i'm imagining a world where all 4 of these videos are included in the witness's theater, and the point about different perspectives is so on-the-nose that it comes across as a joke
You finish a game, and at the end there is a video essay criticising the game. Then a video essay criticising the criticism. Then a video criticising the criticism of the criticism. And then you die in the game then you die in real life.
I think the main lesson I’ve learned from all this is the importance of polite disagreement in online media discourse. I think the main reason people are so mad about the Alliron video is because she’s so insistent on dismantling Anderson’s credibility and integrity as a critic, while making very clear that all of this is based on one video. Paradoxically, I saw people in Patrica’s comments making judgements about her based on the less flattering clips shown in that video. And it’s like, nobody in this situation actually knows each other, most of the viewer base probably hasn’t seen every video, we’re all just making judgements on each other because the other person had a take we strongly disagree with (sometimes from a video from years ago). I think a big factor in all of this is how response videos make it cool to present these types of arguments as adversarial. The person making the response is presented as the protagonist and the opposing opinion is presented as the antagonist. It’s really easy for the creator to lean into these sensationalist narratives in that format and it’s easy for the view to watch that and think “I want to get in on that action”. The problem is that in real life, not every youtuber with opinions you disagree with is the human embodiment of a social ill plaguing our society and can only be stopped if you make the bestest most epicest multi-hour video essay dissecting everything that person has ever posted to the internet. More often it’s best to just leave a reply simply explaining why you disagree, making yourself heard while refraining from ad hominems and focusing on the important points, or just ignoring it all together and moving on with your life.
More people should adopt the norms of academic response articles. I was in a philosophy department for eight years. Someone writes an article, and then other people write articles about why they think the first article was wrong. And there are conferences and discussions, and everyone has a good time and respects each other. It doesn't *always* work out. *Sometimes* academics end up hating each other--like how James Taylor and Jason Brennan hate each other, and accuse each other of being hacks. But this is not the norm. The norm is that people get along and recognize one another as good at what they do. And to be clear, this mutual respect and civility is NOT the result of the disagreement getting resolved. Overwhelmingly the disagreements never get resolved. People continue to disagree, and they still get along and respect one another anyway. Compared to most of the internet, this is night-and-day. And I can tell you which one I prefer in every way. (When academics *do* end up hating each other, in my experience, it's usually within a department, and it's due to disagreements over funding and hiring decisions and stuff like that.)
@@Megaritz You make a good point regarding how academia handles disagreement, and I think that's one of the biggest problem with TH-cam video essays, if not the biggest. A good majority of people making these essays don't have any kind of academic training, which isn't inherently bad, but that manifests in bad ways. A bad video essay on a video game is honestly the best case scenario, and at its worst you get your James Somertons and other hacks. For all of academia's problems, I feel like it's heightened on TH-cam by the money surrounding it and the fact that this is also a social media website and thus bringing all of that baggage as well (this is part of why video essays have gotten exponentially longer as well, with increased ad space combined with a lack of discipline regarding the length and time of a work combined into bloated scripts).
@@KrazyKaiser There was an 8 part response (each part about an hour long) to Hbomb's video by someone named MauLer which quite literally went line by line through Hbomb's video responding to it... and then a bunch of people responded to that, but the big one (and funniest one imo) was a video by dangitjm which spent nearly an hour responding to a mere 10 minute segment of MauLer's 8 hour thesis... and then of course Hbomb's video was basically a response to matthewmatosis... which all put together creates another 4 video deep chain...
stay tuned for my response to this video, which is not actually about the witness at all but rather mid-19th century russian wars and foreign policy, which is explored using this argument as an analogy
@@____uncompetative that's the point isn't it? These are thoughts on the subject of refutations on the subject of arguments on the subject of critiques on the subject. It's so utterly abstracted that points aren't what's needed, it's just some thoughts
@@____uncompetative having no point being the point is literally just the definition of a meta or abstract discussion or work. You are talking about something rather than to it, this video In specific was about how jatsko related their own life to the subject, rather than a continuation of discourse (when I first read your reply I thought this was for a different comment chain I was in about how to render subatomic particles in a virtual physics engine efficiently, until my brain fully processed everything lmao)
The phrase "fundamentally incurious" was originally coined by Thought Slime, who is a... frustrating figure, to say the least. Like Patricia said in her video, it's basically become a politically correct way to call someone mentally r******d.
It hit hard in that moment Because it was so perfectly directed and really captured the spirit of why someone doesn't seem to have what it takes to make good films. But I guess some people just observed that it hit hard and so think they can use it as a catchall dunk
To think Puppyhelic doesn't even agree with Joseph about the Witness, and only made a response because of how needlessly mean spirited and disingenuous Iron's video was
Dear TH-cam: I do not want to see videos of someone complaining about another persons video. I want to see videos of someone complaining about someone complaining about someone complaing about someone's video.
There's something that's been... Bothering me mildly, about this whole situation, that your video on it really helped put into words. One of my biggest takeaways from The Beginner's Guide, one of my favorite narratives, an endlessly uncomfortable and interpretable game, was that it's really dangerous to try to use a work of art to gain insight into its creator. (Spoilers for The Beginner's Guide). When Davey, the narrator, uses his acquaintance Coda's art to argue that Coda is spiraling, in desperate need of help, we get to see how damaging that is for both of them. For Davey, who seems to be projecting onto Coda, treating him like he's made of glass, maybe trying to avoid thinking about his own issues and trauma. For Coda, whose boundaries are disrespected, whose art is warped and misrepresented. And for the player, who becomes an unwitting participant in Davey's unravelling. In Joe's and Alliron's videos, and Dan Olson's, and your Submachine rant video, I get Davey vibes, you know? I can't say who the creators are, or what they were thinking when the made their videos, but a lot of time is spent talking about the creators of the art they're engaging with. Joe says that Jonathan Blow is fucking with us; Dan and Alliron say their subjects are fundamentally incurious; your discussion about Submachine centers around Skutnik and who he is and what he wants. But, like, we don't know any of these people. Skutnik posts on forums and Blow gives talks and Joe streams anime VNs post-ironically, sure, and maybe that makes it easy and tempting to try to make our experience with their work about them, personally. But why does my experience of feeling like I was tricked into wasting my time with a game have to translate to "The game's creator just made the whole thing as a big fucking troll?" Why does my disagreement with a video render its creator stupid? We should be able to experience a work of art, or art criticism, without trying to pathologize it's creator. Maybe it's a kind of parasociality. I go to a gallery and see a painting and I mistake it for a window. In Morris Graves' self-portrait I think I see the man himself, but even a self portrait might tell me less about the artist then it does about me. Graves drew a quirk into his eyebrow and I read it as cynicism -- was that him, or me? Was "Self-Portrait" a window, or a mirror, or some mysterious third thing, a construct of canvas and oil? More and more I find that I wish that critics would engage with the substance of a work, rather than the imagined pathologies of its creator; would use their criticism as a chance to revel in their own subjective experience, rather then as a weapon to attack the artist with.
This really helped me identify the sort of subtle venom I've felt in these videos. It's hard to spot when it's within a long-form video essay, but these analyses of the creator can really poison a critique and turn it from constructive to cruel. Also I love the comparison to the beginner's guide, it's such a good game that discusses themes I haven't really seen discussed elsewhere.
Probably about time I play The Beginner's Guide; I feel like I understand all the basic story beats just by how much I've heard people talk about it (and maybe I watched a playthrough a bunch of years ago; can't remember). The whole thing with trying to figure out the connections we have with the people that we're talking to is something you extended pretty well here, with mentioning the parasocial aspect specifically. For each of the videos mentioned, I imagine it exists on a different level - some much more than others. It's sometimes difficult to assert what is an appropriate level of familiarity, especially in the case of game developers that have the ability/make the effort to connect with the people who are playing their games. They want to connect in a certain way, and you want to connect back, but by also being careful not to make it too much about yourself, but also at the same time the way you experience their work is necessarily purposeful. So yeah, a delicate balance. And of course, us being concerned with what is right and what is wrong, if we see something they're doing as wrong it only feels natural to call it out. Thanks for your comment!
"I go to a gallery and see a painting and I mistake it for a window." is such an absolutely profound statement that encompasses the essence of projecting onto something or someone.
I get where you're coming from, but I also think it's just something inherent to art and thus art critique. Sure, you can invoke death of the artist and run with your own interpretation and that's completely fine, but all art is created with *some* kind of feeling or intention behind it. Even abstract art that's just paint splatters on a canvas is the artist trying to express their emotions. To completely ignore that aspect of it, to an extent, makes the art meaningless, in my opinion. Art is communication, one human trying to make the other one feel something. It can work, fail, or fall anywhere in between. To simply look at art and accept it as it is is inherently nihilistic to me. If that's the only way you're going to look at a work, why engage with art at all? Critics are born from this base assumption that art has some kind of meaning to it imbued by the creator. Typically (but not always) critics train themselves or are trained in the art of symbolism, narrative devices, etc. so as to more readily be able to pick up on the intent of the art and thus, the artist. Not everyone may agree with a critic, though, and while everyone is entitled to their opinion, this is where the issues start, I think. It's one thing to say "I respectfully disagree with your assessment" in response to someone's interpretation of a piece, but making assumptions about the critic based on their response to the art is where it leaves the realm of criticism and enters the realm of debates and (if the involved people are less respectful) personal attacks. At that point the art itself is no longer the focal point of the conversation, it merely becomes a piece of evidence you can use to win your argument and prove yourself right and the critic wrong. This has happened countless times over the course of history, but it's especially rampant and prolific when it comes to games because of just how encompassing they are. You can only really look at a painting or read a book, but games, especially in the modern day where they're often extremely long or more of a community due to online components, capability for self expression, or being involved in fandoms, means that people develop an emotional attachment to a game or game series. Thus what you see is less a civil conversation about the good and bad points of a video game, and more someone responding in an inherently emotional way and with personal insults. Something they like, part of their identity, was attacked, and most people in that state don't have the ability to see their emotions objectively and realize this is not a factual matter but a subjective one, so they lash out with an argument that is less based in evidence and more based in their feelings, *while trying to make it seem like it's factual* . That last bit is the main issue. Everyone (sometimes even the original critic) puts on a facade of respectful conversation, but in reality it's a thinly veiled shouting match where they're all trying to prove their feelings and opinions to be "correct," which of course isn't possible and quickly devolves into a fruitless conversation, with the audience caught in the crossfire. Did you notice how I haven't mentioned a single thing about the actual game The Witness (2016) anywhere in this comment, yet it's still "on topic"? That's a good sign that the conversation has devolved into something honestly not worth expanding upon.
Joe never said that Jonathan was being a troll. It’s weird that nobody is talking about this but he says the game feels like a troll played by Johnathan to see if people like what he makes because it’s good or if they like it just because it’s made by him. He never proposed it as a theory but just used it to state how weirdly uncomfortable the game feels when you play it.
It’s sadly far too common these days to assume the worst of people based on minimal information. We know everything about The Witness itself. We can argue that the game is really good, or really pretentious, or both, and because we have the entirety of it known to us those interpretations are all valid. What isn’t valid is extending those interpretations to the creator, because at the most fundamental level we do not know them. We do not have all the deeper context on Jonathan Blow required to call him a troll or a hack or a genius, we do not have the context on Joseph Anderson required to call him “fundamentally incurious”. And speculating on those things is only interesting up to the point that it becomes genuinely insulting. You cannot know someone from small glimpses of their work or their tastes, and it’s worse that we all seem to be biased towards assuming the worst, even when it isn’t even remotely justified. I have watched a majority of Anderson’s video essays and have come to the conclusion that I dislike them and the angle they take to criticism, and I disagree personally with the overall messages of most of them, but I still respect Anderson and think he deserves a platform. My disagreement is purely my personal feelings on someone’s content, and there is no reason for me to extend those to the creator. I like Anderson and dislike his content, and that isn’t a contradiction in the slightest.
