What is this thread? People be hating on books, hypothesising about tests about video games with insufficient study materials, pretending intellectuals shouldn't make value judgements and other absurdities. Maybe I should just go to bed and look at this in the morning with a fresh eye. Nah, fuck it, I'll put up my wall of text.
CritialGaming said:
I think what really causes this problem is the fact that the article is labeled as a review. There really isn't anything about the game that is reviewed here, instead it is a deep and fairly decent analysis of the setting and motives of the themes within the game and not actually the game itself. Honestly if they had tagged this article "Opinion" instead of review then those people commenting probably wouldn't be bitching.
But when they click an article that is supposed to be a review and read this high-brow analytical piece about theme and setting, it just comes off as pretentious and confuses people. Think about it this way, read that article and ask "Is this a good game? Why or Why not according to this author?" Really you can't. You can take away that the setting upset them, and made their actions, purpose, and role within the world of the game feel horrible. But can you honestly take any information from that article about the game's mechanics, how the loot works, how players gear, or progress, or even move through the game's story? Can you tell if the game runs well? Or if it has any major bugs?
No, no you can't.
Again I don't think there is anything wrong with the piece, but I don't believe that those comments are wrong to point out that this "Review" isn't really a review. At least it isn't a review of the game itself. If I was looking around the internet for a game review and came across this, I would have no information about how the game is...as a game.
And none of this would even be a problem if that article wasn't labeled as a "Review". "Opinion", "Fluff", whatever you want to call it, and it those people wouldn't have anything to say about it. But when the reader goes in expecting a certain level of information, it makes sense that when they do not get that information, they would be questioning it.
Nonsense. Things that are not labeled reviews and reviews that clearly state at the beginning that they aren't buyers guides in any way still get similar responses. In fact, the title makes it abundandly clear what you are getting into when you read this review. I refuse to believe people will respond like this merely over the confusion caused by this being called a review. Not only that but the idea that a review is a very specific thing that should include a laundry list of checkboxes is a notion that has been invented fairly recently, seems to exist mostly amongst gamers and occasionally amongst moviegoers and techreviewers, and that only serves to tell people what they can and cannot write about. The people who support this strangely rigid definition of 'review' seem unaware that a review can be a lot of things. For example:
http://www.openculture.com/2014/08/george-orwell-reviews-mein-kampf-1940.html
Review really only means 'something said about something retrospectively'.
CritialGaming said:
Imagine if you had a test about The Division, and your only study guide was that article. What could you tell me about the game?
Not a whole lot I suppose but this is purely hypotethical. In the real world people don't have tests about the division and nobody in their right mind studies for tests by using a single random review online. I'm somewhat baffled that you think this thought experiment of yours would have any relevance to anything at all. Since when is 'can be used as studying material for tests' a metric for judging any written text besides lecture notes and schoolbooks? Besides that, on the tests that I have taken about books, knowing the themes and messages of the book was a lot more useful than being able to identify genre, characters or any of that easy stuff.
Saelune said:
Personally, I think gaming as a whole is actually pro-intellectual. Ive experienced far more varied and well thought out ideas through gaming than anything else. Whether its racism through fantasy games, ethics of war in certain shooters, anti-authoritarianism/tyranny in well, most games, etc.
Sure books are fine and may help you spell out words better, but games let you experience new ideas firsthand and I think that's far stronger than reading or watching.
If you really think that you must never have read a good book. Books have some advantages due to having pages upon pages of uninterrupted text without the need for 'gameplay' and without having to be wrapped up in three hours tops (like most movies). One of these advantages is that they allow for sharing long and complicated introspection of the characters with the reader. There exist a movieversion(s?) of 1984 but they can't replace the longwinded dialoges and introspection. A game would probably do an even worse job at conveying the horror of room 101 or the surreal experience of seeing people lie to themselves than the movie. Books also allow for the explanation of some points that may not be immediately obvious from a situation itself. That and books have their own unique injokes, forthwall breaking moments and the like that are different from the way such things might be done in games.
Redd the Sock said:
Beyond that, at the risk of drawing attention: bitching about the politics of a work is surprisingly anti-intellectual. I'm sure the politics of the Division are everything every says they are, but people act like the game has less a right to make such a political point than something that affirms their values. Instead of looking at it to ask if the work made the point well, or even as a lens to see how people of a different political stripe view people or an issue, it's basically sticking one's fingers in your ears and going "la la, you're evil, la la, not listening".
If by 'act is if it has less a right to make that point' you mean that people criticise the point that it is making. Why on earth should we restrict our judgement of a game to the form of how it makes a point and not to the content of that point. Choosing not to engage anything head on and merely judging it on form alone is a form of cowardly relativism and hence of anti-intellectualism, especially when you demand of others they do the same.
Corey Schaff said:
Since this places values and attempts to persuade in emotional terms, I'd hardly call it intellectual. It's a polemic piece. As is this thread.
'Placing values' and being a polemic piece is not intellectual? What? How did you even come to that conclusion?
Fox12 said:
Unfortunately. There's a pretty strong regressive culture in games. Parts of it can be seen in backwards cultural movements like GG, but it goes much further then that. Some people just don't want to think. That's why you can have a discussion about the deep philosophy of dark souls, and then you've always got that one guy who insists it doesn't mean anything, and it's just about the gameplay. They get annoyed at the very idea of a game asking you to think, or, worse, seeking to challenge you in a way that doesn't involve a health bar.
Well Dark Souls has always seemed to me as a good example of a game that is often misjudged. There is a steam review of Dark Souls 2 that sums it up quite neatly. It goes as follows: Bearer... Seek... Seek... Lest... From what I've played of Dark Souls 2 (which was the first 70% and the first 30% twice, I've watched my roommate play the rest), the strenght of that game was it's gameplay, and secondarily its theme and atmosphere. The dialogue was cringeworthy and pretentious, the story was barely there and whatever themes it has are still mostly explored by killing things and walking into various death traps for 40 hours which is far longer than the story and themes require to be shown. I certainly didn't see any 'deep philosophy' and most of its thematic strength started to wear thin after twenty hours. I've seen various analyses of Dark Souls and unless Dark souls 1 is very different from Dark Souls 2 (and the first couple of hours where damn near identical to Dark Souls 2, I didn't play it after that) I think the narrative elements of Dark Souls are not nearly as important to the game as people tell themselves. Had the gameplay been ever so slightly less engaging, then I doubt it would have had anywhere near its popularity.
