Autumn Wright

What are we doing? What's going on?

re: Chris Franklin on Bluesky.

The Mixtape discourse makes me feel like we have arrived at a place where criticism is almost untenable because it will be flanderized and stripped down to whatever parts become useful for social media cohorts driven by algorithms towards reactionary or extreme ends rather than engagement w/ media.

— Chris Franklin (@errant-signal.com) May 11, 2026 at 1:15 PM

The biggest reason I keep reiterating that we need to write blogs, not posts is because the act of drafting prose hopefully forces the author to reckon with the very specific text of someone else's argument (a review, comment, or even a post) and not the quippy strawman of it they wrote that is so easy to dunk on in a post. Another reason is that we are desperate for a record to cite as we build on each other towards new conversations that develop into new ideas and ways of thinking about games (and, yes, new ways of thinking about games writing, too).

Imagine film criticism beholden to Tucker Carlson. Today I think that individuals in games media continuing to invest our time and energy and posts and memes and blogs and videos into whatever X and YouTube rage baiters are saying (e.g.) are arresting the development of the entire field. This is the foundation of my critique of IGN's assessment of the reception to Highguard, which may be newsworthy but was not indicative of how an imagined singular audience (a fantasy) felt. From my point of view this weekend, it has looked looked like people may have dismissed a blog critiquing Mixtape because there are gg chuds out to get it for their culture war that many of us on here aren't even keeping up with. I think some folks in this space enjoy being a victim and want to goad controversy, but critical failsons do not make martyrs and paternalistic passivity will not blow wind in our sails any further.

We need to push each other to engage in concrete terms with our colleagues' writing, and we need to push each other to engage in concrete terms with the games themselves, writing past feeling and identification towards close readings and analysis. This may be the single biggest cause of discontent towards legacy reviews in the group chats and backchannels of the games criticism blogosphere (many of whom are laid-off staffers and permalancers), and this also returns us to the record! I abandoned writing about Clair Obscur and its reception as a savior to JRPGs because I couldn't find many compelling analyses of the game to cite. Most of the thoughts that shaped our thinking came from posts (sincere or bait) that I cannot find. This benefits grifters, "video" """essayists""", and publishers who want to sell a game on their own terms.

We need to begin setting the terms ourselves. In the CMS. With hyperlinks. One blog at a time.

That's the goal now.

just blog it

Meme created by Grayson Morley based on this post.

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