Not That I’m Complaining

Quick, what do the following headlines have in common?

“EA’s Latest Take-Two Offer Expires Today”

“GP on Joystiq: Requiem for a Heavyweight”

“Military Using Game Controllers to Pilot Drones, Disarm Bombs”

“Pachter: E3 Headed for Extinction”"EA Extends Deadline for Take-Two Shares; Zelnick Says T2 Has “Multiple” Would-be Acquirers”

If you said that they’re all unrelated to politics, you’d be right!  However, we’d also accept: “What is fully 1/3 of the current headlines on GamePolitics.com?”  (Admittedly, you could make an argument for the military one, but that’s at best a degree removed.)  They can publish whatever they want, but they might want to rethink the branding.

Intelligent Criticism

Insult Swordfighting asks whether people really want intelligent criticism (and highlights an interesting GSW feature in which various “intelligent” commentators are interviewed about their writing and experiences - unsurprisingly, we were not featured).  Many of these writers are also contributors to mainstream journalism sites or publications, and so hearing their views on why they run a blog is a fascinating endeavor.

The conclusion IS draws is that, although mainstream pieces draw far more traffic than the typical niche blog noted, readers are slowly and inexorably being drawn to more sophisticated critiques of gaming.  I don’t necessarily disagree - in fact, this site is predicated on that assumption - although I would note that many of the most insightful blogs are still written from the perspective of industry insiders: developers, professional journalists, and so on.  As a result, journalism that truly tackles gamer-specific issues is more nascent than might otherwise appear to be the case.

There is, of course, something to be said about a site where writers feel that they can truly share their musings.  At the same time, it’s worth contemplating that so many people spend their time writing in a voice they don’t think is truly theirs.

A Pox On Both Their Houses

For those who haven’t been paying attention, there was a minor skirmish earlier this week betwen Gamepolitics and the ESA.  The ESA took issue with one of GP’s posts, highlighting the evangelical views of Texas Governor Rick Perry; Perry’s going to be the keynote speaker at E3 this year.  The ESA complained that GP is a “recruitment tool” for the ECA, an organization that competes with it to some extent… presumably concerned that GP was trying to discredit E3 through its article.  I have the fortunate job of complaining about both of them! 

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40/40

Here’s an interesting factoid from Joystiq: Famitsu, the highly respected Japanese game magazine, has given out 40/40 reviews to only 8 games in its history: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Soul Calibur, Vagrant Story, The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, Nintendogs, Final Fantasy XII, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and now, Metal Gear Solid 4.

I have no idea how good MGS4 is, but some of these entries seem outright odd.  Nintendogs?  Super Smash Bros. Brawl?  Fine games all, but perfect ones?  Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker?  I loved Wind Waker - more than Ocarina, even - but it’s not substantively different in most ways, and the Triforce treasure quest alone disqualifies it from perfection.  I’m sure you can think of plenty of omissions that should be on the list as well.  I was a bit surprised to see the company that MGS now keeps.  (Feel free to avoid general comments about the quality of game reviews and/or Famitsu - I think we exhausted that topic a few days ago and will no doubt return to it shortly.)

Sunlight, Disinfectant, Etc.

I don’t know that we need to touch off another round of hallelujahs on this, but I’ll throw out my bafflement with the MGS review debacle, just the latest journalistic controversy in gaming.  I can’t think of a single reputable journalist that would accept the type of restrictions that were clearly imposed on MGS reviewers - disclosure or no disclosure.  And sure, I recognize the pressure to be first to market, &c., but seriously, people.  Leaving aside the ethical implications of reviewing a game you had to rush through or had no more than a handful of hours to actually experience, if you don’t like these rules, don’t play the game.  If everyone refused to give publishers what is essentially no more than free publicity to these games, companies would damn well make time to give you reviewable copies with the notice you need to actually play through them.  Get together with your friends, agree not to cheat each other, and tough it out.

I’ll give EGM some credit here, but a lengthy “discussion” is the same publicity that was hoped for from the beginning.  Not attaching a numeric ranking is weak tea.  And seeing game reviewers become coopted into essentially extensions of publishers’ marketing arms is really unpleasant for all concerned. 

Review Completists

I don’t have that much to add, but here’s an interesting Multiplayer Blog post on whether or not reviewers need to finish a game like GTA IV before reviewing it.  I lean towards no, but that’s something that I think is fairly specific to massive, sprawling sandbox games like GTA rather than a general rule.

A Brief Comment On The Mainstream

N’Gai Croal has an interesting post up about the lack of real gameplay information in mainstream game reviews.  Croal discusses the difficulty of effectively writing about games to an audience that knows little about them.  However, the implicit question in his piece is at least as interesting, and maybe more fundamental: what should mainstream writers’ goal be in writing about videogames to a mass audience?

It seems to me that that’s the most fundamental question here and one that needs to be answered first.  In Croal’s conclusion, I think he’s arguing that the major role should be that of educator - to teach the mainstream what games are all about, rather than to provide a critical analysis of their gameplay elements.  Although that seems like a fair conclusion (no point in running before you can walk), it calls into question whether or not such pieces can really be termed “reviews.”  If mainstream writers see themselves simply as ambassadors to the masses, they become evangelists for a particular viewpoint - that games are acceptable - rather than critics, which implies the ability to distinguish and critique both positive and negative elements. 

(This has some obvious downsides.  Games that might really be deserving of a serious dialogue get harshly criticized by people who know little about them, whereas mainstream writers appear to be apologists for titles they may not even think have a lot of merit.  For example, I thought Manhunt was a pretty lousy game - but I still felt compelled to defend its existence.)

Is there another option?  I’m not sure, but I do think its incumbent on the mainstream to clearly delineate for its readership what the intended audience is.  If Newsweek wants to do serious reviews, it should distinguish them from Croal’s often philosophical, analytical approach to the medium.  Similarly, I would hate to see his prose overly watered down through the need to describe how survival horror games function before commenting on the nature of zombies in RE5. 

Weekly Column - 4/28/08

Here’s our weekly Joystiq column.  It’s about the intersection of game theory and Guitar Hero (and Rock Band); not particularly complex, but worth discussing to introduce the topic.

Best Review Title For GTA IV

Goes to Slate, for “It’s Not Just About Killing Hookers Anymore!”.  Was it ever?

Impressions from both Jeff and I should be coming shortly.

An Exclusive Problem

Ignited by IGN’s exclusive perfect 10 review of GTA4 (which has also been given a 10 and a 9.8 by IGN’s regional sister sites now as well), Variety has suggested (h/t Kotaku) that “Exclusive Reviews” are ethically suspect. While I doubt that there’s a literal “quid pro quo” for these reviews, when a publisher grants an “exclusive” to a reviewer, they are essentially giving them money (in the form of page views, or sales in the case of print magazines). Does the reviewer have, at least at the subconscious level, a desire to rate the game higher than they normally would in this case?

This basically feeds into the same issues that were brought up, most visibly, by Ubisoft and Eidos recently, where the publishers have threatened (or actually followed through on their threats in the case of Ubisoft) to pull their advertising if the reviewer gives a bad score to their game. Since an early exclusive drives page views and sales, losing these exclusives would actually hurt the bottom line of the publication. It’s easy to imagine what kind of response a media outlet would receive if they actually poorly scored an exclusive review. Would it be safe to say that that particular game publisher would probably think twice before giving an early exclusive to that publication again? Would it also be safe to say that business executives for that publication would be upset at losing another source of revenue (especially one as simple as simply putting up their content a little earlier than other places), and that we’d have another sort of “Gamespot” situation? It certainly seems like a recipe for corruption.

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