How on Earth did these two parts of my life cross over? How did a TH-camr who I learned about back when I was into Submachine as a 12 year old do a response to a TH-camr who I learned about maybe a year ago as a transfem furry online? This is the most ridiculous crossover episode of my life. I love it.
I haven't finished the video yet but calling Joseph Anderson a "fundamentally incurious person" is just so startlingly inaccurate if you've seen any more than one of his videos or listened to him talk ab how he thinks in his streams
I definitely disagree with him about many things, but watching him throw himself at the Sun Station over and over again for hours in The Outer Wilds did make it EXCEEDINGLY clear he's naturally curious
@@flashfire505 That sounds more like determination than curiosity. I watch a lot of Outer Wilds playthroughs and honestly Anderson's felt like one of the least curious I'd seen (disclaimer: watched a supercut).
I feel like the biggest thing Alliron and Patricia miss is this: Joseph is reviewing The Witness as a game, not as art. His points are mostly about how the experience differs aggressively from how many people are led to interpret the store page. People expect a puzzle game with narrative, but instead they get an art exhibit with some puzzles in it. Both are good in their own right, but if someone is expecting one and gets the other, they're likely to be disappointed.
As someone who has her own personal history with The Witness and has also been following this enthralling saga, I'm really happy to have come across this. I went in with no expectations and by the end I found myself really resonating with the desire to tap into personal experiences when talking about games, or just art in general. I agree games are a form of artistic communication, and while critique is an important part of that, I think sometimes we fail to acknowledge the context in which we have these conversations. Where we are in life when we encounter a piece of art greatly influences how we respond to it, especially with art that's harder to interpret. As someone who grew up watching a lot of youtube reviews and such, I'm glad that nowadays seemingly more and more people are willing to talk about their personal experiences with art, and not just trying to generalize it for the sake of some numeric score. It could be that I've personally matured and just gotten better at seeking out good analysis, but I would like to believe that there is a general trend towards having better conversations about games.... At least I hope so. Maybe one day when I finally finish one of my scripts I can be a part of that too, but hey. All in all I really enjoyed these personal reflections from you and they made me reflect too, so this is a great video in my book. Overall score 4/10, no furry rantsona.
You're already part of the conversation-conversation requires listeners, or else it's just yelling at clouds-but also, finish a script! You've already done the hardest part, which is starting a script. That's at least, what, 90%? You probably already even know how you want to finish. That's another 8%. We all know inspiration is 1%, so now you only have 1% of work left before your first video is done. -me to myself in the mirror every morning
@@ExxyPlays Damn, that's a really neat way to look at it. Thank you youtuber user exxyplaysandplays, the day I finally get off my ass will in small part be contributed to by you.
@@ExxyPlays Yeaaaah, that's a neat way to see it. Thank you youtube user exxyplaysandplays, the day I finally get off my ass will in small part be contributed to by you
I think this was a really lovely video, and your words at the end about how you want to talk about videogames resonated a lot with me and how I want to, like, engage in discussion around art without simply falling back on easy measures of faux-objective "quality". Thank you for making this
I took one look at the runtime and knew this video would be a worthwhile watch. Any video that can comment on a triple recursive response chain in only thirty minutes must be good. You explained your thoughts well and this was very entertaining.
I never played The Witness but everything that Joseph Anderson said aboot Jonathan Blow's disregard for his player's time rang true for me due to my experience with Braid
I think the main tension in his video is that I don't think he made it just because he had thoughts on it, I think he was being a games journalist, he was reviewing a game. And this is a TENSION because you can feel that he's not just thinking or discussing how own experience with the game, but his viewer's hypothetical experience. He's trying to give a responsible recommendation and that involves airing out a lot of frustrations but like, ultimately it's a positive review.
Also how can you call someone "incurious" when you don't even look at their other videos, like dude Loved Steven's Sausage Roll and that game is like, unbelievably hard I could never.
This is so well made and the main reason for that is that you share what you know: your take and your opinions. You do not grandstand and you just show how everything you interact with makes you feel. This feels like a diary entry that I stumbled upon with how real you are being. Its nice to hear you talk about yourself
Came for the continued chain of silliness, stayed for the Submachine rant and reflection that echoes my own views and feelings about the Five Nights at Freddy's franchise.
This reminds me of when the "commentary community" referred to much smaller channels than it does now where people would make these longs chains of response videos, sometimes even collabing with other commentators in the process, and it would devolve into an incoherent slide show of furry rantsonas crossing their arms at each other over someone's top 10 worst pokemon list. *sigh* Those were the days...
I think that this video critique-ception has proven at least one thing : Joseph Anderson's video, while flawed, hit on something in his analysis that resonated with a lot a people. He clearly is not alone in feeling like something smells rotten at the core of The Witness, and it's not just because of his writing or editing skills. Is Anderson unfair in his engagement with the game's puzzles? Almost undeniabely yes, he is. But is he wrong in calling the game pretentious? Like it or not, his analysis has struck a chord, since so many people are arguing about it, and I don't think you can dismiss it as just being "uncurious" anymore.
I think what's appealing about Joseph Anderson's content is that his critiques are honest and that he approaches things from an "everyman/layman" perspective. He will make a review after reflecting on his personal experience with a game and articulate it in those terms, and even if/when he acknowledges his own biases or presumptions, he still holds the game accountable for leading him to those presumptions or letting him maintain that bias. This is why his critiques of soulsborne games are both really popular and well received but also a point of friction in the respective community. He's able to articulate his experience with the games from a perspective most people can relate to or understand, which I think has value, but I think he also often fails to do the legwork to back up his more technical criticisms (he's responsible for a lot of misinformation about game mechanics in both DS3 and Elden Ring for example). His "Subjectivity is Implied" video made me more sympathetic and charitable to his perspective even when I disagree with them.
@@duvetboa yeah, I'm fine with people expressing their own personal feelings on games. The problem comes when they then start trying to explain what is wrong with the game to have made them feel that way whilst having no actual knowledge about how the game functions. Or when people try to argue that a game is objectively bad because it wasn't made to appeal to them. At that point it's no longer just that person sharing their experience, it's spreading falsehoods.
People have a very strong need to see things resolved, and sometimes they react more positively or negatively to that tension never dissipating. Sometimes they're able to convert it into an appreciation of the mystery and intrigue, but they can also get burned out on it and view it unfavorably. Both Joseph and I clearly didn't vibe with The Witness and Submachine back then, but my thoughts have changed since then and I hope to delve into it more in a future video.
@@CheesecakeMilitia My point wasn't "popular = true" My point was that a lot people have responded to that video, either to defend it, critique it, or analyse it, which makes clear that there is an opinion expressed in it that people feel the need to respond to. Like, the fact that people are debating so much whether Anderson's opinion is valid makes it valid in itself. There is a discussion to be had here, and you can't dismiss the video on bad faith arguments.
Anderson's "Witness" video was how I found him, and I found that video while searching for information on the game; specifically, I had mostly finished the game, and I wanted to know what the obelisks were for (i.e., what the goal was for completing them). Funnily enough, I disagreed with the Anderson's overall conclusion (that Blow was intentionally being facetious), but agreed with many of the sub-points. My take away from the game before watching the video was a theme of perspective (ironic); I interpreted Anderson's observations according to that presupposition, and it served to reaffirm them to me. I didn't know there was so much followup, and I find it unfortunate that so much of it has centered around character attacks. He's as guilty of it as the rest, but the mistakes of one do not justify subsequent behaviors; rather than trying to discredit the critic, address the critique, and acknowledge the subjectivity therein.
Petition to include this video essay chain into the "The Witness Anniversary Edition", with a secret puzzle that requires you to watch all the videos back to back in the theatre (finding the correct path will be dependent on trivia from these essays so you can't just let the game run for one hour in the background like last time)
the most important video you didnt mention is "Jonathan Blow crying in a dark room about Soulja Boy misunderstanding Braid" If you brought that up i think this video woulda been better.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. It's hard to put clear and short words on my feelings, but I love how The Witness has basically served as a blank canvas to think about my own views on games and life, and how it allows me to confront other completely different idea in other people's experience of the game. Absurdity of completion, complexity of real life problems and enigmas in work of arts were subjects I stumbled upon by playing, but put together with your video, these subjects come again for me to ponder upon. I love the human experience of sharing thoughts for this, and I love in the light of your conclusion. Thanks again.
Also, thank you for talking about The Witness. I wouldn't have found your channel if it wasn't the case, and you seem to talk about subject I really fucking love !
I haven’t watched the video yet but I’m already delighted. How deep will the analysis and the responses go. What is it about this puzzle game that makes people so emotional they can’t help but respond. Exciting
I like my art a little esoteric and I think there's more to an experience than sending a clear message or "figuring it out" (though I do love a good mystery too). I'm currently making art that (if anyone ever gets to see it) people will say many of the same negative things said about these games. That makes me kind of sad I don't expect my art to resonate with everyone but I don't want to make people feel cheated out of a complete experience. You're quickly becoming a favorite youtuber. From talking about an underappreciated game series to some based takes and now a rare level of self reflection. Appreciate you.
i think what's so funny to me personally is that the submachine rant is very similar to how i feel about the fnaf series. there was never a planned, coherent story, but rather than actually try to build one, scott cawthon, the creator and writer, engaged in theories and fandom and relied on THEM to make the story for him. even worse, he'd completely turn those theories on their heads to, what i assume is, keep people guessing and keep people intrigued in the series when the gameplay has always been a bit... lackluster. it was great to keep people invested in the moment, but it only created bigger headaches for fans in the future and anyone else who wasn't there to experience the chaos themselves. that's all, i just wanted to share that :)
First time watcher of the channel, what a well put together, insightful, and illuminating video. I greatly enjoyed how you were able to truly immerse us in your perspective
I highly recommend Jackson Wagner's Examining 'The Witness' series. It's hours and hours long, but it's a level headed, educated, and illuminating discusson of the game's various themes from a philosophical angle
I had no idea that there were even refutations of Joes review before watching this, but I can definitely see why. I'm not going to call his review perfect, its not, and i can definitely see why his video would garner a response, and a response thereof and so forth. But jumping into this video without seeing the inbetween refutations is interesting! Especially given your perspective as someone who has made a video similar to Joe's critique. Theres a particular kind of frustration that anyone can feel when they feel their time has been wasted by something theyre so invested in, thats how Joe's video comes across to me personally, that can be met by a lot of pushback by people who didnt get that. Its a difference in experiences and what you gained or didnt gain from that. This is just how i believe this whole Refutation Rabbit Hole is just from an outside point of view. Maybe im wrong, but either way, i greatly enjoyed your video on it im definitely gonna check out more of your work! As an aside: calling joe "fundamentally incurious" is just untrue if u know anything about him or his body of work, and i think is just being mean for the sake of being mean. joes work is incomparable to the nostalgia critics even on just a surface level, and that drawing the line between the two just felt like that reviewer in particular just wanted to knock him down a peg and call him derivative.
