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This is honestly a very shitty thing to say about people, and it is the icing on the cake against any claim by Prof. Bogost that he is not dismissive of other people.

And I'm done for now.

Again: this is YOU speaking for YOU. Other people may react differently. Myself? I'm actually excited to give it a try, because I occasionally enjoy a challenging video game, especially when funneled through some dorky graphics and a silly premise.

So?

Unless you're a brainless automaton, this is bullshit. It may require less effort from certain parts of the brain, but the notion that watching TV or observing a painting requires "essentially zero effort" is absolute bullshit. If you are actually watching something out of a desire to do so, your brain is doing a lot of intellectual work to put together pieces, identify patterns, create connections for analysis, interpret information, etc. Most of that activity is done by the viewer. Deliberately. That's how you can get to the end of that TV show episode and get into a 30 minute conversation about themes, etc. You were already thinking about that stuff while watching.

Thinking, as it turns out, is effort.

Maybe as academics, we forget that because we do it all the time. I don't, but then again, I had to fight my way up to a PhD.

How? This is an unsubstantiated claim. The "meme-ness" of Untitled Goose Game has no immediate and obvious relationship to the "need" to play the game. Indeed, I'm led to wonder: do you think you were required to play this game for some reason? Is that how you think games work? By some kind of implied social force?

I've got news: YOU DON'T HAVE TO PLAY IF YOU DON'T WANT TO. You're a fully grown adult person creature. Make better choices or whatever.

Nope.

You must be fun at parties.

You sound older than my late grandmother when she first discovered email. She would go on to use Facebook and text messages. Odd how she managed to figure out how memes work on her own in this supposed sea of whatever. It's almost like maybe, just maybe, this is all bullshit.

At this point, I have to ask: What the fuck are you even talking about? What doe this have to do with your claims about Untitled Goose Game? I get that this connection is coming up, but holy hell, my dude, this is pointless.

Again with the general, universal statements of truthiness.

MOST memes fizzle out. SOME are shared, re-shared, remixed, re-purposed, and continually adapted. I seriously question someone's understanding of digital media if they don't know this about memes. So much of the research on memes is about how they are replicated, shared, etc.

Memes are also packed with cultural references and meaning, so much so that there is an entire website dedicated to attempting to catalogue, historicize, and analyze memes.

To quote Star Wars.

This is literally how all games work. There's an entire industry of meme makers, actual plays, etc. designed to give people who may or may not play vicarious enjoyment. We've had this for about a decade or so now. Any game created today could fit into this paradigm. Untitled Goose Game isn't unique here...

Or it's just a different kind of gameplay for a different kind of gamer. Why does this need to be an oppositional practice? People who play games come to games with a variety of interests and needs. The fact that there are games for people who would prefer to simply wander around a virtual world for fun just tells us that a need is being met. At the same time, there are others who would prefer a more action-oriented FPS or a strategy game or whatever.

Again: I understand perfectly why people have accused Prof. Bogost of dismissing games and gamers. This oppositional framing makes it very clear that he views games as hierarchical, with some having more value than others.

Loathe as I am to point to popularity in an argument, the vast majority of gamers aren't playing these games, certainly not with any regularity. Am I to believe that these gamers have been duped into wasting their leisure time by working? If so, I'm not buying it.

Goose errands are always fun, though.

FOR YOU.

Again: Prof. Bogost constantly asserts as general things that apply only to himself. It's a chore FOR YOU. the easy answer to this problem is that you stop playing games that make you feel this way and use your time for more productive activities, such as ones that actually make you happy as opposed to a miserable curmudgeon who poopoos on the things that others do for their own pleasure.

Or, for those of us who are actually fun at parties: we'll still get a giggle out of the game because the wonky play is part of the fun.

And as I keep implying throughout these annotations: sometimes the release from completing a difficult task (you chose) is incredibly valuable.

Translation:

The game's function is that of a game, but it's bad because games being games is making you do game things or whatever...

Translation:

The game about playing a goose asks you to do things that a goose does. I am so annoyed that I have to do goose things while playing a game that asks me to play a goose. I could have gone and done literally anything else with my life, but instead, I'm going to be annoyed that I chose to play a goose game that asks me to play a goose by doing goose things.

CTFO...

It's a fucking goose game, dude. It doesn't need to deal with anything but a goofy goose doing goofy shit. It doesn't have to be about "our real world."

This is the kind of thing that people despise about academics. Everything must be a Very Serious Subject (TM). Prof. Bogost has essentially admitted that Untitled Goose Game is anything but a Very Serious Subject (TM), so rather than just say "well, it's not that, and that's cool," he has to make dismissive statements about it.

If only your article took seriously the value of catharsis in the context of games.

You're not dismissive of games at all. No, sir. You couldn't possibly be accused of being dismissive by making a passing reference to Very Serious Subjects (TM) while highlighting the silliness of a game.

After all, grown adults must take seriously Very Serious Subjects (TM) when considering whether to play a game where you run around as a goofy goose that ruins the day of imaginary characters.

So does building a chair, going on vacation, etc. Leisure in and of itself is structured by a measure of progress, especially when we engage in certain activities we find pleasurable that have structure to them.

