Reviews are very important to the gaming community, and to the industry itself. Gamers care about reviews because a video game is a luxury in a world where unemployment and worrying about money are common. We also care about reviews because the gaming medium demands a lot of time and engagement from its audience, and we want to make sure the time we’re about to invest in one of these worlds is worth it. The industry cares about reviews because they provide publicity for their product.
Good reviews can help drive sales (not always, of course), and bad reviews often steer consumers away from certain games. Some publishers even use review scores as a metric to determine the bonuses their developers will receive, as was the case for Obsidian, the developer behind Fallout: New Vegas (they received no bonuses because FO:NV scored 1 percentage point lower than they wanted on Metacritic). Numerous people in the industry have talked about the arbitrary nature of the numbering system a lot of sites use to rate a game.
Kotaku has largely abandoned it, going for a “Yes or No” approach in their recommendations, while Killscreen doesn’t have a rating system at all. However, most gaming review sites effectively use a numbering system that ranges from 3 to 5, or more often 6 to 9.5 (games rarely score below or above these numbers, no matter how awful or great they are). Gaming sites and journalists have addressed the amount of influence that the industry has over their reviews, as evidenced by the case of Gamespot firing an employee because they gave a bad review to Kane and Lynch, the publisher of which had dumped a lot of money into ads for Gamespot’s site. And who can forget the Duke Nukem scandal where Jeff Redner, a PR guy, defended the game from critics and threatened that bad reviews would influence whether or not a site would receive a review copy.
Some, such as Erik Kain of Forbes, have even addressed the fact that reviewers simply don’t have enough time to play and properly assess each product, so the integrity of the review suffers. As consumers of game reviews, we need to be aware of these problems. The relationship between the industry and the gaming journalism community is a tricky one which deserves much more attention and discussion. But I think there’s something even more basic we are missing when it comes to game reviews. Let me ask you: what makes a game good?
This is what game reviews ultimately come down to. We, as potential consumers, want to know if the game is good. Our criteria for this answer will usually include things like high fun factor, good graphics, solid mechanics, unique weapons, open worlds, detailed dialogue trees, solid multiplayer, and replayability.
All of these things are important for a game, but I would argue that they miss the bigger picture. The main problem is how technical the answers to these questions must often be, although their technicality is part of what lends them to the numerical scoring process. It just sounds more “scientific” if you use a rubric for the quality of the graphics or the feel of the controls. But this is like evaluating a movie solely on the basis of its special effects, or a book on the basis of how few spelling errors are present. Sure, this is somewhat easier to quantify, but it is too simple.
These metrics are too specific and simplistic to answer the overarching question: is the game good? Video games are art. I know that to some people that may be a ridiculous statement, but all that shows is that they haven’t overcome the blinders that every generation acquires as they get older. For one generation, movies couldn’t be considered art, for another it was television. Every college freshman learns in their entry art class that anything can be art. Anything.
So games are art, but are they good art? Usually, no. Games still haven’t grown up. As a medium, video games are often obsessed with fun at the cost of narrative, meaning, and impact. This is to be expected; every form of entertainment starts out this way. Early movies and television were light and goofy in comparison to the modern forms. But the difference between other mediums and gaming is that we currently evaluate and rate games mostly based upon their ability to be a fun distraction.
Roger Ebert doesn’t sit through movies and then rate them based upon how much “fun” he had. Schindler’s List would be destroyed in his reviews if that were the case, while every 3D movie that studios have mindlessly stamped out would receive top ratings. Yet, that’s what our authorities in the gaming review world do with games. I’m not saying there isn’t a place for fun or silly games, because there is, but right now fun and silly dominate the art form.
We aren’t doing ourselves any favors as consumers or reviewers by demanding only one flavor of art all of the time. Sadly, I can’t think of many games that have elevated the medium to the point of good art. This is especially distressing when you think about the tools at our disposal in the interactive medium. Games have the power to push the player through any stories we can imagine, to build worlds that aren’t held down by any rules, to give us completely new experiences. And yet, publishers and developers seem to want to use the same few crayons, while the rest of the box remains unused. Why always shooters? Why always platformers? Why always muscular, brash male characters? They limit the power and scope of the medium in the eyes of the public by having players slog through the same territory over and over again. And every year at Christmas, when we buy the latest version of the same games, our willingness to put up with the same experiences is used by the gaming industry to justify pumping out sequel after sequel.
There are unique games out there that have pushed the medium forward. Spec Ops: The Line was an amazing and disturbing experience that shed light on war in the modern age and how the game industry’s response to that war was horrifying. Portal was a breath of fresh air in a gaming world that seems to revel in misogyny. Journey made me feel an incredible sense of connectedness to a beautiful world and a deep sense of loss when I had to leave other players behind and turn my system off. These games are meaningful, thought-provoking, and amazing, but they are a very small minority. These games didn’t rely on market research or proven, money-making genres.
These developers were willing to take a risk and give us something new, intriguing, and captivating. They are games whose chief motivation was to inspire people, rather than to rake in heaps of money, and yet when they made a great product, that money came, and a reputation for being great game developers came with it. Why can’t the industry learn this lesson? I can look past bad mechanics, bad graphics, or bad voice acting if a game is good art. What that means is up for debate, but at least that debate will be more meaningful than figuring out whether or not the graphics in the latest shooter score a 7.8 or a 7.9.
We need to start asking our reviewers difficult questions: what does this game mean, what does this teach me about the world, what message is it conveying through its mechanics? If we treat our medium seriously and review it like any other form of art, we can elevate ourselves as a community and as an industry.
