I read about a Shacknews article (via Kotaku) where the President of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences (AIAS) calls game reviewers lazy. At the end of the day, I feel he's a non-gamer trying to make sense of reviews written for gamers. But if you enjoy my particular brand of condescending smack down, what follows is the full text of my comment on the Kotaku article.
All right. Let's do the rundown.
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"When I just see a score, whether it's a Metacritic score or 5 stars or 4 thumbs, that doesn't tell me anything"
Actually it does. It tells you whether a game is well regarded in its genre, in the case of a Metacritic score, or what a given reviewer feels about a game if it's an individual score. As in any other art form, you learn that there are certain reviewers who share your tastes and others who don't. And as wacky as it may sound, you still have the option to read the review, even after you've read the score.
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"I am never surprised when there's as much as a 40% or 50% variance between Metacritic numbers and user numbers."
Neither am I. And the user numbers are almost always higher, because they're written by people who liked the genre and concept enough to buy it. People tend to buy games they're likely to enjoy. What a shocker.
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"My pet peeve is that game reviewers are lazy," ... "Not all, but in terms of the reviews [something like] 'This game isn't as good because let's compare it to that game over there and that game was great.' Who gives a, you know, bleep?"
I think I get what he's saying. Game reviewers do use shorthand a lot. But you know who gives a bleep? Enthusiasts. Hence the term "enthusiast press". Look into it. You want N'Gai's prescribed mainstream reviews, fine. But don't call other people lazy because they're not catering to people who are not their audience. Yeesh.
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"How can you review a game, how can you give a comment about a game like Grand Theft Auto IV, that has 40-plus hours or more of gameplay, if you've only spent 2 1/2 to 3 hours playing it," ... "It would be like reviewing a movie but only seeing the opening, first reel. I don't think that's fair, or is it accurate,"
He's mostly right about this. Although it would be nice to know if he acknowledged the time pressures and last minute review copies game reviewers have to deal with. Regardless, he might want to look for review sites where finishing the game (or at least being up front when they haven't) is part of the policy instead of going to crappy sites and then casting broad aspersions. And this movie analogy is the garbage Dyack was spouting on the 1UP Yours poolcast, getting pissed off at people who drop playing a game in the middle. I'll ignore the movie analogy entirely as the differences in length make it obviously flawed. But even removing considerations of length by talking about books, the analogy is still bunk. Most books have more plot and character development in the first chapter than many games have in their entire story. Additionally, books often change locations, characters, and tone or pacing whereas games (especially bad ones) feel like the same experience for hours. If you were reading a book from one character's point of view, doing the exact same things for six hours of reading time with no promise of change in sight, you'd drop that steamer too.
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His remaining comments about reviewers not giving "good coverage as to what a game maker was trying to do" also sound to me like he failed to understand the industry. Often PR people are telling reviewers directly, "It's like Dungeon Siege in space". What's a reviewer supposed say?
Okay, so obviously I'm torqued. Maybe the full context of this interview will make him sound less ignorant. But then again, maybe I'm the ignorant one. Maybe it's time for N'Gai Croal's "Games For New Gamers" magazine to hit the shelves. With the way we've lost core gamer publications and Nintendo is going great guns with the Brain Training Portable and Wii Sports TV Game System that might be a far larger audience. But the bottom line is, please don't blame the enthusiast press for serving their audience instead of you. This is especially true when you're being interviewed by them. :P
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