tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-89920916538023644932024-03-08T04:56:52.314-08:00Shawn ElliottShawn Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16301045945239475897noreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992091653802364493.post-28322883368977446702014-09-10T18:10:00.002-07:002014-09-11T09:00:34.605-07:00The time that TotalBiscuit totally told on me. <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Update: TB and I spoke briefly and agreed to continue the conversation in the comments section. </span></span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial;">“We run a popular gaming channel with over one million subscribers and have a Twitter following of almost 190,000[...] Shawn proceeded to tweet the aforementioned remark about TotalBiscuit to his 16,000 followers.”</span><span style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; color: #500050;"></span></span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial;"> –email excerpt from Cristian Baltoc, Media Relations Specialist | CynicalBrit, LLC</span><span style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; color: #500050;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Some would wear their Gamerscores, or the social media metric equivalent, on their sleeves. People who assess their self-worth and see the world through these figures – through the accumulation of “like,” “favorite,” “retweet,” “subscribe,” and “upvote” clicks -- are unpleasant. Self as brand bugs me. But we're all human and, hey, we all want to make sure mom watches when we're on the diving board. Again, what's grotesque is when we take these stats to signify worth. I find this particular character flaw so off-putting that I've probably screamed “shit” at times when all there actually was, was something that smelled a lot like it (or at least the inside of a top hat). I felt sure I whiffed it in the following Twitter exchange:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Whether I was right or wrong, I responded that “TotalBiscuit is truly gross.” This was a personal reaction to the above and another set of screencapped exchanges in circulation. (Seeing a silhouette of what in haberdashery genealogy is the fedora's kissing cousin might've contributed to my conclusion.) I don't watch Youtube or “Let's plays” or Twitch (outside of EVO tourneys) and honestly had never heard of TotalBiscuit. I certainly wasn't speaking for the studio that employed me at the time, nor would any thinking person assume I was. In any case, TB was clearly concerned with my partially informed opinion and, curiously, wrote and performed a recorded response (I say curiously, since I didn't pay a penny for it). I listened and intended to reply at length when it was convenient. In the interim, others on Twitter addressed him <i><a href="https://twitter.com/ShawnElliott/status/343151754554269697">on their own accord</a></i> but I'll come back to that.</span><span style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; color: #500050;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial;">A few days later -- this being before I found time to chat, and during BioShock Infinite crunch – Irrational's HR department forwarded me an email written on TB's behalf. In it, his dedicated PR person wrote:</span><span style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; color: #500050;"></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial;">“<i>We run a popular gaming channel with over one million subscribers and have a Twitter following of almost 190,000. I would like to bring to your attention the fact that Shawn Elliot, one of your employees, posted a derogatory remark earlier today about my employer, namely "Fucking yuck. @</i></span><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">totalbiscuit </span><span style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial;">is truly gross". That remark was deduced from an out-of-context screenshot he had discovered of a partial conversation between my employer and an obnoxious person over Twitter. The image had been circulating on one of 4chan\'s hate threads in the /v/ section, where Shawn or a follower of his might've stumbled upon it.</span></i><span style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; color: #500050;"></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; font-style: italic;">Without confirming whether that image represented the entire conversation, Shawn proceeded to tweet the aforementioned remark about <span style="background-color: white;">T</span></span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-style: italic;">otalBiscuit t</span><span style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial;"><i>o his 16,000 followers, which include a lot of industry professionals we are in contact with, have collaborated with or wish to in the future (names include Tom Ohle, Ben Kuchera, Evolve PR, Justin Kranzl, etc). Needless to say this tarnishes my employer's image greatly, all because of a misunderstanding. We felt this most certainly constitutes getting off on the wrong foot, which led to my employer posting an audio clip directed at Shawn, meant to explain the entire situation in detail (you can listen to it here:</i><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span><a href="http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2F10WLPxs&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNFeXGCEhgXdIZfaa3yXvncuMOJ0sw" style="color: #1155cc; font-style: italic;" target="_blank">http://bit.ly/10WLPxs</a><i>). Here is a screenshot of Shawn's tweet and a link to his actual tweet:</i><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span><a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2FShawnElliott%2Fstatus%2F343151754554269697&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNHpWCk2e-3B1OG_mtZSPqVWHTmJVA" style="color: #1155cc; font-style: italic;" target="_blank">https://twitter.com/<wbr></wbr>ShawnElliott/status/<wbr></wbr>343151754554269697</a><i> // </i><a href="http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FhQkBdMY.png&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNEwYOJISNloEUrPl-vb5uH5fswqhQ" style="color: #1155cc; font-style: italic;" target="_blank">http://<wbr></wbr>i.imgur.com/hQkBdMY.png</a><span style="color: #500050;"> </span></span></span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We would appreciate it if Shawn could abstain from posting such remarks in the future and if he would be so kind so as to issue a public apology to my employer, as unverified offensive statements aimed at industry professionals do nobody any good.”</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Anyone who's worked in the service industry – and a great many of the people who follow the few of us who get to create or critique games for paychecks are there now – is familiar with the indignity of being called into the boss's office because a customer is willing to jeopardize jobs for slight service hiccups. You know the sort; they’re likely the same species that files abusive copyright infringement claims when their products are criticized. I lived that life, working grocery throughout undergrad education as well as when in graduate school while also teaching college courses. Among the many perks of salaried employment is partial impunity from such shit. I was surprised to see it happen here; surprised when, strictly speaking, it wasn't a customer this time and I wasn't on the clock; surprised that a personal opinion and insufficiently speedy response would so offend someone who, on Twitter, had only a day or two prior asked, <i>“D</i></span><i><span style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; color: #292f33;">o you live in a place where you can just order someone around without employing them?</span><span style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial;">”</span></i><span style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial;"> <i>and “</i></span><i><span style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; color: #292f33;">Wanna tell me which human on this planet is entitled to someone else's time?</span><span style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial;">”</span></i><span style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial;"> Tattlebiscuit, it seemed, had staked claim to such a place on just such a planet.</span><span style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; color: #500050;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial;">This week, aware that, at long last, I meant to write a response since I'm no longer silenced on the topic as his complaint once ensured, our ever humble top hat reminded us that he “</span><i><span style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; color: #333333;">hold(s) more power and influence than any games journalist</span></i><span style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; color: #333333;">[..</span><span style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial;">.]<i>” </i>He</span> asks, <i>“</i><i><span style="color: #333333;">Would arguing with him/her publicly on Twitter have been a better course of action?”</span></i><span style="color: #333333;"> As established, he attempted to argue about it with me publicly on Twitter. The trouble was that I wasn't able to respond with sufficient speed.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In addition, he states that <i>“we had one incident outside of the DMCA stuff (where we used actual lawyers because it was a legal issue) of contacting a dev to see if we could work out what all the negativity was about and how we might best solve it.”</i> One would expect a self-proclaimed critic, of all people to understand that unfavorable subjective opinions are not necessarily problems in need of “solving.” Finding narcissism offensive is not a claim whose truth we can test. An example of a claim whose falsehood we <i>can </i>confirm is <i>“he/she sicced a large number of people on me.”</i> If anyone bothered TB on my behalf, I apologize, as I certainly never encouraged anyone to do so; never condoned it. Ever. If on planet TB, any and all unsolicited comments from Twitter followers constitutes “siccing,” I'll happily supply evidence and circumstantial witnesses that suggest TB has explaining to do.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i><span style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; color: #333333;">“I had no interest in getting into it publicly with an employee of one of this [sic] studios,” </span></i><span style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; color: #333333;">he goes on. <i>“So I did the professional thing which was to contact the studio to try and find out what was happening. <a href="http://www.twitlonger.com/show/ng592j">What should I have done differently?</a></i></span><i>”</i> <span style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Per<wbr></wbr>haps in TotalBiscuitville on the noted narcissist planet TotalBiscuit, contacting the employer of a person who has a poor opinion of you is a material conditional. You see, i</span><span style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; color: black;">f Marie is in Paris, then she's in France.</span> <span style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial;">And if someone, anyone, says I'm gross, you better bet I go and tell their boss. Pleasant enough place if you can stomach the brim sweat.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">On our far more familiar planet, requesting that I “abstain from posting such remarks” and “issue a public apology” is not an attempt to “find out what was happening.” When sent to a studio and preceded with a reminder of your social media reach, it is rather – again on this planet – understood as a demand with the possible threat of retaliation. In no world would TotalBiscuit admit that this was his intent. Still, in few other worlds would a studio head run the risk of taking his word on it. Any chance at all that one thin-skinned critic would be biased against a collaborative project as a result of beef with the personal opinion of one member of a massive team is too much to accept.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I'm fairly sure TB and I have buried the hatchet. I apologize for that unwarranted first Tweet, he says he's sorry I was silenced. We disagree on whether or not contacting a person's employer for publicly expressed personal opinion (that isn't sexist, racist, homo- or transphobic, etc.) is cool. In AAA game dev, it guarantees gag orders. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I also understand that it seems petty to speak on this now after so much time passed. The thing is, I wasn't able to say anything about it at all until now. I faced the the consequences of the outcome every day. It seems I'm tough to contact, too, as the only attempt to talk about it that I was ever aware of was on Twitter. And indeed I was crunching at the time (I worked on Clash in the Clouds, Burial at Sea 2, as well as unshipped DLC that was in the works prior to Infinite's launch). Regardless, we've worked things out.</span></div>
Shawn Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16301045945239475897noreply@blogger.com138tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992091653802364493.post-52433118735444166272013-05-13T17:47:00.001-07:002013-05-13T17:47:12.986-07:00Leigh Alexander and I agreed to move the chat we started via Twitter to email so that we could express and explain ourselves without the character limit.<br />
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;">Leigh Alexander and I agreed to move the chat we started via Twitter to email so that we could express and explain ourselves without the character limit. As Leigh tweeted, "D</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 17.99715805053711px; white-space: pre-wrap;">isagreement or the need for further discussion can't preclude respect among colleagues." </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">The conversation:</span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><b>Leigh Alexander: </b>So
I saw you as being displeased that people too easily leaped to
attribute the wage gap to sexism, because they were eager to earn
accolades for being politically-correct, and that they saw sexism
where there might not be any in order to feel they'd won a moral
victory.</span></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Shawn Elliott: What
bothers me is that they both attribute the wage gap to sexism on the
part of game industry employers by </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">arbitrarily
banishing any serious consideration of alternative explanations from
the realm of possibility, and proceed to issue moral imperatives,
demanding that the accused address wrongs for which they haven't
actually been convicted. In other words, when someone admits that
they don't understand the actual conditions that contribute to an
unfavorable outcome, then sentences someone all the same, and
explicitly tells the accused that their “only valid response” is
to rectify the perceived problem, they're moralizing plain and
simple. I don't doubt or call into question their commitment to
equality (more on this in a moment). I believe their commitment is
sincere, and ask that you accept that mine is as well. But it's
possible to come to dumb conclusions despite having your heart in the
right place.</span></span></b></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><b>LA:</b> </span><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;">On
one hand, I completely agree with you that if we're going to address
representational problems financially and otherwise, we do need a
complete picture of the disparity, in order to make a stronger case
that it can't be explained by other means. Logical fallacies don't
help anyone's case.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><b>SE: We
need a more complete understanding of the causes of the disparity in
order to correct if it is indeed due to discriminatory policies and
practices. You can't fix what you fail to comprehend, no matter how
nice it makes a person feel to pretend that they have sufficient info
to tell a particular party that its their fault and that they need to
fix it. If it turns out that the problem is more challenging and
multidimensional, the finger pointing will not have helped anyone at
all – in fact, it can contribute to the problem. It can lead you to
overlook much more promising avenues for change. Poor reasoning can
allow people to dismiss your <i>concerns</i> as well as your
diagnosis. I'm taking pains here to clarify that I do not dismiss the
underlying concern. </b></span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><b>LA: </b></span><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;">On
the other hand, that women are unequal in the games industry is a
fact of life for us. Sexism, hostility and general alienation are the
reality for many if not most of us. That isn't something that
requires data or is up for debate -- women in the industry have been
trying to talk about our experiences at increasing volume and at
critical mass over the past few years. Many men will find any reason
not to listen to us, but we are trying.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><b>SE: I
absolutely understand this, however, I addressed wage disparities
among developers alone, not the treatment of women as a whole within
development, and definitely not across the industry spectrum of
reporting, blogging, streaming, forum-going, and gaming. </b></span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><b>LA: </b></span><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;">So
I don't think it's actually such an intolerable leap for some people
to have seen that data and presumed <i>some</i> degree of
logical correlation. Women are unequal in the games industry; women's
pay is also unequal. You are right that we don't know the extent to
which one fact <i>causes </i>the other, and indeed,
it <i>would </i>help to know. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><b>SE: It
isn't a tolerable leap to say that, since women are exposed to
persistent sexual harassment within games, for example, wage
disparities among developers are necessarily due to sexist practices
and policies on the part of employers. When you write that “Women
are unequal in the games industry” do you specifically mean that
devs are disproportionately male? (I'll pass on the pay aspect, as
that is the point of this discussion.) </b></span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><b>LA: </b></span><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;">But
the correlation <i>is </i>a fair assumption. I would trade
my right hand if further research into the pay gap found that sexism
does not play <i>some</i> role (especially as you and
others discussed women being relatively new to the industry or
less-experienced -- why would that be the case, for example?). It is
absolutely, at least, an abstractly-related discussion even if the
data doesn't "prove" it.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><b>SE: Again,
my argument is not that sexism is unlikely to play a part in
explaining why fewer women than men work in development, or even why
on balance women developers are paid less than their male
counterparts. When I wrote that “</b></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><b>We
must also study the male-female ratio among qualified candidates from
whom studios receive applications. We must ask what percentage of
women pursue educations in programming?” I meant to imply that
sexism may enter the equation at any number of steps on the path from
a woman's childhood experiences and environment up to her ultimate
decision to pursue a career in development. I also cited the
well-documented effects that marriage and career interruptions have
on occupational compensation (and how this differs depending upon
one's field of expertise), and sexism may play some part here, as
well. But that blame is not </b></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i><b>necessarily</b></i></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><b>
the employer's. And that doesn't scratch the surface of the
meaningful, multidimensional discussion occurring outside the walled
garden of gaming industry coverage. (<a href="http://www.npr.org/2013/02/25/172879971/the-science-of-being-top-dog">See Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman on gendered competitiveness</a></b></span></span><span style="color: black;"> </span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><b>or <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&ved=0CEMQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.american.edu%2Fspa%2Fwpi%2Fupload%2F2012-Men-Rule-Report-final-web.pdf&ei=nGWRUePsB-3L0gHVroDACg&usg=AFQjCNGjgFTb_qsT_8DDf73FKoTiDAOkZg&sig2=CySw-S0pkHoQgmQpJhB2Uw&bvm=bv.46340616,d.dmQ">Jennifer Lawless and Richard Fox on political ambition</a> )</b></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><b>LA: </b>And
people are righteous about it because a certain degree of outrage has
accumulated in the discussion on sexism, and justifiably. Whenever we
talk about sexism, a man appears to find some way to either abuse or
discredit us (even when "we" includes our men friends, who
also increase their volume of outrage). A common derailing tactic
when someone has a hostile political agenda is to play the "I'm
simply discussing the facts" card, to veil the fact they're
refusing to have empathy for the party that's requesting it.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><b>SE: I
find it a bit embarrassing -- as though I'm being put on trial – to
need to explain that I'm wholeheartedly for equality and intolerant
of sexism. Every woman who faces sexism (every woman alive?) has my
empathy. At times, though, you do need to discuss known facts (and
challenge unsubstantiated supposition), and doing so has nothing to
do with evincing empathy.</b></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><b>LA:</b> The
numbers in the salary survey are not the entire conversation, you are
right. But they're the beginning of a conversation, and I would have
liked to see you frame your argument as asking it to go further,
rather than discrediting others in your desire to prize facts or
further research. At the <i>very</i> least, it shows more
care toward underrepresented people if you presume their instincts
about discrimination <i>may be</i> correct and you seek
data to support that, rather than asking for data before you will
consider their feelings.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><b>SE:</b> </span><b style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">I
accept blame for my poor writing. It was my intent to expand the
scope of what I saw as constrained conversation, not to close it.
With available data, though, I can't presume that instincts that say
employer discrimination explains the wage disparity in game
development are correct. They might be, they might not be. Not coming
to conclusions about causes before adequate evidence is available
doesn't preclude the ability to consider someone's feelings. I don't
understand this argument at all. </b></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><b>LA:</b> </span><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;">Because
the statements made that you criticized -- things like how we need to
train, hire and promote more women -- are pretty important goals for
the industry that I don't think you'd disagree with. I was
disappointed in your eagerness to banish them from a conversation
about wage gap when even in absence of statistics, we know there is
very probably some relationship.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><b><span style="color: #222222;">SE: Did
I criticize the notion that “we need to train, hire and promote
more women”? I remember writing that “</span><span style="color: black;">These
are fine policies to follow.” That said, more women working in game
development is a great thing – same for members of other groups
that are less represented than women by far. </span></b></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><b>LA:</b> </span><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;">Border
House, or RPS, are allies of diversity. You say you want to enable
them to be better allies through more information, but your clear
disdain for their logic can unfortunately be read as derisive of
their long campaigns for equality.It's a destructive rather than
supportive approach.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><b>SE: I'm
not aware of their campaigns and was responding to what I read. I
didn't intend to deride the spirit of their campaigns. And you're
right in that my tone was too combative. I think the tone I took from
the stories was “I'm going to tell you how it is and don't you dare
argue or I'll dismiss you for who you are and not what you say.” I
took that as a challenge and it immediately turned me off to RPS's
approach in particular.</b></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><b>LA:</b> </span><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;">Maybe
I'm misreading you some, but then I'm not the only one. As it is now,
you have commenters whose takeaway may be that allies of diversity
are just getting uppity to score political points, or that someone
like John Walker is insincere (men who champion against sexism are
often accused of 'white knighting' or pretending to care in order to
get laid or something, so your insinuation that these kinds of
articles try to 'score points' is weighted). Or that "we need
less outrage," etc.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><b>SE: Fair
enough. I hope that this discussion – if we publish it – will
help clarify my perspective. The logic was so loopy that I </b></span></span><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><b>supposed
politicking or sheer naivete was at play. I found the former
assumption more charitable.</b></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><b>
Again, my tone was too combative. And as I wrote on Twitter,
“</b></span><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><b>Suggesting
that the potential causes for an outcome are more complicated than a
specific speaker insists they are in no way says that emotional
response to that outcome is improper. I'm not saying we shouldn't be
upset by it so much as I mean to say that we shouldn't prescribe
solutions when when we aren't certain as to the causes.” Although
to add to that, I disagree with directing a strong emotional response
at a group (</b></span></span><span style="color: #1d1d1d;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><b>“those
in senior positions at publishers and developers”)</b></span></span><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><b>
before their guilt's been decided. </b></span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><b>LA:</b> </span><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;">When
I worried you'd arm our enemies, what I meant is that every time a
woman writes an essay about her personal experiences, there are
commenters complaining she is emotional, irrelevant, lacks 'facts' to
'prove' she has been a victim of a situation, and so on. The
commenters say things like 'we need to stop all this emotional
manipulation and stick to games' or whatever, as a way of silencing
people. And now they'll be able to grab your essay, which is about
facts over outrage, and which can be read as attributing vocal
writers' passion to an insincere 'political agenda', and use it as
ammunition in that kind of argument, which I'm sure is not how you
wanted to come across.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><b>SE:<u> I
agree, anyone who dismisses concerns about sexism because a few
writers used poor reasoning in one place is dumb.</u></b></span></span><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><b>
I should underscore that. I imagine you've encountered plenty of
people who were willing to dismiss feminism as a school of thought
because Harding characterized Newton's Principia Mathematica</b></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><b>as
a “rape manual” or because Irigaray argued that E=MC2 is a “sexed
equation” or that “masculine physics” neglects fluids. (Not
that the arguments I addressed approach that now legendary lunacy. )
</b></span><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><b>But
we can't be too timid to critique an argument simply because the
sentiments of those who make them are in the right place. Another
example: I believe that sufficient empirical evidence exists for me
to be concerned about anthropogenic climate change, and for that
reason I was upset by “Climategate” before it came to light that
the controversy was manufactured.</b></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><b>LA: </b>You
totally could have made your point as regards all the things we have
yet to know about the salary data, and why it's important for us to
know them (so we can build better, more positive arguments for this
equality we all want). in a way that did <i>not </i>target
and dissect others who were only trying to express that commitment,
albeit imperfectly.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;">Does
that make sense? I think if you're joining the gender inequity
conversation you do want to be very sensitive about the format you
choose, and the tone and purpose of your argument, and which sides in
the discussion you are really best enabling and expressing support
for. Making fun of RPS for assuming 'moral DEFCON' just equips people
to think sensitivity is something suspicious or worthy of ridicule. I
really don't want to believe that was the tone you were going for.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><b>SE: It
isn't. See above.</b></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><b>LA: </b></span><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222;">This
isn't, unfortunately, the kind of thing we can treat with the same
dispassion with which we handle other journalistic issues. We want to
teach others to model compassion, too, and mobilize them to care
about equality on every frontier, not to feel justified in defaulting
to skepticism in every conversation. They already do that enough.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;">So
many people look up to and listen to you. Please teach your readers
that being angry about sexism, and wanting to enable more women to
participate in the industry, are meaningful, honest and moral
positions to take, not the province of the self-serving or
uninformed. And that the reason we need more data is so that we can
fight these battles better, not so that we can debunk outrage and
passion.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><b>SE: I
understand and appreciate your concern. </b></span></span>
</div>
Shawn Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16301045945239475897noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992091653802364493.post-23560773197162882822013-05-09T19:22:00.003-07:002013-05-09T21:48:02.952-07:00A topic that deserves to be talked about, and for that reason we should subject morally attractive propositions to more scrutiny, not less. <div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Moral
posturing is so alluring that it leads us to neglect normal standards
of logic. Take, for instance, <a href="http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/04/04/game-industry-gender-wage-gap-is-horrendous/">RPS assuming the moral <span style="color: black;">DEFCON</span> 1 alert posture</a>.