Honestly i don't think any review can be perfect, at least in the sense that people generally use that word. Reviews are fundamentally opinions, they'll have facts sprinkled in, but in the end a review that is *only* fact certainly doesn't feel like a complete one. And opinions can't really be correct or incorrect, you can only agree or disagree with them to various degrees. So, by extension, you can only have degrees of agreement with a review. I think it's fine to respond to reviews, but only if one recognizes that they can only correct the factual statements and not the opinions. Something like "actually you didn't softlock yourself there, if you had waited another 30 seconds instead of ragequitting then the game would have simply opened the door as a failsafe." is fine, so long as you're at least as polite about it as the person you're responding to was in their review. And this is something i really like about Joe, he generally makes it clear when something is his opinion. Which makes it feel very icky when someone insults him in their response.
as a fan of submachine myself (I think we may have interacted on the official discord at least once? haven't been active on there in ages though) it's interesting to me that you and I came away with such different takes on how you felt about submachine at the time of that videoessay and how you felt about the witness when you first played it, and I think it comes down to the fact that I never expected an answer about what the submachine is or how it works (I took it more as a story about people who were destroying themselves trying to comprehend something beyond human comprehension), but I expected the puzzles in the witness to lead up to some kind of revelation about the nature of the island and was disappointed with what a non-reveal it felt like to me (I went in expecting a myst-style "learn about this place and what happened to it" story and felt cheated when I didn't get that). I think there's something interesting to be said about how much analysis/criticism is driven by what expectations we approach things with and expect to have met, rather than the impartial logic we'd like to think we see things with.
Absolutely; that's something I'd like to highlight more in the future as well - how we walk away from things based on whether we were able to allow our expectations to not control what the creative work sets out to offer. If you're interested in another example of this, I talked with another Submachine fan named Anteroinen on my second channel (Jatsko2) about Skutnik's game Slice of Sea. During this I felt like the points that Anteroinen raised against the game were largely a result of them not fully meeting the game on its own terms when it came to how it offered it's gameplay mechanics. More blunt people would say "they just didn't get it" and I definitely felt like saying something like that at various points, but that would've missed the necessary nuance to really carry the conversation forward. If you're interested in seeing how that went down I recommend watching it!
I'm glad for the self discovery that the original game and these subsequent videos have enabled for you. What a wonderful thing about art, hmm? I still am reeling at the fact that Alliron wanted to make a 2 hour video about someone else's capacity to critique a puzzle game, which surely took many hours of work to make, and didn't spend a bit of time watching more than one of that person's critiques of a puzzle game, or trying to learn very much about that person at all.
Seriously, thank you for this. For being so genuine and vocalizing so many mental pathways that I wouldn't or couldn't have gone down on my own. I hope your day is treating you well :)
i would like to appreciate how this title owns far bigger a spot light then the video its self anyways im really hyped for an addendum on "Some Personal Thoughts on "A Refutation of "A Refutation of Joseph Anderson's "The Witness - A Great"
I really love your anecdotally based writing style and would love to see where you could go from here, I think you can really make something of this channel by branching out into larger topics like this
I do think Alliron was a bit out of line with her critique of Joseph tbh, I see where she’s coming from but it feels weird to say a video game reviewer’s critique is invalid. He can have his opinions and she can have hers, there’s more than enough space for both and neither is wrong or right. Video games are art and art is in the eye of the beholder (or so I’ve been told), so different people are going to have different takeaways after playing a game. Who is she to say that Joseph “doesn’t get it” just because she disagrees with him? Neither opinion *can* be wrong, they can just *be*.
I think its valid to say a critique is flawed if the critique is based upon a flawed perspective or is made without fully understanding the intent behind the material. For example, a movie critic having a phobia of gore and thus rating horror movies disproportionately poorly. That doesnt make their subjective critique wrong but it does make it flawed as its not from the intended audience. Alliron gets it wrong by assuming Anderson's critique is from the point of view of someone who doesnt get puzzle games, which a basic glance over his other videos disproves, and by also assuming that hes trying to be objective. Anderson has made it pretty clear that his reviews are from his perspective only and trusts the audience to make their own conclusions based on his viewpoint. Any criticism of Andersons reviews then just boil down to being a disagreement, not an argument on objective fact. If Alliron knew this or decided to view it this way i doubt the video would have been made, but she got upset and made assumptions and came to a bad conclusion. If you want an invalid critique, it would actually be better to watch Allirons video as a proper example, since it does not take into account proper context or properly dissect the material. (Sorry for the word dump this was just a good place to put my opinions)
This is the first video on this topic I’m watching so I don’t have any context. However… There is a difference between objectivity and subjectivity. Art can be criticized and praised from an objective viewpoint. Critiques can be objectively critiqued. Art can be subjectively critiqued and elevated.
@@picklechip9294 Fully agree, and I don't think she was necessarily wrong for making a response video. Critique is a dialogue and if she was just wanting to put forth a different perspective using Joseph's video as a springboard and a point of comparison, I think that would've been perfectly fine. But instead, she argues in bad faith that Joseph is somehow wrong in his opinions when they're just that, his opinions. It leans into this vitriol that is ever prevalent in online discourse where she has to turn Joseph into a bad actor in order to justify her stance (and more importantly, get clicks on her video) which takes it to an unnecessary negative level imo.
@@Alberecht I agree that objective statements can be made about art, sure (f.e. "this is an acrylic painting" or "this painting depicts X person"), but when you reach a higher level of dialogue about an artwork, such as critique, you are no longer in the realm of objectivity and everything voiced will be a subjective opinion. Critique is inherently subjective, it's a subject (the critic) expressing their feelings about a piece of artwork and delving into why they feel that way about it. Yes, there are certain things that are understood to be "bad" by the general public but even those are also subjective opinions. Take bugs f.e., generally considered to be a bad aspect of video games, and I'd agree with that statement. But what if the bugs are an intended part of the work? What if the developer put them in there to give the player a feeling of frustration or annoyance? What if the critic *likes* the bugs being in the game? I once watched a critique of Tears of the Kingdom where the critic argued that its successor, Breath of the Wild, was a better game because there were more bugs in it that could be used to exploit the physics engine of the game. Now, do I agree with that take? No, absolutely not. But it's still his subjective opinion and therefore a valid criticism. In fact, the entire speedrunning community engages with games in this way. Another example is Joseph Anderson himself in his Fallout 76 video. There he discusses the myriad of game breaking bugs and visual glitches present in the game and he states that, despite agreeing that the lack of polish is unacceptable, they nonetheless made his experience more enjoyable due to them being funny.
@@Alberecht You can't criticize or praise anything objectively as those are decided from the subject's point of view. What something is is different to what you feel about it.
After watching this video, I decided to write my own video essay titled: “My Interpretation of ‘Some Personal Thoughts on ‘A Refutation of a Refutation of Joseph Anderson’s ‘The Witness - A Great Game You Shouldn’t Play’’’”
I feel like this chain is missing that game reviewing is a collaborative art. Anderson kind of started the chain on TH-cam, with the most incisive review. That does not mean it is without flaw. Disagreeing and adding to interpretation is not a competetive attack its an addendum that will inform the greater meaning of the text If everyone in the chain was more referential, they would produce better work. Anderson included
Fascinating entry into this now quadrilogy. I agree that it is undirected but like, the clip of the video you made expressing your frustrations with a game series you loved just like, hit me really hard. I don't think on the surface it is angry or mean and I hope I'm just projecting but it felt like lashing out, like you were mad at the developer and not afraid to hurt them because you were also mad at yourself. This comment feels undirected now too whoops, my point was that I empathize with you greatly. Oh also I appreciate that you take pride in your beliefs and put conscious effort into them, but are still willing to admit when sometimes you just feel yourself being swayed by whatever someone said most recently as long as they were decently compelling.
"you were mad at the developer and not afraid to hurt them because you were also mad at yourself" - in a sense, sure. When I spend so much time being absolutely entrenched in this thing I like but still not fully understanding it in the way I want, being unable to reach that point generated the big question of, essentially "what's going wrong here? Who's not doing something correctly? Is it the developer for not putting together a good story that allows us to understand it like we want to (and we think he wants us to)? Or is this on me for just not thinking it through correctly after all this time, or am I just exhausted because I'm burning out on it?". A better version of that video would spend more time talking about myself and how I personally felt about it, treating it more as a conversation rather than a rational, structured essay as to why the focus of tension is simply wrong. Clearly it's not that simple! Thanks for your thoughts!
we achieved the good ending, thank god /lh /hj but seriously i love this video and have been wondering a lot about this stuff myself and i'd love to see more personal talks about games rather then a millionth game critic/theory/whatever video (there's still space for all that stuff, personally i'm really tired of it though)
The good is varied and complex. Whether frustration is a good intermediary to the good of intellectual unraveling of a story, or a good in itself for that as a drive instead of a goal, is not a settled issue. The looseness of phrases, praises or insults, that art critics have towards subjects of their criticisms, creates more excitement than it does a concrete and thorough understanding of the subject. And that failure to get to concrete understanding might be a good in its own right. The recognition of the insufficiency of our methods of criticism is itself a better jumping board to start our investigation of goodness than the presuppositions we discover dont provide what they promise. Thank you for thinking and not mistaking the good to already be given
I'll have to watch your Steam Library review series, because I love a lot of those games! I found this really thoughtful, and I agree that it's important to view art from an empathetic perspective, whether that's a game or a video someone makes.
I remember only watching Anderson's video a while ago, and suddenly I find myself deep down in The Witness youtube drama 😂 How did I get here again? Amazing how much discussion this game can cause - in the year 2024 no less!
I played the witness I 100%ed all the puzzles and completely missed all the audio logs. I didn’t even know the audio logs or story existed until I had already 100%ed all the normal puzzles and was halfway through the secret meta puzzles. At that point it was weird so I didn’t bother going back to get them. What the hell is going on
@@floreroafloreril1458Well, we have to wait for the next one to keep continuity else they'll be 2 diverging paths in the thumbnail which is infinitely less funny
@@someoneontheinternet4518 I'd say that opens the possibility of a madlad putting both thumbnail paths into his thumbnail and roll with that, which is hilarious
A refutation of a refutation of a refutation of a refutation… *3 HOURS LATER* …of a refutation of a refutation of a refutation of “Joseph Anderson’s The Witness, A Great Game You Shouldn’t Play”
The Witness was my most anticipated release following the PS4 announcement show. I even kept up with the developer logs over the months and months of delays. Naturally, the anticipation this built would create a hole impossible for any game to fill. But even with that in mind, I feel like the game fell tremendously short. I had a fantastic time with it (most of the time) and yet... i couldnt recommended to anyone. It felt bloated, but also lacking. How could that be? Anderson's video really helped me put into perspective what my problems were with the game. I want to say I agree with everything he said, but I think his 'overall trajectory' is what stuck with me the most. From my point of view, the Witness is a game that was only 80% complete... but then they polished the shit out of that 80%. Imagine eating a sandwhich, and its a great sandwich, but there's no bread on the bottom. Its just one ingredient, half an ingredient at that since theres still a slice at the top... and yet, what would otherwise be a delightful meal is now a tiresome, and quite potentially messy ordeal. It doesn't matter how good the other 80% of the sandwich is, because if you leave put the bottom, the whole thing falls apart. To follow this analogy to its illogical conclusion, I wish that, when making The Witness, they either actually finished making a sandwich or just fully committed and made what they wanted to. Taco? Pizza? Put in a blender for all I care. I just want something intelligently designed beginning, middle, and end. Where i can enjoy myself and not feel like a messy idiot who still hasnt got his fill.
With the "Refutation", I agreed with a lot of the points about Joe's critique, but not with the method and accusations. I very much agreed that the second half had devolved into a rant that focused more on spewing baseless insults and incohesive arguments than an actual analysis or attempt at discussion. Your own Submachine video, admittedly, was such as well, and I am of the opinion that if you allow that to happen in your 'critiques', you're deserving of either harsh (but FAIR) criticism or for the audience to ignore your what you're trying to say. Joe went on to do much better work, but that second half of the The Witness critique will always remain his 'Lost Izalith' moment. In my opinion, if you're trying to present a genuine, long-form critique to your audience, you should NEVER allow it turn into a rant, even in TH-cam format. The audience SHOULD give less consideration for your thoughts and arguments if it were to occur, even if the rant can still be an interesting topic of discussion; just not in the way that the one making the rant was expecting and/or hoping. More on the importance of self-reflection, tempering one's biases, and trying to understand the intentions of the artist, rather than the actual talking points brought up by the critique. At least, that's how I've remembered Joe's Witness video.
