Even if your sympathetic interpretation of J.K. is correct, it still doesn’t excuse a “response” which hardly responds to any of the points in the original article. What’s up with that?

And the point should be self-evident, shouldn’t it? A valid point made in strong language is still a valid point, and here the language wasn’t even all that strong. Btw, isn’t calling someone “burnt out” offensive as well?

For me, Julian’s point about Markku is not about the “print-to-games” angle, but Markku’s use of ‘should be self-evident’. That’s colonial. That’s “not here, I live here.” The attitude was offensive, not the content, at least that’s how I read Julian’s comment.

However, some of the comments ensuing the original article aren’t “fiery debate”, they’re outright bullying. Is calling someone a child in any way fiery? Just seems burnt out to me.

Heh… you said wehicles.

A case in point is Kucklich’s comment in EBR, which hardly responds to anything in Eskelinen’s article. And when it tries to, it makes no sense: “The irony of Markku?s article lies the fact that in his zeal to rid himself of imaginary colonizers, he has become a colonizer himself. This becomes obvious when he claims that it “should be self-evident that we can?t apply print narratology [?] directly to computer games? (36)”

–Seriously, is it possible to disagree with Eskelinen’s point? Is it in any way unreasonable?

I happen to think that the general debate has been very useful, perhaps even constitutional, and that to regret it or worry about it is to misunderstand its function and the function of academic discourse. Harmonic agreement seldom leads to anywhere interesting, and “fiery debate” is much preferable to scholars who never engage the work of others, for whatever reason.

And of course I agree with Jesper that the idea that “ludologists” are against interdisciplinarity is absurd. But since it obviously can’t be documented, why worry about it? Blogs are fine wehicles for academic networking and cheerleading, but they (the present blog excepted, of course) often leave something to be desired in terms of scholarship.

I also happily agree that things have improved since the First Person essays were written (mine in the Summer of 2001), perhaps because of the “ludological” critique? Having argued against uncritical uses of humanist theories to digital media since 1990, I look forward to laying to rest this particular quest.