Grand Theft Objectivity

[Shjade]

Somewhat. I'll have to take your word for it; I haven't played much of the GTA series so its protagonists are not familiar to me, making the comparisons a moot point.

 

[StriderShinryu]

As a few others have pointed out, I think a fair amount of this dischord falls at the feet of the numerical rating system. There was an article posted on Kotaku on, if I recall correctly, the day of GTA5's release that did a great job of breaking down just what sort of problems a numerical rating system cause. It's a broken system that, far too often, leads to a broken discussion.

As for a reviewer making use of a personal stance to influence their review, I can see both sides of the debate. Either way, I think the more important thing is that a choice has to be made. If you, as a reviewer, are going to be opening to more personal influence, then that's great, but make it clear. Tito's review of GTA5 did an excellent job of this. How his personal feelings towards the game, and those feelings created by the game, were clearly explored in his review. There was a clear discussion on both the merits and failings of the game on a mechanical level aas well as on an artistic/personal level. If, however, your review is going to be based almost entirely on the mechcanical workings (and not workings) of a game, then an off hand comment in the summary section of a review including, if a scoring system is used, an obviously reduced score due to the personal criticism, does not belong. Either you discuss and include your personal feelings within the context of review, or you leave them out. You can't have it both ways.

 

[Tumedus]

/sigh

Should have known this would be used to justify Tito's review. Yes, its true that fans will come out of the woodwork when you give their favorite game of the hour a less than perfect review, but comparing what happened here with some of the internet hate that was lobbed at GameSpot's review is disingenuous at best.

The GameSpot review talked about all the great things about the game, had a few minor issues with the game, explained why those issues were, in their minds, legitimate faults of game and/or story and not just a personal difference and then scored the game slightly less than amazing because of it.

Tito's review couldn't actually articulate a real problem with the game. Even his one sole complaint, that he couldn't identify with the characters, was undermined by him trying to contrast their "evilness" using previous GTA characters that were just as bad, if not worse in most cases, as the characters here (at least compared to Michael and Franklin). Granted, he didn't do a particularly good job of detailing what was good about the game either, but at least that discussion had a more diverse offering of what the game actually offered. And for that nebulous claim of "I didn't like them" he rated the game down to a 3.5 stars. Given what the game is, that reduction is nearly impossible to justify given one poorly expressed dissatisfaction.

The issue at GameSpot was a case of some annoying hate from fringe obsessed fans. Some of those same types obviously contributed here, but the problem was actually a really poor review, not one of fan perspective.

I agree with above sentiments about how numerical reviews are fraught with issue when it comes to games, but still, I can think of several games (D3 springs to mind) that had far more legitimate gameplay issues on top of having a terrible story (not saying GTA 5's story is bad, but that is the absolute extreme end of what you could take away from Tito's issues with it) that got better scores than what GTA 5 had here.

 

[hentropy]

That's just the thing though, disconnecting someone's feelings from a piece of work ultimately makes every review a boring, grey, sterile discussion about mechanics and graphics and level design that can actually be quantified and measured objectively.

Not what I'm meaning.

just so long as there's a certain amount of honesty and clarity involved.

Ding ding ding! Exactly!

Suppose I was reviewing, oh, Starship Troopers.

I'm a Heinlein fan ... that VanHagendas disliked the subject matter and decided to make a satire instead of treating the subject matter straightforwardly pisses me off (In my opinion, if you hated the book you really shouldn't be making the movie of it).
On the other hand, the movie he pooched out wasn't bad per se ... from a generic scifi/fantasy perspective (better than Pacific Rim, for instance): decent if generic story, decent dialogue, good acting, excellent special effects, internally consistent...weak ending, but whatever.

If I say it sucks, because I hate what he's done with the book, that just plain dishonest ... and it's due only to my own personal agenda of "I wanna see Starship Troopers, as intended by the original author, on the big screen."
That's the kind of bias I think professional movie (and other) critics could do without.
Does that make sense?

Well certainly, but you'd also be within your rights to tell others why you didn't love it, while also telling them the things you just said. My only point here was that I was agreeing with Bob in a different way, the reviews I like the best tend to be when the reviewer talks about what they thought of it personally, much like Bob does with his reviews, instead of trying to take a checklist approach.

There seems to be this weird push on the internet to push video game reviews towards more uniformity and "objectivity", when in my opinion at least it has made game reviews a comparable stale blob compared to more established forms of criticism, that "activism" is some sort of pernicious force that wants to inject "isms" into their favorite toy. It would only be a valid criticism if people were giving 3/10s for sexist themes or reviews that were nothing but long rants against sexism, but that's not what is happening here. We have people getting all worked up over one "point" being taken away for reasons they don't agree with, and it doesn't exactly make the community look that much more mature.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

Should have known this would be used to justify Tito's review.

