Friday Night 1337s

I'm not sure what's more perplexing—that people still talk about Chuck Klosterman's "The Lester Bangs of Video Games," or that they still get it wrong. Since Esquire published the piece in 2006, videogame journalists have continued to take umbrage at Klosterman's opening question: "Why are there no videogame critics?" But their reactions miss Klosterman's thesis: "There is no major critic who specializes in explaining what playing a given game feels like" and "what specific games mean in any context outside the game itself." He's not criticizing an existing entity; he's pointing to a deficiency.