Video games are not made for critique, but neither are books, or movies, or any art. It just happens to be a helpful tool for creators to "improve" their art by understanding what the audience likes and dislikes about it, and also for the audience to understand if the art is for them. But you should still try to draw your own conclusions about anything, and not blindly accept other people's opinions.
I will say that i have always believed there are some works where the actual intended meaning or themes are so opaque, so hard to truly find and so vague that they are effectively none. And i always feel this way about literal in universe events. And this video captured a lot of why I feel that way. Like Yume Nikki is great but i always felt it's best enjoyed as sort of an art gallery because trying to find much meaning or actual in universe events beyond the most basic feels. Very difficult if not impossible(which weirdly I think does add to the themes of willing isolation that are there but it is a great example for this so, genuinely sorry Yume Nikki you are great but also as an example). Like it's clearly implied that the main character has some form of trauma that keeps them from going outside, or at least feels heavily implied by a lot of locations you see having say, blood around roads or vaguely sexual imagery. But finding what exactly it was is nearly impossible (which again i think adds to it in Yume Nikki's case but again, good example of the idea.) And this is definitely something I think some game devs absolutely take the piss with. We know getting a game theory video is winning the lottery more or less for devs, so it makes total sense to me that some devs purposely just make some aspects literally impossible to solve or have no answer not as an artistic choice but purely marketing and profit. And I think themes can also be done this way, and if them than whatever the actual point or moral or central idea of a story is. Serves the same function in a lot of ways even if you are much less likely to have the green angel show up and give you a free who knows how many extra eyes and likely paying consumers on your game. Now to be fair, IDT I have seen a game do the piss taking money not explaining thing with themes. I definitely think I have with the in universe events even down to retconning things without ever even telling anyone they were retconned or tailoring your plot around the theories(in fact the bendy and the ink machines dev have debatably admited to doing that with the fan interest around Alice Angel although it is likely her role was going to be played by another character and they gave it to her because they thought it'd be neat but i digress.) but I do think it is definitely possible to have ended up seeming like a dev did do the money grabbing theme without it being intended. Just being the ind of creator who makes a work that happens to be that opaque(Beyond reason imo) but not doing so maliciously. Plus I do have personal beef with any game that makes you literally just stand there for some completion bonus unless it's like, a Far Cry style joke ending. Yes I think montanousness and even mind numbingness can be used very effectively in games but in say, Undertale, you are still doing SOMETHING, even if it is tedious and mind numbing it is something and you can still save and come back to it later. Meanwhile Briad and the Wittness just says "Fuck you and your real life stuff outside of the game, literally wait for a cartoonishly long time to get this one collectable and if you miss it by a few seconds do it again." Which genuinely just feels insulting to the player both in terms of what you are trying to say they are willing to do and also just for the players life outside of that one game and doing with that time anything else they would like to be doing then not playing the game with it open until the funny timer runs out and they don't miss that one jump.
Your story about disappointment with Submachine really resonated with me, and not only as a casual fan of the Submachine games. When I was younger, I was a ~Zelda timeline theorist~. I went through the same cycle of satisfaction, obsession, shock and disappointment, and finally back to satisfaction. And I think that same cycle could apply to The Witness, too. It’s fun to pick art apart like that, but ultimately you will be disappointed when you interrogate a piece in a way that the artist didn’t. Better to sit back and enjoy.
Love dan olson, it's tragic that he accidentally invented the new way to call people fcking idiots on the internet while sounding intellectual & magnanimous
"fundamentally incurious" captures a very specific type of person and i personally don't even see it as an insult so it's very annoying when people just use it as a synonym for "person with a bad opinion"
hahaha I’m just going to leave here at 5.48 - What’s happened is, I’m a fan of Joseph Anderson, and I’m a fan of Patricia Taxxon, and when she dropped her video I’d never heard of All Iron Talks (? sorry if that’s not right, I have bad hearing) and thought that Patty was starting beef with Jo. I skipped the video because even though I’m sure there are many interesting things to be said to counter Joseph, I disagree with him myself semi-frequently, I mainly hold the value that Two Bad Bitches Shouldn’t Fight. This is me realising that I’m wrong about what Patricia’s video is, so I’m gonna go and watch it. hahahaha
I feel like the underlying premise of your old Submachine video itself might be a bit off. I feel like Skutnik is less the type of guy who like intentionally "keeps up the mystery" out of some plan to drive up audience engagement, and more just someone driven by wherever his artistic inclination take him. I don't think "people will enjoy his games more" is entirely irrelevant to him, but I don't think it's the driving factor behind the artistic choices he makes. When he acts like he is discovering this stuff alongside his players, I don't think that's just an act. Compare Submachine to Daymare Town, which seems even more of a passion project for him and is even more vague in it's plot and world-building. Maybe this approach to art is more commonplace/accepted/less-looked-down-upon here in mainland Europe? I dunno and I don't know the guy.
I definitely don't currently think that Skutnik is/was doing the cold-calculation angle, looking at his work in terms of only numbers and driving up interest. I don't think I thought that completely back when I made that video criticizing him either; I think I just was looking at it from a less-than-charitable angle. Since then I've evolved my thoughts a lot more when it comes to creators having a sustained air of mystery over the things they make, and I hope to go more in-depth with that in future videos. I think that, especially after talking to him more over the past few years, it's much closer to how you described it.
Go play Linelith everyone, it's a game that's similar to The Witness but short and focused. It's by the same dev as Patrick's Parabox. And of course, go play The Looker, a parody of The Witness. (I have not played The Witness because I watched Joseph Anderson's video and know that I absolutely would sit and watch that forty minute lecture should I purchase the game. Perhaps an irrational reason).
I sat and watched the 40 minute lecture, (and the rest of them), and for the most part, I found the experience enriching. What I did _not_ do was watch them through a second time. I started the puzzle, drew half the line, and came back 30 minutes later to wrap it up. As an aside, while we're shooting out recommendations, Taiji is a game very similar to The Witness in some basic ways that doesn't have any 40 minute long lectures wrapped up in it.
@@fieldrequired283 I have Taiji wishlisted! Just waiting for the price to come down to where I'd want to get it. Maybe one of these days The Witness' low sale price will entice me enough to get it and I'll form my own opinion on the game.
The other day, I got a Discord message from a friend asking, "Why is The Witness so bad?" I tried to answer to the best of my ability, and then was hit with, "Then why have you played it for 15 hours on Steam? I only got 10 minutes in." Didn't really know how to answer that, but I did send them a link to the Joseph Anderson video. Side note: I stopped playing the game after 15h because the game had started making me nauseated after like 30 seconds of play for some reason.
What I've come to believe over the years, about media critique is that even if someone is wrong subjectively or objectively, if they engaged with it in good faith, and shared their opinion honeatly that's completely fine. For example I don't really agree with how JA critiqued Elden Rings bosses, I think his methodology is flawed and not congrous with the intent of the devs. Still, I believe it's his honest opinion so there's no reason for me to get mad about it or anything. I watch/listen to vodeos about media to get new perspectives and perspectives I might disagree with might be the most important.
If you want more content on the themes etc. present in The Witness I recommend the long series by Jackson Wagner. While I haven't watched them all I really enjoyed the 5th episode on the Fortress.
The first part of this video (about not only defining yourself by your own opinions, but also being so inspired by other people's opinions that they can regularly cause you to go 180 on things) resonated with me so much, that I would really like to talk to you personally about it. I don't think I've ever felt so closely related to what someone else described online that they experienced. I've struggled with these feelings for a while, because it's caused some really big doubts in my own personality. I know it's a big ask, but if you would drop some form of communication (e.g. a discord tag), through which I could contact you privately, I'd really appreciate it. Otherwise I'd love to hear, if anyone else has felt this way before.
i mean, i looked at the design of the game. no sprint button, EXTREMELY slow moving bridges and that fucking moon film puzzle. my interpretation was that mr blow was trying to tell us to stop wasting our time playing video games, and the 110% secret ending seemed to reveal that. my interpretation doesnt mention that my brain simply does not feel rewarded for sliding a bunch of lines around a grid, but i like myst and its sequels, so...
yayy a new perspective, this time about that perpective that i didn't watch where they disagree with a perspective that i disagreed with, in which the person disagreed with a perspective that i disagree with about how they had a perspective about a game which could be perceived as being about perspectives. *add this one to the theatre :3*
I love this style of video. A long, wandery personal story linking a bunch of pieces of media. It's fun :) honestly, if I got into making youtube videos or any other kind of Content(tm), I'd wanna do things like this. It fukken rules.
oh dear
Quick, everyone hide!
cant wait for joe to return after his break to add his reply to however many layers of analysis we'll be on by that point
love your music!
I hope this keeps escalating
the deer in question
i'm imagining a world where all 4 of these videos are included in the witness's theater, and the point about different perspectives is so on-the-nose that it comes across as a joke
You finish a game, and at the end there is a video essay criticising the game. Then a video essay criticising the criticism. Then a video criticising the criticism of the criticism. And then you die in the game then you die in real life.
@@mr.lalnon5455that’s just house of leaves
oh my god you're right😭@tonoornottono
MOD MOD MOD MOD MOD MOD
Sir, a third refutation has hit the South video essay
This made me laugh too much
Video length doesnt melt 4k quality
I think the main lesson I’ve learned from all this is the importance of polite disagreement in online media discourse. I think the main reason people are so mad about the Alliron video is because she’s so insistent on dismantling Anderson’s credibility and integrity as a critic, while making very clear that all of this is based on one video. Paradoxically, I saw people in Patrica’s comments making judgements about her based on the less flattering clips shown in that video. And it’s like, nobody in this situation actually knows each other, most of the viewer base probably hasn’t seen every video, we’re all just making judgements on each other because the other person had a take we strongly disagree with (sometimes from a video from years ago).
I think a big factor in all of this is how response videos make it cool to present these types of arguments as adversarial. The person making the response is presented as the protagonist and the opposing opinion is presented as the antagonist. It’s really easy for the creator to lean into these sensationalist narratives in that format and it’s easy for the view to watch that and think “I want to get in on that action”. The problem is that in real life, not every youtuber with opinions you disagree with is the human embodiment of a social ill plaguing our society and can only be stopped if you make the bestest most epicest multi-hour video essay dissecting everything that person has ever posted to the internet. More often it’s best to just leave a reply simply explaining why you disagree, making yourself heard while refraining from ad hominems and focusing on the important points, or just ignoring it all together and moving on with your life.
More people should adopt the norms of academic response articles. I was in a philosophy department for eight years. Someone writes an article, and then other people write articles about why they think the first article was wrong. And there are conferences and discussions, and everyone has a good time and respects each other.
It doesn't *always* work out. *Sometimes* academics end up hating each other--like how James Taylor and Jason Brennan hate each other, and accuse each other of being hacks. But this is not the norm. The norm is that people get along and recognize one another as good at what they do.
And to be clear, this mutual respect and civility is NOT the result of the disagreement getting resolved. Overwhelmingly the disagreements never get resolved. People continue to disagree, and they still get along and respect one another anyway. Compared to most of the internet, this is night-and-day. And I can tell you which one I prefer in every way.
(When academics *do* end up hating each other, in my experience, it's usually within a department, and it's due to disagreements over funding and hiring decisions and stuff like that.)