</span></span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">I
hope the use of “horrendous” and “despicable” (the <a href="http://borderhouseblog.com/?p=10567">source story</a>, still at a slightly lower DEFCON, settles for</span></span></span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
<span style="color: black;">“disgusting”</span>)</span></span></span></span><span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
stand out, as well as the dogmatic assumption that statistical
disparities alone demonstrate discrimination. My point is not that
sexism may or may not play a part in the wage disparities that Game
Developer Magazine's data allegedly documents, and it definitely
isn't that the industry shouldn't pay matching salaries to male and
female employees with the same experience and skill sets. Rather, I'm
writing to challenge the uncritical assumptions on which both stories
are built, and way that the opportunity to publicly sit on the side
of the angels seems to contribute to the error. Because both stories
note that Game Developer Magazine's numbers offer no information on
the years of experience specific to the men and women surveyed, but
then arbitrarily banish any serious consideration of alternative
explanations from the realm of possibility in order to prescribe the
usual preferential policies. </span></span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">“<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">There
will be factors, certainly,” RPS writes. “The hugely larger
numbers of men in the industry means by nature there will be many
more of them who have worked for longer, and thus secured ultimately
higher salaries. But there are women who have been involved for a
long time too, and this absolutely doesn’t explain away these
massive discrepancies.</span></span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">”</span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">I
trust that the sheer absurdity of the argument speaks for itself. </span></span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Similarly,
BorderHouseBlog says, “I’m sure there are more details that might
make these numbers less damning. For example, we all know that
games have been long dominated by men and the industry is taking
small steps to change that. As a result, many of the women who
answered the survey might be new to the game industry, might not be
in as senior of roles as the men who responded.” And then, in a
comically clumsy attempt at sleight of hand, BorderHouseBlog
continues: “However, I don’t think this changes the fact that we
need to recruit and encourage more women at all levels of every
organization — and we’re failing to do so.” </span></span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">In
other words, the writer acknowledges that while the evidence she
predicated her argument on cannot support her claim, we are to accept
that that now discarded claim is relevant to another new and
equally unsubstantiated claim, no burden of proof required.</span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">And
next come the aforementioned prescriptions for preferential policies.
As RPS has it, </span></span></span><span style="color: #1d1d1d;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">“the
only valid response is for those in senior positions at publishers
and developers to not pretend it isn’t them, to look at their own
figures, and to rectify discrepancies.</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">”
</span></span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">This
is ridiculous. Since when do we draw conclusions without a scrap of
empirical evidence, admit that we lack an argument to stand on, and
then issue moral imperatives, demanding that the accused address
wrongs for which they haven't actually been convicted? We haven't
even determined with certainty whether or not there are
discrepancies, let alone ascertained causes should their existence be
confirmed. Anyone attempting to explain why more men than women work
in a particular industry (indeed a question well worth the
investigative effort) has laborious analytical work ahead of them.
But it's easier for ideologues to attack potential bogeymen and
behave as though they've done their part to change undesirable
circumstances than bother to consult the work of those who do such as
Cornell professor of economics Francine D. Blau. </span></span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Again,
to my point, it's all a muddle of poor thinking in the race to
righteous outrage. If you were among “</span></span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">those
in senior positions at publishers and developers” and believed you
could pay group A some fraction of the wages that you pay group B and obtain precisely the same results, plus stand to benefit
politically from appearances in the bargain, why would your hiring
practices not understandably favor group A at all times, especially
in the current economic environment? </span></span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Similarly,
all of BorderHouseBlog's prescriptions assume that any statistical
discrepancies, should they be discovered, are prima facie the result
of sexist policies and, as such, can be eliminated entirely by
employers: “Leadership: look at your organization. Compare the
salaries of the women to the men who work at your company, and align
their salaries. If all of your women are junior, evaluate them. How
long have they been junior? Are they deserving of an increase in
role, capabilities, and salary?” </span></span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">These
are fine policies to follow – notwithstanding the seeming
suggestion that employers arbitrarily align salaries according to
gender status irrespective of employment history, skill set, hours
worked, etc. (In other words, even if an employee has three years of
experience and is due for advancement, this will do nothing to
equalize salaries if a significant proportion of her male coworkers
have fifteen or more years experience a piece.) On their own,
however, these fine questions aren't enough. We must also study the
male-female ratio among qualified candidates from whom studios
receive applications. We must ask what percentage of women pursue
educations in programming? What percentage of women whose salaries we
survey are married? (<a href="http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274,00.html">Academic women who never married average
slightly higher incomes</a></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274,00.html"><span style="color: #1d1d1d;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
</span></span></span></span></a><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274,00.html">than male counterparts</a>.) How many of the women whose salaries we survey
take extended time off for maternity leave? (Different occupations
have different rates of obsolescence for their respective skills, so
that interruptions of careers in some fields are more damaging to
one's career than in other fields.) And the answers that these
inquiries yield prompt more pressing questions. </span></span></span></span></span>
</div>
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<span style="color: black; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">This
is a topic that deserves to be talked about, and for that reason we should
subject morally attractive propositions to more scrutiny, not less. </span></span></span></span>
</div>
Shawn Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16301045945239475897noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992091653802364493.post-90676773722094822942012-07-21T10:47:00.000-07:002012-07-21T10:47:06.027-07:00On Portal<br />
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I contributed 1up.com's current cover story, <a href="http://www.1up.com/features/cover-essential-100-part-one">Essential 100 </a></div>
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I understand that, due to space limitations, the site was unable to publish my second-opinion submission in full. I've blogged the original text below:</div>
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GLaDOS is condescending. She thinks you're stupid, and insists that you play the way she wants you to play. Indeed, she doesn't want you to complete the game. A terrible game designer is a terrifying villain.</div>
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Dressing you down for behavior that developer Valve actually condones, GLaDOS is, of course, the perfect conduit through which <a href="http://www.1up.com/features/essential-76-portal"><i>Portal</i>'s</a> terrific, real designers apply reverse psychology to deftly nudge you in productive directions, and compel you to complete the game. <i>Portal</i>'s sophisticated soft paternalism masquerades as overbearing maternalism. What this means is that, like GLaDOS, these designers undoubtedly saw Aperture Science's testing facility stymie and aggravate players. However, instead of throwing their hands in the air and sacrificing their vision with intrusive, heavy-handed hints and other fatalist admissions of the failure of their design, they went back -- many, many times I imagine, because all development works this way, and because <i>Portal</i> is as bold as it was novel -- and improved their work without compromising its integrity.</div>
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The results are puzzles that can perplex without confounding; and for players, the mastery of a new skill that requires the cultivation of an intoxicating, alien mode of thinking. In the beginning, you’re told not to poke around behind the curtain, (and by that I mean you’re really being prodded to behave subversively). By the end, you’re both defying GLaDOS, and, perhaps, surprising the game’s designers by arriving at genuinely original solutions to problems.</div>
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Playing <i>Portal</i> is like learning another language. The instant you complete your first challenge without whispering intentions to yourself, without tentatively testing conjugations, and seem simply to arrive intuitively at a correct response is the instant you add <i>Portal </i>to your list of greatest games.</div>Shawn Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16301045945239475897noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992091653802364493.post-90844190322433166802011-12-11T14:06:00.000-08:002011-12-11T14:08:00.299-08:00A personal appeal from Gary GuyGapes<p style="margin-bottom: 0in">As a gamer, I don't pretend that a stone-faced fake soldier doing knee bends over another guy's face is scandalous. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in"><br /></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in">Let me tell you about last night. I still play the parts of characters I create on the spot over VOIP in Team Fortress 2. Rory Manion and I tend to take turns, with one of us coauthoring the goonery in Ventrilo, while the other talks to people playing the game. This time, Rory convinced one particularly uptight player that he was promoting the growing sport of competitive gaping. (Anyone unsure of what gaping was could turn to the wall that was likeliest to attract attention, and see Rory's TF2 “spray”: a photo taken from Something Awful's FYAD forum that depicts a wiry man squat on a catastrophically colossal dildo.) Let me be the first to insist that there's nothing funny about passing this picture while on your way to capture a flag. But when the Red Letter Media reviewer's voice calmly explains that the photo is of gaping champion Gary GuyGapes and his record-stretching performance at this year's Planet of the Gapes invitational, I pause. And when the same person flawlessly fields every incredulous question he raises, revealing that he's GapeEscape.com's webmaster; that he's a third generation competitive gaper whose grandfather pronounced “I could do this professionally” after falling on a railroad spike; and that although opioid use is banned -- “open-oids” in gaper slang, and for reasons that I trust are obvious – if he becomes the Barry Bonds of gaping, then so be it; I laugh out loud. And when that one particularly uptight and unsuspicious player is sanctimoniously screaming that his forebears fought in world wars while Rory's character and his clan shoved shit up their bums for sport it becomes hard to breathe. To cut the crap, you can't convince me that I'm out of touch with gaming's childish abrasiveness. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in"><br /></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in">“As seen on TV” is a sure sign that something that was once funny is now far from it. Unfunny people always think that celebrities certify funny. It never worked that way when dad appropriated the shit you said, and I don't know that it does when awards shows adopt them. Parents and actors are unflattering mirrors: when you find your reflection in them, you know you need a makeover. So tonight, we'll shun the scatological with the characters we create.</p>Shawn Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16301045945239475897noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992091653802364493.post-13656520325962509182010-09-06T17:59:00.000-07:002010-09-06T18:03:42.240-07:00The Last Will and Testament of Noted Games Journalist Kevin BeverageSomeone's going to take games pundit Kevin Beverage seriously. Scary as it is, that's the point. Beverage is best when he's lost online, among other crude, moronic, and dishonest bits written about games. The reader who stops and thinks to himself that, although more misguided, this is a lot like other journalistic generalities he's read, is halfway there. Those who recognize satire when they read it can decide right away whether Beverage's alter ego, Rory Manion, elicits a laugh or a welp. Predictably Rory isn't proud of half he writes. As his friend, I'm biased in his favor, and besides, being unemployed, he'll gladly go where I don't dare. Unfortunately for him, though, these aren't places where major websites with massive audiences are willing to take risks. <br /><br />I asked Rory for permission to post two unsuccessfully solicited Kevin Beverage articles on my blog. Here they are, unedited:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Nuclear Launch Detected</span><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">The Juche is Loose</span><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">By: Internationally renowned games journalist and pundit Kevin Beverage, PhD in Important Topic Contemplation, Harverd Correspondence College and Chiropractor</span> <br /> <br />Like most gamers, the moment I heard about the tragic sinking of the Republic of Korea corvette Cheonan in the contested Yellow Sea, my heart went out to the bereaved survivors in the Blizzard financial department. I had an almost uncanny suspicion that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea—or North Korea, as we in the industry like to call it—was behind the attack. Such agitation could lead to war, and a war between North and South Korea threatens to take more lives in a week than fan death and LAN center brawls claim annually, and that can’t be good for Blizzard’s bottom line or the longevity of professional StarCraft. With that in mind, I cast a fretful gamer’s eye eastward, and think the unthinkable. <br /><br />Though I’ve done no research on the topic, I think it’s safe to panic over the thought that of the 10,000-plus DPRK artillery batteries aimed at Seoul, several thousand are probably zeroed-in on any number of e-sports stadiums. And though I’m no expert on military ordinance, I also feel confident in asserting that a 150mm howitzer shell landing in the middle of a StarCraft tournament might be detrimental to even the most focused player’s clicks-per-minute. The damage done to the gaming reputations of Korea’s most famous competitors could be catastrophic. Some experts have put the potential number of Facebook friends lost by affected ‘Craft professionals in the tens of thousands, a staggering number just vague enough to inspire terror without warranting corroboration. <br /><br />Should their reputations survive the shelling, the threat of compulsory military service looms large for displaced e-thletes. Or at least I’m guessing it does, I can’t really be bothered to look up the Republic of Korea’s stance on military drafting. Nevertheless, I assume that StarCraft experts will be in high demand due to their superhuman logistical prowess and micro skill. Though the possibility of losing an entire generation of ‘Craft experts to war is daunting, one can’t rule out the psyops (psychological operations) benefit to fielding a “gosu” corps of trained StarCraft strategists. <br /><br />There is a silver lining to this menacing cloud of gaming despair. While the various e-sports stadiums in South Korea, being of immense strategic value, are undoubtedly targeted for immediate devastation by DPRK hardware, the numerous LAN centers scattered throughout the nation will be more difficult—if not impossible--to neutralize. The gaming idealist in me can’t help but choke up imagining the remnants of Korea’s professional StarCraft elite feverishly pounding away at hotkeys amidst the smoldering ruins of their former home cities, desperately seeking meaning for their shattered lives in the warm glow of a monitor screen. The movie rights alone ought to net a hefty sum, hopefully offsetting any financial losses from missed StarCraft 2 sales opportunities. But I’ll leave that for economists to ponder.<br /><br />Reached for comment on this important man, a man whom I believe to be the Republic of Korea’s Electronic Gaming Commissioner said, through a translator: “Are you f***ing kidding me? Who is this? Don’t call this number again.” <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">The Last Will and Testament of Noted Games Journalist Kevin Beverage<br />By noted games journalist Kevin Beverage</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">The opinions expressed herein are rarely endorsed by anyone anywhere.</span> <br /><br />If you are reading this will, I, noted games journalist Kevin Beverage, have perished. Most likely I was done in by my years of hedonistic excess; hoisted by my own gaming petard, as they say. Maybe I suffocated in one of my several indoor ball pits, paid for by decades of hard-hitting games journalism. Or perhaps I have been found nude and supine in my subterranean gaming palace, asphyxiated by an HDMI cable. If so, please ignore the controller on my crotch, and pay no mind to the Pocket Pikachu chirping mournfully from somewhere in my colon. I died as I lived. <br /><br />Throughout my storied career, nothing has filled me with more pride and intense self-satisfaction than my charitable donations to Child’s Play charity--except telling people how much I donated to Child’s Play, Twittering about the thrill I get up my spine after donating to Child’s Play, shaking my head in silent judgment of those who don’t know the good works of Child’s Play, and altruistically--publicly, usually shouting--requesting that people make Child’s Play donations in my name rather than give me gifts. It warms my heart to think that, after years of being derided as myopic sociopaths whose entire sense of self-worth is tied directly into the public perception of their chosen pastime, gamers worldwide now come together annually to hurl mud in the eye of their detractors by selflessly purchasing video games.<br /><br />Because when you really think about it, if the charity you support isn’t acting as a public relations tool for your hobby, what’s the point? If I can’t use my generosity as an emotional bludgeon to savagely batter the perceived foes of my beloved gaming, why should I even bother? I could give my scads of games journalism payola to indigent youths, or auction off my Olympic-sized swimming pool full of Shrek SuperSlam promotional t-shirts for cancer research, or whatever, but anonymous individual kindness will do nothing to salt the wounds of the many foes I believe to be misrepresenting my beloved gaming community. Besides, past attempts to force Game Boy cartridges into Salvation Army collection tins have led only to savage bell-whippings, so it’s not like I haven’t tried. <br /><br />And so, being of sound body and superb mind, I do hereby bequeath my gaming estate (once it has been converted from Gamestop trade-in credit to cash) to Child’s Play charity, the only charitable organization on Earth cognizant of what really matters to gamers: Netting press accolades for assuaging the boredom of hospitalized children via colossal handovers of cash to massive entertainment corporations.Shawn Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16301045945239475897noreply@blogger.com40tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992091653802364493.post-20840046332543405082009-10-28T20:18:00.000-07:002009-10-29T10:44:24.964-07:00The Modern Warfare 2 controversy to comeFor weeks, not one television network took the trouble to examine the context in which Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor made the “make policy” and “wise latina” remarks that fed this summer's <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200910/media">24-hour news cycle</a>. I can only imagine how they'll handle <a href="http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/61038 ">footage</a> captured from the forthcoming Modern Warfare 2 in which players unconscionably massacre civilians during a terrorist attack on an airport. If they weren't willing to sit through the Duke University and Berkeley Law School speeches from which Sotomayor's commentary was stripped, they certainly aren't about to play a videogame before using it to tar an entire medium by association.<br /><br />Of course, without that context it's impossible to come to any worthwhile conclusions (including whether developer Infinity Ward was courageous to include intellectually challenging content that can sustain complicated readings; foolhardy in its assumption that meaningfully violent videogames can come of age in the present reporting climate; or crass in its belief that no press is bad press). It is, however, fair to frame questions. A few that come to my mind include:<br /><br />Would an alternative approach effectively “establish the depth of evil and the cold-bloodedness of a rogue Russian villain” and “add to the urgency of the player's mission to stop them.” What if the scene, for example, cast the players as a counter-terrorist who monitors the massacre while en route to the airport where he will engage the enemy? And what, if anything, will the answer tell us about the differences in reading a novel narrated from a monster's point of view, and in acting monstrously in a videogame where the player presumably has other options?<br /><br />What happens when the player turns and attacks the terrorists? Do they die, or does the game end then and there (since the story sustains only one outcome and the bad guys need to live in order to play their part in the escape scene at end of the level)? If the latter, must we comply with the terrorists to complete the mission and continue the story? I don't see why not when the character we play is destined to die.<br /><br />Must we commit mass murder to appreciate the extent of its evil?<br /><br />Is the scene's ending intended to serve as absolution not only for the character -- a CIA agent complicit in mass murder even should he never fire a shot -- but also for the player who presumably will want to “kill” the part of himself that played such a role?Shawn Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16301045945239475897noreply@blogger.com134tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992091653802364493.post-34973221241788328532009-10-10T13:20:00.000-07:002009-10-10T13:41:22.806-07:00The One and Only Right ReviewCalculations conducted with data obtained from the user commentary sections of videogame review websites conclude that the following constitutes the optimal critique of every game ever released. <em>Feel free to paste it where appropriate.</em><br /><br /><strong>The One and Only Right Review</strong><br /><br />I'm the wrong writer for this review. I've given the game a score it doesn't deserve: too stingy because I'm biased against the platform it's supposed to sell; unduly generous because I hoped to hide my bias towards the competing console. I've been bribed to deny that the game sucks; bribed to say that it does indeed. <br /><br />I'm an imbecile. My score doesn't match the aggregation site average which, to indulge one co-conspirator, I wanted to raise. Actually, I intended to reduce it in order to satisfy the other.<br /><br />My editors are morons. Instead of assigning this review to a fan of the genre who wouldn't have naively mistaken imitative mediocrity for innovation because he hadn't already played the eleven other games exactly like it, they gave it to me: a cynic who, having played and appreciated almost every game of the genre ever released, has unreasonably high expectations. <br /><br />I evaluated a sim according to arcade standards, and I expected simulation in a goofy arcade game. <br /><br />Had I played more than a mere 40 hours prior to collecting my $60 check (which may or may not arrive in three months) I'd have noticed that the game takes an irreversible turn for the worse on the third replay and redeems itself on the fourth.<br /><br />I neglected to dedicate individual paragraphs to the trophies and achievements, the customization, the cutscenes, the voice-overs, the Havoc physics, the pause menu, the patented and groundbreaking player abilities bullet-pointed on the press release, and if not these then everything else that the discerning readers who choose to use the comment function on this site point out while proving that they are, in fact, far more qualified to have written this review.<br /><br />Now the credibility I never had is as good as gone. This website and/or magazine was demonstrably better before its former writers and editors departed to become the despised new regimes at rival websites and magazines.Shawn Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16301045945239475897noreply@blogger.com119tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992091653802364493.post-29910250005158199652009-03-22T14:53:00.000-07:002009-03-22T16:45:58.069-07:00Primal Fear: Haunted by Ghosts of Predators Past<a href="http://www.co-optimus.com/images/upload/image/2009/re5_croc.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 500px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 282px" alt="" src="http://www.co-optimus.com/images/upload/image/2009/re5_croc.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="http://www.co-optimus.com/images/upload/image/2009/re5_croc.jpg"></a><br /><br /><div><a href="http://www.vgblogger.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/05/ResidentEvil5-Croc.jpg"></a><br /><br /><br /><div></div><br /><br /><br /><div>Office Space's copier notwithstanding, machines aren't as satisfying to fight; flesh and blood is better. It seemed self-evident when I said it during a discussion about game A.I.s in general. Now, after some serendipitous reading, the assertion makes even more sense. Forget about Cylon skinjobs and the sentient supercomputer HAL 9000. For the time being, it's machines that neither look nor behave like they're alive that I have in mind.