The industry clearly reads the reviews and the press their products receive, so if we change our reviews to ask broader questions about the impact of a game, the larger narrative it communicates, and whether or not the game is good art, those might become the new metrics that the industry measures itself against. This shift in the conversation will do nothing but good for players and for the medium we enjoy. Maybe someday soon, moving, inspiring games can be the norm, instead of the occasional “art game” in a sea of mediocrity.
“Thoughts VS Opinions is where our writers express their thoughts on games and news. Feel free to comment below on what you think.”
Noir_Proxy
Hmmm I think it is more based on the reviewer honestly. If a reviewer sells out then well that is the reviewer’s problem. I also disagree that reviewers need to mature in the way they write reviews. The review is based on the reviewer’s opinion. If I wanted to write an essay about how Journey made my nether regions tingle, I would do so. Sections in a review are after all just sections in a review. The reviewer has the ability to write whatever they want within those sections.
You also have to remember that consumers want you to get straight to the point. They want to know if the visuals are great and the story is engaging, but again that is down to the reviewer and how they write their piece. I have always seen the numerical value as more of a conclusion for people who don’t have time to read massive review articles. I myself couldn’t care for what most of the writers of Kotaku think and thus usually go down to see their positive and negative summaries.
On the topic of games. Games are generally for fun, thus why they are called games. We use them to escape the realism of our everyday lives, be it as a hardened space marine or blue hedgehog collecting gold rings. I need that mediocrity, which I why I play games like Gears of War, Halo and Army of Two. You need those times in games where you can just go “I want to pick up this sword and cut this guy’s head off like a boss, then I want to wear it as a hat without a care in the world”.
It is the same with movies. Were The Avengers or Terminator works of cinematic art? Nope, but just by their popularity it shows that people like brain dead escapism that won’t force them to think all that much. Just like games you also always get the inspiring movies that crop up and take our breath away like The Green Mile, or the Pianist, but can you honestly say you could spend the rest of your life wanting that
same kind of experience? That is why we need a breather from them time to time.
I disagree that Spec Ops: The Line was an amazing experience and rather a hybrid shooter that borrowed too much from previous media entries. That is obviously my own opinion though. Either way there are many games that we can step foot into if we require that artistic, yet mature environment, games like Heavy Rain, Deus Ex, even Red Dead Redemption.
As a concept artist and game designer myself, do I need thought provoking games to constantly inspire me? No, not at all. Sometimes just seeing a 3D man tear another virtual guy’s arm off and beat him to death with it makes my artistic juices flow.
Traveler from Balmora
I get your point, Noir_Proxy, but I think the author of this post already stated that there is a place for fun, light-hearted games. The problem is that hundreds of games are released each year, and almost all of them fit neatly into just a few simple genres.
I like the point that “Games have the power to push the player through any stories we can imagine, to build worlds that aren’t held down by any rules, to give us completely new experiences.” and yet how much of that do we really see each year? The industry is way too focused on using proven models to make a profit, rather than taking a risk to make something new. There is definitely room for light, fun games, but there is room for more creative, artful games too. Man, what was the last time we were really surprised by a game?
You’re right that not all games need to “inspire”, but I agree with the author that the industry is weighed down too far in the other direction right now. I also agree that the way to fix this is to show developers that we take this art form seriously; it’s not just a way to waste time on the bus. It can be that, just like some books can be that, but it can also be much more.
Noir_Proxy
That is a little different though as while some people may see graffiti on a wall as ugly vandilism, someone else will see it as art. As she stated with Spec Ops: The Line, she was completely moved by that game while I wasn’t. I thought Catherine was probably one of the best written games this generation but I know a lot of people probably see it as something far less positive. Same with Binary Domain, sure it has over the top action but what I experienced during that game was really thought provoking at times. All games are generally art really (apart from Leisure Suite Larry) but as I said, something you think is complete and utter filler in the games industry might not be to somebody else.
The Game Scientist
I think this article might contradict itself. I get that it wants to remove the metric reviewing method on video games since it isn’t applied to other entertainment medias like films, books, or music (interesting difference between the two, though). However, Sarah seems to look for a way of measuring the art-quality of a game yet, like other people, forget the simple question: What is art?
This is a tough question that artists have debated upon for years – centuries, considering famous artists like Picasso or Michelangelo. The two artists skill and method of presenting their work is drastically different, and yet even I’m calling them ‘artists’ in this sentence. We don’t stick a 7.5 to Picasso’s asymmetrical interpretation of a woman and give Michelangelo a 4.3 for capturing the human body well on canvas, even if we could see a human body everywhere. Sarah gives a hint that the “Fountain” artwork she linked too might be considered ‘bad’ art, but what is ‘good’ art then?
Getting back on topic of reviews and video games, I think we apply metrics to them because they are a science, in a way. Sure we have games stuck in the same genres as others (another platformer, shooter, or survival-horror). Yet there are qualities of games within these genres that we recognize as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Generally this is still a matter of opinion, but generally some people might be in agreement of something. Deus Ex and Half-Life are great shooters, but they are great due to their individual quality and the components that make the game. Superman 64 is an action/adventure game like Nights – yet most gamers can agree which one should be praised and which should be grounded into a pulp for flying us through another freaking ring with terrible controls. We don’t call “Spec Ops: The Line” ‘shooter #4571’ because there are components about that game which make it stand out from other shooters, as Sarah claims in her article.
Is applying metrics to a video game an exact science? Nope. Noir_Proxy states how he doesn’t like “Spec Ops: The Line” whereas Sarah claims differently. That’s fine really. Reviews are where we get to sit down and listen to someone give what they feel were the best and worst components of an entertainment media. However we are free to make our own disagreements with a reviewer and claim that a component – even if it does come from a urinal – makes a game shine as a piece of art.
Noir_Proxy
I completely agree. I actually said the same in my reply to Traveler at the bottom of the page 🙂