[DreamerM]

I brought this up in the other thread, but no one seemed to want to talk about it there because they were too busy hating on some webcomic dude I don't care about, so because I am a selfish Bee-yatch I am going to make a topic in which to discuss it. Yeah, I'm aware I'm probably the ONLY person interested in this, but ask me if I care.

Can someone be both Creative and a Critic? Or do they have to distance themselves from their own creative endevoers in order for their criticism to be taken seriously? (It's awfully hard to imagine Roger Ebert directing a film.) Can they hold other artists accountable for crimes they themselves have committed in the past?

Yahtzee seems to think so: in fact he calls his webcomics a product of a "a dark time in his life from which he has determinedly moved on without a backward glance." Then this went a step farther in ZP video with the "I'm very much aware of the hyprocracy" note at the end of the Adventure Game review.

Is he right? Can someone not be a creative person AND a critic of other people's creative work without being a hypocrite?

[GoldenSeducer]

I brought this up in the other thread, but no one seemed to want to talk about it there because they were too busy hating on some webcomic dude I don't care about, so because I am a selfish Bee-yatch I am going to make a topic in which to discuss it. Yeah, I'm aware I'm probably the ONLY person interested in this, but ask me if I care.

Can someone be both Creative and a Critic? Or do they have to distance themselves from their own creative endevoers in order for their criticism to be taken seriously? (It's awfully hard to imagine Roger Ebert directing a film.) Can they hold other artists accountable for crimes they themselves have committed in the past?

Yahtzee seems to think so: in fact he calls his webcomics a product of a "a dark time in his life from which he has determinedly moved on without a backward glance." Then this went a step farther in ZP video with the "I'm very much aware of the hyprocracy" note at the end of the Adventure Game review.

Is he right? Can someone not be a creative person AND a critic of other people's creative work without being a hypocrite?

It's not hypocritical to be creative and also a critic. C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien criticized each other's work all the time, and they are probably among the most creative minds that ever existed.

Personally, I wouldn't want an uncreative dolt criticizing my work because they have nothing to offer in the way of advice.

[civilian_number_two]

Great example there GS. Other writers of literary criticism include Coleridge, Eliot, and Pound. And of course Dr Johnson. The word criticism shouldn't be used as a pejorative, but instead to describe a discipline of interpretation. Alas, in film there aren't any good examples because people associate criticism nowadays with naysaying. The original example is awesome: Roger Ebert wrote and coproduced Russ Meyer's BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS. So the ongoing stereotype that failed writers become critics holds true in that case, and in probably a lot of them.

[Gobbler]

I don't see why the seemingly untalented shouldn't be allowed to be regarded as good critics, so long as they give you proper insight into their reactions to your work and a good manner of hinting you into the right direction.

Back when I was still busy with all those anatomy studies and went on frankensteining the outlines of one person after another, criticism was most welcome, from any side, as long as it wasn't stupid. When people had a look at it and said "Something's wrong there" right away, that was already good enough, since it meant that maybe I didn't get some underlying concept right. It got even better when they went into detail about certain points. But then there were also people who didn't seem to know anything about their own anatomy for starters and made suggestions that really made no sense at all - that's the point where I'd actually prefer them to keep it superficial for once.

Anyways, as long as someone can perceive a work of art or science or both, he can have an opinion about it, and voicing this shouldn't be looked down upon.

I'd say that the actual hipocrisy remains in pretending that only someone of adequate skill can formulate the best criticisms.

[DreamerM]

C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien criticized each other's work all the time, and they are probably among the most creative minds that ever existed.

There's a twist to that story though: Tolkien could never bring himself to admit that Lewis's Narnia books were any good. Likewise, Lewis, being one of the first people to read the unfinished manuscript of the Fellowship of the Ring, very nearly caused LoTR to never be published at all: in his letter to Tolkien he made up a number of fictitious literary critics who broke the story down rather mercilessly, resulting in a period of estrangement between the two.

[Patch]

Can they hold other artists accountable for crimes they themselves have committed in the past?

As I have previously said, a criminal can change.
Equally, what stops an ex-criminal from becoming a judge?

[DreamerM]

As I have previously said, a criminal can change.
Equally, what stops an ex-criminal from becoming a judge?

Well the difference is that a Criminal has harmed society in some way. An artist who has produced medicore work in the past (and I happen to think that the Games especially are NOT medicoure) should, above all, know from experience what does and what doesn't work because they've already been there, made that mistake, and now know better.

So WHY is Yahtzee distancing himself from his own stuff? It just doesn't make any sense to me.

[Cerberus]

In that respect should ZP really be reviewing games as yahtzee is not a game designer??
Film critics dont make films yet they review them.

I dont think you have to be the creator of something before you review someones elses, I just believe you should review something based on the success and strengths of another competitor

Take CAD for example, I read both Penny Arcade and CAD but PA is my fav, CAD is like PA Lite for people who just dont get the punch lines

[FFreak3]

There is one good reason why every ACCURATE critic is also a good writer themselves.

http://en.wikipedia....g-Kruger_effect

[Uszi]

In that respect should ZP really be reviewing games as yahtzee is not a game designer??
Film critics dont make films yet they review them.

I dont think you have to be the creator of something before you review someones elses, I just believe you should review something based on the success and strengths of another competitor

Take CAD for example, I read both Penny Arcade and CAD but PA is my fav, CAD is like PA Lite for people who just dont get the punch lines

I agree--it seems that whenever you have a wealth of experience in one area, say you read 100 web comics every week or you play video games excessively, then your opinion as a critic should be valuable. After all, I could never claim to be as informed about web comics as someone who reads 100 of them a week. That difference in knowledge about the media is what I think the difference is between your average Joe and a film critic.

