There’s an opinion piece over at Forbes about the “problem with video game reviews.” Since Forbes was kind enough to try and pull apart one of my opinion pieces not long ago, I would like to take the opportunity to return the favour (a little bit vindictive, perhaps, but this needed to be said anyway). Their headline is right, I’ll grant (and very attention-grabbing, well done guys): there are indeed problems with the way critics write video game reviews, but they’re for none of the reasons that the author of this piece claims.
To save you the need to read a rather self-indulgent attempt to vindicate the author’s writing style, here’s an overview of the author’s line of argument: video game reviews don’t work because while you only need two hours to watch a film and review it, you need 100 hours to play Skyrim to completion to review it.
I could take the easy way out here and simply point out that the author actually ruins his own argument; there are many fine literature critics out there, and yet a book takes many hours to read. But let’s go a little deeper here, because I do think there are a lot of critics that simply do not understand the critical process, especially in the games industry. A video game review is not there to tell a person “how good XXXX game is.” In an era of demos and YouTube consumers are perfectly capable of figuring that out for themselves. No, the purpose of games criticism is to place the game within a broader context and analyse how the game works as a part of a very big, very lucrative industry.
Those reviews that merely break a game down into its components and then tell you how fun it is are not engaging with the game properly. In fact, I would argue that those reviews are mere marketing functions. Listing the features of a game is exactly what a PR company does with a press release. The difference is that game critics like to list the negative features and attach a score that might ward some people away from buying a game. Because of this technical difference a game review is considered more balanced than a press release by the mass public. And that’s exactly why publishers give copies of the game to critics for free – the value of that legitimacy as a marketing tool far outweighs the inevitable negative reviews.
Even bad games benefit from this kind of publicity – I think we’ve all been in a situation where we heard of a game from reading a negative review, and still found it interesting enough to buy the game.
So, Mr. Forbes writer, the real problem with video game reviews is not how long it takes to produce a review. The real problem is that because most critics take the most simplistic approach to reviews possible, games criticism is nothing more than a marketing function for the publishers.
So what should games criticism look like? Like any art work, a game is a product of the society that made it. It reflects the dominant social desires and fears, and while the commercial objective of a game is to be fun and sell a bunch of copies, the importance of games is the same importance of the other arts: the good ones are there to make a statement.
A good film critic doesn’t break a movie down into elements like “special effects, music, story, entertainment value” and assign is a score. A good literature critic doesn’t read a book and then write a review about it as though it’s the only book that has ever been written. A good art critic understands the philosophy of aesthetics and knows about the various art movements that have come and gone.
Like his/ her peers, a good game critic should not be writing about a single game game. He/ she should be writing about how the game fits within the broader context of gaming. The game critic should understand how genre works (given many don’t even realise that a Zelda game is not an RPG, we’re off to a bad start there). The game critic should understand aesthetics and interactivity, and the philosophies behind those artistic concepts. I doubt many games critics have even heard of Marshall McLuhan or Michael Foucault, and yet both philosophers are intensely important to genuinely understanding games.
I think the greatest recent example of what I’m talking about is Lollipop Chainsaw. There were a massive number of reviews written about this game. They all focused on the utterly trivial things – the game’s length, the sexism (apparently many games critics don’t even understand irony), the simplistic combat system.
I saw very little genuine analysis of Lollipop Chainsaw in the games press. There was very little understanding that Lollipop Chainsaw is a work of grindhouse art. There was very little feminist social theory being applied to the game and there was very little deeper thinking about the game and its place in the world.
And that is the real problem with games criticism. We are all guilty of it at times, and at other times games are genuinely braindead works and are not layered like an onion. Not every painting is a work of art, and not every game deserves a “proper” critical analysis. A good critic can tell the difference between the two, but as for a game’s length preventing a good critical analysis of a game? No, sorry, that’s no excuse for bad criticism.
