When most people think of critical writing, it is most likely that they think of academia and the rigorous literature reviews and term papers and blog posts associated with classes at an institution of higher learning. Most of these, I would say from experience, are affiliated with bland, coarse subjects that bear any real interest to the author or, for that matter, any reader outside of the professor or teacher reading them. Sometimes, the subjects are bland to the professors as well.But critical writing is not confined to the strict structure of the stereotyped academic institution (e.g. literature review papers, assigned blog posts about Constitutional law, etc, etc.). Critical writing branches out into many disciplines such as film (film reviews), food (reviews or opinions on restaurants, chefs, or marketplaces, etc), art (discussion of various works of art, spotlights on galleries, etc,), music (CD reviews, band spotlights) and gaming. The latter I will talk about at length - the same processes of writing apply to gaming writing as they do to other subject-writing, but there are some genre specific details to acknowledge.
First, writing about gaming is similar to other subject-writing in that it employs the same principles.
- Be concise
- Paint a Picture (be descriptive)
- Make writing accessible to genre newcomers, but know the audience (experienced gamers)
- Don't write in huge blocks of text -- break things up with multimedia elements
- Keep headlines concise and pertinent to the subject matter
- Don't give overbroad histories within the text - reference, but don't tell the entire backstory to every Zelda game.
- No cliches
- Use active voice
- Use complete hyperlinks and data tags for searches of your piece (if writing online at a blog or website).
- Punctuation is paramount
Second, critical writing in the gaming world, to most individuals, pertains to the game review. Yes, in recent years more attention has been paid to the societal, emotional and psychological aspects games have been presenting and thus creating critical writing prompts more akin to literary reviews essay term papers, but the classic critical writing prompt in gaming is the review, just as in film.
There are 5 sections essential to a game review:
- Presentation
- Fun factor
- Sound
- Graphics
- Replayability
In more recent years, the game review has moved to include more multimedia than writing in certain circles (gametrailers.com - yet, writing is still used in the script. Check video at bottom of page), while in others rely almost solely on writing (gamepro.com/Kotaku), while other still use a relatively balanced combination of both (IGN.com).
Critical writing is not just writing, it's writing an opinion based on facts to inform others. Critical writing is meant to sway audiences into seeing the world through the eyes of the author, to expunge information in a tasteful, digestible way. Critical writing is examining an interest, seeing how it does or doesn't contain relevance, how it speaks to audiences, how it interacts with audiences or promotes or doesn't promote and idea. Sometime critical writing is simply why the author like/supports or doesn't like/support something.
Video game reviews show that critical writing doesn't have to be tedious or boring or even, should I say, all that nerdy. If given the right subject and practice, anyone can be a critical writer.
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