In response to my piece on Shadow of Mordor, someone said to me yesterday, “I’m really glad I don’t feel the need to deeply analyze every game I play. I’m not sure I’d enjoy it much if I did.” I hear variations on this a lot. And to be honest, I don’t understand it. Do I have more problems with Shadow of Mordor because I couldn’t help but think critically about its politics of gender and power? I suppose. But that doesn’t mean that I got less enjoyment out of the overall experience than I would have if I’d mindlessly beheaded orcs, rescued women, grown increasingly powerful, and conquered Sauron’s armies for 25 hours. On the contrary, my experience of the game is so much richer and more memorable for having been engaged with it in these ways than it would have been otherwise. Sure, I might have “liked” the game more if I hadn’t bothered thinking about how I find it deeply troubling in some ways, but it would have been a shallower kind of enjoyment that would have left me with nothing but the vague sense that employing brutal violence in the pursuit of power is totally fun. It’s always far more stimulating and enjoyable, at least to me, to fully engage with a game, or a film or television show or whatever.

I also encountered someone sharing my piece in a way that suggested that he thought that I thought that others should not enjoy the game or should feel bad about enjoying it. And that isn’t the intention of such criticism at all. I just think it’s important–and, yes, enjoyable–to consider and question the politics of the media we consume. I want to obliterate the idea that critiquing the graphics or voice acting or camera or control responsiveness or save point placement or length of a game is valid, but that critiquing its values is not.