I'm not really sure I understand what you're trying to say here, Matt, even after reading the article a second time. I guess the basic message you're trying to send is that reviews should judge a game based on its ideology and place in culture. Ignoring the fact that your review of Planet Crashers follows the same structure and format that any other review does, let's examine what you're trying to say here. First of all, the idea of a review being a 'marketing tool' is correct, because in many ways that's exactly what it is. When an individual decides to read/watch a review, they're looking for opinions and advice on the title that will affect their decision to purchase and play it. Any further commentary on the title should be reserved for an editorial or analysis piece, though if there is anything that stands out in the area of ideology, a reviewer usually does point it out. Even then, games' ideologies and messages are not singular like they often are in film and literature, as games are often made by hundreds of people. Next, I disagree that game critics should be versed in certain philosophies. Why? Because the readers aren't. The majority of readers of reviews know little about philosophy, game design, etc, and discussing such things in a review will only build a wall between you and those readers. A critic's goal, above all else, is to be understood, and I don't think blabbering on about Lollipop Chainsaw in regards to feminist theory, which I'm certain readers of reviews did not ask for, will do you any favors in maintaining one's interest. Actually, on that note… "understanding that [it's] a work of Grindhouse art"? A term like "grindhouse art" is extremely subjective, and not something that can be "understood." You use that word as if that particular view is objective knowledge that can be taught, such as "understanding" that water evaporates. I could keep on ranting, but I'll stop at the Legend of Zelda bit. Why couldn't someone describe that game as a Role-Playing Game? You play a role, (that of Link, or whatever you chose to name him), and you gain powers and skills throughout the game, developing the character. I don't see why you can't call that an RPG. In conclusion, I failed to see a compelling and cohesive argument here. Speaking as an occasional game reviewer myself, I do not agree with what you said.
A couple of things to go through here – thanks for taking the time to debate with me!
1) "First of all, the idea of a review being a 'marketing tool' is correct, because in many ways that's exactly what it is. When an individual decides to read/watch a review, they're looking for opinions and advice on the title that will affect their decision to purchase and play it."
I disagree completely. From the research I've read (and my anecdotal experience supports this), people rarely use reviews as a buying guide. People read reviews to comment and discuss their own experience, or to validate their opinion.
2) "Even then, games' ideologies and messages are not singular like they often are in film and literature, as games are often made by hundreds of people."
Game development has a producer/ director and team structure, not unlike films.
3) "Next, I disagree that game critics should be versed in certain philosophies. Why? Because the readers aren't. The majority of readers of reviews know little about philosophy, game design, etc, and discussing such things in a review will only build a wall between you and those readers."
Not true at all. You don't need to reference philosophy explicitly in your own writing. It's background information that a critic should know, because it explains why a game was made in the way it was made.
Just like how a business analyst needs to understand game theory to understand how business works.
If you don't understand something, then you shouldn't be analysing, much less passing judgement, on it.
4) "A critic's goal, above all else, is to be understood, and I don't think blabbering on about Lollipop Chainsaw in regards to feminist theory, which I'm certain readers of reviews did not ask for, will do you any favors in maintaining one's interest."
No, a critic's goal is to inform. At times "to inform" also means "to educate." This doesn't mean you need to launch into a lecture on feminism, but you sure as heck need to be able to back yourself up if you're going to call a game "sexist." Which, as I've said, most critics can't do.
5) "Actually, on that note… "understanding that [it's] a work of Grindhouse art"? A term like "grindhouse art" is extremely subjective, and not something that can be "understood."
Sure it can. "Grindhouse" is a genre. If you understand the conventions that make up grindhouse, then you understand what grindhouse art means.
6) "Why couldn't someone describe that game as a Role-Playing Game?"
Because the historical, sociological, and practical definitions of "RPG" preclude the Zelda games.
7) "ou play a role, (that of Link, or whatever you chose to name him), and you gain powers and skills throughout the game, developing the character."
As I discussed in the piece I linked to in this story, what you've mentioned there are not characteristics of the RPG genre.
And this is precisely what I'm talking about. If a critic wants to label a game "RPG," then they need to understand this social context and aesthetics that define "RPG." Otherwise the term gets misused and we end up with bad criticism.
8) " I don't see why you can't call that an RPG."
Because the laws of semantics demand that for communication to be possible a definition needs to be agreed on by all participants. If I see a leaf, and I insist it's pink, and you insist it's green, then we're not going to be able to communicate.
9) Speaking as an occasional game reviewer myself, I do not agree with what you said.
I hope I haven't come across too harshly here, I thank you for your input, but speaking as a career journalist and editor, and academic, I've done a lot of thinking over the years what differentiates good criticism from bad.
"Game development has a producer/ director and team structure, not unlike films."
But the difference is that a game development pipeline is technically different from a film production pipeline.What makes them different is the difference in age/maturity and the fact that video games is an interactive medium. The medium is so young that, according to industry-veteran James Portnow from the Extra Credits series, the producer position differs from company-to-company in what they do. Film, on the other hand, existed for over a century that there are numerous film schools and common knowledge established in the industry (and they can take more creative risks since they also have a standardized distribution of film unlike video games).
I just don't think there are enough companies to actually have too few directors to direct a game. I do believe that a few people have total control over a game production like Nintendo, Suda, and Capcom in a few games, but there seems to be mostly creative direction tossed around in a game project. Does this make sense?
Yes, excellent point there – I agree with it all. In many ways the games industry now is like the film industry of the 40s, still maturing and processes and business models are still being worked out.
