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Great Gamers Not Always the Best Reviewers
An editorial posted on The Adrenaline Vault posits that talented gamers are not always the best reviewers because of the necessity for those with elite skills to care as much as they do about their performance. The best reviewers, on the other hand, are generally somewhat detached from the subject material. From the article: "Spending 50 hours playing an offering when you are focused exclusively on trying to win certainly would yield very different insights than spending the same 50 hours trying to evaluate the title's strengths and weaknesses to help inform the general public about purchasing decisions." Kyle Orland's Video Game Ombudsman has further analysis on this subject.
couldn't the same be said for movie reviews?
i mean ebert and ropurt (sp) may not be the movie critic world after all.
video games are after all entertainment. so maybe reviews should be changed from
1.graphics
2.sound
3.difficulty
to
1. replay value
2. entertainment value
3. difficulty
maybe then we'll see that game reviews that give very entertaining but only worth playing once instead of these graphics and sounds are ultra-leet
The best gamers are those who spend most of their time playing games so almost by definition they lack certain interpersonal communication and writing skills. This is nothing new. Great football players are not the best sport reporters either. Great politicians are not the best journalists. Not because of their inevitable bias or the lack of insight but because an expert in one field is not necessarily an expert in another. As the story goes, there is no jack of all trades.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
This just in:
-Film critics don't necessarily make movies.
-Book columnist not world reknown artist.
I'm pretty good at games, so when I read a review by a seasoned gamer, I can more or less relate to their concepts of challenging, frustrating, repetitive, etc.
The same thing can said for everything in life. The best programmers may not be the best at teaching programming. The best soccer players may be awful soccer coaches. The best prostitutes may not be the best at...ok...well, not EVERYTHING...but yeah, this article is kind of a no-brainer.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
there are inherant issues in having a super gamer reviewing games is that the challange rating for them may be MUCH lower than it would be for your casual gamer. Which may caus frustrations or misconseptions and caus' otherwise great games to fall through the cracks becaus of the super gamer saying that the game was too easy and a waste of time... But that's just my $0.02
I haven't lost my mind. It's backed up on disk somewhere.
Game reviewers do not review games accurately at all. Sure someone who blows through a game is not a good reviewer (skim GameFAQs reader submitted reviews and you'll see some stating they beat the game in a short time so it must suck) but someone who may not even reach the end of the game (or simply stop as a short time) is not necessarily a good reviewer either. If someone reviewed MGS2 based on JUST the Tanker chapter, they probably would've called it game of the year (which is what most reviewers stated in their previews). But once the full game came out and people saw the Plant/Big Shell chapter, there was an uproar. Same thing in games such as GTA3 or VC. First time through, its the greatest damned thing you've ever played! After you've beaten all the missions and you're logging your hundredth hour trying to fly the airplane, the game is shallow.
Really, it is kind of silly that game reviews have tried to emulate the whole movie review system. Not only is game play a much more individual experience than movies because it depends on the player, not merely the game itself. Depending on skills or strengths, a good game fro one person is a waste of time for someone else. Personally, I think the Penny Arcade guys have it right. No rankings or stars or whatever. Just what they enjoyed, why the liked it, and what other things they have liked in the past. Really, it is the context this provides that is almost as important as anything they say about the game itself.
"How articulate are avid successful gamers? Well, judging by blogs and forums and reader responses of all types posted on the web, I would have to say the communication skills are not generally very high."
You know I just don't see blogs, forums, and reader responses from kiddies pretending to be l33t as a clear indicator of the communication skills of successful gamers.
While I do agree that good game players *might* make pitiful reviewers, there are probably quite a few that could be good reviewers. Gaming and reviewing can be seen as two completely different jobs in related fields. Some people will be good at both while some will not.
Take the example of sports boradcasters. Some people are good sports announcers but not good athletes (ex. Gumbel). Some are good athletes but are terrible broadcasters (ex. Deion Sanders, who obviously can't read very well). Then there are the people who are good at both (ex. Howie).
