Ben There, Dan That Dev: All Journalists Should Make a Game

[Woe Is You]

This kind of thinking can actually be kind of harmful. Consider the possible resulting thought pattern at work: I know something in a game sucks but because I identify with the developers, I choose not to be too hard on them about it since I know how hard it is to actually do that well. And so the review itself suffers by not being informing the reader whether the game is actually worth playing or not.

 

[ccesarano]

I personally feel that game journalists should at least have an interest in game design, even if they don't want to make a game themselves. My path to wanting to be a games writer came after I sought to try and be a game designer, and when I wanted to be a game designer I learned to analyze video games in a much different way than I had before.

One of the things I see in journalism now are too many people that are simply gamers that can write well. So called journalists covering events without any real journalistic integrity and unable to remove their bias from a review, or to see what a game has to offer on the whole.

I recently played through Mushroom Men: Spore Wars, and while it wasn't a game I would have bought for $50 I certainly saw merit in the title. However, the review scores were absolutely painful to see. There were outlets scoring it a 2/5 when it had some excellent control, an amusing and creative style, clever boss fights and puzzles and massive environments. The only thing wrong with the game was the camera and the fact that it was five hours (and the fact that each death was followed by insta-respawn, but let's just argue we're going for accessibility here). Mushroom Men was scored as if it was a half-assed game when, in fact, it was a fun experience that a much wider array of players could enjoy than, say, Gears of War. The only difference is one is much more "hardcore".

Similar sentiments to the recent TMNT: Smash-Up game. It's a solid title and in particular caters well to the gamers that prefer no-items-final-destination in Smash Bros., but because it was lacking characters, power-ups and a lot of other content stuffed into Smash it was scored low instead of being considered all on its own. A good game was rated as if it were crap.

Then again, maybe this is just the difference between integrity and being a jack ass, though I still say it was through studying to be a designer that I gained a sense of "what kind of people might enjoy this game?".

 

[SomeUnregPunk]

The reviewer needs to identify with the consumer not the producer. Having more reviewers make games would just open the door for "this was a well scripted event." or "the trees move very realistically in the wind, we can see this developer cares." we already have enough reviewers blinded by publisher dollars, we don't need any more giving out sympathy votes for well utilizing a game engine.

if you go a visit a few of those pc sites that provide articles on the latest greatest graphics processor and how to overclock your computer and you'll also find reviews for games that go something like.... "This game has realistic fire that react just like fire is supposed to!"
These aren't reviewers blinded by publisher dollars. They are not reviewing games based on art but more on how it handles and how it presents itself under a bunch of conditions. Reviews like that I like because they see how imersive the game is based on current tech. And since I know the site puts out articles that talk about the upgrading your hardware or articles on the newest stuff out there, it tells me that a game reviewer for their site is better than say a game reviewer from gamefaqs.

i understand why this guy is saying that reviewers should develop games. A mechanic is advised to drive the truck or fly an airplane at least once so he can hopefully have a better understanding on how the thing should work. But i don't think just developing games would make reviewers better in their craft. I believe anything from selling games to creating computers to even writing some lines of code for a macro for use in Microsoft Word 2000, will make a reviewer somewhat better in how they review something.

 

[Nutcase]

One of the things I see in journalism now are too many people that are simply gamers that can write well. So called journalists covering events without any real journalistic integrity and unable to remove their bias from a review, or to see what a game has to offer on the whole.

Impossible. Remove "bias" from a review, and all you are left with is a dry list of facts which a well-trained monkey could type up. In fact it won't be a review at all - no score or verdict of any kind will remain.

 

[Aurora219]

It at least makes you realise precisely how much work goes into them. I for one have spent days building a Neverwinter Nights module - with premade scripts, wizards and props - and still barely even scratched on something fun to play.

I'd love to make an indie game. I'd happily plug months into one.

 

[ccesarano]

Impossible. Remove "bias" from a review, and all you are left with is a dry list of facts which a well-trained monkey could type up. In fact it won't be a review at all - no score or verdict of any kind will remain.

Let me put it this way.

