Colin Moriarty and the ‘Dangers’ of Political Correctness

WC writes: I’ve taken issue with the opinion of IGN Playstation editor Colin Moriarty in the past. A few months ago when Moriarty loudly decried the temerity of fans who would dare question the rushed, illogical, nihilistic endings of Mass Effect 3 (a game whose creators themselves went on to agree needed ‘clarification’ with a free ‘Extended Cut’), I lamented the way in which Moriarty, despite being a mouthpiece for the videogame community, had joyfully set back the debate over the validity of games being Art with a number of stifling and anachronistic sentiments about the way that they should be approached as texts.

[rufusman91]

It's a video game, shit like politics shouldnt matter espicially when you play them to relax.

[Gaming101]

I know the title says "Political Correctness", but that isn't referring necessarily to politics, it's referring to gamers being allowed to openly express their opinion if they don't like something they purchased, which I believe is the entire point of a review, as its a critique of a game. So this idea that games can't be critiqued is nonsense. Yes there are crappy stories, bad game design, bland graphics and glitches, and yes we can critique all of these things, so the developers can learn where the audience is going, what they liked and didn't like (particularly useful when the devs don't have the time or budget for play testing), as this may improve games overall, or it may in some cases make games worse, but that's the way the world works. We have things like Consumer Reports for a reason - to make feedback on products known to the public. The feedback is supposed to be objective, that's the issue here with Mass Effect - whether you like the story or not is largely subjective, and that's the issue - when something is subjective, how much can we really criticize it? If movies can be criticized, why not games? Case closed.

[aliengmr]

Giving you an agree, because I agree with 90% of what you said.

Mass Effect's "issues" were objectively bad, which is why Bioware fixed it. Like the continuity errors in the last ME novel had to be fixed. These may not have been unintended errors, like glitches, but when your audience goes "huh?" a mistake was made.

[--Onilink--]

great read. Personally i cant stand Moriarty.. he is just one big contradiction after another, wrapped in a big pile of holier than thou attitude

[grailly]

yeah, he's the worst editor at IGN imo.
what I i dislike the most about him is his total lack of economic sense, he just goes around telling(though Beyond podcast, not directly) every company what to do and how to do it, while having no clue about how companies work and how much stuff cost, completely overlooking the fact that companies also need income.