Since I suck at games, that I should be a great game reviewer?
And see what he says, Im sure , most certain actually that if Fats was to review a game, that he would have some opinion that was negative based on game performance. Of course as with the case of Fatal1ty, Combat Carl, and most of those others, Dazed420 from clan |dc, and zOdd from =V= , they run their games at lowest rez with no affects so as to get the maximum amount of frame rate and speed. So certainly any indication that a game would lax in performance theyd clearly Dog it in a heartbeat.
"God of Rock, thank you for this chance to kick ass. "
I argue that a hardcore gamer makes a good designer though. A hardcore gamer can't spot imbalances, and thusly change statistics on stuff to bring things to balance. Without balance, some routes in the game just aren't worth taking. Balance flaws especially show up in competitive play. Also a hardcore gamer can 'play out' a game faster than a normal player as been said in this thread. When you 'play out' a game, you can see things to add that aren't in the game. Of course, this doesn't automatically make you a main game designer, more of a game-tester with ideas.
God spoke to me.
Personally, I only read reviews by people who I know have been around the block with videogames and also play along the same level as I do if not better. I know what they have and have not played so they can make judgements based on experience with past titles, which is especially relevent with remakes or games that claim to be revolutionary. I want an actual real-life gamer's opinion (and remember, reviews ARE opinions to a great extent) of a particular title. Move along. Nothing to see here.
"Apparently so, but suppose you throw a coin enough times. Suppose one day, it lands on its edge."
To some, it's being "uber l33t killah doodz", gankers, griefers, pk'ers; which may or may not be a good thing depending on the game. Being good a twitch games (FPS) is just one kind of good.
To others it might be finding and completing every quest/task/mission, or exploring every map/structure, and finding every drop/treasure; regardles of how many monsters/players you kill.
In an RTS, 'good' might be resource management and strategy. To a pure RPG'er it could be great role-playing skills and character development, having a respected guild, etc.
I think it goes back to the socializer-achiever-explorer-killer categories. How you define 'good' will largely be based on how you fit into that.
But even if you say you're 'good' in all the above examples -- one person's 'good' is another person's 'annoying jack a*s' (I'm talking mainly in a multiplayer context). People have different playstyles and goals when they game, so 'good' is highly subjective and relative imo.
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
The casual gamer who plays the campaign on easy and occaionally skirmishes with the computer is going to want a review based more on 'is it fun to play' which is what you get from some one who is a journalist first and gamer second. Does it look and sound good, is it entertaining and are there any major techincal issues.
however a serious (die hard) gamer gets a very different experiance from a game.
Often issues like linear missions, minor balancing issues, cut corners on AI and pathfinding do influence the 'fun' these guys have.
When Empire Earth came out, it got solid reviews from most everyone. Great fun, epic scale, yadda yadda yadda.
As a die hard RTS fan, I was dissapointed to find about 1/2 the campaign missions were made with painful linear design, most of the ages (epochs) were terribly unbalanced (in one gameplay mode or another) and the AI was worthless, it cheated on every difficulty and had no concept of strategy.
Needless to say what the reviews were looking for a what a 'gamer' was looking for were quite different.
www.snackbar-games.com real reviews by real gamers. real spelling and grammar mistakes too.
I meant to say: can spot, not can't
The reason is, the harcore gamer tries to find the best path to beat the game through analysis. Some rare games have several paths that are equal, but most games have one best path even though their instruction manual boasts many. Now given, suboptimal paths are sometimes fun, but if they can't compete in an online game it shows.
God spoke to me.
... that they were convinced to buy Ninja Gaiden because it was 9.5/10 ... and then got OWNED.
