Why Not Just Good Games?

Look, I already hate what I'm about to do, but the contrarian in me prevents me from just letting it go. Especially when I was just being contrary about indie games yesterday.

Shortly after I made that post, Joystiq's Justin McElroy, who is a good writer and as far as I can tell a really nice guy with whom I have no problems whatsoever (outside of this disagreement) tweeted:

If all the time spent analyzing "Game Journalism" had been spent highlighting indie devs, the world would be a better place.

The sentiment is fine: the navel gazing about game writing has gotten pretty out of control. I'm sure we can all agree that it could be better in a lot of ways, but posting 1500 word screeds on the topic seems a bit much at this point.

But why should we spend that time highlighting indie games and not, say, good games? Why should indie games be privileged? This is just a different permutation of the double standard I wrote about yesterday, and I don't expect to see any justifications forthcoming from McElroy or anyone else.

So I guess I'm contradicting myself, because really this is a comment on game journalism. Don't be crusaders for indie games when you're uniquely in a position to champion good games regardless of their publishing and distribution deals.