My line of argument is that games, as works of art, are often the vision of one person (or a small group of like-minded people). From the indie scene (Notch) to the works of Miyamoto and Suda, Molyneux and Spector; there are enough of them out there for my statement to hold true.
And, just like in the film industry where the Hollywood blockbuster is often as much the work of the guys with the money as the director, you have games like Assassin's Creed or Call of Duty, where there isn't necessarily a single creative lead.
Thanks for fleshing that point out!
"
A good film critic doesn’t break a movie down into elements like “special effects, music, story, entertainment value” and assign is a score. A good literature critic doesn’t read a book and then write a review about it as though it’s the only book that has ever been written. A good art critic understands the philosophy of aesthetics and knows about the various art movements that have come and gone."
My problem with game reviews though? You rarely know how often the game was played by the reviewer, unless they specify it, which most reviewers don't from my experience. So, I probably am leaning in more with agreeing with the other side here…even though I haven't clicked over yet (slow internet current location).
How do you know how many hours a reviewer puts into a game, if they don't tell you? How do you know how many hours you can expect from it? That's not something I'm usually wondering about in an art, movie, or book review. As a matter of fact, it's the opposite with book/movie reviews, in that I assume the reviewers watched/read the entire movie/book; but I'm way more skeptical of video game "reviewers" these days, especially on the larger sites. I remember my first time writing a magazine over failing to mention how many hours gamers could expect, and it was GameInformer on their original Mercenaries review.
Before most people go to a movie, one thing they know is that the movie will almost always be under 3 hours long, with the average probably closer to 2 hours (just a guess).
If you are going to read a book, most time you know how many pages it is, and can guestimate how long it will take to read based on your reading speed.
As for, "A good film critic doesn’t break a movie down into elements like “special effects, music, story, entertainment value” and assign is a score.", if a movie has a poor story, a terrible music score, and horrible camera movements/controls, I would think those issues would become evident in reviews and word-of-mouth quickly.
If I'm interested in a certain movie/game, and I want opinions before watching/playing, the one thing I am most interested in is how much time it will require.
coming from a background of literary studies, I wholeheartedly agree. of course I like to read Gillen et al. more than your average IGN review, and everyone who really reads reviews and not just skips to the number at the end should do as well. problem is that not everyone is looking for these kinds of reviews. games are so diverse and there are so many different kinds of people playing games that it's hard to find the review that suits everyone.
…so that's what makes writing about games kind of a hard thing to do. add to that the armies of "armchair experts", i.e. untrained amateurs who sometimes shouldn't be writing reviews in the first place. hmm, not really sure how exactly to get out of this situation that games writing put itself in. more diversity is the answer, some writing for every kind of reader, I believe. of course that makes it impossible to find the review that has value for everyone.
Excellent point. We need all kinds of writing. I'm not a fan of the Gillen-style review – in fact, I cancelled my PC Gamer subscription because its pseudo-intellectual tone annoyed me so much (grrrrr!) – but that style has its place, as does an incoherent but sincere rant on a blog. As readers, we have a choice, and it's so easy to click on something else. Live and let live, I say!
And incidentally, I recommend Dan Amrich's "How to Review Videogames for a Living" for anyone who's interested. It's reasonably cheap on Kindle, and it has thoughts on this topic as well as some practical writing tips. Some of it is obvious, but it's still a thought-provoking read.
the thing that really gets me is when people review or write a blog or even write on a post like this i hate when people argue like no way your wrong etc..everyones entitled to there own opinion and reviews and such are there only as a guide line to help us in our decisions etc..
Matt, this is a great piece.
Firstly, I read the Forbes article, and some of it I had to read over again, and I still don't see where the piece ever actually explains the catchy title. It's not a well written piece and it's completely subjective, even when the title comes off like the author is about to prove some sort of factual information.
With this said, one of my worst issues I find with today's game journalist, is it's so apparent that many of them don't put enough time into the game, and then write a half-a** review of the little of it they played. I can't put a 100 hours into a game review, just like most any other review cannot, but sometimes they bite themselves in the back end with this approach, and I can prove it: Rainbow Moon.
Rainbow Moon is a game that blends genres and opens in a way that few games would dare try. How? It smoothly unfolds the game's inner-workings over a ten hour period. While the game is indeed over 100 hours in length, any reviewer that didn't cross the 10-15 hours threshold, never actually saw the game to it's fullest gameplay extent. It's a game that required a time sink to properly review, and the developer was up front about it when they sent out the review codes.