@@Megaritz You make a good point regarding how academia handles disagreement, and I think that's one of the biggest problem with TH-cam video essays, if not the biggest. A good majority of people making these essays don't have any kind of academic training, which isn't inherently bad, but that manifests in bad ways. A bad video essay on a video game is honestly the best case scenario, and at its worst you get your James Somertons and other hacks. For all of academia's problems, I feel like it's heightened on TH-cam by the money surrounding it and the fact that this is also a social media website and thus bringing all of that baggage as well (this is part of why video essays have gotten exponentially longer as well, with increased ad space combined with a lack of discipline regarding the length and time of a work combined into bloated scripts).
perfectly put. And applicable far beyond YT essays as well.
Four videos deep now… it’s “In defense of Dark Souls 2” all over again…
Ah, yes, mi two favorite series
oh god dont give me ptsd
Dude i deadass think that’s why i got this in my feed
I think I missed that whole thing, I just watched Hbomb's video, never saw any responses to it though.
@@KrazyKaiser There was an 8 part response (each part about an hour long) to Hbomb's video by someone named MauLer which quite literally went line by line through Hbomb's video responding to it... and then a bunch of people responded to that, but the big one (and funniest one imo) was a video by dangitjm which spent nearly an hour responding to a mere 10 minute segment of MauLer's 8 hour thesis... and then of course Hbomb's video was basically a response to matthewmatosis... which all put together creates another 4 video deep chain...
stay tuned for my response to this video, which is not actually about the witness at all but rather mid-19th century russian wars and foreign policy, which is explored using this argument as an analogy
Tell me when it's ready so I can respond to it and explain how this is all related to brutalist architecture
This isn't even a response video. Jatsko makes no points.
@@____uncompetative that's the point isn't it? These are thoughts on the subject of refutations on the subject of arguments on the subject of critiques on the subject. It's so utterly abstracted that points aren't what's needed, it's just some thoughts
@@damprat141 Does having no points count as a point? I would have thought an argument can be strong or weak or nonexistent.
@@____uncompetative having no point being the point is literally just the definition of a meta or abstract discussion or work. You are talking about something rather than to it, this video In specific was about how jatsko related their own life to the subject, rather than a continuation of discourse (when I first read your reply I thought this was for a different comment chain I was in about how to render subatomic particles in a virtual physics engine efficiently, until my brain fully processed everything lmao)
That Dan Olson line is going to become absolute poison in internet arguments.
The phrase "fundamentally incurious" was originally coined by Thought Slime, who is a... frustrating figure, to say the least. Like Patricia said in her video, it's basically become a politically correct way to call someone mentally r******d.
which line
which one!
@franslair2199 "a fundamentally incurious person"
It hit hard in that moment Because it was so perfectly directed and really captured the spirit of why someone doesn't seem to have what it takes to make good films. But I guess some people just observed that it hit hard and so think they can use it as a catchall dunk
“The guy made Braid, a game I’ve been told is important because I’d never heard of it before then and haven’t played it”
Brilliant
damn, the TWVERCU (The Witness (2016) Video Essay Refutation Cinematic Universe) is getting really difficult to follow
They're a couple of installments away from going multiverse, I can feel it
This ain't no Joshua tree. Pretty straight forward.
in the end, we're all The Witness
the real the witness was the friends we made along the way
To think Puppyhelic doesn't even agree with Joseph about the Witness, and only made a response because of how needlessly mean spirited and disingenuous Iron's video was
Sounds like something Patricia would do she seems like the type to dislike mean spirited arguments judging by the videos on her main channel
Normalize shaming idiots like Joseph Anderson
Bottom line, don't let video essayists dictate how you feel about a game you love.
Dear TH-cam: I do not want to see videos of someone complaining about another persons video. I want to see videos of someone complaining about someone complaining about someone complaing about someone's video.
i want to see comments about someone complaining about not wanting to see videos of someone complaining about another persons video
There's something that's been... Bothering me mildly, about this whole situation, that your video on it really helped put into words.
One of my biggest takeaways from The Beginner's Guide, one of my favorite narratives, an endlessly uncomfortable and interpretable game, was that it's really dangerous to try to use a work of art to gain insight into its creator. (Spoilers for The Beginner's Guide). When Davey, the narrator, uses his acquaintance Coda's art to argue that Coda is spiraling, in desperate need of help, we get to see how damaging that is for both of them. For Davey, who seems to be projecting onto Coda, treating him like he's made of glass, maybe trying to avoid thinking about his own issues and trauma. For Coda, whose boundaries are disrespected, whose art is warped and misrepresented. And for the player, who becomes an unwitting participant in Davey's unravelling. In Joe's and Alliron's videos, and Dan Olson's, and your Submachine rant video, I get Davey vibes, you know? I can't say who the creators are, or what they were thinking when the made their videos, but a lot of time is spent talking about the creators of the art they're engaging with. Joe says that Jonathan Blow is fucking with us; Dan and Alliron say their subjects are fundamentally incurious; your discussion about Submachine centers around Skutnik and who he is and what he wants. But, like, we don't know any of these people.
Skutnik posts on forums and Blow gives talks and Joe streams anime VNs post-ironically, sure, and maybe that makes it easy and tempting to try to make our experience with their work about them, personally. But why does my experience of feeling like I was tricked into wasting my time with a game have to translate to "The game's creator just made the whole thing as a big fucking troll?" Why does my disagreement with a video render its creator stupid? We should be able to experience a work of art, or art criticism, without trying to pathologize it's creator.
Maybe it's a kind of parasociality. I go to a gallery and see a painting and I mistake it for a window. In Morris Graves' self-portrait I think I see the man himself, but even a self portrait might tell me less about the artist then it does about me. Graves drew a quirk into his eyebrow and I read it as cynicism -- was that him, or me? Was "Self-Portrait" a window, or a mirror, or some mysterious third thing, a construct of canvas and oil? More and more I find that I wish that critics would engage with the substance of a work, rather than the imagined pathologies of its creator; would use their criticism as a chance to revel in their own subjective experience, rather then as a weapon to attack the artist with.
this is beautiful. The Beginner's Guide is one of my favorite games of all time, and im glad I see other people sharing that sentiment.
This really helped me identify the sort of subtle venom I've felt in these videos. It's hard to spot when it's within a long-form video essay, but these analyses of the creator can really poison a critique and turn it from constructive to cruel. Also I love the comparison to the beginner's guide, it's such a good game that discusses themes I haven't really seen discussed elsewhere.
Probably about time I play The Beginner's Guide; I feel like I understand all the basic story beats just by how much I've heard people talk about it (and maybe I watched a playthrough a bunch of years ago; can't remember).
The whole thing with trying to figure out the connections we have with the people that we're talking to is something you extended pretty well here, with mentioning the parasocial aspect specifically. For each of the videos mentioned, I imagine it exists on a different level - some much more than others. It's sometimes difficult to assert what is an appropriate level of familiarity, especially in the case of game developers that have the ability/make the effort to connect with the people who are playing their games. They want to connect in a certain way, and you want to connect back, but by also being careful not to make it too much about yourself, but also at the same time the way you experience their work is necessarily purposeful. So yeah, a delicate balance. And of course, us being concerned with what is right and what is wrong, if we see something they're doing as wrong it only feels natural to call it out.
Thanks for your comment!
"I go to a gallery and see a painting and I mistake it for a window." is such an absolutely profound statement that encompasses the essence of projecting onto something or someone.
I get where you're coming from, but I also think it's just something inherent to art and thus art critique. Sure, you can invoke death of the artist and run with your own interpretation and that's completely fine, but all art is created with *some* kind of feeling or intention behind it. Even abstract art that's just paint splatters on a canvas is the artist trying to express their emotions. To completely ignore that aspect of it, to an extent, makes the art meaningless, in my opinion. Art is communication, one human trying to make the other one feel something. It can work, fail, or fall anywhere in between. To simply look at art and accept it as it is is inherently nihilistic to me. If that's the only way you're going to look at a work, why engage with art at all?
Critics are born from this base assumption that art has some kind of meaning to it imbued by the creator. Typically (but not always) critics train themselves or are trained in the art of symbolism, narrative devices, etc. so as to more readily be able to pick up on the intent of the art and thus, the artist. Not everyone may agree with a critic, though, and while everyone is entitled to their opinion, this is where the issues start, I think.
It's one thing to say "I respectfully disagree with your assessment" in response to someone's interpretation of a piece, but making assumptions about the critic based on their response to the art is where it leaves the realm of criticism and enters the realm of debates and (if the involved people are less respectful) personal attacks. At that point the art itself is no longer the focal point of the conversation, it merely becomes a piece of evidence you can use to win your argument and prove yourself right and the critic wrong.
This has happened countless times over the course of history, but it's especially rampant and prolific when it comes to games because of just how encompassing they are. You can only really look at a painting or read a book, but games, especially in the modern day where they're often extremely long or more of a community due to online components, capability for self expression, or being involved in fandoms, means that people develop an emotional attachment to a game or game series.
Thus what you see is less a civil conversation about the good and bad points of a video game, and more someone responding in an inherently emotional way and with personal insults. Something they like, part of their identity, was attacked, and most people in that state don't have the ability to see their emotions objectively and realize this is not a factual matter but a subjective one, so they lash out with an argument that is less based in evidence and more based in their feelings, *while trying to make it seem like it's factual* .
That last bit is the main issue. Everyone (sometimes even the original critic) puts on a facade of respectful conversation, but in reality it's a thinly veiled shouting match where they're all trying to prove their feelings and opinions to be "correct," which of course isn't possible and quickly devolves into a fruitless conversation, with the audience caught in the crossfire. Did you notice how I haven't mentioned a single thing about the actual game The Witness (2016) anywhere in this comment, yet it's still "on topic"? That's a good sign that the conversation has devolved into something honestly not worth expanding upon.
Joe never said that Jonathan was being a troll. It’s weird that nobody is talking about this but he says the game feels like a troll played by Johnathan to see if people like what he makes because it’s good or if they like it just because it’s made by him. He never proposed it as a theory but just used it to state how weirdly uncomfortable the game feels when you play it.
Thats what ive been thinking about too
It’s sadly far too common these days to assume the worst of people based on minimal information. We know everything about The Witness itself. We can argue that the game is really good, or really pretentious, or both, and because we have the entirety of it known to us those interpretations are all valid.
What isn’t valid is extending those interpretations to the creator, because at the most fundamental level we do not know them. We do not have all the deeper context on Jonathan Blow required to call him a troll or a hack or a genius, we do not have the context on Joseph Anderson required to call him “fundamentally incurious”. And speculating on those things is only interesting up to the point that it becomes genuinely insulting. You cannot know someone from small glimpses of their work or their tastes, and it’s worse that we all seem to be biased towards assuming the worst, even when it isn’t even remotely justified.
I have watched a majority of Anderson’s video essays and have come to the conclusion that I dislike them and the angle they take to criticism, and I disagree personally with the overall messages of most of them, but I still respect Anderson and think he deserves a platform. My disagreement is purely my personal feelings on someone’s content, and there is no reason for me to extend those to the creator. I like Anderson and dislike his content, and that isn’t a contradiction in the slightest.
How on Earth did these two parts of my life cross over? How did a TH-camr who I learned about back when I was into Submachine as a 12 year old do a response to a TH-camr who I learned about maybe a year ago as a transfem furry online? This is the most ridiculous crossover episode of my life. I love it.
