustrating hours of reading and taking notes, my jaw dropped near the end when Phil Owen presented the perfect example of how video games may truly become works of art one day (I'm not sure they're there now), and he didn't even realize he did it. In fact, that's a recurring theme throughout his narrative: Mr. Owen continually misses the point and he's too angry (I lost track of how many times he said "f***" or "f***ing,") to realize that he glossed over something that he could work with. Let's get something out of the way first. This book (if you can call this short thing a "book") isn't well written. I kept finding myself highlighting sections with inconsistent punctuation (like Mr. Owen not being sure whether or not to include a period within quotation marks or outside of them, so he does both on one page), or just boring/cringey prose, like: "'Spoilers, Phil Owen," Caitlin jokingly chided, saying my full name because her husband is also named Phil." It's one thing to be a bad writer on a website where the reader isn't paying you, but when you're selling a book on Amazon... Anyway... Mr. Owen goes onto define art in the first chapter by saying "Because that's what art ultimately is. It has a purpose, to communicate something to you. Sometimes something other than what the creator intended comes through, which is fine and speaks to the fluid nature of art as a concept." He then goes on to describe the process of crafting a shiv in The Last of Us (although his description of the function has some merit, he doesn't actually communicate the mechanic accurately, claiming that you require "four scissor blades" instead of one complete "blade" item) and claims that "...there is simply no meaning to be found there beyond their being a gameplay device" and "...I'm constantly distracted by how much of a video game it really is." Before I move on to how silly this statement is, here's a question. Why is there simply no meaning to be found inside a gameplay device? I realized shivs should be multi use in my own playthrough, but I saw the gameplay mechanic as a tangible storytelling method that reinforces the "scavenge or die" theme that's present throughout the Last of Us. The gameplay mechanic requires you to continually search the environment for crafting mats, or you will die when a clicker grabs you. Is my idea on the art of this mechanic valid? I should think so, especially in the context of Mr. Owen's own definition of art. If Mr. Owen is so bothered by these shivs (don't even get me started on his Gears of War critique), why didn't he tackle the glaringly ridiculous leveling system in the Last Of Us where Joel pops pills to gain better stats? 100 pills for more health? Or, why didn't we get a critique of the arbitrary health system that pervades nearly every game since it isn't a 1 to 1 representation of how health works in real life? Is it because a willing suspension of disbelief is required for games sorta like movies and novels? Mr. Owen's apparent hatred of gameplay (he admits that he thinks games are boring and he only plays them for their stories) tints his perspective throughout the book. I noticed that when talking about the merit of art in games, he never stops mentioning the "story" or the "theme," even going so far as to say "Glen Schofield... said one of the most hilarious things I've ever heard a developer say: 'The primary theme of Dead Space is dismemberment.' That completely nonsensical statement explains just about everything about the way developers too often think." Nevermind the general smugness here, Mr. Owen is actually unaware that gameplay features can actually be a (GASP!) theme inside a video game! Also, dismemberment can totally be a theme in a literary novel, but it feels like Mr. Owen doesn't actually know what a theme is. This smug attitude toward devs who probably know better than him (oh wait, I forgot, according to the intro he's the only guy that has this insight in the game industry) carries over to his opinion of Amy Hennig. Here he quotes Amy Hennig: "'The story has to be the mots flexible thing in the whole production,' Hennig told CNN in 2011, in regards to writing around the big set pieces and whatever else the designers constructed. That's a terrible way of thinking..." Yes, Mr. Owen. You know more about writing for video games than someone who has been doing it for a very very long time. Amy Hennig was in charge of some of the Legacy of Kain games, which I would definitely call artistic. Mr. Owen then goes on to contradict himself about the role writers have in gaming. Amid some good points about most games not having dedicated writers (I agree with some of this), he complains that writers have to work around designers and environment artists (he wants writers to have unlimited artistic license), and then he mocks devs that talk about everyone have to work as a team by saying something like "of course I know that game development has to have some give and take." (Not an actual quote because I don't feel like slogging through this book to find it). Look up the dunning kruger effect, by the way. But now I'm finally ready to talk about why Phil Owen completely dropped the ball in this book. After reading this entire mess, he talks about the storytelling in Mass Effect, which he says is one of his favorite games (by the way in one chapter he says Mass Effect had a morality system that he had never seen before, and in the previous he said that its morality system was "fairly common" in the game industry. This book really is a mess). I was thinking to myself "Ah, surely he's going to make a point about choosing who lives and who dies as a positive example on how the game industry can learn to take advantage of its interactivity as a storytelling device." But he doesn't. He complains about some random detail within the "Ashley or Kaiden" choice that he didn't like. Phil Owen had the opportunity to hold up that choice and say "Here is the interactive storytelling method that is only possible in games," but he didn't. He utterly missed it and continued to complain and whine. It was right there and it tumbled through his clumsy, angry fingers. This entire book is nothing but negative vomit. It has no redeeming qualities except for Phil Owen being correct about games needing better writers. It is utterly unpleasant, terribly written, and I wish I could get my $3.00 back. Polygon ran an article as if this was going to give me some insight into games as art, but it didn't. It's just a guy that swallowed some sour gummy bears and ipecac. Do not buy this book.