The reviewer absolutely loves Zelda games. No matter what, the game is great because it is Zelda. This reviewer always gives it a 10/10. Is this an accurate score at all? No, because they are letting their opinion interfere. You shouldn't have to have someone that's not much of a Zelda fan review the game in order to say what is wrong and what is right.

When I say bias, I mean remove a personal hatred for a certain genre, or remove themselves from their absolute loyalty to it.

Of course, in the case of Zelda, even gamers are absolutely retarded. I still think 8.8 was generous for Twilight Princess, but nooooo, we CAN'T give Zelda anything less than a 9! That's like saying Jesus was an asshole!

There's no way you are going to remove opinion, but as I said, a reviewer should be able to step back and see how the game is for a wide audience, as if this is the first game in the series and as if the players haven't played a game like it before. It's not merely a matter of "yo I didn't like it so it sucks". I could say that about strategy games because I happen to suck at them, but that doesn't mean the games are bad.

But, as stated, game journalists are merely gamers that can write. Most of them, at least. There's a complete lack of higher thought because their audience has yet to demand it that much. Now that gamers are getting older, it's becoming more and more of a problem. It's about time journalists were more than just some kid with a camera, keyboard and game system.

 

[domicius]

Being a game reviewer who hasn't written a game is a bit like being an art critic who's never painted, or a food critic who doesn't cook. Their viewpoint is representative of a "knowledgeable" consumer and thus quite informative, but there will perhaps not be the insight into the product that, probably, only other insiders would be interested in.

What I suspect is missing however, and something that a published game developer would have, is simply this:

A developer will have talked, argued and defended his choices with the game buying public, and in the process learned a whole lot more about how people use, enjoy or hate your creation. This dialog, this process, could inform a journalist about what the gaming public really feels about a game's mechanics, and what effects choices that he has made have them.

But it's all good.

 

[BloodRed Pixel]

actually, being actively involved in a creation process makes you realize how much of its final product REALLY SUCKS.

So making a game would make journalists actually SEE how much better a game could have been.

so you see why INSIGHTS DO help, always.

 

[Uncompetative]

While the experience of building a boat is not a prerequisite for writing disparaging articles about boats that sink, it does come in handy if you ever want to offer advice on how to build a better boat.

I absolutely agree. But criticism and advice are separate things. One need not be present in order for the other to have value.

Surely, criticism and advice can be combined to form constructive criticism. Wouldn't this be of greater value to this yet-to-mature culture? It may well be the case that reviewers primarily stick to writing about the cinematic aspects of an interactive medium (which, incidentally, encourages the publishers to pour money into stories that require a linear form, rather than construct open worlds that support non-linear emergent systems) because they fear making fools of themselves by suggesting how a game's sequel could be redesigned to, theoretically, fix its current faults.

They would argue that it was not their job to talk about what it ought to have been, only to criticise how it is.

Yet they ought to have some opinion on how its controls and HUD could have been improved, rearranged and simplified. They ought to expect the next generation of consoles to let you pause (shutdown, start-up) and resume a game in progress at any location. They ought to outline how different genres could converge, rather than just observe that they are converging.

 

[Nutcase]

Impossible. Remove "bias" from a review, and all you are left with is a dry list of facts which a well-trained monkey could type up. In fact it won't be a review at all - no score or verdict of any kind will remain.

When I say bias, I mean remove a personal hatred for a certain genre, or remove themselves from their absolute loyalty to it.

Also impossible. If you consider all turn-based games boring as hell, then "bad" is the only honest verdict you can make of any one of them. This doesn't mean you are a bad reviewer, but that you are unable to review these games and do them justice. Not recognizing your own limits, and pretending to know whether someone who *does* like turn-based games will find the game fun or not, is A) worthless to the reader and B) a sign of incompetence. Unfortunately, 90% of gaming "journalists" fall into this trap.

There's no way you are going to remove opinion, but as I said, a reviewer should be able to step back and see how the game is for a wide audience, as if this is the first game in the series and as if the players haven't played a game like it before.

No. Everything exists in context, and a proficient reviewer will be familiar with that context. If the game is a sequel to another that the reviewer judges to be better in every way, that's extremely relevant information and directly affects whether the game should be recommended or not.