Glad you enjoyed it :D
I haven't finished the video yet but calling Joseph Anderson a "fundamentally incurious person" is just so startlingly inaccurate if you've seen any more than one of his videos or listened to him talk ab how he thinks in his streams
Also, queue jedi survivor and half life 2
No, thats a pretty accurate assessment of the man. He has to be the most bland, thoughtless and uncreative "reviewers" out there
@@TheLetterH111 I find he puts a lot of thought into his work are you sure you don't just disagree with him 😭
I definitely disagree with him about many things, but watching him throw himself at the Sun Station over and over again for hours in The Outer Wilds did make it EXCEEDINGLY clear he's naturally curious
@@flashfire505 That sounds more like determination than curiosity. I watch a lot of Outer Wilds playthroughs and honestly Anderson's felt like one of the least curious I'd seen (disclaimer: watched a supercut).
The layers of analysis and critique are reaching levels that are very, very interesting. Thanks for sharing.
fellow deltarune fan? Also fellow device theory enjoyer?
@@TeltStory Deltarune yes, though I don't think you need to be aware of any particular theories to notice the reference
@@andriaabashidze2497my undertale brainrot always goes hehe hoho when wing gaster
LB do be everywhere puzzle related
I feel like the biggest thing Alliron and Patricia miss is this: Joseph is reviewing The Witness as a game, not as art. His points are mostly about how the experience differs aggressively from how many people are led to interpret the store page. People expect a puzzle game with narrative, but instead they get an art exhibit with some puzzles in it. Both are good in their own right, but if someone is expecting one and gets the other, they're likely to be disappointed.
As someone who has her own personal history with The Witness and has also been following this enthralling saga, I'm really happy to have come across this. I went in with no expectations and by the end I found myself really resonating with the desire to tap into personal experiences when talking about games, or just art in general. I agree games are a form of artistic communication, and while critique is an important part of that, I think sometimes we fail to acknowledge the context in which we have these conversations. Where we are in life when we encounter a piece of art greatly influences how we respond to it, especially with art that's harder to interpret. As someone who grew up watching a lot of youtube reviews and such, I'm glad that nowadays seemingly more and more people are willing to talk about their personal experiences with art, and not just trying to generalize it for the sake of some numeric score. It could be that I've personally matured and just gotten better at seeking out good analysis, but I would like to believe that there is a general trend towards having better conversations about games.... At least I hope so. Maybe one day when I finally finish one of my scripts I can be a part of that too, but hey.
All in all I really enjoyed these personal reflections from you and they made me reflect too, so this is a great video in my book. Overall score 4/10, no furry rantsona.
I think Reasonabilist Bear would really nail Jatsko to a cross (with facts and logic) if he ever made a response
You're already part of the conversation-conversation requires listeners, or else it's just yelling at clouds-but also, finish a script! You've already done the hardest part, which is starting a script. That's at least, what, 90%? You probably already even know how you want to finish. That's another 8%. We all know inspiration is 1%, so now you only have 1% of work left before your first video is done.
-me to myself in the mirror every morning
@@ExxyPlays Damn, that's a really neat way to look at it. Thank you youtuber user exxyplaysandplays, the day I finally get off my ass will in small part be contributed to by you.
@@ExxyPlays Yeaaaah, that's a neat way to see it. Thank you youtube user exxyplaysandplays, the day I finally get off my ass will in small part be contributed to by you
I think this was a really lovely video, and your words at the end about how you want to talk about videogames resonated a lot with me and how I want to, like, engage in discussion around art without simply falling back on easy measures of faux-objective "quality". Thank you for making this
I took one look at the runtime and knew this video would be a worthwhile watch. Any video that can comment on a triple recursive response chain in only thirty minutes must be good.
You explained your thoughts well and this was very entertaining.
I never played The Witness but everything that Joseph Anderson said aboot Jonathan Blow's disregard for his player's time rang true for me due to my experience with Braid
I think the main tension in his video is that I don't think he made it just because he had thoughts on it, I think he was being a games journalist, he was reviewing a game. And this is a TENSION because you can feel that he's not just thinking or discussing how own experience with the game, but his viewer's hypothetical experience. He's trying to give a responsible recommendation and that involves airing out a lot of frustrations but like, ultimately it's a positive review.
Also how can you call someone "incurious" when you don't even look at their other videos, like dude Loved Steven's Sausage Roll and that game is like, unbelievably hard I could never.
This is so well made and the main reason for that is that you share what you know: your take and your opinions. You do not grandstand and you just show how everything you interact with makes you feel. This feels like a diary entry that I stumbled upon with how real you are being. Its nice to hear you talk about yourself
Thanks so much!
I like that the title didn't fit and the rest is in the description
Came for the continued chain of silliness, stayed for the Submachine rant and reflection that echoes my own views and feelings about the Five Nights at Freddy's franchise.
This reminds me of when the "commentary community" referred to much smaller channels than it does now where people would make these longs chains of response videos, sometimes even collabing with other commentators in the process, and it would devolve into an incoherent slide show of furry rantsonas crossing their arms at each other over someone's top 10 worst pokemon list. *sigh* Those were the days...
I think that this video critique-ception has proven at least one thing : Joseph Anderson's video, while flawed, hit on something in his analysis that resonated with a lot a people. He clearly is not alone in feeling like something smells rotten at the core of The Witness, and it's not just because of his writing or editing skills.
Is Anderson unfair in his engagement with the game's puzzles? Almost undeniabely yes, he is. But is he wrong in calling the game pretentious? Like it or not, his analysis has struck a chord, since so many people are arguing about it, and I don't think you can dismiss it as just being "uncurious" anymore.
I think what's appealing about Joseph Anderson's content is that his critiques are honest and that he approaches things from an "everyman/layman" perspective. He will make a review after reflecting on his personal experience with a game and articulate it in those terms, and even if/when he acknowledges his own biases or presumptions, he still holds the game accountable for leading him to those presumptions or letting him maintain that bias.
This is why his critiques of soulsborne games are both really popular and well received but also a point of friction in the respective community. He's able to articulate his experience with the games from a perspective most people can relate to or understand, which I think has value, but I think he also often fails to do the legwork to back up his more technical criticisms (he's responsible for a lot of misinformation about game mechanics in both DS3 and Elden Ring for example).
His "Subjectivity is Implied" video made me more sympathetic and charitable to his perspective even when I disagree with them.
@@duvetboa yeah, I'm fine with people expressing their own personal feelings on games. The problem comes when they then start trying to explain what is wrong with the game to have made them feel that way whilst having no actual knowledge about how the game functions. Or when people try to argue that a game is objectively bad because it wasn't made to appeal to them.
At that point it's no longer just that person sharing their experience, it's spreading falsehoods.
Just because a video is popular doesn't make its opinions expressed more valid. There are loads of internet hate mobs founded on rubbish opinions.
People have a very strong need to see things resolved, and sometimes they react more positively or negatively to that tension never dissipating. Sometimes they're able to convert it into an appreciation of the mystery and intrigue, but they can also get burned out on it and view it unfavorably. Both Joseph and I clearly didn't vibe with The Witness and Submachine back then, but my thoughts have changed since then and I hope to delve into it more in a future video.
@@CheesecakeMilitia My point wasn't "popular = true"
My point was that a lot people have responded to that video, either to defend it, critique it, or analyse it, which makes clear that there is an opinion expressed in it that people feel the need to respond to.
Like, the fact that people are debating so much whether Anderson's opinion is valid makes it valid in itself. There is a discussion to be had here, and you can't dismiss the video on bad faith arguments.
Anderson's "Witness" video was how I found him, and I found that video while searching for information on the game; specifically, I had mostly finished the game, and I wanted to know what the obelisks were for (i.e., what the goal was for completing them). Funnily enough, I disagreed with the Anderson's overall conclusion (that Blow was intentionally being facetious), but agreed with many of the sub-points. My take away from the game before watching the video was a theme of perspective (ironic); I interpreted Anderson's observations according to that presupposition, and it served to reaffirm them to me. I didn't know there was so much followup, and I find it unfortunate that so much of it has centered around character attacks. He's as guilty of it as the rest, but the mistakes of one do not justify subsequent behaviors; rather than trying to discredit the critic, address the critique, and acknowledge the subjectivity therein.
Petition to include this video essay chain into the "The Witness Anniversary Edition", with a secret puzzle that requires you to watch all the videos back to back in the theatre (finding the correct path will be dependent on trivia from these essays so you can't just let the game run for one hour in the background like last time)
the most important video you didnt mention is "Jonathan Blow crying in a dark room about Soulja Boy misunderstanding Braid" If you brought that up i think this video woulda been better.
26:56
Had to pause for a moment at 13:48 to appreciate the script choice there
I can't wait for "A Refutation of "A Refutation of "Some Personal Thoughts on "A Refutation of "A Refutation of Joseph Anderson's "The Witness"""""
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. It's hard to put clear and short words on my feelings, but I love how The Witness has basically served as a blank canvas to think about my own views on games and life, and how it allows me to confront other completely different idea in other people's experience of the game. Absurdity of completion, complexity of real life problems and enigmas in work of arts were subjects I stumbled upon by playing, but put together with your video, these subjects come again for me to ponder upon.
I love the human experience of sharing thoughts for this, and I love in the light of your conclusion. Thanks again.
Also, thank you for talking about The Witness. I wouldn't have found your channel if it wasn't the case, and you seem to talk about subject I really fucking love !
I haven’t watched the video yet but I’m already delighted. How deep will the analysis and the responses go. What is it about this puzzle game that makes people so emotional they can’t help but respond. Exciting
I live for this penta-meta video-essay-ception. Fantastic.
I like my art a little esoteric and I think there's more to an experience than sending a clear message or "figuring it out" (though I do love a good mystery too). I'm currently making art that (if anyone ever gets to see it) people will say many of the same negative things said about these games. That makes me kind of sad I don't expect my art to resonate with everyone but I don't want to make people feel cheated out of a complete experience.
You're quickly becoming a favorite youtuber. From talking about an underappreciated game series to some based takes and now a rare level of self reflection. Appreciate you.
Thanks for the kind words! I agree there's definitely more to engaging with someone's art than just simply being able to "figure it out".
Best video in this whole multi-channel series, love the way you led us through your thought process
i think what's so funny to me personally is that the submachine rant is very similar to how i feel about the fnaf series. there was never a planned, coherent story, but rather than actually try to build one, scott cawthon, the creator and writer, engaged in theories and fandom and relied on THEM to make the story for him. even worse, he'd completely turn those theories on their heads to, what i assume is, keep people guessing and keep people intrigued in the series when the gameplay has always been a bit... lackluster. it was great to keep people invested in the moment, but it only created bigger headaches for fans in the future and anyone else who wasn't there to experience the chaos themselves. that's all, i just wanted to share that :)
First time watcher of the channel, what a well put together, insightful, and illuminating video. I greatly enjoyed how you were able to truly immerse us in your perspective
Thank you!
I highly recommend Jackson Wagner's Examining 'The Witness' series. It's hours and hours long, but it's a level headed, educated, and illuminating discusson of the game's various themes from a philosophical angle
I had no idea that there were even refutations of Joes review before watching this, but I can definitely see why. I'm not going to call his review perfect, its not, and i can definitely see why his video would garner a response, and a response thereof and so forth. But jumping into this video without seeing the inbetween refutations is interesting! Especially given your perspective as someone who has made a video similar to Joe's critique. Theres a particular kind of frustration that anyone can feel when they feel their time has been wasted by something theyre so invested in, thats how Joe's video comes across to me personally, that can be met by a lot of pushback by people who didnt get that. Its a difference in experiences and what you gained or didnt gain from that. This is just how i believe this whole Refutation Rabbit Hole is just from an outside point of view. Maybe im wrong, but either way, i greatly enjoyed your video on it im definitely gonna check out more of your work!