Reviewers often apply scores to games, while completely ignoring the game's replayability factor. Others do talk about that, but often say junk along the lines of "the game lets you be good or evil, and gives you two endings!!". Wow! It doesn't make me want to play through the whole thing a second time, but that sure is neat! I won't pay $50+ for a game that only lasts a few hours and it done. Similarily, games I play need depth (contributing to replayability), usually some sort of modding ability, and a good replayable multiplayer, skirmish, or sandbox mode. Quite often I find reviews ignoring or downplaying things like this, talking about the game as if it was a movie that one could pay $7 and watch at a theater or rent. I can rent many games, but that doesn't work so well on the PC.
I wrote about 40 video game reviews for a now defunct zine. I was a pretty good writer - but not so great at the game. Without cheating or win-trading, I had a StarCraft ladder rating of 1240 or so. That's and a few moments of brilliance here and there are all I can claim.
Being a good writer is extremely imporant to writing readable reviews. I wish I could remember the names of two gaming magazines that got canceled but had excellent writing - one was called something like "insight" and the other was "pc extreme" or something. Any suggestions? Extreme went first, then the second one did. I could go through a PCGamer mag in about 20 minutes - these other ones would take hours because I would read every written word.
If someone who is detached from the subject material can be a better reviewer... then wouldn't it be somewhat inaccurate. Especially if they don't fully understand the concepts of or are uninterested in a particular game they have been handed :P
:P
:P If you want to read reviews to find games you might enjoy, you should just find a reviewer you know is like yourself and stick with 'em :P
I think you need to be attached to the material at least, or you might give a totally lame review. Like some other people have said - games mean different things to different people.
I think a good reviewer can take every single aspect of gameplay and put it together. This includes graphics, reliability, sound, gameplay, enjoyability, difficulty, genre appeal... you get my drift. Most people seem to focus on specific aspects. This might however mean a time consuming and slightly less enjoyable time playing
Turning a hobby into a chore. Don't do it
I don't not believe there isn't a God.
In other news, great researchers are not always the best teachers, great athletes are not always the best coaches, and great lovers are certainly not always the best parents.
Oh, wait, that's not news. That's not even remotely insightful to anyone over the age of twelve.
I think the problem in reviewing games is that the average person doesn't like all genres of videogame. I personally find MMORPGs a waste of time, but have friends who love them. I don't think it would be fair for me to review World of Warcraft while my friends are reviewing the latest 2D Castlevania.
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
Casual gamers would be best served by reviews written by casual gamers. Obsessive gamers would be best served by reviews written by obsessive gamers. Each group expects and cares about different things, why a one-size-fits-all game review is even expected escapes me at the moment.
sig fault
I think both of these articles are a little off the mark. Rather than one type of gamer or another being "the best reviewer", I think the best reviewer is someone who is as much like the reader as possible.
The Adrenaline Vault article scoffs at the player who "brags" that they beat the game in a few hours and that they always play games in Hard Mode. Well, you know what? Unless I know a game is already very hard, I usually set the game to Hard Mode before I start playing. I also like a good, long game, because when I like a game system, I like to actually spend some time with it. So if, for instance, a reviewer says that he almost always plays games in Hard Mode, that his favorite games are Shinobi and Devil May Cry, and that the action game he's reviewing is too easy, too short, and generally sucks, then I'll probably think it sucks too. And if you generally like a short, easy game that you can just kind of relax to for a few hours, someone that likes those sorts of games is probably your perfect reviewer. That sort of reviewer would be useless to me, but then again, my kind of reviewer would be useless to you. Different views for different audiences, no different than getting your movie reviews from a daytime talk show or SlashersBloodDen.com.
Another poster under this story really hit the mark. The best type of review is the Penny Arcade style review: Here's what I'm playing, here's what I liked or didn't like about it, and these are the other games I liked. Rather than having three writers print three very generic, sterile reviews that are nearly identical to each other and make the readers wonder what terms like "too easy", "too hard", "too long", or "too short" mean for them, maybe gaming magazines should get three reviewers that actually like completely different kinds of games review the game from their own perspective.
Cue footage of Magic Johnson or Michael Jordan trying to cobble together a coherant English sentence, much less a relevant or interesting one. Try telling me those guys arent intellectual powerhouses.
