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I'm not sure how useful this viewpoint is, but I'll state it for the record. I started posting at IC sometime last summer, and barely used it at all during the school year since I was a lot busier. Now that school's over, I've come back to find SB, and I haven't noticed any consistent change. It's almost creepy, how I can come back and find that same idiosyncratic tone (or tones--the axe is the same, too) again. I hadn't noticed a change of demographic or an increase in "gamery" topics, but I was used to avoiding topics that don't interest me since I use the "posts since your last visit" feature, so a change would be difficult to notice.

I'm not sure how useful this is, since the IC of last summer may have had some of the features ascribed to current SB (it's not like it would be an abrupt discrete change, naturally). And maybe I'm too drunk on the uniqueness of the IC/SB style to recognize more subtle, though still significant, changes in that style. Still, the magnitude of the IC-ness is far eclipsing the magnitude of the deviations, and that's a good thing in my book.

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It's strange to assume that "IC at its best" (Waugh's phrase) means "that the smug rambling that IC became notorious for" (slipstream's phrase).

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Re: The "pretentious" issue. (After reading Dhex's paper, I realize I'm like the millionth person weighing in on this, so I apologize if this is tedious.)

One of the things that originally attracted me to IC was that the communal tone strikes a very good balance about art appreciation. People tend to go too far in either one direction or the other: either they're in a quasi-childlike phase where the things they like are awesome ^_^ for largely unexamined reasons and that cartoon about love and robots that they like to watch is totally great literature!!!1--or they've debunked that, but they're so wrapped up in that discovery that spend all their time trivializing people's interests, as if everyone should divide their time firmly between intense readings of the canon and purely unthinking fun, with no cross-pollution. (If you read that sentence straight through, uh, congratulations.) This divide is heightened on the internet, where there's lots of anonymity, so the latter group is (understandably) quick to assume people belong to the former, because so many people do in the first place.

The great thing about IC is that people are able to have that spell-breaking revelation, and still bring its insights along into a life that isn't so dogmatic about keeping your Seriousness from mixing with your Fun. If all the serious meditations on games-as-art were just from the childlike type--probably because they spend a lot of their time gaming, so hey, "gaming must be important"--they would indeed be "pretentious." On IC, people take up this attitude essentially because it's fun and because there's nothing wrong it, within limits. But they still realize the problems it'd have without limits. Ironically, this is a more mature and intellectually sensible way to act than the "maturity police" tend to, with their dismal reminders that THIS IS GAMING/THE INTERNET (and therefore it must be boring, apparently).

Essentially, I did come to IC for the "pretentiousness" here. But that's because I can get it here when it's a conscious decision, knowing its nakedness like Adam and Eve, which makes its supposed "pretentious" character a lot less important.
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Maybe there could be some kind of stronger interplay between the forums and "official" site content? I dunno, I'm being vague here, but some (semi-)formal way in which interesting threads or posts can get turned into articles if there's interest. This sounds like could create more bitchiness, of course ("SB won't 'officiate' my ideas because they don't fit in," or whatever), but it could also inspire people to posit more ideas rather than just standing back and criticizing. And counter the "this is the internet, who cares?" attitude through some vague ethos of creating a respectable face for the outside world to see.

Just an idea. The devil would be in the details, and for all I know this has been tried to disasterous effect or something.
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