The whole time, up until Klosterman spoke with Will Wright, I was frustrated reading what he had to say about video gaming and The Sims. His thought process that The Sims boiled down to materialism just aggravated me. It seemed like he was thinking into the game way harder than was necessary. This seems to be a constant with a lot of people that dislike the ideas of videogames. I remember there was lawyer in Florida named Jack Thompson who kept going at a certain game company and ended up getting disbarred because of his work. Video games are just an easy target for these types of people.
That wasn’t the only thing that bothered me about this article. Klosterman didn’t even explore the other ideas possible, he immediately assumed the worst. It took calling the creator of the game and complaining for him to open his mind to the other possibilities.
>>It seemed like he was thinking into the game way harder than was necessary. <<
ReplyDeleteThis is a common critique of Klosterman. It's what he does - takes the seemingly mundane and "overthinks" it.
I'm not sure he dislikes video games, but he's definitely (by his own admission) not one who plays very often. As you note, this certinaly skews his perspective.