What?

Tito's review was never even mentioned in Bob's article.

 

[Kargathia]

"Oh look, Bob Chipman did another soulless rant about how the attitudes of gamers and how full of "rage" they are. Urgh. While he's at it I wonder if he'll find a way to bring up misogyny and feminis-
Oh there it is."

I'm surprised that he writes for The Escapist and not Kotaku or even Jezebel at this stage, it's embarrassing.
At least he didn't use the word "entitled" even once, I'll give him that.

While I can understand your distaste for continually hearing the same thing, I find it hard to even imagine any point of view in which these internet storms are anything but disgusting. Not in reason, nor in intensity of emotion, but merely by the downright appalling way the more vocal choose to express themselves.

Being the umpteenth to complain about a rampant lynch mob might possibly make you sound somewhat rehashed, but that doesn't mean your concerns are any less valid.

 

[Tumedus]

Should have known this would be used to justify Tito's review.

What?

Tito's review was never even mentioned in Bob's article.

It's called subtext. If you can't see it, I am sorry, but its seems pretty obvious to me. He comes in defense of reviewers when not all that many are getting much flak for this game. Jim Sterling, for example, gave it a 9 (just like GameSpot) on his Destructoid site and, while there has been some complaints, it has been met with mostly reasonable responses, at least for the internet.

Relative to their user base, the review here and Carolyn Petit's are probably the worst in terms of an angered response. So rather than just blindly come to the defense of his boss, he attempts to turn this into a broader issue than it really is by using "the most visible example".

Except Carolyn's review isn't a great example of what Bob is trying to argue. In case you are unaware, Carolyn is a trans woman and thus her claim of misogyny engenders a lot of blow back that otherwise would not be an issue. There is a LOT more to the anger there than just unhappy fanbois. So to use her review for these purposes is dubious at best and really just comes across as deflection. This is especially striking when you consider that with all his talk of gender issues, both in this article and in general, that he doesn't even mention the much larger issue that exists within that scenario.

Not surprisingly when you factor all that extra junk out, you realize that the way Bob's argument is framed, it is a much better fit for Tito's review than Petit's, especially if you read/watch both reviews. But, as I pointed out above, it misses the fact that the complaints about Tito's review extend beyond just his personal opinions, but his inability to properly express those opinions or justify the score because of them.

 

[xyrafhoan]

The Petit thing is probably just because people are so tired of hearing about misogyny in games. If there are so many female gamers that are being left out, there would be a bigger market for games catering to them. But that is a group that doesn't exist in very large numbers, and so the market isn't very large.

Well, Saints Row has managed to allow players to play as a female, has notable female characters, and is generally better received by female gamers. GTA5 isn't hurting for players with its over $1bil sales, but this is one of the biggest strikes against the game when compared to other games in the sandbox genre, even the male-dominated crime sandbox genre. I know no one in GTA is meant to be admirable and no one should take the game seriously, but don't you think it's a little wearisome to not even have the option to play as a female in any portion of the game? Or that the empathy for female characters in general is damn low, even by the standards of the GTA world?

And for the record, over 40% of gamers are females and they aren't all playing casual games on their phones or on Facebook either. Even if women were only say, 5% of this game's audience, that's still a pretty big number when you think about how many millions this game sells. Rockstar simply doesn't care as GTAV is pretty much prints money, but even COD, the other quintessential dudebro game, actually had a 30% female playerbase (at least for MW2), and COD is slowly changing to be more inclusive of that silent mass of gamers who don't touch voice chat and don't touch internet forums to talk about their experiences.

 

[M920CAIN]

This is an article with an opinion about people having opinions. Can't you guys find something worthwhile to talk about? We already know the obvious, this article is just a piece of paper to keep a fire going. Stop it!

 

[Playful Pony]

The devil is probably in the details. I should imagine it is that when women (and some men) like to play a fun, violent game, they don't want to be reminded of how often women are objectified/abused etc in real life within that game. Having not played GTA V, I couldn't say.

I think it really depends on the way it is presented. In LA Noire there was quite a bit of racism and sexism, but it worked because it became such a part of Coles character to see him struggle with handling those things. Of course it also helped us learn to hate the racist women beater! I haven't played GTA V myself, I want it for the PC cause I don't own a console, but a friend of mine says that some of the stuff the protagonists do makes you feel quite uncomfortable playing as them. That can certainly work in its own way, it very much did for Spec Ops: The Line, but I guess people didn't feel like it worked for GTA V.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

The answer is simple: both perspectives are correct. Critiques of both types can and should exist simultaneously. Someone doesn't like that a particular critic factors in cultural context into their opinion? Simple. That person just doesn't read that critic's work any more.

There's obviously other outlets that can and do put out reviews ignoring those ideas.