When did it start?
I first noticed it when I saw a story about how the Metal Gear Solid 3 remake looked stunning. A cursory search led me to 64 articles that used the word ‘stunning’ in the last year alone. I didn’t even begin with the premise, but rather, I just noticed the word coming up a lot.
That’s actually not true. It might be a semantic distinction, but it doesn’t feel like it is and frankly that’s all that matters at the moment. I really just hate the overuse of the word stunning and I guess I’ll try to figure out what I hate about as I write this.
What does ‘stunning’ mean? Does it mean anything?
stunning adjective
1. extremely attractive or impressive
synonym: beautiful
examples:
– You look absolutely stunning!
– a stunning view of the lake
– his performance was simply stunning
What’s funny though is that the dictionary part of this doesn’t really matter. The more ubiquity there is among headlines, the less likely we are to recognize them or care that they are there. Everything is stunning. Every game, every trailer, every screenshot, every teaser, and even every Steam page.
In the next example, “a stunning view of the lake” is implying a feeling of awe at seeing the lake, soaking it in, and failing to come up with a more interesting adjective to describe it (which is fine because it is generally an appropriate word), but applying it to games which are manmade, thoughtfully designed, constructions of what starts in a brain, ‘stunning’ is woefully insufficient.
The “extremely attractive-” part of this definition is the most telling as in all three examples, it’s describing something with other elements to its beauty that would contribute to the use of ‘stunning’ like in “You look absolutely stunning!” where said statement would be between two people and the word in that case can be related to the person themselves outside of how they look.
Everything is stunning, I guess
Who would’ve thought that a visually accurate $383.99 statue that looks like the same iteration of Banjo-Kazooie in the most recent Super Smash Bros. would be stunning? Is it stunning because it’s life-like, or is it stunning because looks like it should? What is stunning about? Even if I was unoriginal enough to use a word like stunning, I don’t actually see anything stunning about it.
Sometimes stunning doesn’t even emphasize visual elements, like PC Gamer’s recent article about a 240Hz 32-inch 4K OLED monitor, which again is ‘stunning. Is it the absurd number of acronyms and consumer terms needed to describe it that is stunning because in that case, I would agree.
It makes everything worse
Stunning is a buzzword. We know this, but part of what makes reading video game news, especially via an RSS feed so miserable is that everything eventually blends together and becomes everything else. By the time you make it through the multiple instances of stunning, and PC Gamer’s Wordle answer of the Day (which just, like, do the Wordle), even when you do stumble upon an article worth reading, it’s too late.
After guides about Minecraft and the stunning new trailer for a pixel art Metroidvania, it becomes industry layoffs that are actually pertinent to video game development and video games themselves. But again, it’s too late. As far as I can tell, everything appears stunning to someone, even games that have an anime style that looks like every other thing that also has an anime style, which I get it, because it’s easy, but why is it stunning? There’s a new Destiny 2 mission that takes 19 hours to complete and even that’s stunning.
To be fair, it’s not as annoying as “hidden gem”, “soulslike”, “charming”, “cute”, “fun”, or “wholesome”, but it’s not an excuse.
Please stop buying video game peripherals products paraphernalia
If I wrote an article about a nearly $400 Banjo-Kazooie statue, I might say it captures the era of the mascot with its beady lifeless eyes and represents the soulless consumerism of ‘gamers’ attempting to cash in on not on anything substantial or of merit, but simply their own nostalgia for something that they so clearly haven’t played in a long time because as someone who has recently played it can firmly say that it does not hold up at all, and though I have nostalgia for it, it has to simply be the idea of its existence and the opening of the door for me to better games because it is, for the most part, a miserable slog. This statement would not fit in a headline but it is something more substantial than stunning.
For $400, you can buy this Banjo-Kazooie statue that on purchase will prove you haven’t played it in a while
That’s the headline.