It's not merely a matter of "yo I didn't like it so it sucks".

Indeed. The reviewer should pick apart everything about the game that matters, and then use their own judgment openly and honestly.

If Tetris and its clones didn't exist, and someone came up with Tetris just now - with the 80s graphics and sound - a good reviewer would certainly analyze the shortcomings of the graphics and sound, but might ultimately consider the game's merits to outweigh the shortcomings to such a degree that it is a 10/10 game. Subsequent clones the reviewer judges to improve on the game, and therefore be the best version of Tetris so far, obviously deserve a 10/10 as well.

There is no reason that the Zelda fan who gives every Zelda a 10/10 cannot be a superb reviewer. What matters is how they arrive at that score.

 

[D_987]

A good game was rated as if it were crap.

Maybe you need to look up the word "subjective".

 

[Nutcase]

While the experience of building a boat is not a prerequisite for writing disparaging articles about boats that sink, it does come in handy if you ever want to offer advice on how to build a better boat.

But it's not a reviewer's job to offer advice on how to fix a game, merely to point out a game's issues. Of course, sometimes those fixes are obvious -- if the voice acting is lousy, for example, you might want to hire better actors. But I don't need to know the first thing about coding AI to suggest that smarter enemies would make for a more fun game experience.

The one thing I would say, though, is that while you don't need to know the first thing about coding AI to suggest that smarter enemies would make for a more fun game experience, knowing about coding might help one realize how hard (or how easy) it is to accomplish a goal, and therefore, how hard to slam a game that is flawed (or how much to praise a game that succeeds).

Trying hard is a measure of success for preschoolers, not for grown-up game developers.

A game critic is concerned with how the game plays. The most important factor in ascertaining that is to be a good enough player relative to the game in question. (Who else but a chess grandmaster could write a review of Deep Blue that is worth the paper it is printed on? What of value could a newbie say about the AI in Hearts of Iron?) The capacity for analysis, research, and relating the game to the overall landscape of games comes second. Writing skill is good, but obviously doesn't matter before you have something of value to write.

Wannabe software engineering has nothing to do with game criticism.

 

[Russ Pitts]

While the experience of building a boat is not a prerequisite for writing disparaging articles about boats that sink, it does come in handy if you ever want to offer advice on how to build a better boat.

I absolutely agree. But criticism and advice are separate things. One need not be present in order for the other to have value.

Surely, criticism and advice can be combined to form constructive criticism. Wouldn't this be of greater value to this yet-to-mature culture?

Absolutely, but that's not my job. There seems to be a fundamental confusion over the role of criticism. I don't write reviews for the benefit of the game developer, I write them for the benefit of the consumer. While I think some kind of peer review forum for developers would be an awesome tool for them, that's not why I'm here. because - and here's where I agree with Dan - I don't know enough about making games to give practical advice to those who make them. But I do know enough to offer my perspective to consumers regarding what games I think are worth playing.

 

[Nutcase]

The one thing I would say, though, is that while you don't need to know the first thing about coding AI to suggest that smarter enemies would make for a more fun game experience, knowing about coding might help one realize how hard (or how easy) it is to accomplish a goal, and therefore, how hard to slam a game that is flawed (or how much to praise a game that succeeds).

Trying hard is a measure of success for preschoolers, not for grown-up game developers.

On the other hand, having your success measured against an understood metric for degree of difficulty is for world-class Olympic athletes, let alone the average grown-up game developer. In other words, you misunderstood me: I'm not talking about how hard someone tried, I'm talking about how difficult it is to pull something off.

Criticism is about the quality and nature of the outcome. It doesn't matter to a critic if you create a technical marvel as long as the game is not good, or the technology fails to improve a good game beyond what less impressive technology would have done. On the other hand, if it pays off and pushes the game into new spheres, you get commended - for the result. Still not for the difficulty.

A game critic is concerned with how the game plays.