<br /><br />“Have you ever wondered why normal adults living in urban environments like Manhattan are liable to be terrified of snakes and spiders, while being quite blasé about dangers like cars and cigarettes?” David Livingstone Smith asks in <em>The Most Dangerous Animal: Human Nature and the Origins of War</em>. </div><div></div><div><br />His answer agrees with Barbara Erenreich's: “[H]uman beings are haunted by the ghosts of predators past” -- which is to argue that we evolved in environments where it paid to be aware of animal predators, but not the technology that we would invent millennia later. And so, as Smith writes, high-grossing movies like <em>Jaws</em>, <em>Alien</em>, <em>Predator</em>, and <em>Jurassic Park</em> “arouse primal emotions within us. We respond to these films because they resonate with ancient fears of being hunted and eaten.”<br /><br />While we are, without doubt, able to imagine nightmares such as a demented car that intends to drive donuts over our corpses, these scenarios lack a snarling dog's ability to automatically elicit hair-raising reactions. The Resident Evil games get this and use it to frightening effect. Crocodiles, snakes, and spiders are among the menagerie of clawing, biting, or stinging animals that menace us in the series' current incarnation. RE 5, of course, capitalizes on the psychology of fear in other ways as well.<br /><br />More than any other species, ourselves included, parasites and viral organisms have historically made mankind miserable (the Spanish flu eliminated 50 million of us in only a year and a half). It is correct to object that, while we can see macroparasites such as tapeworms and leeches, the microscopic monsters that create measles, leprosy, and Lhasa fever have until very recently remained invisible to humankind. Remember, though, that their transmission vectors – rats, lice, blood, feces, rotten flesh – are both obvious and elicit instinctive revulsion across cultures.<br /><br />There's more to zombie imagery than this peculiar power to induce disgust. Smith writes that “it is typically thought that the contaminated object transmits its filthy essence to anything that it comes into contact with.” Bear with me, as this becomes fairly complicated. Essence (Aristotle called it substance) distinguishes what a thing is from the qualities that it has. Dogs have four legs, for instance, but can lose any number of these and retain their “doggy-ness.” In other words, a hairless, toothless, three-limbed dog remains in our minds' conceptual “dog” category despite his setbacks. This essentialist thinking finds its home in the notion that humans have souls independent of the bodies that they inhabit (and, perversely, in the tradition that held that a person was black or Jewish on the basis of one-eighth of his or her “blood”).<br /><br />Zombies -- the converse of our hypothetical canine -- are superficial humans who've lost their human essence. The ubiquity of made-up monsters that appear to be people but in actuality aren't – consider werewolves, vampires, witches, changelings, Cylon skinjobs, pod people, T-800 terminators, and demon-controlled children to name but a few -- proves the concept's immense power over the human imagination.<br /><br />If you agree with Smith; copious evidence canvasing all of recorded history; and the research of psychologists who study post-combat stress disorders, it is essential for soldiers and communities to dehumanize the enemies who they destroy or whose destruction they condone. We compare our foes to the same dangerous and disease carrying animals that trigger the instinctive fight-or-flight and disgust responses detailed above. <em>Zombies literalize the picture that political propagandists paint when attempting to activate our anti-parasite modules in preparation for war</em> -- which brings us to the disquieting nature of another note that Resident Evil 5 strikes. The title not only features fearful animals and contagious pathogens that create monsters in people's clothing; it blatantly turns people who in relatively recent history have been relegated to a sub-human status and held as vectors of barbarity and disease into barbaric disease spreaders.</div></div></div>Shawn Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16301045945239475897noreply@blogger.com91tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992091653802364493.post-75323423453508695902009-03-20T08:47:00.000-07:002009-03-20T08:49:15.606-07:00Preserving past blog entries, part one<h1 style="margin-top: 10px;"><span style="font-weight: normal;font-size:85%;" >Originally published: April, 2008</span><br /></h1><h1 style="margin-top: 10px;">Racist imagery in RE5 trailer?</h1> <span class="blurb">Posted: 2008-04-13 15:18:46.257</span> <!-- Begin My1upBlogs-BlogEntry-Body --> <img src="http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/residentevil5-03-281.jpg" /><br /><br />Message board <a href="http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=277325">reactions</a> to Newsweek blogger N'Gai Croal's <a href="http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/04/10/newsweeks-ngai-croal-on-the-resident-evil-5-trailer-this-imagery-has-a-history/">thoughts</a> on Resident Evil 5's controversial trailer miss much of the point.<br /><br />To say that previously released Resident Evil games featured rabid mobs of Spaniards and Americans of mixed ethnicity simply won't do. To many Americans, an animalistic, homicidal white man is an anomaly, and an animalistic, homicidal black man is a recognizable "type" with historical and institutional precedent. This is what Croal refers to when he says "the imagery is not the same. It doesn't carry the same history, doesn't carry the same weight." Some discussion of the taxonomy of stereotypical, racially insensitive, and/or outright racist imagery of blacks -- such as revolting notions of sambos, minstrels, and savages, as well as the spiritual and moral mentors to non-black figures who feature in many Hollywood movies -- might have preempted much of the reactionary posting that is appearing online. However, I understand that it is not the Newsweek writer's obligation to provide crash courses in black history for an American audience that ought to know better.<br /><br />Imagine a series of tycoon games in which the object is to control a state's banking and financial institutions and then exercise increasingly powerful political lobbying power. The first game in the series features white characters. Its sequel, however, focuses on corporate fat cats with stereotypical Jewish features. The same entrepreneurship lionized in American culture as the embodiment of by-their-bootstraps success is something else entirely for the stereotyped Jewish character because of historical context and because the same socially constructed categories have been used to oppress and separate Jews from people of other ethnicities. As it retells an age-old story, the game of Jewish tycoons perpetuates notions that have been used in part as justification for the expulsion and extermination of Jews across Europe from 15th century Spain and Portugal to 20th century Germany, Poland, and Russia.<br /><br />No matter how academic this might sound, all Americans are familiar with the concept. We know that is it different to use a racist, sexist, or homophobic epithet against a person of an ethnicity, gender, or sexuality who the term was never intended to slander, than it is to use the same word to attack another person of the ethnicity, gender, or sexuality that it is intended to wound. Resident Evil 5's trailer is no racist slur-- the point I'm attempting to make is the all-importance of context to meaning.<br /><br />Unlike Croal, I am not yet convinced that the trailer depicts non-zombie blacks as "all dangerous men, women, and children" who "have to be killed." But I do believe that its imagery does invoke, if not directly draw on, our familiarity with and interest in films like Black Hawk Down, as well as the real world tragedies in Sudan's Darfur region and Rwanda (where black Hutus have in fact murdered perhaps as many as a million black Tutsis and moderate Hutus, often with knives and machetes). The potential problem is that while action games are perfectly able to adapt some of the intensity and chaos of these situations to the purposes of interactive entertainment, they're miserable at handling complicated social, political, and historical contexts. (Similarly, where Black Hawk Down succeeds as an action movie, several critics accuse it of shortchanging the socio-politics of the Battle of Mogadishu.)<br /><br />At the moment, neither Croal nor I have any idea as to how Resident Evil 5 will handle its suggestive themes. We aren't sure whether it will in some way acknowledge the terrible baggage attached to the real atrocities that lend its scenes such emotional power or simply mine these as videogame thrillmakers. Beyond this specific game, there exists the danger that -- over time, and across multiple iterations -- well-meaning pop culture creations will distill the specific and complex character of conflicts such as Darfur's into the general and simplistic trope of a malicious black mob armed with machetes.<br /><br />I say well-meaning, because in the case of videogames, current technical limitations restrict the extent to which a developer can paint complete pictures. For instance, it is both easier and more cost effective to render convincing opponents in games like Resident Evil or Call of Duty than it is to breathe believable life into non-combatant characters who go about the business of day-to-day living. This is one reason why we find no NPCs in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare's middle-eastern cities, even as the game's missions lead players through the very homes and workplaces of vanished people. And should Infinity Ward have decided to populate its levels with anyone other than armed militants it would have faced the challenge of preventing players from shooting innocents -- a circumstance undoubtedly closer to life, but one that would have risked depicting American and British soldiers as war criminals, as well as forcing players to restart missions after each incident of indiscriminate fire. The trade-off, of course, is that COD 4's unnamed Saudi Arabia is inhabited exclusively by angry Arab gunmen.<br /><br />While I would be surprised if RE5 does not include a few black NPCs who fill sympathetic supporting roles fleshed out in non-interactive cutscenes, I'm not counting on in-game villagers to flee their zombified and cannibalistic former neighbors.Shawn Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16301045945239475897noreply@blogger.com50tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992091653802364493.post-84413567902350056322009-02-12T07:54:00.000-08:002009-02-12T08:12:29.993-08:00Symposium Part Two: Review Policy, Practice and Ethics<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;"><b>Introduction</b></span><br />Are reviews primarily a consumer guide, or should they serve another purpose? Do review scores deter intelligent discussion of videogames? Is the presence or absence of a review score the only difference between a reviewer and a critic? What is the role of the reviewer when the Internet is democratizing published opinion? How should reviews and reviewers evolve in light of the emergence and growth of Flash games, small games, indie games and user-generated games?<br /><br />These questions and more were on the mind of N'Gai Croal, John Davison and Shawn Elliott last summer when they decided to expand their conversation to a number of noted reviewers, writers, bloggers and journalists for a published email symposium on game reviews. (See below for the full list of participants.) The planned list of topics include <a href="http://shawnelliott.blogspot.com/2008/12/symposium-part-one-review-scores.html">Review Scores</a><span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;"></span>; Review Policy, Practice and Ethics; Reader Backlash; Reviews in the Age of Social media; Reviews in the Mainstream Media; Casual, Indie, and User-Generated Games; Reviews vs. Criticism; and Evolving the Review. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Round Two's topic: <b style="">Review Policy, Practice and Ethics</b>.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><b>Participants</b></span><br /><a href="http://sexyvideogameland.blogspot.com/"><br />Leigh Alexander, Gamasutra/Sexy Videogameland/Variety </a><br /><br /><a href="http://harryallen.info/">Harry Allen, Media Assassin</a><br /><br /><a href="http://alifewellwasted.com/">Robert Ashley, freelancer</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/">Tom Chick, freelancer</a><br /><br /><a href="http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/levelup/">N'Gai Croal, Level Up/Newsweek </a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.whattheyplay.com/">John Davison, What They Play </a><br /><br /><a href="http://shawnelliott.blogspot.com/">Shawn Elliott, 2K Boston</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.giantbomb.com/">Jeff Gerstmann, Giant Bomb </a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/">Kieron Gillen, Rock, Paper, Shotgun</a><br /><br /><a href="http://sorethumbsblog.com/">Dan Hsu, Sore Thumbs Blog</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.oxmonline.com/">Francesca Reyes, Official Xbox Magazine</a><br /><a href="http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/"><br />Stephen Totilo, MTV News</a><br /><br /><br /><b style=""><span style="font-size:130%;">Round Two: Review Policy, Practice and Ethics</span><o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style=""><o:p> </o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style=""><o:p> </o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="">Shawn Elliott, 2K Boston:</b> Is it important for a writer to have a history of fandom with the genre of the game he or she is reviewing.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="">Leigh Alexander, Gamasutra/Sexy Videogameland/Variety:</b> The answer to your question is no, Shawn. There is a definitive and equal merit to both. On one hand, a fan expects something specific out of a game, and so it'd be useful for that fan to read a review written by someone who understands their expectations, preferably by sharing them. On the other hand, plenty of readers might be interested in a title while having no prior experience with it, and so it would be useful for them to read a review written from a general perspective.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In other words, in my opinion, it takes both kinds -- especially given that our industry has such a common culture of sequels and such commonly-established genre conventions. "Would I like Metal Gear Solid 4 if I've never played Metal Gear?" Is a perfectly valid question and probably even a common one; so is "Would I like Persona 4 if I don't usually play RPGs?" On the other hand, equally useful is a review that answers questions like "Does Fallout 3 contain elements that fans of previous Fallout games would enjoy?" or, "What conventions common to eastern tactical titles does Disgaea 2 share?"</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">It's impossible to critique a genre game or sequel in a fashion that satisfies both the acclimated and the uninitiated unless you're experienced with it. The real question is should you try to do both?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The approach I favor for criticism is to be familiar with the fandom whenever possible, but to be aware of how those inexperienced with the franchise or genre might approach it. I should hope we're all good enough at the work we do to be able to separate our own fan opinions from the generalities of a title; I hope we're all knowledgeable enough to differentiate between "this isn't my thing" and "this is bad."</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Therefore, I think context is essential. There is nothing wrong with evaluating a game as a "virgin," if you will. In fact, I think inexperience can be a merit, when the result is "I hate shooters, but here's why this one appealed to me," as an example. Similarly, experience can be a detriment, in that your prior sentimental disposition is going to be elevating your experience. But instead of pretending to be an objective neutral voice, I wholly favor revealing up-front the position from whence you're approaching a title -- your readers need to know the context of your opinion so that they can apply their own.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In other words, feel free to evaluate something within the context of your own taste and experience. Just be honest about the fact that you're doing that. I think the massive lack of trust on the part of much of our readership can be credited to the fact that we often try to take the stance that we're stating some factually-supported, correct single opinion. That's why reviews feel inconsistent and confused to many people; we can't seem to decide whether to be authoritarian or individual. I'm all for being upfront about where you're coming from and who you think you're speaking to. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Caveat: When scores are involved, a fan evaluating a title for fans is going to produce a wholly different number than someone with no particular sentiment, period, because their criteria will be fundamentally different. Fortunately there are numerous outlets, all of whom are likely to assign different numbers, and a reader who doesn't feel your opinion was relevant to him will probably seek a second or a third.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="">Stephen Totilo, MTV News:</b> Shawn, can we get a clarification on what you mean by "a history of fandom with the genre of the game"?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">It's one thing to be familiar with a genre, another to be an experienced player in it and a third thing altogether to be a fan of it.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Experience with a genre enables a reviewer to assess the objective car-review aspects some readers want with reviews. But being a fan? Call me naïve but I don't see why or how that should be a factor. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">We're talking about reviewing games, not rooting for them.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Do you reviewers in this exchange feel like you're expected to root for games?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <br /><p class="MsoNormal"><b style="">Shawn Elliott, 2K Boston: </b>Sure, Stephen. I suppose someone could call himself an enthusiast though not an expert, or an expert though not an enthusiast (even if enthusiasts always seem to think that they're experts, and experts tend to gravitate to genres that they enjoy). So to clarify, I'll cheat and say I'm asking two questions. Should a writer be an expert of the genre of game she's reviewing? Should she be a fan of the genre (which doesn't guarantee "Rah! Rah!" rooting any more than my sci-fi fandom means I must adore Mission to Mars).</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <br /><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="">Kieron Gillen, Rock Paper Shotgun:</b> Oh, I suspect this one will be fun.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">My answer is, basically, that it depends. The question assumes that all reviews serve the same purpose, when I think reviews differ from organ to organ. From the consumer's point of view, I suspect it's more important -- and I'm mainly talking about consumer reviews to start with -- to have similar levels of experience to your readers. Occasionally we see the games forums erupt when a reviewer from some mainstream mag eviscerates a sacred calf -- Ninja Gaiden got one, if I recall correctly. Except -- y'know -- their review was perfectly acceptable for that audience. And when we don't do this, we get some fascinating side-effects. The JRPG wasn't a major part of the British game landscape until really late. Final Fantasy VII was the first to seem to get any kind of push -- and received a mass of really positive reviews from people who knew the genre. Sold well too. It was also, if the chattering classes of the time were to be believed, the most returned game of all time.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">What I'm saying is that a fair review to the game can be an unfair game to any reader who actually believes the mark. Which may be another reason to dump marks, but that's last week's conversation. Are we marking for "good in the genre" or "good to buy"? That impacts entirely on whether you want a generalist or specialist reviewer.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">For me, that's one of the interesting things about games reviews -- that we generally view all reviews as trying to do the same thing. In most other forms, the spread of reviews seems more pronounced. The most popular films and albums will almost certainly get one total slagging from someone or another -- because there's a sense that because they're writing for different demographics, they're allowed to mark and review for those demographics. We've got this universal idea of "Gamers", and that they're all the same. That's not true. A single glance at how all the different game forums operate prove it's a lie immediately. So maybe -- to use mark-based shorthand -- for OXM's readers Space Giraffe was a 2/10. But for Rock Paper Shotgun I could easily justify it being a 9/10. When asked, readers often talk about being unable to trust reviews. I don't think there's an easy solution for that, and my gut feeling thinks that reviews are actually going to have to get /more/ unreliable before people will be able to start to believe them. As in, reviews start showing more opinions allowing people to realize which reviews are for them. We need different sorts of writers writing about what genuinely matters in a game to them for people to really find people who mirror their opinion.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">My general stance is while all knowledge is helpful -- and I gravitate to the people who really understand a game at its most fundamental mechanical level -- to review worth a damn all you really need is an honest and unvarnished connection to your own emotions and the brains to analyze that response.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Spinning in another direction, the cult of the expert, specialist reviewer has another interesting side effect which I don't think people have thought through. We, understandably, view it unfair to give a game to review to someone who doesn't like the genre at all. The problems with that Leigh's already pointed out -- essentially, often increasing irrelevance to anyone not deeply in that genre and happy with the way the genre already is. But what I also find interesting is that -- especially for successful, popular series -- people who don't like those series are similarly removed from the conversation. Which seems to make sense -- clearly it's unfair for someone who despised Halo or Gears of War or MGS 4 to review the sequel. But it also inevitably leads to mark inflation. The first game in a series, before anyone really knows what it's like, gets that wider selection of reviewers. If it <i style="">is</i> a success, those who didn't like it are rarely given a shot at the sequel. Is it any wonder that GTA and Mario or Zelda or MGS, no matter what their charms, get top ratings across the board? Anyone likely to feel otherwise doesn't get anywhere near a review. And if they were, the internet would go wild. As I said last time, Eurogamer's Ollie Welsh got death-threats for his 8/10 for MGS4. And he likes MGS. What would have happened if you gave it to someone who does like Action-adventure narrative games -- like, say, me -- but find the direction the series grew since MGS1 kinda laughable?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In short: less than 9 out of 10 gamers like MGS4. Why should our selection of reviewers not represent that?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="">Robert Ashley, freelancer:</b> The whole genre expert thing deserves a lot of blame for the overwhelming sameness of game reviews. I can't think of anything more boring than reading a Final Fantasy freak's assessment of where the new game fits in the canon, pouring over all the little details of combat systems and inventory management like an accountant. In general, if you wrote the review of last year's game, I don't really want to read your review of this year's game. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I have plenty of good things to say about the way EGM ran their reviews section, but the one thing that always bothered me was the use of the same writers for the same games, over and over again. Mainly, it was a reflection of seniority. The people who had been around the longest always got to write about the year's biggest games, and it made the process completely predictable. We already know that Shoe digs Halo! (I would use an emoticon here to convey my playful ribbing, but I don't want to be the first person in the group to stoop that low). </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">To answer the original question: If you're honest with your audience about your personal taste and experience, it doesn't matter. The reviews editor at 1up once had the audacity to put me on a soccer game (I've never had any interest in sports and am, in general, a totally wussy girl of a man). I pined on the review forever, worried that the audience would easily sniff out my inexperience. In the end, I just laid it all out for the readers, and it worked out fine.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Critics feel the need to project expertise because expertise is the easy path to authority. If you have no authority, nobody gives a shit what you think about a game. The tougher path to authority runs through insightful observation and clever argument, and it's much more entertaining to read. Which is the point, right?<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><b style="">Shawn Elliott, 2K Boston:</b> Robert’s remarks about the same writers reviewing the same games rings true. Dan, do you disagree? Can insightful observation and clever argument produce more authoritative -- or simply stronger -- reviews than encyclopedic familiarity with a franchise?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <br /><p class="MsoNormal"><b style="">Dan Hsu, Sore Thumbs Blog:</b> There’s a very practical side to all of this. Let’s say we’re on the 15th Tony Hawk game, and you have a staff of...say, 10 reviewers. What are the chances that you can find one Hawk virgin in that group? And let’s say you do...then what happens when Tony Hawk 16 comes out? You’re going to run out of those “fresh” perspectives at some point for any regular franchise, unless you’re constantly recruiting new writers every few months. In which case your reviews team starts to lose some identity with all the unfamiliar faces rotating in all the time. And what if you’re just an individual blogger/reviewer?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I suspect Robert’s example might’ve worked out fine because, really...how many people out there in the U.S. really care about a review of a PSP soccer game? But imagine the backlash he would’ve gotten if he gave a B- to a Final Fantasy game, claiming he’s never really been into that series or genre before. That’s a serious credibility hit to that outlet, too.