Basically, this is a criticism of games on the basis that they have a structure to them and, therefore, a goal for the user. But the same could be said about books, movies, etc., which explains why some people who are more structurally oriented than others may react negatively to media products that lack such structure.

Structure, however, is not the same as framing games within the rhetoric of labor. It may define the contours of the type of enjoyment on offer, but, again, the user's agency comes into play here: if they don't want that kind of enjoyment, they can simply do something else.

As for the claims about gamification in the job market: that is hardly the fault of games, which have fought for decades to be taken seriously as a field of humanities research, but a fault of corporate and work culture. If you have issues there, take it up in the correct context.

I spoke too soon.

Hey, look. The first time you've properly acknowledge this. But wait...there's more!

This example has nothing to do with games, which, again, are played for personal enjoyment.

It is incumbent upon you to provide an alternative that would be pure leisure. I submit that no such thing exists that would be appealing to most people.

This is horribly reductive. For RPG players, the act of grinding comes with a payoff that materially changes the game experience. Grinding takes time and effort, but it is distinct from the type of labor/work Prof. Bogost refers to here. The payoff of grinding is the product of the player's agency and choice. They choose to do this; it is not something thrust upon them by necessity. So the repetitive tasks involved in grinding share superficial similarities to the kind of labor/work I have to assume Prof. Bogost is referring to: the everyday, just doing it for a paycheck even though I am not fulfilled by what I'm doing work.

That is NOT a description of work in games.

As someone who has taught a LOT of literature in his time as an educator, there is nothing "easy" about reading a book. Some books may "read easier" for some, but that will be based on personal enjoyment, not the fact that books are inherently easy.

The notion that a book is not work is, for someone who presumably earned a PhD that involved reading, bonkers. The same type of work (for pleasure or enjoyment) we find with games exists for books, too. The mechanisms may differ (one is more intellectual than another and requires an active imagination -- depending on the work), but you can approach both fro the same position of desire.

Only if you don't actually enjoy playing games.

The problem with this article thus far is its incessant need to make universal pronouncements about games that really only apply to the individual writing the article. Based on Professor Bogost's Twitter feed, he is aware that his perspective will rankle feathers, which raises the question: Why take a universalist approach to your subjective claims if your intention is not to confuse the reader by giving the wrong impression of what you actually think?

Well, we have the answer to that: https://twitter.com/ibogost/status/1187004935487004673

Or, here's a novel idea: if you want to play the game, play it.

Then...don't? Like, a goose didn't come into your house a month ago and say, "You better play Untitled Goose Game or I will cut you." Even as a so-called academic of media studies, this is a bizarre framing to take.

I am aware of Professor Bogost's efforts on Twitter to make this particular line stick, but given the bulk of the content of his article, I am hard pressed to take seriously his claim that he is not dismissing or slighting games and the people who play them. If his position were solely personal, he might have led quite clearly with a declaration of both facts; that he chose not to do so may be a consequence of the medium (entertainment "journalism"), but given that we share a connection by field in academia, I am, again, disinclined to accept this reasoning largely because engaging in clickbait practices is unethical.

We are also left with the same questions I raised at the start:

Why are you doing this in the first place? Having a professional interest in something only goes so far here. At some point, your inability to truly enjoy the material you are studying should lead you to consider studying something else. I didn't enjoy Troubadour poetry during my undergraduate education, and so I have not dedicated part of my professional career to interrogating why Troubadour poetry requires work, why I don't enjoy it, etc. I went on to study postcolonial literature, digital rhetoric, and science fiction (and all permutations therein) because those things interested me and I continue to get genuine enjoyment out of the work that I do.

Why have you reduced work to a singular definition that removes its potential for pleasure through productivity? On what basis should we accept this interpretation of work that excludes work for pleasure, which is embodied in all forms of leisure activities outside of literally sitting in a chair staring at nothingness? That is not apparent here.

Have you ever talked to the average video game player? The only one who seems aggravated about playing this game is you and the colleague you'll mention later on. And the question the becomes: why are you playing video games in the first place if the act of play is, for you, an aggravation? What are you doing with your life that you're deliberately doing something you don't enjoy so you can write an article rambling out nonsensical defenses of your unenjoyment?

I answered my own question.

This is not a problem to literally anybody who actually enjoys games, whether video, board, card, or RPG. It becomes clear here that the "it's fun" was, in fact, sarcastic.

I'll also add that there is nothing inherently wrong with putting in effort on something you actually enjoy. This can, in fact, be fun. Folks who like carving wood in their spare time do it because it brings them pleasure. Carving wood is, arguably, far more difficult than playing a goofy goose in a video game, and yet people still do it because it brings them pleasure. Video games -- and all games, for that matter -- bring a lot of people pleasure even if they take time and effort.

But we'll come back to this shortly...

This is where the review should have ended. "It's fun." Fin. Done.

But we're not going to stop here. No. You just can't help yourself, you curmudgeonly goose hater.

Anti-goose propaganda. Geese are notoriously delightful creatures with wonderful personalities. Respect the goose and the goose will respect you.