A more interesting question about Yahtzee's ZP reviews is: does that fact that his primary purpose is to entertain and secondary purpose to inform affect the critical value of his reviews? After all, in order to be funny, Yahtzee has to sharpen/level his testimony about a video game, usually by making it sound worse than it really is in order to have things to rant about.

Certainly, Yahtzee's reviews are insightful. But when it comes to making a decision to buy a game, how seriously do you take ZP as criticism of a game's merit?

[Ghello]

I read his reviews for entertainment and thats it really. I like Jericho, Assassins Creed, Turok, and some other games he disliked, but there's something wrong with every game no matter how good it is, and that's why it's funny to hear what he says said, espcially if he tears apart games I love, which he usually does (Im a turn-based RPG fan).

Now the critic creator thing. I don't think you really need to know how somethings made before you can judge it. Just because I don't build houses doesn't mean I know if a house looks good or not. I can look at a painting and say it's bad or not because it doesn't appeal to me. I can also say "I hate that movie" if I hated it because i've seen enough movies to know if it's shit or gold. Same with games as well, I play games alot, and even though Jericho was shit, I still enjoyed it, and it really all comes down to what you prefer at the end.

This post has been edited by Ghello: 27 March 2008 - 11:12 AM

[Uszi]

I can look at a painting and say it's bad or not because it doesn't appeal to me.

Interestingly though, if you ever took a painting class or painted on your own, you kind of gain a different appreciation for paintings: How an artist constructs an image, which strokes and colors he or she uses, etc.

Maybe the analogy you used to argue against a creator-critic could be used to defend one? Maybe critics who paint have a better appreciation of technique then do non-painting ones.



... And really, no snobish-look-down-the-nose attitude intended at all. I hardly consider myself a painter.

This post has been edited by Uszi: 27 March 2008 - 12:33 PM

[FFreak3]

A viewer can't really know whether a movie is shit or gold, unless they've been involved in the making of a film before. (ie: writing, directing, producing . . )
They can say whether they liked it or not, but I can like the taste of shit too, right? I don't, but it's possible that some people enjoy the taste?

What really distinguishes the good crap from the bad crap, and the stuff that isn't crap, is a number of criteria. Personally, I judge art the same way I judge mathematical method or other science.

A)Is it Useful?
B)Is it General?
C)Is it Easy?
Applied to math, these criteria are easy to explain: does it give a result that you can use in some way? Can you change it to make it work for more formats, variables, problems, etc.? Can i simplify it?
Applied to art:
Does it have a meaning that is new to me, or expand an old meaning in a new direction? If no, then =/= art
How many people could possibly understand the meaning? If not many, then = bad art. (judge "many" relative to the audience it has been displayed to by the author. Example: Yahtzee's games, viewed as art: the people who visit his site for the blogging can understand the humour, the drama, the characters, etc. But if his games were plastered over every gaming magazine in the world, they'd be bad art, because the audience they were portrayed to, for the large part, would be unable to understand why people would even want to play these games.)
Is it easy to understand? Why bury what you mean in incoherent sentences so you can claim that people just don't understand? If you have an idea, say it. Poets are notoriously bad at this. I don't care what you think, mediocre prose trumps excellent poetry, except where the idea can be condensed below the boundaries of prose. Ie: In the Station at the Metro, Ezra Pound (believe that's the name and author, someone correct me if I'm wrong)

Now, going through these, to explain why you have to have worked in a medium to judge a "good" movie to a "bad" movie . . .
[there was a longer explanation in here]
To shorten that, whether art is good or bad depends on the audience. To people who have never heard of family values, that boring disney stuff is going to be gold. It carries the message well (understood easily), to a maximum of people, and we already made the assumption that the message is new to these people.
But to me, disney is shit. Pretty good shit, but still, shit.
Only an author can understand the limits of a medium, of logic, of being human, when it comes to creation. He also understands where his art shouldn't fail, but does, and can forgive others for doing the same.
Basically, the author can understand the audience better than a non-author can, and can therefore can say whether art is good. (extending: true art is therefore universal: a nopn-ending supply of inspiration and idea)

On the other hand, all art, when viewed as art, (like, say, "found art", which isn't art until you say/think of it as being art), carries a message. If you have, in any form, attempted to create a message (which such stuff as found art doesn't, naturally, you create the meaning by acknowledging it), then you can appreciate the message created by the author of a medium you haven't worked in. But, you are still an amateur, compared to those authors in that medium, see my previous post for why that matters. That doesn't mean that all of those authors in that medium aren't idiots merely because no one can contradict them, but it does mean that all their art is bad art, since only they can understand it.


Clear? *sarcasm*

[Casual]

I wrote a long post on this last night but then decided not to post it because I was drunk and it was rambling. However about five other people have said what I was going to anyway, what it comes down to is anyone can criticise someone else’s work as long as their criticism is valid and constructive. Granted though some might say someone who has experience in a certain field would be able to offer more constructive criticism than most.

[DreamerM]

Some well-know movie personality (can't remember who) said that when he was growing up, he was amazed and perplexed at the number of terrible movies that manage to get made. Then he moved to LA, worked on a few productions and changed his opinion to "it's amazing that ANY good movies ever manage to get made." Virtually the stars have to align and everything has to go just right for anything good to come out of the mess of real production.