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">If we’re doing a good job of critiquing, then we’re covering both bases. Halo 3, Madden 2009, BioShock 2, etc. are not games living inside of their own bubbles...just like Star Wars Episode 1 is not a standalone sci-fi movie or “Free as a Bird” is not just any random rock song (I just watched the Beatles Anthology recently, hence the outdated reference). We should be providing that historical/fandom perspective because it’s critically important to do so. But at the same time, we should all be qualified to provide that objective, neutral perspective as well. Any Madden veteran should be able to say whether the latest edition can appeal to newcomers or not.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In other words...what Leigh said.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The very obvious question we have to ask first is, who’s our audience? A mainstream outlet may be excused for approaching almost every game from a, “Will a newcomer enjoy this?” point of view, while a hardcore fansite that covers a specific franchise or genre may get deep into nuances no one outside of its readership gives a damn about. And then you have the general enthusiast press that sits somewhere in between. Knowing the audience makes all the difference in whether a reviewer would discuss Halo as an epic sci-fi action game where you get to shoot a lot of aliens...or just how different the plasma-pistol/battle-rifle “newb” combo works in the latest edition.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="">John Davison, What They Play:</b> I would argue that there are U.S-dwelling, PSP-owning soccer fans out there that really do care about a review like that. They're a pretty small niche, for sure -- but they're out there. There are certain expectations of the "enthusiast" press, and I think that subject matter knowledge is taken pretty much as read. In this particular example, while it may not matter to the vast majority of the audience, there's always a small group that really cares about a franchise or a genre, and if they feel that they are given short shrift, then they understandably feel disrespected, and consequently get vocal. As the enthusiast media, we were born out of the concept of "niche" and I think we need to be very clear about defining who our intended audience is before acting on assumptions about whether we can choose to overlook a particular game.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The challenges with something like a soccer game (specifically) are that A) there are only two franchises in town (to all intents and purposes) B) both are evolving in an iterative fashion each year, and C) both always have something about them that could use some work. Given that consumers of soccer games are invariably as passionate (or more) about the sport than they are about video games, they tend be extremely picky when it comes to coverage. My assumption is that a large portion of the audience in this case would strongly disagree with Robert's point that, "if you wrote the review of last year's game, I don't really want to read your review of this year's game."</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">We were both there for this Dan, but I don't recall the specifics -- I'm surprised that EGM's three-man review system didn't eliminate the need for an "I'm obviously no expert" style lead review. Running multiple opinions afforded us the chances to have a genre "expert" that could provide the context for enthusiasts (usually Todd Zuniga) AND voices such as Robert's here that could provide a broader experiential approach. Do you recall what necessitated this route? I know it was a long time ago.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">For Robert's sake, thank god this was a FIFA review, and not a PES review. PES fans would've eaten him up and spat him out.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I think a lot of the "genre expert" stuff that we're talking about here is born out of a long legacy in the games media. As someone that spent a lot of time in the PC space back in the dark ages, the importance of having a "flight sim guy" and a "role playing guy" and a "strategy guy" could not be overstated. All of them required specialized knowledge, and all of them were employed to provide context far beyond talking about a specific franchise -- these guys were fully versed in the minutiae of their particular field, and had followings from readers that felt just as passionately about the genre. On both PC Player, and PC Zone back in the UK, I found that it was our strategy guys more than any other that wielded significant influence over the audience of their niche within a niche. These guys had an encyclopedic knowledge of historical warfare, were extremely comfortable with hex-based war games, and could tell you things about individual weapons (and whether the game employed them correctly) that would make your head spin. Not only did we use them because they knew their stuff, but we also used them because -- let's face it -- you have to be wired up a certain way to be that into something like that, and other people on the team just couldn't tolerate these kinds of games. We knew there was a portion of the audience that was equally nerdy about such things, so we put the war game guy on the war games -- and everyone was happy.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The reputation of the enthusiast media 15 years ago was as much about the "enthusiast" chops of those writing for it as anything else. Shawn has argued in the past (I think on GFW Radio) that a lot of writers are still employed for their ability to play games over their ability to write. That they're hired for their Xbox Live Achievements list. To me, this is symptomatic of the transitioning nature of games and games coverage, along with a throwback to the old days. Genre lines are blurring, which is part of it. But I think the biggest part is that while some games are far more mainstream than they were in the days of Falcon 3.0 and the entire SSI back catalog, the desire to read (and write) about videogames in any real critical depth is still very much in the enthusiast realm.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">To answer the original question, while I think that being a "fan" is the wrong term to use, genre expertise is important. Connected to this, though, is the fact that understanding, and defining who the audience is for our reviews and our outlets is more significant than ever.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="">Leigh Alexander, Gamasutra/Sexy Videogameland/Variety:</b> Right, so what I think we're all agreeing here is that different approaches and perspectives on genres are useful to different audiences -- oh my goodness, you mean there isn't one, single, correct objective way to do this? </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I dunno, this has always seemed to me like a fairly obvious point, and thus far we all seem in agreement here. I don't want to get ahead of others' answers to the original question, but for now I'll bookmark a follow-up for later: At any given time, do we have an idea of who the audience for a review is going to be -- and how do we know that? Is it something you guys often think about? Is the "whoever is interested in reading it" approach sufficient?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">But, yeah, tag the question for later. Looking forward to everyone's continuing thoughts.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="">Shawn Elliott, 2K Boston:</b> It's certainly complicated. Our audience isn't always who we think. As John said in the first section of the symposium, Google doesn't discriminate along that line. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Sometimes self-consistency is an issue. When I worked at EGM, our imagined reader was Mr. Mainstream: A college-aged dude who doesn't know one developer from another; clowns on dorks because he's a bit dorky; likes pictures and is allergic to words. I think the magazine that we produced pretty much matched our intentions. Still, as Shoe said, "the general enthusiast press sits somewhere in between" hardcore and casual. That's a problematic place, as you aren't always going to please gamers who lean one way a little more than the other. Maybe the contradiction is more apparent than actual, but I always wondered why Mr. Mainstream would want a franchise aficionado reviewing every installment in a series. Shoe assumes that "any Madden veteran should be able to say whether the latest edition can appeal to newcomers or not." I'm not so sure of that. As someone who has stopped following Japanese RPGs, I know I'd weigh Robert's words more heavily than the hypothetical reviewer who is fluent in the sub-genre's grammar and sleeps in a room full of figurines. In fact, myopia might be an issue for the specialist. He says, "Oh, that's just how JRPGs are," but the generalist knows better because he's played plenty of games that have solved the same problems despite their belonging to different genres.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="">Jeff Gerstmann, Giant Bomb:</b> I think that, for a good stretch of years there, there was something that could pass for the one correct, objective way to do this. When gaming itself was a niche, it seemed like everyone had much wider interests, genre-wise. Nowadays, just to give an example, my opinion on sports games is fairly useless because I haven't stayed current with the genre. Even if I happen to like the game, is my take on Madden NFL 09 meaningful to someone who's played the game every year for the past two decades? A review that starts out with "I don't normally like this kind of game, but boy, this one's great" doesn't serve the person that's likely to be the core audience for that review. I'm not even sure if that review serves anyone at all.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">As the market for games expands, attempts to answer the question of "should I buy this game?" have become far less meaningful. The audience's taste has already splintered a great deal, and it's getting more and more scattered as time goes on. Attempting to weigh a game and write out some sort of recommendation for every possible audience leads to phrases like "If you're the sort of person who likes this sort of thing, this game's for you!" It's like having a person with no kids review a kids game and attempt to guess if a game would be good for children or not. Or having your flight-sim guy review Ico. Or having someone who's a lifelong Madden fan make educated guesses about the game's approachability for non-fans.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In today's market, I really think that readers need to bring their own tastes to the review and filter our words through those tastes. Really, that crosses all mediums these days. Faced with this notion, I've stopped answering the old question. Point blank, I don't know who's reading, I don't know their experience level with games, and I don't know how much money they have to spend. Sure, we could all go off and conduct focus tests to find out some of these things, but we'll never know for certain. So, instead, I've started answering the "what do I think of this game?" question. After spending most of the last decade never EVER EVER EVER writing reviews in the first-person, it's been an interesting and exciting transition that's really freshened up the process for me. At the very least, I'm no longer writing 2,000-word reviews and immediately receiving an e-mail from a reader that says "so what did you think of the game?" But this is a transition that's only really felt possible relatively recently, maybe over the last two years or so. Whether this is evidence of the audience for games (and game criticism) actually widening or me just going mad with power after perceiving that there seems to be some group of people out there specifically interested in what I have to say about this stuff remains to be seen. I certainly still attempt to provide the objective facts about a game -- the amount time I spent with the game, details on its performance, and so on -- and then pepper that with my take on how all those things clicked and, as I become more and more comfortable with writing reviews this way, maybe a bit of touchy-feely stuff about how I reacted to the game. It's still an evolving process, of course. Old habits die hard. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Even the technical aspects, however, can be up for debate. Personally, I think that dodgy, uneven frame rates are one of the worst things happening in gaming these days. Seriously. So I'm always sure to call that out one way or the other. If you, the reader, don't care about that, then great. Ignore that point and move on. Even if we completely disagree, you'll hopefully have learned something meaningful about the game you are considering purchasing. With that in mind, you'd think that I'd be able to run off and review something like Madden or a flight-sim or a Final Fantasy game. But at some point, rattling out your own opinions on something you have no interest or expertise in becomes more noise than signal. It's with that line in mind that we decide when to review a game or pass on it. Giant Bomb didn't review Madden this year, or, really, any other team-based sports game. We don't need to slap our opinionated stamp on every single release that comes our way.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">John's right that the "genre expert" stuff started with things like flight sims and the like. For me, though, the specialist reviewer craze really got big with sports games. I remember EGM gaining a big, breakout section on sports at one point, and guys like Kraig Kujawa essentially turned into some of the first sports game reviewers. Now, it seems like every publication has a sports guy, or maybe even a team of guys that are mostly focused on sports...but these days, that's just as likely to have to do with presenting a large sports area for the purposes of selling ads to sports-focused advertisers.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Though I feel that the sports- and MMO-focused sections at some publications can go a bit too far, it's useful to have someone in place who can approach a game with a certain level of perspective on the genre or series. It's not about getting "fans" to review the games. It's about having a person who potentially fits a product's core audience cover it from a starting point of cautious optimism. Ideally, this person should have enough history with the genre to know if a game is just shamelessly ripping off games of the past, or if it's something truly innovative. And a group of peers should be in place to call that reviewer out in cases where he or she starts to apologize for a game's flaws (the "Oh, that's just how JRPGs are" case that Shawn mentioned).</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="">N'Gai Croal, Level Up/Newsweek: </b>As a reader, the only things I ask of a reviewer or a critic is that they carefully reflect on the work at hand and write it up in a way that's enlightening and/or thought-provoking. In fact, I'll often seek out writers whose opinion is completely divergent from my own. I already know what I think -- I prefer to have my opinion challenged rather than validated, because I'm always trying to see if there's something that I've missed or failed to consider.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">As a writer, I try to do the same thing, even though I don't consider myself an expert in any genre or a fan of any particular franchise. That's what happens when you've only been seriously playing games since 1999, though I have developed a soft spot for Tetsuya Mizuguchi, Hideo Kojima, and Valve Software. Most of the game criticism that I've done on Level Up took place in my Vs. Mode exchanges with Stephen. (There has been a handful in Newsweek's print edition as well, but I'll save that for when we get to Reviews in the Mainstream Media.)</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Some of the games came from franchises I was familiar with as a player (<a href="http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/levelup/archive/2007/05/29/the-complete-vs-mode-on-god-of-war-ii.aspx">God of War II</a><span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;"></span>) others did not (<a href="http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/levelup/archive/2007/12/17/the-complete-vs-mode-on-the-legend-of-zelda-phantom-hourglass.aspx">Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass</a><span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;"></span>). Some games I finished before we discussed them (<a href="http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/levelup/archive/2007/09/24/the-complete-vs-mode-on-bioshock-and-metroid-prime-3.aspx">BioShock</a><span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;"></span>); some I didn't (<a href="http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/levelup/archive/2008/06/17/the-complete-vs-mode-on-patapon.aspx">Patapon</a><span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;"></span>); and some we only had partial access to (the first five missions in <a href="http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/levelup/archive/2007/07/02/the-complete-vs-mode-on-manhunt-2.aspx">Manhunt 2</a><span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;"></span>, right after the ESRB slapped it with an Adults Only rating). I'll leave it to the rest of you to determine how credible my half of each exchange was. I will say that after re-reading all of my Vs. Mode entries, it goes without saying that in those instances when I'd played the entire game before we began to write, my end of the conversation was both specific /and/ holistic; micro /and/ macro. When I'd only played a portion of the game, as with The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, I necessarily focused on aspects of the game (its stylus-driven controls) that some might consider minutiae and others meaningful. So even if I was being transparent about how much of the game I had played -- which I was -- does that write-up on a partially digested game make me a credible critic or not?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">This gets to some of the reviews-related complaints that have been raised in response to our symposium. <a href="http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showpost.php?p=1569572&postcount=160">Doug "Drinky Crow" Erickson plainly stated on Quarter to Three</a> that he doesn't trust many reviewers because they "…don't play the games long enough to form a credible opinion. This is demonstrated by any number of reviews that get the basic mechanics of less popular games wrong, or gloss over the long-term failings of popular games," he goes on to say on NeoGAF that the four basic points of any review must include:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">1) who is the audience for this game; 2) what is the game ultimately trying to achieve; 3) how does the execution support this goal or goals; and 4) does it succeed or fail.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=14066065&postcount=137">Stumpokapow backs him up on NeoGAF</a><span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;"></span>:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">You don't give a score that compares Dynasty Warriors to Halo, you begin your review by describing the basics of the game in a way that makes it clear it's not intended for the same audience as Halo at all. When you move on to the critical portion of the review, your criticism should be tailored to the concerns of the audience described or alluded to in the first part of your review.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">They're spot on with points 2, 3 and 4. Point #1, however “Who is the audience for this game?” <span style=""> </span>is not where I begin when I'm evaluating a game. I start with what I thought and how I felt while I was playing the game and immediately afterwards, regardless of my expertise with the genre or the franchise. Then I map those thoughts and feelings against points #2 (what is this game ultimately trying to achieve?) and #3 (how does the execution support this goal or goals?) in order to help determine point #4 (does it succeed or fail?)</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The game's intended audience doesn't factor into it much for me because <i style="">I'm</i> the one who played the game. I can't tailor my critique to the concerns of someone who I'm not. If I've done my job properly, a discerning reader should be able to determine from what I've written whether or not my tastes align with theirs, like when I explained <a href="http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/levelup/archive/2007/09/24/the-complete-vs-mode-on-bioshock-and-metroid-prime-3.aspx">why 3-D Metroid games don't work for me</a><span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;"></span> or <a href="http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/levelup/archive/2007/06/01/the-complete-vs-mode-on-the-halo-3-multiplayer-beta.aspx">how inhospitable online shooters can be to newcomers</a><span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;"></span>.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Those are a couple of takes on how we and our peers should approach reviews. I've given you my thoughts. How do the rest of you do it? For those of you working at or for outlets with formal or informal review policies, what are they? How strictly is it adhered to, and how is it enforced? And does it include any direction as regards the intended audience for a particular review?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="">Robert Ashley, freelancer:</b> More and more, we do know our audience -- personally. They're the people you don't really know sending you friends requests on Facebook. They're the people e-mailing you at odd hours about something you said on a podcast or in a video, or about the story you wrote in a magazine they never expected to see you in. The game for writers these days, increasingly, is about building up a personal audience, loyal readers who follow your work across blogs, print, videos, podcasts, and whatever's next. These people seem to come from different income and education levels, different countries, and they often latch onto you for reasons other than your preference in games. They think you're a likable person. They identify with your attitude. You make them laugh. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Just look at Shawn. He's got an audience of people who come for videos of morbidly obese people eating pizza rolls and stay for epic inside-baseball discussions of game reviews. That's kind of amazing.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="">Shawn Elliott, 2K Boston:</b> N'Gai, I more or less agree with your method, although I'd add an alphabetized step or two to acknowledge that, on occasion, games can achieve things that their developers never intended to accomplish. On the other side of this coin, design decisions can also carry unanticipated negative consequences.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Or say that as a designer your goal is to bore players in order to parody another genre of game. What if you want to exhaust people in a way that parallels the protagonist's exhaustion? So we're bored or exhausted. But what if your timing was bad? What when your intentions conflict with one another, as is the case in Gears of War 2 when a cutscene clearly wants us to cry, and an audio clip that activates when players pick up ammo is there to spur scavenging? You see your buddy hit rock bottom, and then you scream "Sweet!" as you stock up on bullets. (I figured I should touch on "the intentional fallacy" again since the guys and gal on the Joystiq Podcast Appreciation Group Podcast somehow thought that I was saying that reviewers should read design documents.)</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Coming back to Doug "Drinky Crow" Erickson's concerns, I think context is everything. It's one thing to engage in an email dialog that divulges the extent of your experience and another to provide a score in a publication that calls itself the "ultimate authority" or "where gamers go first!" It's great that N'Gai both admits when he hasn't bothered to complete a game and confines his analysis to the parts he has played. Do we know of times when we've done neither?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I never finished Evil Dead: Fist Full of Boomstick, which I reviewed for EGM. It wasn't for lack of trying. Although it was precisely the type of game I'd spent several years playing, I never understood what I needed to do, even after calling the company for tips. I had a horrible time, and the review reflected that. Maybe I missed the great gameplay in later levels. I decided that didn't matter much, as I would've angrily returned the thing that night had I rented it.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In fact, I think I hated Fist Full of Boomstick because I felt I had to finish it. The consumer who completes any given game is an anomaly. 2K Boston is proud of the fact that nearly fifty percent of the people who bought BioShock played it all the way through. That's well above the average. What this means is that most people who profess to enjoy a game don't enjoy it enough to get to the end. Think about that. They have fun with it, turn it off when they feel like it, and leave with a positive impression. What if that wasn't an option? What if they were forced carry on through the frustration, to complete the game again and again with each and every Dynasty Warriors character? David Blaine should do that stunt. Seriously.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Still, I understand Doug's anger and agree that now and then reviewers "get the basic mechanics of less popular games wrong, or gloss over the long-term failings of popular games." MMORPGs are the one genre where we happily fess up to having less-than-fully-informed opinions. In my mind, any game with a multiplayer mode is in danger of getting short shrift in a review that doesn't disclose the circumstances under which it was written.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Often times, publisher's host off-site press sessions that last no longer than four or five hours. Because an untimely review is an unread review, editors agree to take what's there. Their reviewers then sit in a room attempting to coordinate with occasionally uncooperative or uncommunicative teammates against a group of godlike QA testers, die, and then call it a day. This is the worst-case scenario, but even better circumstances result in reviews as confused as <a href="http://www.gameinformer.com/NR/exeres/0B22652E-7DA8-4613-8B13-61D5E9FC9D98.htm">Game Informer's take on Team Fortress 2</a>, which talks about a class it calls the Mechanic; seemingly complains about the absence of a deathmatch mode; and commends classes that are "balanced against each other." He means the Engineer. He isn't imagining what happens when a spy in a game called Team Fortress darts around disguised as another player who his opponent is, by default, determined to kill. And he doesn't comprehend how classes, like basic football positions, need not be balanced against one another (an offensive line is balanced against a defensive line, but a Cornerback isn't balanced against a QB in any meaningful sense).</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="">Harry Allen, Hip-Hop Activist & Media Assassin:</b> What I think I hear people saying is with what I agree: How you speak to readers, and who speaks to them, depends on the specific audience to whom you're speaking.