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Deconstructing Game Review Structure
Recently there has been a lot of division on the topic of game review structure. Kotaku has an interesting summary of recent commentary, including a piece by GameSetWatch's Simon Parkin and the Taipei Gamer blog. "Except, of course, video games don't work in the same way as toasters or digital cameras. Sure, they have mathematical elements and measurable mechanics and it's possible to compare the number of polygons between this one and that and spin out ten thousand graphs detailing how two specimens compare. But, unlike with the Canon EOS400D, I would have no idea at the end of those 25 pages which game was better or where they would sit on the 'true' scale of quality."
And that's why such a comparison would be pointless.
Remember, "quantifiable" and "subjective" are neither opposites nor mutually exclusive. You can have a quantifiable metric that may vary from person to person, but is still measurable and can thus give a solid indication of how you may react to a game. What quantifiable "fun" metric am I talking about? Well think about what is both fun and measurable and I think you'll see the obvious answer: I'm talking about orgasms.
And no, pleasuring yourself (or having someone else do it -- ha!) while playing doesn't count. Only orgasms resulting from the game itself counts. As you can see, this is a completely quantifiable measure, and while the result is certainly subjective, its measure is not (well, for males, it can be a little iffy with females). How much better is that than a traditional "score" where not only is the reviewer's enjoyment of the game completely subjective, but how they translate that enjoyment into the numerical score is essentially arbitrary.
Now how do games stack up with the Burke Metric? Well, every game I've ever played has a Burke Score of 0, making them all equally bad. Except Rez, which at a score of 1 is objectively the best game I've ever played.
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Just look at the difference between how users score games compared to how reviewers score games and you will see a problem. Grand Theft Auto 4 has a reviewer average of 97.4%/97.3% on the PS3/XBox 360 yet users give it an average score of 79%/83% ... In contrast a game like Mario Kart Wii has a reviewer average of 81.9% and users give it an average score of 96%
...
I'm not saying that GTA4 is a worse game than Mario Kart Wii, but it is clear that the reviewers are not giving scores which reflect the experience of gamers who own the game
(Note: all scores from Gamerankings.com)
Your reasoning is flawed because the enjoyment of a game is on several levels, and part of the enjoyment of a game is based on your personal interest/involvement - For example, Final Fantasy Fanboys love Final Fantasy Games. Even when they're crap (FF8), there are still a lot of people who love it, simply because of the FF designation. It has to do with personal commitment and involvement with a game!
The gaming, movie, music, and art press issued a statement today. "We realize now that people have been looking for an objective reviewing standard," read the statement. "We apologize for not noticing earlier, but since they have buying our review magazines and visiting our review websites for decades now, we thought they happy with our reviews. A blog entry on a website "kotaku" has changed all that. We are now retiring en masse. All non-objective reviews will cease immediately. We apologize for wasting your time."
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
This really isn't so profound. A review of hardware is mostly technical, with some allowances for appearance and perhaps overall "feel." Of course there's a formula; you compare the specs and put it to the test. It takes a competent writer to turn in a good tech review but really, it's a set process.
On the other hand a review of a game, a book, a movie, really any entertainment product is entirely about the reviewer's personality and taste. They build a following and you get to know who you agree and disagree with, even if they write for the same outlet. And a biting sense of humor is key (where jokes tend to ruin a good tech review.)
You trust a tech review site because they cover all the bases and report in a straightforward manner. You follow a movie reviewer because they steer you right and their reviews are fun to read.
It takes a certain amount of creativity and personality (and often a great sense of humor) to build a following
A good review must be score by how much the author represented the right way of thinking about the game (i.e. my way of thinking about the game).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
How is a game all that quantifiable?
I'm sick of seeing perfect 10 after perfect 10 review. Not only do I know these are absolutely worthless in regards to objectivity, but very few reviews explain what gameplay is like on a very specific scale.
A good description allows me to decide how much I might enjoy that game. After all, we all enjoy different things.
