It begins with one rather large issue:
They created a documentary about starting their website.
Documentaries are traditionally filmed by documentary makers, interested in a particular subject and asking if they can film somewhere/someone and create a study of it/them. When the subjects themselves are the ones who decide the documentary should exist, well, that’s slightly different. And when it’s paid for (alongside some extremely uncomfortable Internet Explorer sponsorship) from the same massive pool of money that’s allowing a gaming website to take the best part of a year to build itself and hire a huge team of highly paid editorial staff, it starts to look like an act of vanity. Because – and I have to be extremely clear here – it IS an act of vanity.
It really doesn’t matter how great the documentary is, nor how worthy it might one day be deemed to be – just that this group of people who write about videogames thought that their project was of such worth and interest to the world that every detail should be documented in high definition can only be seen as just enormously egotistical. Being egotistical isn’t necessarily wrong, but you have to – HAVE TO – accept that other people don’t take kindly to egotism, and tend to want to at least question it.
They are taking themselves so incredibly seriously.
I’ve, along with three other colleagues, created a successful gaming website from scratch. I know how hard it can be, and I know what risks have to be taken. RPS has never had a penny of investment, and we’ve never had a penny of debt – we began the site by working in our spare time for a long time, working and fighting extremely hard to get established, get a reputation, and eventually become a profitable business. I don’t mention this because I think it’s more noble than having investment – not at all – but purely to point out that getting RPS going was a very serious business for us. But at no point did we ever become so enamoured with the process that we acted as though we were doing something so ultimately significant. RPS is, no matter how proud of it we are, and how enormously hard we work at it, a site writing about toys and the culture surrounding them. We think we’re one of the best sites out there about games, and we are extremely happy that we do not do a lot of what we don’t like about the gaming press. We know that games cost a lot of money, and our readers take the business of how they spend their money very seriously. But in the end, are we rescuing orphans from Syria? No we are not. Are we saving lives? It’s pretty unlikely. We’re writing about games.
We love games, and we love writing about games. We take it seriously, to an extent. But we also keep it within the boundaries of reality. Apart from when we’re actually shouting at each other, our meetings are never sombre-faced. We don’t sit at tables and ponder the existential nature of our project. We muck around and insult each other’s mothers and make up words. Yes, we get on with planning stuff, but if we were to (go insane and) present a documentary of such events, we’d not look like we’re just back from a funeral. And it’s that presentation of Polygon that is adding to the problems here. It doesn’t matter how much money they’ve got on the line here – to the rest of the world they’re making a website about games, and they need to get to grips with that not being a big deal for everyone else. This po-faced attitude, and the utterly ridiculous statements of the severity and Earth-changing significance of what they’re doing, makes them just look silly. The rest of the world has some perspective on what they’re doing, but they apparently do not. Most people who get into that situation with their personal project only wind up the people they meet – these guys have chosen to film it and show it to the world.
They have blown things entirely out of proportion.
Someone relocating for a new job isn’t a very big deal. I’m sure it’s a big deal for the person involved, and their family. But the idea that it’s of such extraordinary import that it not only merits filming for a documentary, but is cut into a three minute trailer, just underlines what’s gone so very wrong here. They appear to have confused what’s important to them with what’s important. They appear to have confused what matters to them and their lives with what matters. The whole production demonstrates such enormous inward-looking and insularity that it comes across as narcissism. So of COURSE people are going to react badly to that. When their teaser contains statements about how this site going wrong could “muck up entire lives”, it’s unavoidable just how loose from reality they appear to have become. Or are at least presenting themselves as having become.
The longer trailer’s content takes this to a new level, as the site they’ve not yet made public is described as being some sort of valhalla for the internet, a new-found promised land that will change everything, change the way we view the universe. It’s literally described as having been thought “impossible”, until they came along, until this group of maverick geniuses managed to solve the Internet’s Last Theorem and allow us to ascend as a people. It’s so ludicrously overblown, so unbelievable pompous, and it’s being presented with an utterly straight face and not even a glimmer of modesty or humour, let alone irony. And people are going to react to that.
They don’t appear self-aware.
The reaction to the negativity has, sadly, mostly been met by incredulity and disgust, rather than any demonstration of introspection. The tweets that have appeared in response to criticism, or entirely deserved pomposity-pricking, have been complete denial. Rather than taking stock, asking whether there’s a reason for this reaction, and questioning the direction, there’s instead been a wall of anger or self-pity. There’s no sense of their saying, “Woah, yeah, we did take this a bit too seriously, eh?” Instead there’s the sense that the idea that a documentary of this nature should be criticised is utterly unacceptable – how dare we?! And that only makes it worse. They’re a talented bunch, and they’re attempting something they believe will be special. That’s great. But oh boy, you need to think about how you present yourself to others. And when it’s to tell people that you are incredible, that what you’re doing is unsurpassed, in a documentary about yourself that you’re making yourself – people are going to take the piss. Because that’s when taking the piss is needed.
These documentary trailers are ridiculous. They are pompous, they are self-aggrandising, and they are utterly without perspective. That’s not reflective of the writers themselves (well, it might be, I barely know them – but I’m not making that accusation), but rather an explanation of why they are being so poorly received. And the trailers are also pretentious. And let me be clear about that:
I believe that the word “pretentious” has become warped by misuse on the internet. Mostly it’s now used to mean “confidently stating something someone else disagrees with”. That’s not it at all. It means to be pretending to be something you’re not. And that’s what these trailers portray – the pretence of saving orphans from Syria, when in fact they’re writing about console games on a website. And that loss of perspective, and the stupidly serious way it’s all presented, and the awkward fact that it’s presented at all, is riling people. And that should have been expected. And it now should be taken on board.