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I definitely connect with what Robert Ashley says:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">"The whole genre expert thing deserves a lot of blame for the overwhelming sameness of game reviews."</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">That is, all kinds of people read about and write about games now. Though this audience isn't as wide as those who read or write about, say, news, or cooking, it is getting more diverse.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Some game writing needs to be very technical, because some portions of the game audience just want to know how to perform specific tasks. This is often served by writers immersed in "fandom," though not solely, of course.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Some game writing needs to be more atmospheric and/or impressionistic, because a reader may merely want to know in what direction a game series is going, or what a new game is about, or going to be about.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I think the question Shawn asks is akin to wondering, should people who don't speak a language review movies made in that language?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The answer is that, if you don't speak the language, your reviews will likely be most useful to people who speak your own tongue. However, if you're honest, tell the truth about what you're seeing, and deeply connect it to what you already know, people who speak the film's language fluently may also derive something from your outsider perspective.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I just have to pause here, for a moment, and say that I see so many comparisons between the world of video games and that of hip-hop. It's a very striking series of parallels, to me.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">However, the one alignment that's most pressing to me, right at this moment, is the thought that both forms would benefit from a wider variety of different kinds of writing about them.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Here, I want to address Shawn's question, for a moment, by stepping out of it, briefly:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Most of you write for enthusiasts, and, indeed, most -- the overwhelming volume -- of the writing about both hip-hop and gaming come from the enthusiast press, I'd conclude.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">But I believe that games, like hip-hop also, have yet to be fully explained to the wider public, in a way that can maximally engage people who don't know what games are yet. Doing so would possibly create a much richer landscape for gaming.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I mean this, much the way that film criticism, in the 1960s, energized the notion of film as art. This cleared the way for the concept of the film auteur, or of film studies, core ideas around both of which we're now just starting to see in gaming. (Right here, I'm reminded of some wonderful writing I finally read this morning: A piece that journalist Tom Bissell did for <a href="http://tinyurl.com/6dpe4f">The New Yorker</a> last month, profiling Cliff Bleszinski<span style="background: yellow none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;"></span>. How possibly might a piece like this appear in EGM or Game Informer?)</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I realize that the wider public may not be your focus for the aforementioned reasons. But, in a way, though, they are, anyway, because they surround everything that you do.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">One of the conclusions that Rockstar Games reached right around the time I came aboard was that we needed to talk to people who didn't know anything about games.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Why?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Because everyone who was talking about our games didn't know anything about games.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I don't mean you guys, or fans. I meant that every person who had a beef about the very existence of GTA inevitably knew nothing about it -- hadn't played it, often hadn't played a video game since Pong. It was amazing how consistent this was.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">As well, though, what we soon understood was there were other people -- a whole lot more, in fact --who hadn't played San Andreas, either, but were just curious about the phenomenon, didn't know what the noise was all about, and were open-minded.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">These people, we concluded, were better served by folks who could tell them how our games worked than they were by people who couldn't. That was just logical. So, we spoke with them.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">People who don't play games form the larger context for everything that happens in gaming. "Mothers," for example. "Trade groups." "Politicians." Learning how to actively speak to these groups -- the way people talked up Obama to their neighbors, for example -- is, to me, the next task, or goal, of gaming, as a field.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">So, I guess what I'm saying is that there's a meta-context to Shawn's question. That context asks, How should we write about games, really?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I say the answer is that you have to write about them on the terms of the world you want them to inhabit, even in that world isn't here yet.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Thinking about it this way, I think, is also a kind of larger context for even the question, "Should we send the FIFA guy to review MGS4?" If you do, ultimately you do because you don't want your magazine to become narrow. You want it to open up, and for readers -- and writers -- to make new and powerful intellectual connections about games.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Ultimately, most readers, I'll venture, will probably not remember what number you gave a game, or even if you wrote a review with which they didn't agree. Most, instead, I'd argue, will recall the feelings they associate with your medium, then seek to re-create that feeling. This strongly connects with what N'Gai says:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">"As a reader, the only things I ask of a reviewer or a critic is that they carefully reflect on the work at hand and write it up in a way that's enlightening and/or thought-provoking. I already know what I think -- I prefer to have my opinion challenged rather than validated, because I'm always trying to see if there's something that I've missed or failed to consider."</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Think of it this way: When you study archival copies of electronics magazines, or computer magazines, in the early periods of those forms' histories, they were very nuts and bolts. (I'm old enough to remember Byte. It's a way different magazine that PC is [or -- zoinks! -- was!]).</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Today, those magazine genres are far more about lifestyle. They're more mainstream, more "easygoing" and "open." They're this way, because they have to speak to more and different kinds of people. (That, incidentally, is why all art gets watered down, in my opinion: So it can speak to a wide variety of people without confusing them.)</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Writing about electronics and computers this way is part of how these hobbyist forms went wide, instead of staying underground.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I'm not sure if I'm speaking about this in a way that's relevant to Shawn's question, or to the practical issues having to do with assigning writers and editing text. For example, I'm really taken with Dan's question(s):</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">"There's a very practical side to all of this. Let's say we're on the 15th Tony Hawk game, and you have a staff of...say, 10 reviewers. What are the chances that you can find one Hawk virgin in that group? And let's say you do...then what happens when Tony Hawk 16 comes out? You're going to run out of those "fresh" perspectives at some point for any regular franchise, unless you're constantly recruiting new writers every few months. In which case your reviews team starts to lose some identity with all the unfamiliar faces rotating in all the time. And what if you're just an individual<span style=""> </span>blogger/reviewer?"</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">It's here that the magazine, or the blogger, has to find a way to make it fun for him/herself. They have to find some interesting or new way to talk about the game, because nothing comes across to readers more like boredom...than one's own boredom.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I'm not sure how well that works for fanboys, but I'm not sure if the people who scream bloody murder are the majority of readers, either. I think the ones who are outraged form, at most, 20% of the readership. The other 80% think, "That's interesting. Cool," and move on.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="">Kieron Gillen, Rock Paper Shotgun: </b>Honestly, Doug "Drinky Crow" Erickson's problem isn't what he thinks it is. What he's primarily talking about a failure of insight (and possibly one of explanation - a reviewer getting something isn't the same as a reviewer writing it), not necessarily a failure of simple time. One of my editors -- not one who reviewed it, I stress -- loved Deus Ex. He played through it running through the game shooting people in the face at point blank range with the shotgun and skipping all the cut-scenes. You can get through Thief as a mass-murderer. Alec on RPS got butchered by Witcher fans for getting the combat system wrong -- but he was getting through the game happily with his slight mis-reading of the combat system. Time wouldn't have cured any of that -- and hell, the editor loved Deus Ex as his face-shooting game, y'know?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I'm personally think it can be acceptable to review games before completing them, for a few reasons. Some are higher level nature-of-games ones. Some are strictly utilitarian. And some of my utilitarian ones makes me think a universe where no-one ever reviewed a game before they'd finished it would be one which would be actually worse for consumers, readers and developers.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Firstly, games aren't movies or books and aren't consumed in the same way. I'm actually amazed at Shawn's 50% completion figure for BioShock. I'm amazed that it's that high -- when Episode 1 for Half-life 2's STEAM stats were first revealed, about 50% of people actually finished the game. That's four hours tops, and still half the gamers aren't completing it. Even for narrative games, even for short narrative games, completion of the arc isn't how most people consume games. Imagine if at least half the people walked out of the cinema at every showing. That's normal for games. And -- key point -- they're not walking out because they're necessarily pissed off with it. We've all had games we've enjoyed and left and not gone back to for one reason or another. And, hell, even simple narrative completion doesn't mean that you've really completed it in a meaningful way. And I'm not even going to breach the issues of MMOs and multiplayer, y'know?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">So how can you recommend or damn a game if you've played it less than completion? Because a review, as it is at the moment, is primarily a buyers guides. If a game is openly terrible for 10 hours, it is not a game you can ever recommend. How can you even dream of telling someone something is worth buying is you have to go through that? It doesn't matter how good it gets after that -- it may be an interesting critical thing to discuss in an essay, but for an actual consumer guide <i style="">it doesn't matter</i>. You don't throw down thirty to fifty quid to be made to go through enormous pain for the length of a working day.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">My standard answer to the question of "How long do you play a game for?" is "Until I know what score it's going to get" (Which is shorthand for "how good it is" -- and I really mean "As much as possible, but at least until then"). The worse a game is, the less time that is. If a game crashes every five minutes in the first hour on every machine it's tried on, then that may be all you need to hammer it. Conversely, the more you love a game, the longer you play to make sure it's true. Is it ever justified to give a really high score to a game you haven't completed? Ideally, not. In practice, the rule of thumb I've used is if a game literally stops at that second and all you get for the money is what you've experienced, and it's still worth buying, you're justified.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">(None of which should be read to mean you should extrapolate from your experiences to the rest of the game. That's just lying.)</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">But why are reviewers not having the time to complete a game? Shawn's picked up on part of it -- that persisting on a game wouldn't necessarily, as Doug suggests, lead to a better understanding, but rather just a more vehement kicking after you've played 80 hours of something you despised after four. The other half is economic. Last time I had the completion-debate with journalists was over at Quarter To Three, primarily with Jeff Green. When he claimed that on Games For Windows, no game had ever been reviewed without it being completed, my IM-tray was full of messages from my fellow British writers which could be paraphrased to "Bullshit: either he's lying or his freelancers are lying to him". But not wanting to cause a full-bore internet meltdown, we did some more thinking and tried to work out how such a thing could actually be true. An explanation hit us - basically, GFW reviewed a tiny fraction of the games than -- say -- PC Gamer UK did. In other word, PCG UK spent some of its budget on small reviews of games which would otherwise get covered -- and expecting anyone to actually complete your 80-hour strategy game for thirty quid is optimistic to say the least. Especially, as I've said earlier, the idea that you have to do that to speak with sufficient authority is just plain wrong.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">(Or, to put it another way, PCG UK probably completed as many games a month as GFW. It's just that they felt able to review other things on top of that.)</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Ideally, if there was all the money, time and patience in the world, we'd play all games to completion. There's not, and unless people are willing to pay far, far more for games coverage (either via ads or directly) there never will be. What I argue is an effective compromise -- and without it, we're not actually creating a world with better reviews for minority games and more accurate scoring. What we get is a world where minority games simply don't get covered, because it doesn't pay enough to justify it and you can't find a writer who'll put in 80 hours into a game which everyone hates because it's openly terrible (i.e. another cause of apparent mark inflation -- the worst games simply don't get reviewed in many places now).</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">What serves games better? A more comprehensive general coverage or a more comprehensive coverage of the biggest games? Because, really, it's a case of people choosing one or the other.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="">John Davison, What They Play:</b> Harry's last note is a great place for us to jump off and talk about some of this from a slightly different perspective -- and that's from the editing side, as opposed to the writing. We've talked a lot about how and why we tackle the criticism itself, but I'd like to get everyone's perspective on the direction that we (or our editors) give the writers in guiding what they write. Jeff said that "Point blank, I don't know who's reading." While I think that's probably true for all of us in the broadest sense, I'd like to get some input on who we intend the content to be for, and the freedoms afforded to writers in that context.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Since stepping out of the hardcore/fanboy service industry directly a year ago I've noticed the inconsistencies in the way that some outlets present (and chose the subjects of) their reviews a lot more. Not only do we see erratic occurrences of "punitive" reviews that are just downright pissy, but a lot of games that receive this kind of treatment are seemingly chosen at random as to their "eligibility" for coverage; this is something that seems particularly prevalent when it comes to the more casual games aimed at either kids or families. Being told by a hardcore gaming site that a kid friendly game sucks because it's too "kiddie" is of absolutely no use to anyone (duh, but it still happens) but I'm curious about everyone's experiences with reviews editors and their guidance on approaching or handling this stuff.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Do the outlets that you write/edit for have a well-articulated reviews policy? How strictly is it adhered to, and how is it enforced?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="">Stephen Totilo, MTV Multiplayer:</b> I'm sorry to follow John's good question with a bad answer, but I have no other choice. I don't review games for a living and therefore don't operate under any reviews policy. I do read reviews and talk to people about this stuff often, though, so I think I recognize where some of the reader frustration with reviews comes from.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Circle back to Shawn's original question for this round about reviewers' familiarity with fandom and look at the subsequent excellent discussion here about the relevance of genre expertise. Now let's tweak our angle. What I think some readers react badly to is a lack of implicit or explicit empathy -- or worse, false empathy.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Reviewers and game player lead two radically and possibly irreconcilable gaming lives.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Hey reviewer, do you really know what it’s like to be a gamer? Do you really know what it would be like to own this game, at the expense of some other game I wouldn't be able to afford? Do you play games for review that way a real gamer would play them? Or are you spoiled and distracted and unrealistic?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">This is the crux of it all in my mind: the mutant gaming experience of the professional games reporter and reviewer.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Envy the movie critic who may not see the new movie in the same theater as her reader but can make a safe bet that she and her reader will consume it in similar ways: in a dark room over the course of two hours. She doesn't have to worry about how much of the movie she should finish before she writes her review or whether she could give a more accurate score if she waited a week to better experience the movie's online mode. And -- this is key -- her reader never has to worry those things about her.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Envy the TV critic whose most mutated form of watching TV simply involves seeing the season premiere of<span style=""> </span>Lost three weeks before you do.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Envy the book reviewer who might read a galley of a novel and therefore not see the finished cover and might see a few typos that will be corrected before the book reaches your amateur eyes. That's the only difference. The gulf between the two experiences is narrow.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">And then back we are to game reviewing where there are a few sessions available from EA to try the online mode of Skate 2 before it comes out and you need to appraise the game's online modes… where LittleBigPlanet and Spore are already very different games from when they were released a few months ago when you probably reviewed them…where you binged through Assassin's Creed even though your readers who bought it didn't have to and where you did the same for Grand Theft Auto IV -- and where none of these facts could have gone very differently…and where the difference between "good" reviewing and "bad" might simply have been whether you acknowledged any of this.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Nothing changes the fact that the game reviewers' experience of games is so alien to that of the gamers' that I believe the relationship between the two parties will always contain a distance. It will always contain an undercurrent of distrust not prevalent among reviewers and audience of any other medium. No reviews policy can do better than bridge that; it can't hide the broad gap or narrow it. (And it's true for game-playing beat reporters like me too.)</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">You can be as familiar with fandom as you want, reviewers, but you are not one of them. You don't play games the same way. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">That's my thesis. Who's with me?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="">Tom Chick, freelancer: </b>Great comments, Stephen, and I suspect you're largely correct for a lot of games writers. You can spot these folks a mile off at a press junket. Most of them are (were?) full timers on a staff somewhere. They have a powerful sense of entitlement. "Spoiled" and "distracted" are great words for them. "Mutant gaming experience" indeed. However, I think good professional reviewers can avoid what you're talking about. They can separate the incidentals of being a games writer from the fundamentals of being a gamer.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">For example, the incidentals of the experience of Skate 2 are different for me. I got a preview build a week early. It arrived at my doorstep. The PR person from EA was very conscientious about checking whether I had any questions. I didn't get a chance to see a manual. I can't go online until the retail copy is available. There was an online session with the developers set up if I wanted to join it.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">But I don't write about the incidentals. That's not my job, and furthermore, I can't imagine that anyone would care, any more than anyone would care where Roger Ebert parked when he went to a screening, which he didn't because the studio probably sent a car.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">But just as Ebert's job doesn't begin until the movie actually starts playing, mine doesn't begin until I've got the controller in my hand. Here is the fundamental part of the experience, and here's what I write about. Here is where my experience is no different from that of a kid who saved up his allowance for two months, and here is where I hope to communicate with him. Just as Ebert saw the same movie I saw, I'm playing the same skateboarding game that kid will play.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">To use your examples, just as a book reviewer doesn't write about typos in the galleys and just as a TV reviewer doesn't get to enjoy the week-long water cooler talk between episodes of Lost, there's no reason a game reviewer can't understand and address the experience of an average gamer.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">It's more of a problem when reviewers are pressured to get an official review -- the Definitive Word -- posted by a certain time, usually before the game has been released into the wild. And, yes, that can lead to a very different kind of experience, but it doesn't have to mean the writer can't work around those differences (whether they <i style="">do</i> is another question entirely, but I don't buy that they <i style="">can't</i>).</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="">Leigh Alexander, Gamasutra/Sexy Videogameland/Variety:</b> First off, I do agree with Stephen that your average reviewer's lost touch with the average audience member in a big, big way. In fact, I'd argue that there are working, prolific reviewers out there who only think about the Internet echo chamber and don't even realize who their audience is anymore.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">But I also agree with Tom. This jadedness, this hyper-exposure and this devaluation of a medium we're overexposed to is not necessarily restricted to games -- and it is not an inevitability or applicable to everyone.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Stephen's right -- the wider experience of the reviewer is never going to be the same as the experience of the player. We may see things they don't see. Constantly exposed to games and information about the industry, we enter the experience with a different perspective. Going into a title, we might know things about the background, the development, or even the staff on the project that the audience doesn't know about. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">However, I think the idea that this is automatically a problem assumes that all audience members pick up a game with some kind of baseline perspective in common, or that they're all expecting the same thing; they're not. The only commonality among members of any medium's audience is that they're interested in a new experience -- which requires them to be ready to find things they like and dislike, to think about what they're playing and see what it means to them, just as we do.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I believe audiences go into a game ready to think about and feel for what they're about to see and do -- just as a critic does (or should). The role of the critic is to bring in that background knowledge, that experience, and the practice in articulating it, to help the audience member do that in a meaningful way.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Every individual's experience of consuming entertainment is going to be colored in complex ways by their larger life experiences and the things they've liked or disliked in the past. In my opinion, rather than divide reviewers from audiences, this in fact unites them.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">So I don't think it's quite as simple as the reviewer simply being able to set aside the fact that they've played eight other games that same week and pretend they're just like a normal player. Nor should they. The challenge is to use the ways they're different from players to the benefit of the players, rather than to their detriment. If the reviewer's experiences lead him or her to provide less useful information to the player rather than more, to obfuscate a title's value or lack thereof rather than highlight it, that's not an inevitability or a necessary weakness -- that's just an amateur. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Is there an epidemic of amateurism out there? Sure. Are there heaps of game reviews out there that provide a nose-squinched-to-glass point of view that's lost its ability to see or communicate the big picture? Hell yeah. Should we all work on that? Definitely, and it won't be as easy as just trying to wipe the slate clean every time we sit down with a title. