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Denis Dyack's Quest For A New Game Biz
Just weeks after Too Human producer Denis Dyack confronted the folks at 1up, he's now talking to Gamasutra about many of the same topics, and seems to be pining for a very different games industry. Specifically, Dyack takes exception to the whole concept of incomplete games being seen by the press, the large and now-deceased glitz and glamour version of E3, and the enthusiast press in general. His big complaint seems to be that enthusiast press folks want things to be good. "I guess I'm really against the whole notion of the enthusiast press. Being so enthusiastic that they want things to be good. I think if our medium is going to become mainstream, and we're going to be considered an art form, we need true critics like the movie industry or even the music industry where people go up and literally critique something, and it's a profession to critique it. In order to critique something, it has to be done."
Professional critics are word of mouth.
You probably have friends with totally different tastes in movies. As a result, if they were to say a movie was great you would take that with a grain of salt. Humans are all different and they define "good" in different ways.
Critics are the same way. You find a critic who's taste closely matches your own, and use them as a gauge of how much you will or will not like any given game, movie, etc.
No, not really.
Games: cost $50 (or $60 for next gen) Movies: cost $10
If 100% of the population goes to the theatres once a month, and 20% of the population buys a game once a month, the games will bring in more revenue...but won't be "mainstream".
From another angle, the last movie I watched I could tell my parents and siblings to watch, and they may or may not like my taste, but they'd probably watch it to see what the fuss is about. The last game I played I could tell my parents and siblings to play, and they wouldn't (unless I was there with them as an extra hand to lead them through the tutorial, and even after they learn the controls they would never pick up the game on their own).
Its true,
How can somebody be expected to write a relevant and fair review of a game (or movie for that fact) without experiencing the whole thing.
Playing a demo/sample will tell you a little but its like reveiwing an entire movie after you have only watched the trailer, 9 times out of 10 the trailer looks awesome but the movie is crap.
I think you might be missing the entire point of what he's trying to say. Of course we, as consumers, want the things we spend money on to be "good". He's saying that the press shouldn't go into the review process with too many expectations, because that will affect the way they review the game. Imagine a movie critic visiting the set of an action movie and looking at the storyboards for an awesome looking upcoming action scene (which AFAIK would probably never happen). This is a similar scenario to a game journalist being shown a rough scene from a game and being told about "features" that haven't even been implemented yet. Now imagine that the film runs into budget / time constraints and has to drastically cut the action scene and the special effects for the film. The film critic would have all these awesome images and ideas in their head about what the movie is going to look like, but when it comes time to watch the actual film all that stuff is missing. Their review is going to pan the shit out of the movie, even though there may be plenty of other great things about it. Ultimately the ones that suffer will be the audience and the game maker. The audience will probably be dissuaded from buying a game that might still be really fun to play, and the game maker gets panned becasue their products isn't what someone thought it would be. If game journalists were objective and critical instead of basically being fanboys, we'd get much more balanced reviews that might give us realistic impressions of the games themselves. This is true regardless of whether you consider games an art form. BTW Most professional film makers would consider film an art form (even action films!). Just because you don't recognize the details and intricacies of great games doesn't mean they aren't there for others to enjoy. A lot of great games are art, even if they're really fun to play.
I get the impression that Gamasutra is hard up for real news sometimes. I want to call Dyack's crusade Quixotian, but I've never read the novel so I'm not sure it'd be accurate. His preaching is odd, though, because he's railing against something that seems quite insignificant to me. On the other hand it's very significant to him, because his game got critically panned an E3 or two ago when they showed a crappy build of a not-anywhere-near-complete game. He can claim it's not about that all he wants, but it's incredibly obvious that it is. It's a bit sad.
Would the game industry be better if reviewers didn't see early copies of games? Would it be any different at all? Probably not much. I'm not sure what he's trying to accomplish, but somehow he seems to have convinced himself that this is a life or death choice for the industry. It's all a bit ridiculous. In a month he's gone from "seeing early copies of games is bad" to "the enthusiast press is bad." I'm wondering where his slippery slope ends, but I'm sure quality industry publications like Gamasutra will be sure to keep me informed.
Games are still a fledgling media. I have found that meta-ratings systems help, but their is still room for improvement.
For instance, I have found that a movie that is getting more than an 80% rating on rottentomatoes.com is almost always a movie that I will find worthwhile, even if it is in a genre that I don't normally enjoy. However, game ratings like those at rottentomatoes.com or metacritic.com aren't quite as consistent.
There are several reasons for this. First, game review scores tend to be overinflated. The median score for a game rating seems to be about 7.5 which makes it very difficult to distinguish which games are really the "best".
Second, unlike movies games don't always age well. The original "Resident Evil" has a great rating. However, I tried playing it for the first time this year, and it was agony. I just couldn't get in to it with its primitive interface.
Last, games are more personal. The amount of time that can be committed to a game is at least an order of magnitude greater than the amount of time that it takes to watch one movie. Also, games are much more diverse. I have never gotten into FPSs, so no matter how highly rated they are I wouldn't shell out $60 for one. However, I probably will buy Heroes of Might and Magic V despite the fact that it doesn't have a stellar rating.
Long live the Speaker Bracelet
Rolo D. Monkey