As an aside: calling joe "fundamentally incurious" is just untrue if u know anything about him or his body of work, and i think is just being mean for the sake of being mean. joes work is incomparable to the nostalgia critics even on just a surface level, and that drawing the line between the two just felt like that reviewer in particular just wanted to knock him down a peg and call him derivative.
Honestly i don't think any review can be perfect, at least in the sense that people generally use that word.
Reviews are fundamentally opinions, they'll have facts sprinkled in, but in the end a review that is *only* fact certainly doesn't feel like a complete one. And opinions can't really be correct or incorrect, you can only agree or disagree with them to various degrees. So, by extension, you can only have degrees of agreement with a review.
I think it's fine to respond to reviews, but only if one recognizes that they can only correct the factual statements and not the opinions. Something like "actually you didn't softlock yourself there, if you had waited another 30 seconds instead of ragequitting then the game would have simply opened the door as a failsafe." is fine, so long as you're at least as polite about it as the person you're responding to was in their review.
And this is something i really like about Joe, he generally makes it clear when something is his opinion. Which makes it feel very icky when someone insults him in their response.
as a fan of submachine myself (I think we may have interacted on the official discord at least once? haven't been active on there in ages though) it's interesting to me that you and I came away with such different takes on how you felt about submachine at the time of that videoessay and how you felt about the witness when you first played it, and I think it comes down to the fact that I never expected an answer about what the submachine is or how it works (I took it more as a story about people who were destroying themselves trying to comprehend something beyond human comprehension), but I expected the puzzles in the witness to lead up to some kind of revelation about the nature of the island and was disappointed with what a non-reveal it felt like to me (I went in expecting a myst-style "learn about this place and what happened to it" story and felt cheated when I didn't get that). I think there's something interesting to be said about how much analysis/criticism is driven by what expectations we approach things with and expect to have met, rather than the impartial logic we'd like to think we see things with.
Absolutely; that's something I'd like to highlight more in the future as well - how we walk away from things based on whether we were able to allow our expectations to not control what the creative work sets out to offer. If you're interested in another example of this, I talked with another Submachine fan named Anteroinen on my second channel (Jatsko2) about Skutnik's game Slice of Sea. During this I felt like the points that Anteroinen raised against the game were largely a result of them not fully meeting the game on its own terms when it came to how it offered it's gameplay mechanics. More blunt people would say "they just didn't get it" and I definitely felt like saying something like that at various points, but that would've missed the necessary nuance to really carry the conversation forward. If you're interested in seeing how that went down I recommend watching it!
@@jatsko3113 I’ll check that out, thank you for the recommendation!
I'm glad for the self discovery that the original game and these subsequent videos have enabled for you. What a wonderful thing about art, hmm?
I still am reeling at the fact that Alliron wanted to make a 2 hour video about someone else's capacity to critique a puzzle game, which surely took many hours of work to make, and didn't spend a bit of time watching more than one of that person's critiques of a puzzle game, or trying to learn very much about that person at all.
Seriously, thank you for this. For being so genuine and vocalizing so many mental pathways that I wouldn't or couldn't have gone down on my own.
I hope your day is treating you well :)
Thank you! Hope yours is going well too.
i would like to appreciate how this title owns far bigger a spot light then the video its self
anyways im really hyped for
an addendum on "Some Personal Thoughts on "A Refutation of "A Refutation of Joseph Anderson's "The Witness - A Great"
I really love your anecdotally based writing style and would love to see where you could go from here, I think you can really make something of this channel by branching out into larger topics like this
At this point, I think Dan Olson has surpassed "video essayist" and is now firmly an "independent documentarian."
13:47 sneaky and incredible reference
I do think Alliron was a bit out of line with her critique of Joseph tbh, I see where she’s coming from but it feels weird to say a video game reviewer’s critique is invalid. He can have his opinions and she can have hers, there’s more than enough space for both and neither is wrong or right. Video games are art and art is in the eye of the beholder (or so I’ve been told), so different people are going to have different takeaways after playing a game. Who is she to say that Joseph “doesn’t get it” just because she disagrees with him? Neither opinion *can* be wrong, they can just *be*.
I think its valid to say a critique is flawed if the critique is based upon a flawed perspective or is made without fully understanding the intent behind the material. For example, a movie critic having a phobia of gore and thus rating horror movies disproportionately poorly. That doesnt make their subjective critique wrong but it does make it flawed as its not from the intended audience.
Alliron gets it wrong by assuming Anderson's critique is from the point of view of someone who doesnt get puzzle games, which a basic glance over his other videos disproves, and by also assuming that hes trying to be objective. Anderson has made it pretty clear that his reviews are from his perspective only and trusts the audience to make their own conclusions based on his viewpoint. Any criticism of Andersons reviews then just boil down to being a disagreement, not an argument on objective fact. If Alliron knew this or decided to view it this way i doubt the video would have been made, but she got upset and made assumptions and came to a bad conclusion.
If you want an invalid critique, it would actually be better to watch Allirons video as a proper example, since it does not take into account proper context or properly dissect the material.
(Sorry for the word dump this was just a good place to put my opinions)
This is the first video on this topic I’m watching so I don’t have any context. However…
There is a difference between objectivity and subjectivity. Art can be criticized and praised from an objective viewpoint. Critiques can be objectively critiqued. Art can be subjectively critiqued and elevated.
@@picklechip9294 Fully agree, and I don't think she was necessarily wrong for making a response video. Critique is a dialogue and if she was just wanting to put forth a different perspective using Joseph's video as a springboard and a point of comparison, I think that would've been perfectly fine. But instead, she argues in bad faith that Joseph is somehow wrong in his opinions when they're just that, his opinions. It leans into this vitriol that is ever prevalent in online discourse where she has to turn Joseph into a bad actor in order to justify her stance (and more importantly, get clicks on her video) which takes it to an unnecessary negative level imo.
@@Alberecht I agree that objective statements can be made about art, sure (f.e. "this is an acrylic painting" or "this painting depicts X person"), but when you reach a higher level of dialogue about an artwork, such as critique, you are no longer in the realm of objectivity and everything voiced will be a subjective opinion. Critique is inherently subjective, it's a subject (the critic) expressing their feelings about a piece of artwork and delving into why they feel that way about it.
Yes, there are certain things that are understood to be "bad" by the general public but even those are also subjective opinions. Take bugs f.e., generally considered to be a bad aspect of video games, and I'd agree with that statement. But what if the bugs are an intended part of the work? What if the developer put them in there to give the player a feeling of frustration or annoyance? What if the critic *likes* the bugs being in the game? I once watched a critique of Tears of the Kingdom where the critic argued that its successor, Breath of the Wild, was a better game because there were more bugs in it that could be used to exploit the physics engine of the game. Now, do I agree with that take? No, absolutely not. But it's still his subjective opinion and therefore a valid criticism. In fact, the entire speedrunning community engages with games in this way. Another example is Joseph Anderson himself in his Fallout 76 video. There he discusses the myriad of game breaking bugs and visual glitches present in the game and he states that, despite agreeing that the lack of polish is unacceptable, they nonetheless made his experience more enjoyable due to them being funny.
@@Alberecht You can't criticize or praise anything objectively as those are decided from the subject's point of view. What something is is different to what you feel about it.
Jatsko and Taxxon what a sick crossover i never expected to happen
After watching this video, I decided to write my own video essay titled: “My Interpretation of ‘Some Personal Thoughts on ‘A Refutation of a Refutation of Joseph Anderson’s ‘The Witness - A Great Game You Shouldn’t Play’’’”
Joseph is the circle and we are the line
Omg the Electron Dance Witness video is one of my fave TH-cam vids ever! Cool shoutout
13:47 nice touch
thank you, thank you
I feel like this chain is missing that game reviewing is a collaborative art. Anderson kind of started the chain on TH-cam, with the most incisive review. That does not mean it is without flaw. Disagreeing and adding to interpretation is not a competetive attack its an addendum that will inform the greater meaning of the text
If everyone in the chain was more referential, they would produce better work. Anderson included
Can't wait for someone to share their personal thoughts on this one
Fascinating entry into this now quadrilogy. I agree that it is undirected but like, the clip of the video you made expressing your frustrations with a game series you loved just like, hit me really hard. I don't think on the surface it is angry or mean and I hope I'm just projecting but it felt like lashing out, like you were mad at the developer and not afraid to hurt them because you were also mad at yourself. This comment feels undirected now too whoops, my point was that I empathize with you greatly.
Oh also I appreciate that you take pride in your beliefs and put conscious effort into them, but are still willing to admit when sometimes you just feel yourself being swayed by whatever someone said most recently as long as they were decently compelling.
"you were mad at the developer and not afraid to hurt them because you were also mad at yourself" - in a sense, sure. When I spend so much time being absolutely entrenched in this thing I like but still not fully understanding it in the way I want, being unable to reach that point generated the big question of, essentially "what's going wrong here? Who's not doing something correctly? Is it the developer for not putting together a good story that allows us to understand it like we want to (and we think he wants us to)? Or is this on me for just not thinking it through correctly after all this time, or am I just exhausted because I'm burning out on it?". A better version of that video would spend more time talking about myself and how I personally felt about it, treating it more as a conversation rather than a rational, structured essay as to why the focus of tension is simply wrong. Clearly it's not that simple!
Thanks for your thoughts!
we achieved the good ending, thank god /lh /hj
but seriously i love this video and have been wondering a lot about this stuff myself and i'd love to see more personal talks about games rather then a millionth game critic/theory/whatever video (there's still space for all that stuff, personally i'm really tired of it though)
The good is varied and complex.
Whether frustration is a good intermediary to the good of intellectual unraveling of a story, or a good in itself for that as a drive instead of a goal, is not a settled issue.
The looseness of phrases, praises or insults, that art critics have towards subjects of their criticisms, creates more excitement than it does a concrete and thorough understanding of the subject. And that failure to get to concrete understanding might be a good in its own right.
The recognition of the insufficiency of our methods of criticism is itself a better jumping board to start our investigation of goodness than the presuppositions we discover dont provide what they promise. Thank you for thinking and not mistaking the good to already be given
13:53 nice callback with the “assuming I’m wrong” lol
Thank you for this video essay on a video essay on a refutation essay about a video essay about the witness.
6:30 when you said "everything's in disarray" my mind instantly jumped to memory merge by yonkagor
Took me a while to see the "some *personal thoughts* " in the title to understand the video.
I feel a tad stupid having realized that after 15 minutes
I'll have to watch your Steam Library review series, because I love a lot of those games! I found this really thoughtful, and I agree that it's important to view art from an empathetic perspective, whether that's a game or a video someone makes.
I remember only watching Anderson's video a while ago, and suddenly I find myself deep down in The Witness youtube drama 😂 How did I get here again? Amazing how much discussion this game can cause - in the year 2024 no less!
THIS RABBIT HOLE IS TOO DEEP MY GOD
Witness video essay refutation situation is crazy
I played the witness I 100%ed all the puzzles and completely missed all the audio logs. I didn’t even know the audio logs or story existed until I had already 100%ed all the normal puzzles and was halfway through the secret meta puzzles. At that point it was weird so I didn’t bother going back to get them. What the hell is going on
Should we all make a response now?
Yes. We must.
@@floreroafloreril1458Well, we have to wait for the next one to keep continuity else they'll be 2 diverging paths in the thumbnail which is infinitely less funny
you gotta take turns, one at a time
@@someoneontheinternet4518 I'd say that opens the possibility of a madlad putting both thumbnail paths into his thumbnail and roll with that, which is hilarious
A refutation of a refutation of a refutation of a refutation…
*3 HOURS LATER*
…of a refutation of a refutation of a refutation of “Joseph Anderson’s The Witness,
A Great Game You Shouldn’t Play”
Layer number 4 here we goooo
The Witness was my most anticipated release following the PS4 announcement show. I even kept up with the developer logs over the months and months of delays. Naturally, the anticipation this built would create a hole impossible for any game to fill. But even with that in mind, I feel like the game fell tremendously short.