But what happened? Well, you can read the reviews yourself. I know you (Matt) and myself dropped the allotted time into the game, but the vast majority of the reviews made the mistake of writing before playing and the readers tore them alive in their comments section for it. One, very respectable site, of which I'm not going to name for business reasons, had the paid reviewer write such a shoddy review, that he literally had to finish the review with a comment that was about the same length of what he initially published. Honestly, it made me sick to my stomach when I read it.
Some reviews just don't care, and I don't understand why they even continue to write for the industry if they're willing to publish such garbage with their name attached to it. I put in the necessary playtime to write a review and put pride in my work. I pull the emotions and feelings I had throughout the game and inject them back into the review for my readers. When you read a review that I've written, you'll know what to expect from the game, as I only accept reviews that fit the genres that I enjoy and understand. Of course, if a game fails on every front, that's when you can cut it short and just have fun with the review.
And if you really want to know what's wrong with the game industry, go to Metacritic and search for the action/RPG title Nier. A game that's so deep, so emotional and literally destroys the the "fourth wall" barrier. But, so many reviewers don't understand what that means do they? So many compare everything to a handful of triple-A titles now. When you put a piece of art right in front of their faces, they can't see it, because they've been focus grouped over and again, and they don't even realize it.
I've written enough. I'm just going to stop now.
They're opinion to a degree. Two reviewers worth their salt might differ on their overall experience of a game as a whole, but there are fundamental elements that aren't opinions. Games have a basic foundation they are built upon. If those elements are broken, there's no way around it, it's a broken game. That's not an opinion, it's a fact.
What we're seeing a lot of today, is what I call "slam journalism." These are journalist who take great games and find a minor few things that aren't fundamental structure parts of the game, and intentionally leave out the overwhelmingly good things the game owns up to, while absolutely going off-the-rails with slamming the game for it's very minor faults. These games (e.g. Uncharted 3, Halo 4, Journey, etc.) are games that get overwhelming praise, so these "slam" journalist intentionally write this way, and intentionally underscore the game to pull in the outraged fanboys by the masses.
While that's the far end of the spectrum, it also falls into games like Sega's Binary Domain. It featured a great, standout single player campaign, but it was railed over and again by the majority for its average multiplayer experience, which was only added to satiate those who desired it. What did this do? It cause a game that should have sold very well to become highly underrated and underplayed, which is a shame.
Yes, reviews are opinions, but only to a degree. I've reviewed games that I personally didn't care for, but as someone who cares about the industry and the fans that the particular title(s) are aimed at, I played the game accordingly, weighed the fundamental elements of the title properly and made a concerted effort to grade it accordingly toward crowd the game was designed for, as well as taking the mass appeal into consideration. Reviews should be written according to your audience. In my case, I now write for a vast crowd of gamers across all sorts of genres, and my reviews are tailored to this specific readership. While my reviews featured here at Digitally Downloaded are geared toward a more niche, indie crowd and are written accordingly. Am I a perfect reviewer, nowhere even close, but the feedback I've gotten over the years, is that my writing shows that I care for the games, and about my writing, and that's because I do.
While I agree with you, I must say that I think there is a very big difference between an informed opinion, and an uninformed opinion. Journalists have an ethical responsibility if they're writing opinion pieces (such as criticism) to have informed opinions.
I think back to Gamespot's review of Samurai Warriors 3 – this is the perfect example of everything wrong with criticism for me. Gamespot being one of the most important games criticism publications published a review where the critic spent an entire paragraph explaining that the game was about the "Three Kingdoms Era."
The Three Kingdoms Era was a period of Chinese history, not Japanese, which is obviously (even just from the title) what the game is really about.
So I did a bit of research. I typed in "Sengoku" to Google, and for some reason it linked me to the Three Kingdoms Wikipedia page. So this game critic, for one of the most important gaming websites, has "researched" the game by doing a Google search and almost copy-pasting the wrong Wikipedia entry.
You won't see that paragraph-long mistake any more – after a few hundred people pointed out the author was wrong the text was edited, but it remains with me because it represented everything wrong with games criticism – not only is the author spreading misinformation, but the editor also let it through.
thanks Rob, will try to get a hold of that book!
and what you just wrote is of course a valid opinion and everyone should value this. you do make some great points…
"Games have a basic foundation they are built upon. If those elements are broken, there's no way around it, it's a broken game. That's not an opinion, it's a fact."
Thank you for saying this! I'm sometimes bothered by the way some try to discredit the validity of certain criticisms by using the opinion card. There is such a thing as facts in reviews.
Wanted to let you know I appreciated reading your insights and can definitely see where you're coming from.
Thanks mate! I've become quite picky over the years. While I do agree that every site has its own angles and target audience, which can dramatically change the content of a review, there are things that there's just no way around.