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I think this is something we're all collectively developing as time goes on and as games become more complex. If we had all the solutions, we wouldn't be doing this. But that we must fail simply by virtue of being reviewers? I don't agree.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Our background and our perspectives are why we can succeed, as long as we're capable of articulating and contextualizing them in a balanced, constructive way. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">And as one last note, even if we did somehow collectively stumble on the formula for the perfect, universal review (as if such a thing definitively could exist!), it still wouldn't eliminate the other important way audiences evaluate games -- through conversation and recommendations from their friends and peers.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">No matter what reviews do, audiences will always also consult people who definitively relate to them kind-to-kind in terms of perspectives. If we were ever to try to be just like players in order to be more useful to them, we'd already be beat in that arena -- so why not explore what else we have to offer?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="">Shawn Elliott, 2K Boston:</b> Stephen wonders whether or not reviewers really know what it’s like to be a gamer. Tom answers that "there's no reason a game reviewer can't understand and address the experience of an average gamer." Leigh, however, argues that the reviewer's "unpopulist" perspective is really the point -- another signpost to a forthcoming section in which we'll consider where reviews and criticism part ways. Leigh also suggests that members of an audience aren't in agreement with one another (e.g. the expectations of Game Informer readers might be as different from one another as they are from the reviewer). What are your takes on that? Do you always assume to know who you're writing for? Do the review policies of your employers define intended audiences?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="">Kieron Gillen, Rock Paper Shotgun:</b> My answer on this one's relatively simple. I'm a freelancer. I'll write for whatever abstract audience I've been hired to write for.<span style=""> </span>Working for kids/teenage games magazine Games Master is different for writing for Edge. Less jokes, mainly (Oddly, I found I wrote best for GM drunk. I'm in touch with my inner 14 year old whilst boozed. Er.. I edited sober). Are the magazines’ comprehension of what their readers think and believe correct? Probably not, but I've been hired to write for that hypothetical audience. It's not my job to decide what the audience is. As a freelancer, I have no power to decide that. And if I do decide that, I'll be rightly sacked and edited to the magazine line.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">(And perhaps obviously, if I disagree with the magazine line -- and there are magazines I find pretty reprehensible -- I don't write for them. Or at least, I don't write for them twice)</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">When I'm the boss -- as in, as 1/4 of the RPS hive mind -- we've constructed the audience from the ground up. We basically made the site we'd want to read. And, generally speaking, specialist magazines only ever really work when your writers are also your audience. I disagree with most people here who've argued in the split. I think we are gamers. I don't think it's a huge thing to remember what it was like to throw down thirty quid for a videogame for it to turn out to be shit. If you're genuinely interested in the form, what interests you in it is what interests your readers. It may be easier to say that on something relatively niche like RPS -- but RPS is little other than old-school PCGUK/Amiga Power/You Sinclair with the leash of decency removed, all of which were brilliant and highly popular (i.e. Best selling in their market) magazines. Specialist games writing in the UK has always thrived on the sense that the writers were the readers, just capable of articulating better than you were what these wonderful things called videogames are like. I always recall Tim Edwards -- Deputy Editor of PCGUK, and recovering mag fanboy -- overjoyed when we first did the yearly Top 100 Games feature by disappearing to the pub all day and arguing it out. "You really do it! You actually go to the pub and argue games". That was the fantasy for the brit mags, y'know?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">If I'm writing for a more mainstream place, of course, the rules all change. But that's a different question -- and there I return to being a freelancer. I'm a writer. I'm perfectly capable of writing for any audience I'm told to. At which point all my commissioning editors are laughing, as well they should.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="">Dan Hsu, Sore Thumbs Blog:</b> I think the most successful media outlets are the ones that understand who their audience is, and like Kieron says, is a part of that same audience. On this first point, if the editors don’t give their writers some captain’s guidance as far as their readership goes, that boat can sail all over the place. Game Informer...are their readers the typical 18-34 gaming males? A more hardcore gamer? Or a more general consumer (including parents, aunts, uncles, etc.) who might be shopping at GameStop for someone other than themselves? If GI’s editors don’t provide that feedback, then a new writer may not know if using the term “RPG” or referencing some guy named “Miyamoto” without proper context is appropriate or not. I remember GI’s Editor-in-Chief Andy McNamara talking about this very thing at a panel once, so I know they think about this kind of stuff. We did at EGM as well. We figuratively painted a picture of our audience to our writers and editors regularly, so they understood whom they were writing for. It helps maintain a certain level of consistency in the writing. It also gives our respective magazines a consistent identity and brand. This is very important for so many obvious reasons.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">And Kieron’s right as well as far as it helping when the writers are in the demographic they’re writing for. This lets the prose come out more naturally, more authentically because the writer and reader are in the same state of mind.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Take a look at John Davison. When he had his first son, his brain started changing. He started looking at videogames differently. I know he can still write for a more traditional, hardcore audience (because he’s still a hardcore gamer), but now he has a parent’s perspective as well. He was more and more interested in writing for a crowd that has to split time between Madden and diaper changing, and since Ziff Davis Media wasn’t the right outlet for that, he gave birth to What They Play. That’s a great story...a perfect example of someone reaching out to the audience he wants to write for rather than forcing it upon the wrong crowd and diluting the established hardcore brands (1UP, EGM, etc.).</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="">Francesca Reyes, Official Xbox Magazine: </b>I hate to chime in only to ride on Kieron’s coattails on this, but to me, he’s absolutely right. I know as writers, we’re supposed to be able to take on the guise of the Everyman, reviewing games for some fictional demographic out there and assuming the voice that speaks to them. But how successful is anyone if they’re not in some way writing for themselves? Especially for stuff like reviews, which are essentially well-supported (or crappily-supported, depending) opinions based on experience, knowledge, and taste? <b style=""><o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">But before I get carried away with that tangent, I wanted to make sure to address Shawn’s question about review policies. I’ve only really ever worked for one company for the past 12 years and since then, I’ve never had any sort of really strict guidelines for how to write or approach reviews. Maybe that had nothing to do with freedom of editorial and everything to do with disorganization, but a few things have always remained consistent, but never quite stated, across all the pubs I’ve written for: review the product, not the company that created it or released it (how very Formalist of us!); don’t become a jaded fuck; don’t get too insider-y with technical language (because it’s just wankery at that point); and always support your hypothesis. Those were for the actual writing part of reviews and I’d think they’re pretty straightforward. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">For the process of reviewing a game or product -- it was always strongly encouraged to finish the game you were reviewing and be as thorough as possible in researching them. Those were ideals, and like every ideal -- not always realized in practical application, of course. Back in the day, it was a lot easier to do because of a number of factors -- not the least of which, we all had some form of a freelance/contributor budget. These days, things run much leaner and as such -- unless someone comes along and adds 5-10 more hours to each day, finishing every single game on time just isn’t always a possibility. But you always push people to do it, even if they physically can’t -- even if it’s only to get across the importance and accountability of reviewing a product. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I know it’s an old-fashioned (possibly annoyingly earnest) ideal, but I always kind of thought you owed it to your audience and to the people who spent months to years creating a game to at least put in the 10-20 (and in the case of JRPGs, even more) hours of diligence to critique it. It’s completely impractical, I know, but I’ve always aspired to be consistent about it with the games I’ve reviewed. I’m always disappointed if I don’t accomplish it by the time I have to write the review. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">But maybe I’m not being completely honest about my reasons, because I’ve also learned over the course of the past years that I have to cover my ass. If I don’t play through a game and know it thoroughly, I can’t expect to be able to accurately debate with someone who disagrees with my review -- whether that’s a reader or a developer or a co-worker.<span style=""> </span>I realize there are loopholes in my logic (I think Kieron pointed out early on that two players can see the same game completely differently), that I don’t always have the hours in the day to follow through on my goals, and that maybe I’m increasingly paranoid – but I’m also trying to be completely honest. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">And as for the original topic for debate in this thread -- being a fan reviewer versus not being a fan -- that really depends on the publication. I know this is going against my original paragraph about how we all basically write for ourselves -- but I don’t think you necessarily have to become someone completely different in order to connect or write for a different audience. I mean, if we’re all writing and reading about games -- there’s a fundamental understanding that we are interested in the same medium and it’s only the degree of familiarity with said medium that separates any of us as writers or readers. So, it’s an adjustment of language -- but it’s not an adjustment of passion or enthusiasm or knowledge. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">There was some earlier chat in the thread about broadening game reviews/games media appeal to a wider audience by freeing certain reviews from genre experts -- that doing this would somehow democratize the appeal of game reviews for readers. I’m a bit on the fence about this one since I think it all comes down to the skill of the reviewer. I mean, what do you want out of a review? Who are you hoping it’ll appeal to? If someone who’s never played a Madden game before gets an assignment to review one, you would hope they did their homework. But is that point? I mean, are you assigning it to them in order for them to write some experiential editorial about how they learned to play Madden? Or are you hoping that they write a review that weighs the pros and cons of the game versus what’s come before for people who’ve had some experience with the series? I think that’s really what you need to ask. Because I’m guessing that everyone in this forum, if they’re handed a game to review that they have no experience with, will do an inordinate amount of research (including maybe playing previous games in the series) in order to be able to evaluate it before or while reviewing it. And ultimately, you may not become an expert on the genre or the game’s series/background, but you will know more than the reader you’re hoping to attract by giving the review a “fresh, unfettered” take. Or I could be full of shit at this point. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I think the “non-expert review” idea is a great one for feature-type coverage or on a blog. I’d love to hear someone’s take on, say, Monster Rancher or Harvest Moon if all they’ve played up to this point was Counter-Strike games. But I’m not entirely sure I’d base any actual buying advice on that reviewer’s opinion. Because ultimately -- games are weird in that they’re part entertainment (like movies), and part consumer product (like televisions). Evaluating how a game works (or doesn’t work) can be just as important as evaluating what it’s trying to say. And figuring both of those out takes some familiarity that I would think the reader trusts that you have.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="">Harry Allen, Hip-Hop Activist & Media Assassin:</b> I definitely find this change in how reviewers review -- the effect that the birth of offspring has -- the most interesting one: The idea that, now, having children, I, as a gamer, see games differently.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">It happens, and it happens pretty instantly. I'll bet if you ask them, they couldn't even tell you how, nor would they tell you that it "creeped" up on them.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">My brother has two small children, aged five and eight.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">A few years ago, it may have been before the first of his five-year-old, or shortly afterwards, I was reading up on this devastating new roller-coaster somewhere in the U.S.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I love roller-coasters, and e-mailed the link to him, with the idea that this was something we might go ride together.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">He sent me an e-mail back -- I'll never forget this -- with one word:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">"Horrifying."</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In other words, having had children, he was having, essentially, a chemical counter-response to the idea of putting himself in even simulated danger.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Another, related-unrelated: I once did Tavis Smiley's show, when it was on BET. Rapper Mack 10 was also a guest, and he was married to T-Boz, of TLC, at the time.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">They had a bunch of food in the green room, including stewed chicken. At one point, T-Boz, who was pregnant then, came into the area. "Oh, my goodness," she said, her nose offended. "What's that smell? Ugh, chicken!" she said, and walked out.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I couldn't understand it. The chicken wasn't prepared in any unusual way, nor was its scent that dominating.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">It was only later I learned that pregnant women will often have a very powerful, chemically-programmed counter-response to meat, because animal flesh can often be the carrier of parasites, to which a fetus would be especially vulnerable.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">As a person aspiring to Christianity, I thought of this as a remarkable piece of design.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">As a gamer, a person who adores the art of gaming, and who respects the craft of writing, what I appreciate is game writers being honest and saying, "I've changed."</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">As Chris Rock says, you don't wanna be the old guy in the club. Whether the issue is a lack of passion, burnout, family duties, or too many first person shooters in one lifetime, I think saying that, "I see this differently," for whatever reason, has a high moral quality.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>Shawn Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16301045945239475897noreply@blogger.com99tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992091653802364493.post-30521781450027726522009-01-24T22:15:00.000-08:002009-01-24T22:26:34.110-08:00Painting by Numbers<p><br />Guitar Hero gets a bad rap. Granted, it's not the game itself that critics carp on. Maybe it's the image of grown men wanking away at it that, for a few of us, epitomizes the emasculating inauthenticity of the times. In a remade Fight Club, Rock Band -- with its interactive light and smoke show peripherals -- would replace the bachelor pad packed with Ikea furniture. </p><p><br />As I once said on a podcast, I feel weird when I watch people play Rock Band or Guitar Hero. I'm reminded of how human music is and what it means for us to make it. I think, this is what happens when a culture decides that music-making is strictly the domain of the specialist and that we should stop performing when it becomes clear that we aren't cut from professional cloth.</p><p><br />This is a relatively recent development in the industrialized world. Throughout history, more people have created music than have consumed it. And while we've recently reversed that equation, cultural prejudice hasn't curbed evolutionary predisposition. So for me, Guitar heroism is sort of like seeing a clawless cat pretend to scratch a post. Or a future in which only porn stars have sex and the rest of us plebes simulate it with reel-feel plastic. But the game isn't to blame.</p><p><br />The fact that Guitar Hero's interface imitates actual guitar playing is important, but I believe that the game, like painting by numbers, is singled out <em>because its source of inspiration amounts to more than mere entertainment</em>. Nobody worries over Wii bowling -- and yet, as a game that adds a dose of lethargy to an already lazy pastime, Nintendo's bestseller can also claim candidacy for sign of the times.</p><p><br />The trouble with cultural criticism of this sort, though, is its tendency to ignore contrary evidence. Guitar Hero is emblematic of an era. So is Myspace and its armies of amateur, attention-seeking troubadours. All of them making music.</p>Shawn Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16301045945239475897noreply@blogger.com70tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992091653802364493.post-46904550287589528022009-01-18T15:21:00.000-08:002009-01-18T15:32:05.250-08:00Are We What We Link?Are we obligated to outline our thoughts on the things that we point other people to? On Twitter, where I more or less say look at me or look at this, it's tough. At times, “agree” or “disagree,” “like” or “dislike,” is all it takes. When I link to a <a href="http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/stlog/assets_c/2009/01/kkk.php">Ku Klux Klan boycott </a>, I safely assume that my audience knows that I'm laughing at, and not endorsing, the so-called United Northern and Southern Knights. The link alone is enough. At other times, such as yesterday when I Tweeted the url to <a href="http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2009/01/complete_contro_1.php">Nick Carr's writing </a>on our age of advertising, inauthenticity, and sacrificed attention spans; and to <a href="http://www.popmatters.com/pm/post/the-alluring-danger-of-dilettantism/">Rob Horning's essay </a>on how Guitar Hero is a symptom of a generational aversion to actual challenge, Twitter's alloted 140 words won't cut it. Directing attention to these writers was a way of saying that what they wrote is well worth reading; I didn't intend to endorse the messages in their entirety.<br /><br />I was well aware of the irony when I Tweeted these. In pointing towards writing without engaging with it, I was proving Horning's point about the dangers of dilettantism -- in effect saying, “I've read this, so should you; talking about it is too much trouble, though.”<br /><br /><a href="http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/">More Intelligent Life's </a>Brett McCallon<a href="http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/"> </a>indirectly called me on it, by taking the time to write the following thoughtful email (to which, I'll respond in a separate entry as soon as I'm able):<br /><br />Shawn:<br />I've listened to, and read, a number of your objections to GH/Rock Band, and those of the bloggers you've linked, and I'm still a little puzzled. It's not, of course, that I don't understand why someone wouldn't be into it, but the arguments against it seem to me to be a huge marshaling of rhetorical grandiloquence to assault a straw man. If you have a moment, I'd like to share a few counterpoints.<br /><br />1) I don't think I ever linked you to <a href="http://moreintelligentlife.com/story/my-quotrock-bandquot-band">my first column for More Intelligent Life</a>, which regarded my Rock Band Band; if you have the time, it might make understanding my thoughts on the subject a bit easier.<br /><br />2) In that article, I draw parallels between the experience of playing RB, and the ethos of the punk movement; I found it amusing that Carr used the same argument to opposite effect. His feeling about the Clash seems driven by a weirdly nostalgic view that wants to separate art out completely from the rest of modern life in a way that is deeply ahistorical. Because "Complete Control" is a rant against obedience and conformity in consumer society, it somehow can't convey that message if it is sold in a different package than it was originally (both times, I might add, by a multinational corporation)? Do the pieces that Mozart wrote for wealthy patrons (and therefore, presumably conforming to those patrons' tastes) lose their value due to some overarchingly "punk" reading of music history? He references John Lydon to dismiss him, but surely Johnny Rotten's layers of impenetrable irony were as intrinsic to the punk exercise as Strummer's (sometimes hammy, definitely put-on) working class solidarity-speak. Are we, finally, still stuck on "authenticity" as the apex of punk's meaning? Even at this late date?<br /><br />3) While there will, of course, be a few people who conflate ability w/r/t the plastic instrument rhythm genre with actual musical skill, I can hardly believe that either of the authors whose posts you twittered, or you yourself, really believe that that is the majority opinion. Certainly, the drums can make one more aware of what goes into playing a real drum kit, but it's barely more than the rudimentary beginnings of developing that skill set (Bill Harris' Dubious Quality blog has some great entries where he details the benefits and drawbacks of knowing RB drumming as he begins his real drum lessons).<br /><br />4) I'm going to quote myself (apologies) from the comments on my article--someone raised the standard objection to playing GH (that you could invest that time in mastering a real instrument, and that that would somehow be a more "authentic" experience:<br /><br />Your comment voices a common belief, especially amongst musicians who haven't played games in the rhythm genre. However, I believe it is off-base. As a musician, I can tell you that the game does not require all that much time in order to achieve competency. Granted, playing on the higher difficulty levels requires more effort, but it's similar to the amount of effort one would expend on improving in another video game, not the amount required to master an instrument. Also, and this is key, playing Rock Band is not a simulation of playing music, so much as it is a simulation of being a rock star -- this is a feeling that most people, regardless of talent, will never experience. Also, it is relatively easy to get a few friends together to play the game over beers. Setting up a genuine rock and roll band requires a level of investment and effort (and generates a level of neighbor-annoying noise) that simply doesn't apply to the game scenario. Playing in a Rock Band band is more akin to joining a non-serious bowling league than it is to forming a band. And as such, it's a really fun way to spend time with friends.<br /><br />5) Two real-life examples of musicians who play a lot of Rock Band:<br /><br />My friend Dan is like a songwriting machine, churning out at least four or five new tracks per week on his real guitar, thanks to Garage Band. He also spends far more time playing Rock Band than anyone else I know. Does the latter have a detrimental effect on the former? Does his time doing the latter somehow devalue the former? Clearly, one is not creative all of the time. What's wrong with listening to music while also trying to ape its rhythms?<br /><br />I'm a pianist, with fourteen or so years of classical training. I have a piano in my house, but I also have a 2-year-old, and my time to practice is hard to come by (when I have free time, she's generally asleep, and would wake up if I started gearing up Rachmaninoff). Once a week, though, I can go over to my friend's house and pretend to be a rock star, while cutting up and drinking. Where, really, is the harm in this? Would anyone conflate these two activities, really?<br /><br />6) Do you really think that the Internet has led to an increase of dilettantism (which it undoubtedly has), without also spawning a hitherto unimaginable spread of deep, deep expertise? I don't mean to assume that the former isn't happening, of course -- I see its effect on my own media consumption habits. But let's face facts: one of your best go-to tropes, both in the Twitter feed and on GFW Radio, has to do with the absurd level of interest and time that people have poured into becoming expert at some unbelievably small slice of the human experience (here, I'm thinking specifically of the rant about how many ninjitsus that some anime character could learn if he split himself into some ungodly number of clones, or some other nonsense--hopefully you remember. It may have been Naruto). You and I think this is a ridiculous thing to focus on, but there's just no question that people throughout society are diving ever more deeply into extremely specific rabbit holes (some of which you and I would approve of, if that matters) to approximately the same degree that others of us (me included) are increasingly expanding our dilettantish knowledge base. And both of these phenomena are facilitated by the Internet.<br /><br />7) The PopMatters article posits that someone who wanted to learn all about psychedelic music would be overwhelmed by the mp3 blogs -- as a counterpoint, I would offer my own example. I began reviewing music for Splendid magazine in 2000, and quickly deepened and developed my knowledge of dozens of genres precisely because I was faced with the need to sound authoritative, combined with a hunger for knowledge about the subject. Whie I certainly don't know everything about pop music now, I would never have achieved even a portion of the broad, fairly deep knowledge that I maintain of the history of thousands of bands, labels, and innovations without the Internet. It's not like reading a book, but it can eventually generate its own sort of expertise, and I guarantee that my experience when faced with the endless information available on the Net is not unique.