I had a fantastic time with it (most of the time) and yet... i couldnt recommended to anyone. It felt bloated, but also lacking. How could that be?
Anderson's video really helped me put into perspective what my problems were with the game. I want to say I agree with everything he said, but I think his 'overall trajectory' is what stuck with me the most.
From my point of view, the Witness is a game that was only 80% complete... but then they polished the shit out of that 80%.
Imagine eating a sandwhich, and its a great sandwich, but there's no bread on the bottom. Its just one ingredient, half an ingredient at that since theres still a slice at the top... and yet, what would otherwise be a delightful meal is now a tiresome, and quite potentially messy ordeal.
It doesn't matter how good the other 80% of the sandwich is, because if you leave put the bottom, the whole thing falls apart.
To follow this analogy to its illogical conclusion, I wish that, when making The Witness, they either actually finished making a sandwich or just fully committed and made what they wanted to. Taco? Pizza? Put in a blender for all I care. I just want something intelligently designed beginning, middle, and end. Where i can enjoy myself and not feel like a messy idiot who still hasnt got his fill.
With the "Refutation", I agreed with a lot of the points about Joe's critique, but not with the method and accusations. I very much agreed that the second half had devolved into a rant that focused more on spewing baseless insults and incohesive arguments than an actual analysis or attempt at discussion. Your own Submachine video, admittedly, was such as well, and I am of the opinion that if you allow that to happen in your 'critiques', you're deserving of either harsh (but FAIR) criticism or for the audience to ignore your what you're trying to say. Joe went on to do much better work, but that second half of the The Witness critique will always remain his 'Lost Izalith' moment.
In my opinion, if you're trying to present a genuine, long-form critique to your audience, you should NEVER allow it turn into a rant, even in TH-cam format. The audience SHOULD give less consideration for your thoughts and arguments if it were to occur, even if the rant can still be an interesting topic of discussion; just not in the way that the one making the rant was expecting and/or hoping. More on the importance of self-reflection, tempering one's biases, and trying to understand the intentions of the artist, rather than the actual talking points brought up by the critique. At least, that's how I've remembered Joe's Witness video.
Video games are not made for critique, but neither are books, or movies, or any art. It just happens to be a helpful tool for creators to "improve" their art by understanding what the audience likes and dislikes about it, and also for the audience to understand if the art is for them. But you should still try to draw your own conclusions about anything, and not blindly accept other people's opinions.
I will say that i have always believed there are some works where the actual intended meaning or themes are so opaque, so hard to truly find and so vague that they are effectively none. And i always feel this way about literal in universe events. And this video captured a lot of why I feel that way. Like Yume Nikki is great but i always felt it's best enjoyed as sort of an art gallery because trying to find much meaning or actual in universe events beyond the most basic feels. Very difficult if not impossible(which weirdly I think does add to the themes of willing isolation that are there but it is a great example for this so, genuinely sorry Yume Nikki you are great but also as an example). Like it's clearly implied that the main character has some form of trauma that keeps them from going outside, or at least feels heavily implied by a lot of locations you see having say, blood around roads or vaguely sexual imagery. But finding what exactly it was is nearly impossible (which again i think adds to it in Yume Nikki's case but again, good example of the idea.) And this is definitely something I think some game devs absolutely take the piss with. We know getting a game theory video is winning the lottery more or less for devs, so it makes total sense to me that some devs purposely just make some aspects literally impossible to solve or have no answer not as an artistic choice but purely marketing and profit. And I think themes can also be done this way, and if them than whatever the actual point or moral or central idea of a story is. Serves the same function in a lot of ways even if you are much less likely to have the green angel show up and give you a free who knows how many extra eyes and likely paying consumers on your game. Now to be fair, IDT I have seen a game do the piss taking money not explaining thing with themes. I definitely think I have with the in universe events even down to retconning things without ever even telling anyone they were retconned or tailoring your plot around the theories(in fact the bendy and the ink machines dev have debatably admited to doing that with the fan interest around Alice Angel although it is likely her role was going to be played by another character and they gave it to her because they thought it'd be neat but i digress.) but I do think it is definitely possible to have ended up seeming like a dev did do the money grabbing theme without it being intended. Just being the ind of creator who makes a work that happens to be that opaque(Beyond reason imo) but not doing so maliciously. Plus I do have personal beef with any game that makes you literally just stand there for some completion bonus unless it's like, a Far Cry style joke ending. Yes I think montanousness and even mind numbingness can be used very effectively in games but in say, Undertale, you are still doing SOMETHING, even if it is tedious and mind numbing it is something and you can still save and come back to it later. Meanwhile Briad and the Wittness just says "Fuck you and your real life stuff outside of the game, literally wait for a cartoonishly long time to get this one collectable and if you miss it by a few seconds do it again." Which genuinely just feels insulting to the player both in terms of what you are trying to say they are willing to do and also just for the players life outside of that one game and doing with that time anything else they would like to be doing then not playing the game with it open until the funny timer runs out and they don't miss that one jump.
You should really condense that into, like three words.
Alright guys, im buying the witness, just so i can refute thus refutation
godspeed
Your story about disappointment with Submachine really resonated with me, and not only as a casual fan of the Submachine games. When I was younger, I was a ~Zelda timeline theorist~. I went through the same cycle of satisfaction, obsession, shock and disappointment, and finally back to satisfaction. And I think that same cycle could apply to The Witness, too. It’s fun to pick art apart like that, but ultimately you will be disappointed when you interrogate a piece in a way that the artist didn’t. Better to sit back and enjoy.
Love dan olson, it's tragic that he accidentally invented the new way to call people fcking idiots on the internet while sounding intellectual & magnanimous
"fundamentally incurious" captures a very specific type of person and i personally don't even see it as an insult so it's very annoying when people just use it as a synonym for "person with a bad opinion"
I dont go here but it has been funny watching new layers to this saga show up in my recommended feed the past little while
If I had a video essay for every time a video essay inspired me to be a video essayist, my lovecraft essay would be out by now
Maybe the real way to analyze The Witness was the friends we made along the way
hahaha I’m just going to leave here at 5.48 - What’s happened is, I’m a fan of Joseph Anderson, and I’m a fan of Patricia Taxxon, and when she dropped her video I’d never heard of All Iron Talks (? sorry if that’s not right, I have bad hearing) and thought that Patty was starting beef with Jo. I skipped the video because even though I’m sure there are many interesting things to be said to counter Joseph, I disagree with him myself semi-frequently, I mainly hold the value that Two Bad Bitches Shouldn’t Fight. This is me realising that I’m wrong about what Patricia’s video is, so I’m gonna go and watch it. hahahaha
I feel like the underlying premise of your old Submachine video itself might be a bit off. I feel like Skutnik is less the type of guy who like intentionally "keeps up the mystery" out of some plan to drive up audience engagement, and more just someone driven by wherever his artistic inclination take him. I don't think "people will enjoy his games more" is entirely irrelevant to him, but I don't think it's the driving factor behind the artistic choices he makes. When he acts like he is discovering this stuff alongside his players, I don't think that's just an act. Compare Submachine to Daymare Town, which seems even more of a passion project for him and is even more vague in it's plot and world-building. Maybe this approach to art is more commonplace/accepted/less-looked-down-upon here in mainland Europe? I dunno and I don't know the guy.
I definitely don't currently think that Skutnik is/was doing the cold-calculation angle, looking at his work in terms of only numbers and driving up interest. I don't think I thought that completely back when I made that video criticizing him either; I think I just was looking at it from a less-than-charitable angle. Since then I've evolved my thoughts a lot more when it comes to creators having a sustained air of mystery over the things they make, and I hope to go more in-depth with that in future videos. I think that, especially after talking to him more over the past few years, it's much closer to how you described it.
I actually like every video in this chain of responses, looking forward to checking this out
Why would youtube think this is something that will interest me and why is it so correct
someone please PLEASE keep it going
you'd be doing that right now if you wrote how this video made you feel :3
Go play Linelith everyone, it's a game that's similar to The Witness but short and focused. It's by the same dev as Patrick's Parabox. And of course, go play The Looker, a parody of The Witness. (I have not played The Witness because I watched Joseph Anderson's video and know that I absolutely would sit and watch that forty minute lecture should I purchase the game. Perhaps an irrational reason).
I sat and watched the 40 minute lecture, (and the rest of them), and for the most part, I found the experience enriching.
What I did _not_ do was watch them through a second time. I started the puzzle, drew half the line, and came back 30 minutes later to wrap it up.
As an aside, while we're shooting out recommendations, Taiji is a game very similar to The Witness in some basic ways that doesn't have any 40 minute long lectures wrapped up in it.
@@fieldrequired283 I have Taiji wishlisted! Just waiting for the price to come down to where I'd want to get it. Maybe one of these days The Witness' low sale price will entice me enough to get it and I'll form my own opinion on the game.
I can't wait until we reach the top meta layer and start seeing Red Truths get thrown around
The other day, I got a Discord message from a friend asking, "Why is The Witness so bad?" I tried to answer to the best of my ability, and then was hit with, "Then why have you played it for 15 hours on Steam? I only got 10 minutes in." Didn't really know how to answer that, but I did send them a link to the Joseph Anderson video.
Side note: I stopped playing the game after 15h because the game had started making me nauseated after like 30 seconds of play for some reason.
What I've come to believe over the years, about media critique is that even if someone is wrong subjectively or objectively, if they engaged with it in good faith, and shared their opinion honeatly that's completely fine. For example I don't really agree with how JA critiqued Elden Rings bosses, I think his methodology is flawed and not congrous with the intent of the devs. Still, I believe it's his honest opinion so there's no reason for me to get mad about it or anything. I watch/listen to vodeos about media to get new perspectives and perspectives I might disagree with might be the most important.
oh man I love how many layers deep we've gone
If you want more content on the themes etc. present in The Witness I recommend the long series by Jackson Wagner. While I haven't watched them all I really enjoyed the 5th episode on the Fortress.
The first part of this video (about not only defining yourself by your own opinions, but also being so inspired by other people's opinions that they can regularly cause you to go 180 on things) resonated with me so much, that I would really like to talk to you personally about it. I don't think I've ever felt so closely related to what someone else described online that they experienced. I've struggled with these feelings for a while, because it's caused some really big doubts in my own personality. I know it's a big ask, but if you would drop some form of communication (e.g. a discord tag), through which I could contact you privately, I'd really appreciate it. Otherwise I'd love to hear, if anyone else has felt this way before.
wow i just watched the iron video its SO petty my god
i mean, i looked at the design of the game. no sprint button, EXTREMELY slow moving bridges and that fucking moon film puzzle. my interpretation was that mr blow was trying to tell us to stop wasting our time playing video games, and the 110% secret ending seemed to reveal that. my interpretation doesnt mention that my brain simply does not feel rewarded for sliding a bunch of lines around a grid, but i like myst and its sequels, so...
yayy a new perspective, this time about that perpective that i didn't watch where they disagree with a perspective that i disagreed with, in which the person disagreed with a perspective that i disagree with about how they had a perspective about a game which could be perceived as being about perspectives.
*add this one to the theatre :3*
gonna need someone to make a refutation of this video. just for the sport of it all honestly
I love this style of video. A long, wandery personal story linking a bunch of pieces of media. It's fun :)
honestly, if I got into making youtube videos or any other kind of Content(tm), I'd wanna do things like this. It fukken rules.
This was a pretty interesting video about what it truly means to engage with and discuss art.