Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
Again, this is a bad take, intentionally assuming ill intent and malevolence and assigning it to someone you don't know as if he actually did terribly things. Edwards is "deplorable" now because he used some words you don't like. I don't like them either, but you know what, what he's saying with those words is really good stuff. This is more attacking the speaker to dismiss the ideas. Edwards isn't saying your game sucks, he's not acting in an elitist way about games (fair cop to discussing his attitude towards people's engagement with criticism). He likes a lot of the games that people are saying he's trashing. @pemerton has said that Edwards' essay on Simulationism described his play exactly and he continued to do it and got better at it for the description. That's not actually possible to do if the intent and extent of the essay is trashing a game or idea.But, again, it’s not just that he said something problematic, therefore his ideas aren’t worth listening to. It’s that his ideas seem to be a Trojan horse for the same elitism that he put on full display when he said the problematic thing. It all expresses the same sentiment, it’s just that in the one case he didn’t bother hiding it.
It’s not just that he’s harsh. It’s that his ideas seem to stem directly from disdain for a huge portion of the RPG playing community and the things they like.
I disagree. I think it’s revealing of what he actually thinks of fans of certain games.
The conversation was better a few pages back. Can we stop trying to defend the deplorable man who wrote the theory and get back to trying to figure out what value can be extracted from what he said?
Some games do not work. If we apply this to a game like FATAL, no one argues. If you look at where games that are more popular than that fail to do what's on their tin, people get testy because you're impinging on identity for them. Edwards didn't care whose feathers he ruffled, he called it bluntly as he saw it. But, that bluntness seems to be what everyone stops at and claims that analysis is bad because blunt. They don't get through to the actual ideas. You can disagree with Edwards, for sure (I do in areas), but if you can't even get through to the ideas then you aren't disagreeing, you're dismissing.
And it's fine if you want to dismiss. It's the attempt to shut down discussion with people that don't want to dismiss it, or poison the well by bringing in, mischaracterizing, and then sensationalizing other things said with no intent to further the discussion that's a problem.