<br /><br />8) If game design were a more widely practiced art in our society, would people be complaining about the inauthenticity of Little Big Planet? Isn't the whole anti-GH argument (at least the "you should buy a real instrument" part of it) just a repackaging of the "you shouldn't play video games anyway, because they're a waste of time" argument?<br /><br />These blogs are trying to point out a legitimate new development, but it seems to me that both of them go way, way over the top in decrying it. Rock Band is a pop culture phenomenon that is arguably on its downswing. I don't think that people have invested any more time into it than they did into "useless" but now nostalgically regarded phenomena of the past: pinball, classic arcade games, etc. It has arguably exposed a younger generation to music they might otherwise have missed, thus deepening their cultural awareness (though, to be fair, I kind of wish some of those songs had remained buried). Would it be a bad thing if something similar had gotten people our age interested in the great jazz of earlier decades? Most of the people who play GH/Rock Band (including me) never had any intention of learning to play the guitar, nor are we under any illusion that we have done anything to develop our knowledge of that instrument. It's a fun way to hang out with friends. I'm just not seeing the problem.Shawn Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16301045945239475897noreply@blogger.com55tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992091653802364493.post-16410974186319584882008-12-24T10:02:00.000-08:002009-01-07T09:00:33.395-08:00Shawn Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16301045945239475897noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992091653802364493.post-20522244386222004422008-12-18T10:02:00.000-08:002008-12-18T19:05:47.419-08:00Symposium Part One: Review Scores<span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Introduction</span><br />Are reviews primarily a consumer guide, or should they serve another purpose? Do review scores deter intelligent discussion of videogames? Is the presence or absence of a review score the only difference between a reviewer and a critic? What is the role of the reviewer when the Internet is democratizing published opinion? How should reviews and reviewers evolve in light of the emergence and growth of Flash games, small games, indie games and user-generated games?<br /><br />These questions and more were on the mind of N'Gai Croal, John Davison and Shawn Elliott last summer when they decided to expand their conversation to a number of noted reviewers, writers, bloggers and journalists for a published email symposium on game reviews. (See below for the full list of participants.) The planned list of topics include Review Scores; Review Policy, Practice and Ethics; Reader Backlash; Reviews in the Age of Social media; Reviews in the Mainstream Media; Casual, Indie, and User-Generated Games; Reviews vs. Criticism; and Evolving the Review. Round 1's topic: Review Scores.<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Participants</span><br /><a href="http://sexyvideogameland.blogspot.com/"><br />Leigh Alexander, Gamasutra/Sexy Videogameland/Variety </a><br /><br /><a href="http://harryallen.info/">Harry Allen, Media Assassin</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.myspace.com/icometoshanghai/">Robert Ashley, freelancer</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/">Tom Chick, freelancer</a><br /><br /><a href="http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/levelup/">N'Gai Croal, Level Up/Newsweek </a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.whattheyplay.com/">John Davison, What They Play </a><br /><br /><a href="http://shawnelliott.blogspot.com/">Shawn Elliott, 2K Boston</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.giantbomb.com/">Jeff Gerstmann, Giant Bomb </a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/">Kieron Gillen, Rock, Paper, Shotgun</a><br /><br /><a href="http://sorethumbsblog.com/">Dan Hsu, Sore Thumbs Blog</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.oxmonline.com/">Francesca Reyes, Official Xbox Magazine</a><br /><a href="http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/"><br />Stephen Totilo, MTV News</a><br /><br /><br />Review Scores<br /><br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Shawn Elliott, 2K Boston:</span> How much is on our minds before we begin playing any given game for review purposes? Will we imagine a range of probable scores that a heavily marketed, highly budgeted, and hugely anticipated game will get? What when the game is branded “budget” or is the work of a lesser-known, less-storied studio? If so, how closely have actual scores correlated with our assumptions?<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Kieron Gillen, Rock, Paper, Shotgun: </span>As others have said before—but Troy Goodfellow put most snappily, so I'm stealing his phrasing—the games press has a presentist/futurist bias. The vast majority of press coverage is for games that either aren't available, or are only just available. Even if we haven't seen or played the game personally, our peers will have. And we'll have seen comments threads full of people saying what *they think* of the edited information of the game we (and their PR) have presented. And with all that, when you throw a score out you know it's going to be read with those expectations in mind. When Eurogamer's Metal Gear Solid 4 review gave it an 8/10 there were 2000-post threads and actual death-threats. And Oli [Welsh], when he wrote that review, knew exactly what response he could expect. Games without the hype have lower expectations. I remember the attitude being crystallized by a comment I saw ages ago on Kotaku which stuck with me, when they linked to a B-game someone had 9/10ed: "It can't be any good, as I haven't heard of it". It's an ugly, but common, tautology.<br /><br />You can't avoid knowing what the score is on that point, without becoming a true hermit. In terms of coloring your actual expectations of the game per se... well, unless someone's actually paying me to research a feature, I ignore 95% of previews. So when reviews come up, I try to review what's there rather than the hype... but that's going onto a whole different question.<br /><br />Quick thought regarding the indie/AAA dichotomy, though: I often think that AAA-popular-sequels tend to start with 9/10 and lose marks, while games with less expectations start with 5/10 and have to gain them. And... oh, I'll shut up. More on this later, I suspect.<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Leigh Alexander, Gamasutra/Sexy Videogameland/Variety: </span>So, as far as preconceptions go, I just thought it worth noting that a game's marketing machine, whether through its fierceness or its clumsiness, would very much for like for us to have a preconception going into a review.<br /><br />Unfortunately for them, they can't necessarily pick what impression they create. I like to think we react to the fashion in which we're being messaged, rather than devouring piecemeal the messaging itself. Or, most of us do.<br /><br />So, I agree with Kieron that the right answer is "no preconception"—i.e, the reviewing process doesn't begin until you start playing the full version of the game, period. But sometimes I wonder whether background factors should be considered as context for a review. For example, for months a hyperbolic individual promises that his game will revolutionize ludology. Are we allowed (or, conversely, obligated?) to consider his lofty goals when evaluating the end result? If a company creates an "identity" for a game ahead of time, shouldn't that exemplify what the game is aiming to be, and shouldn't we try and consider whether or not it achieves it?<br /><br />There's a line, I think, between making a prejudgment, and bringing with you a context within which to make an evaluation. Games are an industry and a culture, not a fragmented, compartmentalized list of disparate products, and rather than pretend we have no early opinions, I wonder if it's not beneficial to be prepared to bring that context—which also applies, perhaps to being aware of budgets, of team sizes, of other challenges?<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Shawn Elliott, 2K Boston: </span>Because I believe that self-enhancing, self-serving, egocentric biases are normal, and that people are prone to see themselves as being immune to the influences that move everybody else, I'll happily admit—along with Kieron—that I have preconceptions before playing. I'm human.<br /><br />I'd argue that our preconceptions are active when we decide which games we want to review. That's not to suggest that, when given the choice, all critics go straight for the gravy (I've often volunteered to review games that I imagined would be interesting but not the best available). But what, if not a preconception of some sort, drives these decisions?<br /><br />In addition, I believe that my assumptions are active as I play. For instance, I'm less likely to immediately doubt the wisdom of a given design choice in a Valve game than I am with the work of second-rate studios. An analogy: Say you're competing against someone with sorry win-loss stats in a strategy game. His opening moves seem odd, so you assume he's stupid. When his record is intimidating, you take the time to study his seemingly odd tactics until you're certain you're not missing something. In my mind, "the right answer" isn't a realistic answer.<br /><br />Leigh, I have a problem with holding a loud developer to his hyperbolic promises (and it has nothing to do with the dozens of programmers, designers, producers, artists, and animators hanging their heads behind him): intentional fallacy. I'm interested in the degree to which game maker's games match their ambitions, but I wouldn't want to evaluate them on this basis. What New Critics wrote of poems seems sensible for games: "It is detached from the author at birth and goes about the world beyond his power to intend about it or control it. The poem belongs to the public."<br /><br />Should we consider budgets and staff sizes? Certainly not when the critic's intent is strictly to inform consumer shopping sprees.<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">N’Gai Croal, Level Up/Newsweek:</span> I’ve never liked assigning scores as part of any critical assessment, and the times I’ve had to do so in the past, it’s always been under duress. I started out as a journalist by writing movie reviews for my college paper, and none of the critics after whom I tried to pattern myself—Pauline Kael, J. Hoberman, Stanley Kauffmann, John Simon, Andrew Sarris, Armond White—used stars or points or thumbs. They didn’t provide you with any shortcuts or shorthand. You had to read what they wrote in its entirety in order to figure out what they thought. I said to myself, when I grow up, that’s the kind of critic that I want to be. So because I’m not obligated to dole out review scores in print or online, I only have two things on my mind when I start playing a game that I know I’m going to write about.<br /><br />First, am I going to enjoy this game? In that sense, it’s not dissimilar from when I take in a movie. Or a TV show. Or a play. Or a book. Even when it’s a shared experience, playing a game is intensely personal, and no matter the developer’s pedigree, no matter the budget, I start each new title the same way: on the precipice between hope and fear. I hope that it will be good or great. I fear that it will be mediocre or worse. And as I give myself over to that series of firsts—the first image, the first sound, those first bits of gameplay, that first accomplishment—any and all external influences evaporate, leaving me only the thrum of my internal gauge, the one that tells me just how much I’m enjoying myself. I trust that gauge implicitly, and while external factors might influence precisely how I /articulate/ my opinion, I don’t believe it goes much beyond that.<br /><br />Second, how much of this game am I going to be able to complete before my deadline? That’s very different from how I approach plays, television, theater or literature—I wouldn’t dream of critically assessing a piece of work from those media without having completed it. Why doesn’t that stop me from doing the same with videogames?<br /><br />The explanation—or is it an excuse?—that I offer is that I don’t review games. We’ll get into this more in the Reviews vs. Criticism section of our symposium, but the way I see it, a reviewer answers the question, how well does this game work, but a critic answers the question, how does this game work? A reviewer helps consumers decide whether or not they should buy a game; a critic helps players think about a game that they’ve played—in its entirety /or/ in part—and that is the end of the spectrum where I believe my writing lies. (That’s also why, on a game by game basis, I don’t think I need to have completed a game to have some insights about it—but I do think that if I were advising someone on how to spend their money, I’d feel obligated to play most or all of the game.) Scores can serve as a valid form of shorthand for the work of the reviewer, but I’m not convinced that scores have much to offer the work of the critic.<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Kieron Gillen, Rock, Paper, Shotgun: </span>Leigh, I agree with Shawn. You can mention the hyped intention and mention whether it measures up—but that's not what you're rating. Marketing doesn't necessarily understand their games and what's interesting about it. And occasionally a game is fascinating despite what their creators were trying—Jim Rossignol loving the deeply buggy unpatched release of Boiling Point for its sheer constant surreality comes to mind as an extreme example of that.<br /><br />N'Gai, it's far too early for me to do my You Don't Need To Complete A Game To Review It piece, I suspect. Methodology of reviews is a question all of itself.<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Stephen Totilo, MTV News: </span>I wonder why Shawn dragged me into this. I seldom write reviews. I don't put scores on games. My main gig's reporting, a.k.a journalism, a.k.a. the thing most people don't really mean when they want to talk about "games journalism" because the thing they really mean to muddle over and improve upon is what we're talking about here: games-reviewing. I'll give it a go, nonetheless! Scores, who are they for? What do they do?<br /><br />The question we're answering is whether those who review games pick a number before writing a word. Kieron says the ideal reviewer would not; he and Leigh agree it's hard not to pick a figure already. Shawn's acknowledging the humanity of having preconceived notions but dodging his own question about whether that made him start with a number. But I guess it's hard in some ways to pick a figure at all when it's so unclear what the point of it is.<br /><br />What does it mean to select -- prematurely or even at the "right" moment—a seven for a game? Or to see a game and, at first sight, have your gut gurgle that it’s a nine?<br /><br />A review score number may be for the fans, a shopping guide metric that informs a purchase or justifies one already made. It may get used for the dastardly purpose of comparing a game to another—even though it never quite works to pit a 2008 sports game that got an eight against a 1998 role-playing game that got a nine, especially if neither is as good as Tetris. A numerical score might, in isolation, even indicate if a game's any good, but not always.<br /><br />We're talking about arriving at a number, and, frankly, I don't know how you all do it. A decade ago I worked at a boxing magazine and sat in press row for many fights. Scoring vexed me then. I'd score rounds for my coverage on the "10-point must" system: 10 for the winner of the round, nine for the loser unless he got knocked down or really took a beating, which would dock him to an eight. In that system we see the Gillen-described method of scoring-by-reduction. We also saw the great gaming tradition of grade inflation. Give a judge (or a reporter aping the actions of the official judge) a 10-point scale and all kinds of psychology comes into play.<br /><br />The other thing I saw at the fights—the thing that really stuck with me—was how hard it was to score any of it. Boxing matches aren't like Rocky fights. It's often hard to see who is winning or which fighter is doing the better work. Sometimes it's all boring or repetitious, but you still must score each three-minute round. Putting numbers on these things—and the official judges had to, in case it went the distance and, god forbid, the paying public needed to know who won—was a murky and unpleasant job. Try it some time. I'd root for the knockout, which would render scores moot and sweep any errors in numerical judgment away. The scorecards didn't matter then. Any scoring biases we had would be secret. The fallacy of putting a number on things would be dodged, and everyone would go home happy. No one would have to know that I gave a 10 to fighter B because I felt bad that he'd gotten beaten up for the three previous rounds or that I gave the wrong guy the first round because I bought into his pre-fight hype.<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Robert Ashley, freelancer:</span> I took a break from enthusiast press game reviews for a couple of years. What a fucking relief. No more death threats from insane superfans who think my evaluation of their favorite game is some kind of paid-for hit job by a shadowy corporate network. No more forcing myself to play through a 40-hour game in three days. No more tearing my hair out trying to avoid the clichéd language of a form of writing frozen in its awkward adolescence 15 years ago. Free to play whatever I wanted, I fell in love with games all over again. Hard.<br /><br />Now that I'm back and picking up the occasional review, I simply refuse to engage in the bullshit that used to drive me insane. Review scores have one use: driving traffic from message boards and social networks to your site and giving those people an excuse to argue out their fan beefs in the comments section. I treat them as such.<br /><br />I have no methodology for choosing a review score. I certainly don't think about it much. Your gut feeling (after either beating the game or the game beating you) is more accurate than whatever you might come up with after careful consideration. This is how the rest of the gaming community arrives at an opinion—and probably why so many people feel that critics are out of touch. When you sit at your computer, running down all the plusses and the minuses—technical issues, story concerns, lovable roughness, annoying roughness—you can end up talking yourself into a score that doesn't really represent your true reaction. You can't explain the magical pixie dust that made the empirically bad game good. You can't explain the soullessness and sterility that made the empirically good game bad. You let your stupid logical brain take the wheel and explain yourself into a lie.<br /><br />When I say you, I mean me.<br /><br />Anyway, I say be gutsy and honest with a score, and save your careful thinking for the text.<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Jeff Gerstmann, Giant Bomb: </span>Well, I won't deny that scores stir up message boards and social networks and such. But to claim that's the only reason they exist is a pretty narrow, jaded view. I think scores are primarily there to serve as shorthand for folks that won't or can't read the full review. They're meant to serve as part of the summary. A deck, a score, and, depending on your publication's review style, some pros and cons or whatever. They aren't rocket science, and were never really meant to be treated as such. The key is to not let the different ways that scores are misused get in the way of what you're trying to accomplish with your reviews. I don't care if the scores I give fit in with the rest of the industry on the review aggregator sites. I don't care if people infer the score to mean that I'm playing favorites because I'm obviously "TEH BIAS" or whatever. I care about the people out there who haven't been following a game from day one, and the people who haven't already pre-ordered the game and are just looking for validation. As soon as you start bending your review systems in order to cater to those extremist segments of the audience, you're getting away from the thing that reviews are designed to accomplish: assist average, everyday people in their purchasing decisions.<br /><br />I say assist because we've reached a point where one review can't possibly work for every single person that reads it. The audience for video games is too widespread and varied now for reviewers to think that their review is the only one that matters, or that it will be able to directly state if a person should or shouldn't buy a game. This, more than anything, is what should be driving a change in the way games are reviewed, not a bunch of reviewers who are tired of all the weak-ass game review clichés that are still out there. Getting rid of scores because people who write reviews are tired of assigning them and dealing with the fanboy rage that invariably ensues hurts the consumers that actually use reviews for their intended purpose.<br /><br />But to answer the core questions, I don't really think too much about scores when I'm playing a game. I attempt to go in feeling cautiously optimistic about the game in question, and as I'm playing, I think about text, and things in the game that need to be specifically called out. I start to think about the best way to mention those moments, and the best way to call out its flaws. At some point, all that text swirling around in my head starts to sound like a range of scores, so maybe around halfway through playing a game I start thinking a little more about the score. But it isn't until after the review is written that the score is actually assigned. The score is meant to sum up the text. If I've just written a review full of harsh criticisms, well, then that sounds like a pretty low score. Assigning a score and then attempting to justify it with text puts the cart before the horse.<br /><br />Assuming a score (or range of scores) before actually playing the final game is pretty dangerous territory. Carefully controlled publisher-run demos usually paint a pretty rosy picture of a game, and games often don't live up to that. Case in point: every time I saw Mercenaries 2 prior to its release, I thought it looked awesome. The missions seemed smart, the co-op was fun, and it felt like a game that would offer a lot of variety. The final product turned out a collection of dopey missions that showcased the game's boneheaded AI, the co-op didn't make much sense, and a lot of the missions were pretty boring. I didn't review Mercs 2, but not letting pre-release exposure to a game color your review with overt disappointment or a sense of smug "I totally called it" satisfaction can get a bit tricky.<br /><br />So I agree that, ideally, a reviewer should start with no preconceived notions about a game based on budget, hype, promises made by the developer, and so on. But at the end of the day, we're all human, and I'd expect that some form of disappointment over a game that fails to deliver on promises or excitement over a sequel that's turned out better than the last leaks into some of our reviews. The key is in owning up to that and presenting your reviews as informed opinions, rather than hiding behind the old paradigm of rigid objectivity.<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Shawn Elliott, 2K Boston:</span> I didn't mean to duck the question, Stephen, and I definitely don't start with a specific rating in mind. However, I'm sure that I have imagined ranges of scores that a given game would receive whether I or anyone else was to write the review. That's not to suggest that I once forced the square peg of a game to fit the round hole of my presumptions. I never did. Or I don't think I did. What I'm acknowledging is that, all the same, something was on my mind, both before I began and while I was playing. I think this is the case for every videogame critic. And while that something isn't necessarily decisive, it's nonetheless worth investigating.<br /><br />I should also add that our predictions regarding meta-ratings and the reviews of other critics are on the mark more often than not. (In these instances, self-fulfilling prophecy isn't an issue.) Some companies are so confident of our ability to make these calls that they're willing to pay us for our input as consultants.<br /><br />Jeff is correct in that sometimes PR-controlled preview demonstrations are smoke-and-mirrors magic shows. But what about when we're allowed to play near-complete code for prolonged periods? I'm not talking about performance issues—commenting on the framerate of an unfinished game is almost as pointless as it is for an Entertainment Weekly writer to assure her audience that King Kong may or may not appear in place of a green screen. Sometimes design, locked down years prior to a game's preview phase, is apparently dopey. Again, I have to emphasize that holding some assumptions in no way necessitates my maintaining them in the face of final evidence.<br /><br />You also imply that an aversion to cliché shouldn't drive change in the way that we review games. I won't argue that cliché is the one and only reason to reconsider our habits, however, I count it among the many. The paragraphs on a game's graphics, sound, and so on in previews and reviews produce recognizably generic writing devoid of the discovery and perception that might make them worth reading. They are lazy in that they eliminate both the need to transition thoughts and to interpret a game as the complex product of interconnected components (instead of simply summarizing these parts).<br /><br />Even worse is when the paragraphs that constitute a template are themselves composed of yet more methods of avoiding actual analysis. I mock the overuse of words such as compelling not because there is anything wrong with the words themselves but rather with the way that they're used to replace real explanation. We know that any guy in the game store can say he likes or doesn't like a game's graphics or story. We recognize that it's our responsibility as paid writers to say something more than "I like it" or "it's good." Replacing "like" and "good" with "compelling" isn't even trying.<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">John Davison, What they Play:</span> If nothing else, review scores serve as the starting point of a discussion for readers. As Jeff says, they serve as a shorthand for those that have no interest in digging deeper than a fundamental thumbs up or thumbs down gauge of quality. I think we can all safely assume this, but back in my time at Ziff we experimented sufficiently that we got absolute, empirical proof.