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There are certain aspects of a game that are "objective" and some that aren't. Design flaws and low skill ceilings often don't impact the short-term enjoyment of a game, but can make it worthless for long-term play. Mario Kart Wii is a perfect example of this. While skilled players will beat unskilled players nearly every time on Wi-Fi, the item chaos makes high level play worthless on Wi-Fi. (High level play is still quite good on the same console with items set on "strategic" or turned off, of course.)
This is a pretty straightforward analysis, and while it's hard to be 100% objective, it's fairly straightforward to say that the game's design minimizes the small skill gaps and thus replay value is minimized due to the fact that getting better and better at the game has diminishing returns. There's just no point in getting that extra hundredth of a second every lap when you lose 3-5 seconds to a blue shell.
The things that can't be quantified are the problem- is FF7's materia system better than FF8's junction system? That's purely personal preference. You can't go "well, this one requires more skill than the other" or "this one has more replayability" or whatever; because they're fairly similar in those respects and you can't really make a distinction between the two.
But anyone can see that Final Fantasy whatever is a better game than Super Barbie Movie License Cash-In 93 on the Game Boy. The huge, huge difference makes it plain.
I would say that it's probably easier to just lump games into "utter trash", "below average", "average", "above average", and "genre-defining"; and maybe have 2 categories- one for firstplay and one for long-term play.
Gran Turismo 4, for instance, is genre-defining and has excellent long term playability.
Mario Kart Wii is above average when you first play it, but the long term playability is lacking.
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I agree. I don't want the author's opinion. I want the facts about the game. I want to know whether or not I should bother to even rent it, let alone buy it. A good review will give me this information (along with the author's opinion).
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Whatever good game review structure might be, this isn't it.
Rob
who still reads game reviews? we all know that the magazines are all biased. They give good and bad reviews depending on who crosses their palms with more money or more free games.
games that are absolute rubbish get good reviews because the publishers were good to the reviewers or parent company. the number one goal of game review mags and sites is to help sell games.
the only people I still see reading traditional game reviews are kids and n00bs who don't know any better.
I published a magazine a couple of years ago, and in it all game reviews reviewed gameplay from one person's perspective, and would never ever give a score. Because each person is different. If I don't like something about gameplay, you might love it.
in this day and age (with the "help" of blogs), things are getting less structured, and certainly when it comes to game reviews, that's the way I like it. I want someone who is immersed in the game to write from the heart, not some fucking clinical analysis, telling me redundant information like number of polygons, and how many levels of parallax scrolling. maybe give it a quick mention if it's something never before seen in the industry, but don't dwell on it, and certainly don't use it to score the game.
of course, the best policy is to just play the games yourself and make your own decision. stop being a sheep and letting other people's opinions drive yours.
websites like fileshack.com have demo games coming out the wazoo that you can try for yourself.
The reason girls and Windows users don't understand UNIX is because all the documentation is in Man files.
I've been writing game reviews for about seven years now (shameless plug: game-over.net), and as a writer and a reader I think that game reviews do have merit. If you want someone to tell you if a game is fun or not, you're using reviews the wrong way. What a game review can tell you, especially if you read a lot of them, it what a game is like to play, drawing useful comparisons to other games that you may have played and may or may not have liked. It is also possible to find a reviewer who in general likes the same kind of games you do, and becomes sort of a litmus test for you in the future.
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Game reviewing is pretty straight forward. A lot of people would assume it's based on things like fun factor, aesthetics, controls, etc. This is actually not the case.
There are effectively two factors involved in game reviewing; bribes, and repercussions.
The video card and big gaming companies give a lot of bribes to the game reviewers, so things like graphics and big blockbuster titles are given good reviews regardless. Repercussions are taken into consideration based on on which company produced the game you're reviewing. Say for example if you're reviewing a game from some small time game company. There's no worry about money being pulled from the magazine/website if you ream the game. The complete opposite is true if you're reviewing anything from say Bungee, or Eidos.
The bottom line is, graphics and big titles are the most important things, since that's where all the bribes come from.
I have nothing compelling to say