Are they? Look at this review:

Wet makes me wish I could rip a hole in the time/space continuum. I'd like nothing more than to throw the game into it and see how femme fatale Rubi's adventures would fare with another six months' worth of polish. With just a bit more time and effort, I have the feeling that Wet could have been the balls-out, sassy shred-a-thon that it wants to be, but as it is, the game's many good ideas and genuinely inspired moments are lost in a sea of mediocrity and sloppiness.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/reviews/6586-Review-Wet

The review starts out with a judgment not just about how the game plays, but about how the game *could have* played--in fact, it couches it's opinion on how the game plays in the context of how it could have played.

There's absolutely nothing here that an observant gamer doesn't figure out over time, both instinctively, and by carefully comparing games to each other and analyzing them. And that games which get small details wrong can be polished to a higher standard if they remain longer in production - wow, imagine that!

There is some technical stuff where a game critic ought to be more rigorous than the "normal" highly skilled gamer - such as really close observation of output - but I'm hard pressed to think of a single thing which belongs in a review and requires software engineering know-how to come up with.

Wannabe software engineering has nothing to do with game criticism.

Eh, that's like saying wannabe direction of photography has nothing to do with film criticism.

FFS, what a horrible analogy. If you insist that knowledge of software engineering significantly improves game criticism, surely you also think a video camera repairman would make a great film critic?

 

[SomeUnregPunk]

While the experience of building a boat is not a prerequisite for writing disparaging articles about boats that sink, it does come in handy if you ever want to offer advice on how to build a better boat.

I absolutely agree. But criticism and advice are separate things. One need not be present in order for the other to have value.

Surely, criticism and advice can be combined to form constructive criticism. Wouldn't this be of greater value to this yet-to-mature culture?

Absolutely, but that's not my job. There seems to be a fundamental confusion over the role of criticism. I don't write reviews for the benefit of the game developer, I write them for the benefit of the consumer. While I think some kind of peer review forum for developers would be an awesome tool for them, that's not why I'm here. because - and here's where I agree with Dan - I don't know enough about making games to give practical advice to those who make them. But I do know enough to offer my perspective to consumers regarding what games I think are worth playing.

From that I got:
Your job is to give readers, your opinions on the product you experienced.
The reader's job is to derive a conclusion on the product they are interested in acquiring.
Products creator's job is to take your opinions and subsequent number of products sold as an indication on how great of a product he created. The creator may then use your opinions to better himself but that has nothing to do with your job.

 

[Russ Pitts]

While the experience of building a boat is not a prerequisite for writing disparaging articles about boats that sink, it does come in handy if you ever want to offer advice on how to build a better boat.

I absolutely agree. But criticism and advice are separate things. One need not be present in order for the other to have value.

Surely, criticism and advice can be combined to form constructive criticism. Wouldn't this be of greater value to this yet-to-mature culture?

Absolutely, but that's not my job. There seems to be a fundamental confusion over the role of criticism. I don't write reviews for the benefit of the game developer, I write them for the benefit of the consumer. While I think some kind of peer review forum for developers would be an awesome tool for them, that's not why I'm here. because - and here's where I agree with Dan - I don't know enough about making games to give practical advice to those who make them. But I do know enough to offer my perspective to consumers regarding what games I think are worth playing.

From that I got:
Your job is to give readers, your opinions on the product you experienced.
The reader's job is to derive a conclusion on the product they are interested in acquiring.
Products creator's job is to take your opinions and subsequent number of products sold as an indication on how great of a product he created. The creator may then use your opinions to better himself but that has nothing to do with your job.

That's more or less correct. Listen, there is a position for someone who gives professional advice to people who make or do things. Those people are called "consultants" and they get paid a great deal of money to, essentially, give advice. Whether or not I'm qualified to do that, that's not what I do. At least not for videogame developers.

You'll notice in the reviews I write (and that most of us at The Escapist write) you'll rarely see us suggest that a given game would be more or less this or that if the developer had done one thing or the other. We're not talking to them with our reviews. We're talking to you. You're the audience.

Frankly I don't care what the developer gets out of my review, but I care a great deal about what you get out of it. If, after reading our reviews, you don't feel as if you have a better idea of whether or not you'd enjoy playing the game, then we've failed. It's basically that simple.