Some points I agree with, some not so much.
I do find it more than a little odd that review scores are often scaled like school grades, where everything under 60% is a failure and anything in the 60-70% range implies a decided lack of effort. As Ms. Finnegan says, the makers of a game aren't solving for x; a game that scores a 70 hasn't gotten 70% of the problems they addressed "right". For students, perhaps, this makes sense; at the least, for consumers, wouldn't it at the least be more helpful to use more of the range? Otherwise you end up with an enormous berth that's merely different shades of terrible. 55% is execrable, 35% crashes half the time, 5% bricks every system on the network?
On the other hand, English teachers aren't necessarily just grading your essay on its grammar and whether it meets a checklist of a number of supporting points and a properly formatted bibliography, nor should they. That doesn't mean their opinion is no better or worse than anyone else's. I get more than a little weary of critics falling back on some variant of arguments like "it's just an opinion", "it's all subjective", "if you don't agree, look elsewhere", etc, etc. A critical opinion, whether it's expressed in a certain number of stars or a thousand words, should have some value. And a critic shouldn't be telling me that I shouldn't care.
It's true that a critical piece is a snapshot of its time. There are movies, books, pieces of art and works of music that were scorned at the time of their release that later are recognized as hits or "cult classics". Shakespeare and Dickens were pop culture in their day; now they're considered great literature by most.
But I think I should care what a critic says about the latest grey military first-person shooter if they say it's just going through the motions. And I should probably view that with more respect than the fifty die-hard fans who have been playing every iteration of the series for a decade who scream that it's great and the critic doesn't know what they're talking about. Unless I'm one of those die-hard fans, the critic's point of view has more value... And if I am one of those fans, I'm not looking for criticism at all so much as affirmation. (And that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish.)
Not irregularly I get to read people who defend things to the point of "If you squint, and turn your head sideways, and allow your vision to blur, and look through the window on the south-west corner of this building, you'll understand the beauty of this object". (Or you could substitute "Real gamers play this on hard difficulty at 720p so they can get 60 frames per second with the $200 special-order controller that was sold out after nine days.") Good critics both bring their knowledge to bear on a subject and see through the kind of crap that deforms the view of people who are willing to contort wildly in order to maintain their personal narrative.
It is indeed weird to come out describing the hard work of a hundred people over the course of a year as "average". But at least for the time, I think a sufficiently large group of intelligent and well-informed people with an interest in a subject are able to come up with something that resembles an actual "right answer"- whether that's expressed as a consensus opinion or a numerical mean.
I do find it more than a little odd that review scores are often scaled like school grades, where everything under 60% is a failure and anything in the 60-70% range implies a decided lack of effort. As Ms. Finnegan says, the makers of a game aren't solving for x; a game that scores a 70 hasn't gotten 70% of the problems they addressed "right". For students, perhaps, this makes sense; at the least, for consumers, wouldn't it at the least be more helpful to use more of the range? Otherwise you end up with an enormous berth that's merely different shades of terrible. 55% is execrable, 35% crashes half the time, 5% bricks every system on the network?
On the other hand, English teachers aren't necessarily just grading your essay on its grammar and whether it meets a checklist of a number of supporting points and a properly formatted bibliography, nor should they. That doesn't mean their opinion is no better or worse than anyone else's. I get more than a little weary of critics falling back on some variant of arguments like "it's just an opinion", "it's all subjective", "if you don't agree, look elsewhere", etc, etc. A critical opinion, whether it's expressed in a certain number of stars or a thousand words, should have some value. And a critic shouldn't be telling me that I shouldn't care.
It's true that a critical piece is a snapshot of its time. There are movies, books, pieces of art and works of music that were scorned at the time of their release that later are recognized as hits or "cult classics". Shakespeare and Dickens were pop culture in their day; now they're considered great literature by most.
But I think I should care what a critic says about the latest grey military first-person shooter if they say it's just going through the motions. And I should probably view that with more respect than the fifty die-hard fans who have been playing every iteration of the series for a decade who scream that it's great and the critic doesn't know what they're talking about. Unless I'm one of those die-hard fans, the critic's point of view has more value... And if I am one of those fans, I'm not looking for criticism at all so much as affirmation. (And that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish.)
Not irregularly I get to read people who defend things to the point of "If you squint, and turn your head sideways, and allow your vision to blur, and look through the window on the south-west corner of this building, you'll understand the beauty of this object". (Or you could substitute "Real gamers play this on hard difficulty at 720p so they can get 60 frames per second with the $200 special-order controller that was sold out after nine days.") Good critics both bring their knowledge to bear on a subject and see through the kind of crap that deforms the view of people who are willing to contort wildly in order to maintain their personal narrative.
It is indeed weird to come out describing the hard work of a hundred people over the course of a year as "average". But at least for the time, I think a sufficiently large group of intelligent and well-informed people with an interest in a subject are able to come up with something that resembles an actual "right answer"- whether that's expressed as a consensus opinion or a numerical mean.
R: either you trust the site/reviewer, or you don't. How they choose to publish their opinion is meaningless.