Just imagine if a "game reviewer" spent 50 hours playing Chess when it was first released hundreds of years ago. I bet these professional "game reviewers" would have bagged the game as simple, shallow, and boring... with a need for improved graphics and sound. The truth is that some games can only be properly reviewed after playing them for an extremely long time. The way Chess was played changed over the years. Similarly for many other video games.
The way people play Pacman for example, is very different from they way it was played when it was first released because people realized you could memorize the movement patterns: hence the gameplay turned out to be not as good as people originally thought.
Similarly for multiplayer games like Quakeworld, where it took months for people to figure out basic rocket jumping and then years to completely figure out other types of trick movement such as strafe jumping, bunny hopping, accel running, forward rocket jumping, etc. The game is played almost completely differently than then. Now acrobatic skills as well as map skills are the big determining factor in who wins, as opposed to just good aim.
I could go on and on. Some games just keep getting better, the more you learn how to play them, like Chess and Quakeworld. Other games become decidedly shallow, like Pacman.
Good games, and by that I mean games that aren't like crappy movies that you need to press buttons to keep advancing the plot, can't be reviewed as if they were 50 hour movies. A real review would be made after at least several months of playing the game constantly. Of course, you can usually recognize a real stinker within a few minutes of playing: buggy, incomplete, etc.
The Adrenaline Vault posits that talented gamers are not always the best reviewers because of the necessity for those with elite skills to care as much as they do about their performance
It's not their performance they care about, it's about being rewarded for performance. A casual gamer plays for fun, and competitive one plays to be reward for skill. For example:
Casual Fighting game fans love killer instinct, the graphics were nice, and the combos were easy to do. The "elite" players hated it, played at it's highest level the game was nothing but a turtlefest and didn't reward players based on "skill".
FPS players tend to gravitate twards counterstrike. Why? Because spamming for the most part, isn't effective. Casual gamers may love the fact that they can grab the flak cannon in the original Unreal tournament and spam it around corners in hopes for a kill, but 'elite' players hate it, because it isn't skill based.
If a skilled player wants to review a game, they have to realize what their main audience would be playing the game for, which most often is fun.
Please let us keep dumbing-down games to the point where everyone can enjoy them. You know, like Britney Spears. TIA
sincerely,
The PC game industry
If a reviewer is playing a game looking to get out of it something different than the gamer does, then they're doing it wrong.
A good example would be Burnout 3. Though it got good reviews overall; I read one that blasted it for not having a grinding noise when a car touched a sidewall. Frankly, I didnt even notice it didnt make a noise until I read the review. The fact is the reviewer was looking for flaws, while the gamer was looking to have fun. Since I dont play a game to find the flaws in it, I'd much rather hear what the gamer has to say.
The article's not focused on communication and writing skills, but rather how a particular gamer's perspective. That is, the perspective with which an elite gamer looks upon a game does not predict its enjoyment for your average gamer.
I'd describe myself as a casual to avid gamer, but I never saw the fuss about Quake 3, for example. It felt plastic. I've always been a fan of Unreal (original and tournament - 2004, which is traditionally poo-pooed on by the hardcore gamers.
I despute your point for the most part, certainly with respect to gamers. It's a false analogy because a champion football player does so by getting his head knocked around on a daily basis, where being a champion gamer has at least something to do with mental effort, at least in the ideal situation. I know lots of really good gamers who are very well spoken. I do not take this to a representative sample, though.
talented gamers are not always the best reviewers
And what's the surprise here?
I don't see how above average gaming skills should help your journalistic skills, after all a review is no more than an article about a game. From a professional point of view, the reviewer should be a good analizer, have good writing skills and be somewhat intimate with the gaming world, but that's it.
I shot the sheriff
Hell neither gamers, nor reviewers are good at comming up with opinions on games.
Just ask Derek Smart.
That reviewers for magazines that rely on advertising from large publishers tend not to be the best reviewers either.
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