A Short Endorsement of "Extra Punctuation"

If you didn't know already, Yahtzee, the Zero Punctuation guy (and the only video game critic I follow on a regular basis except this guy: Will Westwater), also has a weekly written column on the Escapist website. It's called Extra Punctuation and in it, as the name suggests, Yahtzee tends to write a little more in-depth about a topic related to his most recent ZP episode. While ZP fans just looking for Yahtzee to deal out more abuse may be slightly disappointed (the joke/insult-density is relatively low here), and while his arguments occasionally don't go in the direction you'd like (while writing about Knack he tangents for an overlong period into misanthropy, though he acknowledges this), this column allows Yahtzee to escape a bit from the Colbert-like persona he's build through ZP and share his thoughts more directly. Despite the varying quality of these EP articles, he's is a great writer and is extremely knowledgeable about video games, and thus he will occasionally stumble upon something brilliant, like in this weeks post, in which he responded to the legions of people who attack his videos/articles because they disagree with his opinions, specifically accusing him of not understanding beauty:

"It's a strange thing to say because, as cliche would have it, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It's subjective. So the sentence "you don't know how to appreciate beauty" can surely be reworded as "you don't know how to appreciate things that you, subjectively, appreciate", and now you're just talking crazy. Perhaps a truer meaning would be "you don't know how to appreciate things that I, subjectively, appreciate". And I'll put my hands up to that one, yes, that may well be correct. Although I don't see how it counts against me."

That's a good defense for critics, and a flame war-deterrent as well.

So, if you're at all interested in video games or video game culture, I recommend checking out all of Yahtzee's work (hell, even follow the Rhyme-Down, 'cause it's hilarious), and not just Zero Punctuation.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/columns/extra-punctuation
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jim-yahtzees-rhymedown-spectacular