<br /><br />Jeff Green and I spent a lot of time talking to Computer Gaming World readers, and trawling through our message boards to really try and put together the ultimate reviews section for the audience. We wanted to do something a bit different, but more than anything we wanted to acknowledge what a large group of our readers were telling us. That was, essentially, that "we're older" and "we're smarter" than the average gamer, so "treat us like that." They wanted longer, more considered think pieces about games, and it appeared, anecdotally at least, that review scores were not high on their list of priorities. They wanted, they said, to really understand what the reviewers were trying to convey. They wanted to really dig in.<br /><br />So we gave them that. We took the scores off, and made the reviews longer. We actually went a step further, and tried to acknowledge the broader critical spectrum, and talk about what caused other reviews to express particularly positive or negative comments. It was our own little expression of idyllic critical idealism. A utopia of reviewing and we dreamt that it would spark enlightened and intelligent debate about specific qualities and opinion.<br /><br />The reaction was spectacular. The readers really, really fucking HATED it. The most common complaint (I'm paraphrasing, but it was pretty consistent) was "How do I know what you think if you don't give it a score?" That and "you guys are retarded." We figured at first that it was simply a bit of culture shock and that it would wear off, but the negativity increased over time. After three months or so, we had to go back to putting a score out of five on the reviews just to stem the tide of vitriolic hatred.<br /><br />On a separate note, I was speaking to someone recently who had some connection to Rolling Stone, and he told me that the reviewing process for albums there was that the critics only submit the text, but do not submit a score. The number of stars is assigned by the reviews editor based on the tone of the review. He was drunk at the time, so might have been talking out of his arse though. Does anyone know for sure if this is the case? Even if it's not true, it's certainly an interesting approach—and something I'd like to discuss in this context. If a reviewer is freed from thinking about assigning a score, but knows one will be applied later—would it necessitate a more disciplined approach to how thoughts are expressed? I know it would for me. But are we ready to relinquish that kind of control?<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Robert Ashley, freelancer:</span> I don't advocate putting an end to scoring. Scores seem to be the one thing that today's online audience can easily form a conversation around, and I think, ideally, a review should be like a conversation between reader and critic. I just think the incredible seriousness surrounding scores (born in no small part, I'm guessing, from the fact that retailers stock their shelves based on review scores, ratcheting up pressure on critics to treat scores like jury sentences) is irritating. Handing out a mediocre score to a mega-hyped game can brand you a heretic (a Crispin Boyer, if you will) when you're just trying to be honest about your reaction.<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Stephen Totilo, MTV News Multiplayer:</span> Who is actually upset about review scores?<br /><br />Offended publishers who wanted a 9? Stressed developers whose bonuses depend or ability to get another deal require them to get at least an 8? Superfans whose feelings you hurt by giving the game they are going to buy anyway a 7?<br /><br />Before we do any more debating about the merits of putting a number on a score I want to know who cares.<br /><br />Have any of you come across gamers who won't buy a game they were curious about because you gave it a 7 and not a 9? And, if so, would they have made a different decision if your review didn't include a score? Was it review scores that did in Too Human or put Wii Music slow out the gate?<br /><br />Do scores ever really hurt or help games? Or are we just debating the best way to describe a game's quality, be it through numbers, words or faces in various stages of excitement?<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Leigh Alexander, Gamasutra/Sexy Videogameland/Variety: </span>Backing Stephen on this. Scores do stress the reviewer, but the stress doesn't come from any source that really counts—excepting maybe the anxiety I get sometimes knowing people's jobs depend on, say, Metacritic, and hoping that I was as thorough and fair as I could possibly be.<br /><br />Like some others who've chimed in, I write the text first, and then see what score the text supports. In a way, I'm not assigning the number as a be-all measure of the game itself, but as a shorthand for my evaluation, and I think that's the function for which scores are most useful—as Jeff said, a single value that makes sense from a macro viewpoint for people who don't read text. There are a lot of those people (which makes me wonder if we shouldn't be trying to create more accessible, readable text, but that's probably a whole 'nother issue).<br /><br />Finally, because I talked about preconceptions, I just wanted to clarify that while I may sometimes go in with ideas, hopes, dare I say biases, I never go in with a number in mind. The number is the last thing I come up with.<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Dan "Shoe" Hsu, Sore Thumbs: </span>To Stephen: Yes, yes and yes. They all care. But in the end, that review and score aren’t for them anyways -- they’re for your “normal” audience—so it really shouldn’t matter how bunched up their panties get.<br /><br />At EGM, we’ve had plenty of readers who told us they would not even consider a game purchase if the reviews didn’t average a certain score they had set in their minds. Now, this “certain score” is usually a moving target—higher if it’s a game that reader wasn’t originally interested in, lower if he already had that title on his Amazon wishlist. This overreliance and faith in this one rating (scored by someone you probably don’t know intimately well) may seem silly, but I’m absolutely with Jeff and John on this: Despite complaints from a vocal minority, the vast majority of readers really want that number, letter, or direction the thumb’s pointing. It’s ingrained in society and it’s pointless and stubborn to fight it. People don’t always have time to read a 2000-word, well-crafted review to get inside the brain of the reviewer. For most folks in this short-attention-span world, that “4 out of 10” usually says more than enough.<br /><br />Are we off-topic here, by the way? To answer question #2 above, yes, I sometimes change my score after I write the text. I do it like Robert initially: I score with my gut. But then while writing a review, I get to reflect upon my play time, think back to my progress 10, 20, or 30 hours ago, check back on my notes from last week, etc....and then I might adjust my score (usually by one increment up or down) based on my experience in its entirety. This may seem obvious—to score the whole game, not just how it finishes -- but I also have that same short-attention-span problem. And this helps me keep too much emotion out of the process, too, so a game’s high-note finish doesn’t unduly inflate the score.<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Francesca Reyes, OXM: </span>I can’t tell you how much I personally hate coming up with scores. It’s putting a quantitative label on something that’s qualitative. But that said, it’s a necessary and completely understandable function of game reviews in enthusiast pubs. (Hell, when I read movie reviews or book reviews, I do the same thing—look at the score to justify whatever half-ass, cobbled together pre-opinion I may or may not publicly admit to having.) The reviews I’m used to writing aren’t criticism in the sense that you’re a “reader” and you’re “reading” a game like you would text, or a movement, or even a movie—they’re practical forms of consumer advice. So, I agree with Jeff in that we’re here to inform our audience if a game is worth X amount of money based on whether it delivers, and to what extent, on its back-of-the-box promises, as well as how it handles as a game. And that demands a score, really. A signpost for what the review contains.<br /><br />I’ve been lucky that all the pubs I’ve worked for fall in the realm of “enthusiast,” so in a lot of ways, you’re writing for gamers like yourself when you score a product. You’re also using a set of established criteria, depending on your publication’s ranking scale. If a 7 in a certain magazine means “average,” while a 5/5 stars in another means “must-have,” etc., this is what you’re working off of.<br /><br />I remember writing a review of one game across multiple publications. One had a 100-point scale, another had a four-star scale, and yet another had something else. The thing that sticks out in my mind is that the 100 point one was for Ultra Gameplayers and the star-scale was Next Generation. UGP was your regular “review as a gamer.” Next Gen was “review for innovation and uniqueness, like ‘does this push the boundaries of its genre, etc.?’”. One game, reviewed against two very different sets of criteria. Interesting contrast.<br /><br />So yeah, it’s totally ideal and utopian to think that you can sum up a game in a one-word or one-sentence definition from a pre-existing list of rankings, but this ain’t science. It’s voodoo magic in a lot of ways, no matter how hard we try to justify what the numbers, letters, or stars mean.<br /><br />I try not to go into a review with a preconceived score in my head, but like Shawn said early in the thread—the result of months of pre-release hype or non-hype may or may not play a role in expectations from the reviewer and the reader. You may never really know. It’s just human nature, really, and publishers know this. But the trap is that we all play a shit ton of games, right? But our readers do not. Yeah, some of them play a lot of games that we haven’t. Some of them may play as many as or more than we have. But that’s the small portion of our audiences. Most of them pick and choose what they buy and we have to understand that spending their cash may rely heavily on what reviewers say. You have to respect that and go in to a game with the same expectations that someone without the months of exposure to a title might have.<br /><br />Maybe that’s idealistic to expect this of writers who are supposed to be “experts” on their field (how do you become an expert in a field or medium if you’re not exposed to everything it has to offer, right?), but when it comes to reviews—in a lot of ways the boss is your reader and you have to kind of get in their skin. Am I always successful at doing this? Hell no. But it’s what I always aim for.<br /><br />As for the actual process of coming up with a score—sometimes you just know, based on games you played before or a gut feeling when you’re playing it. I sometimes wait to put the score in the review until after I’ve written it so I can step back and get some perspective. If I have the luxury of time (shyeah), then I can let it sit for a bit and return to it for another pass to see if the score still holds. I like how Shoe mentioned the “high-note finish” and I agree. Games are experiences and once you see the entire narrative a developer has to tell you, there’s a sense of accomplishment that sometimes make you review through rose-colored glasses.<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">N'Gai Croal, Level Up/Newsweek:</span> Robert, I’ll raise my hand and say that I do advocate putting an end to scoring. You wrote, "Scores seem to be the one thing that today's online audience can easily form a conversation around, and I think, ideally, a review should be like a conversation between reader and critic." Yes, a review should be a conversation between reader and writer. But /what kind/ of conversation do review scores foster? Judging by the Metal Gear Solid 4 example Kieron cited above, not much. (We’ll get into that more when we tackle Reader Backlash.)<br /><br />Jeff, you wrote, "scores are primarily there to serve as shorthand for folks that won't or can't read the full review." Unless I'm missing something, that's quite an indictment of a portion of your audience. Why would you write for people who won't or can't read an entire review? You also say that scores "assist average, everyday people in their purchasing decisions." I don’t object to heds and deks; pros and cons; bullet points; final words; buy, try, fry; and other forms of giving readers a succinct take on a reviewer’s opinion about a game’s value. Heck, you could just tell them how much you think the game is worth. And like you, Fran, I firmly support the consumer guide function of game reviews. But anyone who won't or can't read an entire review isn't making an informed decision by looking at a single review score, so I’m not convinced that the reason review scores are “necessary” is to genuinely inform those consumers who can only focus on a letter grade, a number or a star rating.<br /><br />In a different context above, Shawn talked about intentional fallacy. I think that's what's happening with review scores in the age of the Internet. Those of you who assign scores intend them to perform a certain function, but in the real world, the use to which they're being put by the most vocal portion of your readership is pernicious. Scores help bring out the worst in readers. They shut down conversations; foster silly debates; and they encourage meaningless comparisons. For too many readers, the very presence of scores turns the text of a review into a sideshow for the main event: this number, those stars, the orientation of that thumb. The text becomes a caption and the score becomes the photograph, en route to becoming the final cog in the Gamer Metrics-Metacritic-GameStop machine. Why would any of us want to perpetuate that?<br /><br />This may seem easy for me to say from the perch of a blog and a magazine that isn’t dependent on gamers for its survival. But many of us work for or were previously employed by outlets that have been struggling. None of us are safe. Newsweek had a round of buyouts this year, the third in my nearly 14-year tenure at the magazine. Time Inc recently had layoffs. MTV had layoffs last week. Ziff-Davis closed Games For Windows magazine. The Tribune Company just declared bankruptcy. For years, magazines and newspapers have been moving towards bigger photos, more charts and even “charticles.” The Associated Press has imposed a 500-word limit on its entertainment writers. All of this devalues the importance of the word. Review scores are yet another signal to your readers that your words don’t matter.<br /><br />If we don’t think scores are genuinely meaningful—there may be a robust defense of the inherent value of review scores; of the 6.5 versus the 7.0 and the 82 as compared to the 89, but no one has offered it yet—why do we continue this charade? Shoe, you wrote that the desire for scores is “ingrained in society and it’s pointless and stubborn to fight it” and that “For most folks in this short-attention-span world, that ‘4 out of 10’ usually says more than enough.” Apparently it’s not enough for most folks that we slit our own throats; we’re expected to provide the knives as well. I won’t pretend that yanking review scores will bring an age of genteel conversation or Socratic debate to the intertubes. But if message boards must be clogged with pointless argument, I’d rather it be fuelled by the words you wrote rather than the numbers you assigned.<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Kieron Gillen, Rock, Paper, Shotgun: </span>Since you ask for a justification for scores and the fetishized graduations of hundred-points scale, N'Gai, let me give it try. I'm from the wanky English tradition, and was anti-scores for most of my adolescence for the obvious reasons. They're stupid and putting any kind of scale over a subjective experience was ridiculous. For game reviews, at the current point in the medium, I've come around to them on solely utilitarian grounds.<br /><br />For scores, per se: reviews exist fundamentally as buying guides, the proverbial shit-filter. They can do other things, but the reason to exist is to spend other people's money. When I score, for the pure consumer magazine (as opposed to one with a more critical leaning) I score for one thing only: should you buy it. For those less-prominent games, a high score is a direct tool to even make them read it - World of Goo and Braid getting a string of 10s is an obvious flare for ATTENTION! in a way which just giving them a glowing review isn't. If reviews are a shit filter, the mark is a very blunt tool for achieving that. That, to many gamers, is just what they want. In a real way, N'Gai, that's the job.<br /><br />(This will come up later, but the thing about classical game reviews is that it isn't like film or music reviewing, but a hybrid between some stuff that's purely subjective and some stuff that's objective. You don't get a band's new CD which doesn't work on most CD players. You don't get movies which freeze randomly. For a review, that stuff genuinely matters and we're betraying our readers and being deeply disingenuous if we pretend otherwise. Are there other forms of games writing for other readers? Hell, yeah. But dismantling the review isn't the solution. We should just go and build something else.)<br /><br />And the hundred-point scale? Perversely, what I most like about it is actually its weakness. It's inherently ludicrous. Who can tell the difference between 83 and 86 percent? No-one. In other words, its subjectivity is totally clear. The 10 or 5 point scale has a way of actually tricking people into thinking there's some science at work. The hundred-point scale--and calling it "percentage" scale is another thing that's deeply deceptive—is very silly. The fact it's a rough tool rather than a scientific implement is blatant. If you try to argue a few percentage scores you look as if you're suffering from some obsessive-compulsive disorder in a way you don't necessarily look like if you try to argue between a 7 and a 10. 100-point scales, treated correctly, are an ideal way to both act as a shorthand for the review, and simultaneously make it clear the mark isn't the review.<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Shawn Elliott, 2K Boston: </span>To add to N'Gai's thoughts....<br /><br />Some of us suggest that our audiences sees scores as buyers' advice. Actual sales rarely correlate with review scores in cases where games are not also heavily hyped and marketed. Increasingly, gamers pre-order games prior to the publication of reviews. Interactive demos allow our audiences to decide for themselves whether or not a game will be worth their dollars. In addition, word of mouth and message board discussions inform our potential audiences' purchasing decisions with an intimacy and directness that we cannot provide. Finally, review aggregation sites such as Metacritic mute the bias of individual reviewers and provide a bigger picture.<br /><br />I suspect these circumstances suggest that our self-perception is, well—a throwback to a time when magazines and websites were gaming's gatekeepers.<br /><br />And yet we have John's anecdote about the angry reactions of some Computer Gaming World readers when the magazine dropped its scores. Robert introduced the idea that "review scores have one use: driving traffic from message boards and social networks to your site and giving those people an excuse to argue out their fan beefs in the comments section." Jeff countered that ratings "are primarily there to serve as shorthand for folks that won't or can't read the full review," which prompted N'Gai to ask why anyone would want to write for such an audience. Maybe our audiences aren't a homogeneous monolith—not in the sense that different readers look to a Level Up or Gamespot for different reasons, but that we (and our bottomlines) want or need different readers to look to a single site or magazine for many reasons. Is this part of the problem?<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Stephen Totilo, MTV News:</span> Shawn concluded his note with "Is this part of the problem?" I ask again, as I did in my previous note (with slightly different phrasing), what's the problem? Who or what are review scores hurting? N'Gai makes a passionate argument against the damage he sees review scores doing to the discourse about games on some message boards and comment threads. And he pitches a convincing case that such damage obscures the value of the scorers' words. All told, though, that doesn't seem like a whole lot of pain.<br /><br />But, again, what's the problem? Are quality games not being appreciated because of the existence of review scores? Are quality critics not being read because of the proliferation of scores? Are talented game creators losing their jobs because of review scores? If yes to any of those questions, then would the abolition of scores remedy those situations? If not, I see no more reason for Giant Bomb and IGN to ditch scores than I see them needing to have their reviewers append to their reviews drawings of whatever flower the game they just played makes them think of. Whatever info the readers find useful and edifying, you know?<br /><br />To the score haters, though, I direct you to Kotaku's reviews for support to your arguments. The mad bloggers there found a way to write reviews that don't use scores but can still somehow be comprehended in the time it takes to tie one's shoes. See their Far Cry 2 review, and, aside from too many puns, it gets the job done: <a href="http://kotaku.com/5071946/far-cry-2-review-hurry-boy-its-waiting-there-for-you">http://kotaku.com/5071946/far-cry-2-review-hurry-boy-its-waiting-there-for-you</a><br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">John Davison, What They Play: </span>Kieron's point that game reviews have to be a hybrid between purely subjective commentary and some stuff that's objective is an extremely important one. The innovation and creativity of games design (or lack thereof) is more than just artistic expression, and an assessment of the overall experience is often incomplete without some mention of the mechanics. Criticism of games reviews often focuses on the fact that we spend too much time on this stuff, but it is often a more important consideration than the "art". I think we'd all love to spend more time on digging into what a game is trying to "say"—but we're often faced with impenetrable control mechanisms, or distracting technological problems that cannot go unmentioned. There are also still an awful lot of games, particularly in the current climate of "casual" style games on DS and Wii, that are practically *all* mechanics, and an intelligent discussion of how well they work is all that's needed.<br /><br />Take a game like Prince of Persia, though. While there's much to be said about the art style, the way the narrative unfolds, and the co-dependence of the lead characters—a review of the "experience" cannot ignore the fact that the game has some nuts and bolts mechanical issues. It has a tendency to play itself, for a start. The controls are simplified to the point that it can be distracting to an experienced player, and that there are some unavoidable issues with the camera. They're boring topics compared to something that, say, focuses on an emotional response to the player's growing bond with Elika, but I think there's an expectation from our audiences for us to convey and assess the overall experience, not just the "heart."<br /><br />Shawn, your point about the "homogeneous monolith" is a really important one. Times *have* changed since the days of magazines and websites being gaming's gatekeepers, and while we all tend to identify with our own outlets, and maintaining a sense of community that is distinct, we all have a part to play in the broader scheme of things. Given that Google is the window through which the world views the vast majority of content, there's less and less loyalty to specific outlets, and instead people are simply looking for opinions on specific topics. For this growing audience, a score is still important for exactly the reasons that Robert and Jeff have mentioned. It's shorthand. It's a hook. It's a way to get people to look at our reviews. We are all, after all, businesses. We need traffic. We need people to come to our sites and read our stuff.<br /><br />N'Gai, you asked "Why would you write for people who won't or can't read an entire review?" I think that's oversimplifying. Often, our audiences (both the hardcore, and the not-so-hardcore) go trawling for review scores purely for validation of their taste. An abundance of high scores serves that purpose, and makes them feel vindicated whether it's because they've made a pre-order, or are simply fans of the franchise.<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Robert Ashley, freelancer:</span> I wouldn't want to separate "art" from game mechanics and interactive feel. Atmosphere and storytelling have been a fixation for games critics lately, but the connection between the player and the machine—the mysteriously engrossing feeling that makes people scrunch their faces up and open their mouths like zombies—is the real "art" of gaming. Technology and all its various failures play a huge role in that feeling. Anyone can tell when something isn't running smoothly, but I wouldn't call these observations entirely objective. Badly behaving cameras can drive some people insane. Other people not so much. The same thing applies to many common technical problems. The question is, did you have that great zen feeling of being inside and part of the game, or did technical problems and poor interface constantly break the spell? Making a game feel like Super Mario Galaxy isn't a simple question of technology and time. There's something special going on there.<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Tom Chick, freelancer: </span>On the subject of review scores and expectations, I have a lot on my mind when I review a game. I'm crammed full of preconceptions, expectations, prejudices, hopes, and fears. I call it "context" and it's probably the single most valuable thing I have to offer as a guy who writes about games. I've got thirty years of it under my belt. I don't let loose of it when I play a game, and I certainly don't let loose of it when I write about a game. I write as a hobbyist, and I write mostly for other hobbyists. We know how Spore was hyped, we're aware that Haze was from the Timesplitters guys, we've heard about the problems with Killzone, and we remember Trespasser. It's how we talk. When I have my druthers (i.e. when I'm not writing for a wider audience), it's exactly the sort of stuff that goes into what I write. And, yeah, it figures into whatever number or letter I have to slap onto a review. Like any gamer worth his salt, I have the bias of experience.<br /><br />As for how much and when I think about scores, I think about them all the time. I think about how much I hate them and how much damage they do to the state of videogame discourse. Scores are an end run around saying anything meaningful. I hate when someone says (almost always on the internet), "I liked your review, but I would have given it an 8 instead of a 7". Because that's an unborn conversation that will never happen. If I didn't have to come up with that insufferable 7, the comment would have had to go as follows: "I liked your review, but I disagree with what you said about it being too hard" or "I liked your review, but I disagree with what you said about the graphics being too much like Fable" or "I liked your review but I disagree with what you said about the ending feeling out of place" or even "I liked your review, but I liked the game more than you did". Those are all starters for at least a line of thought and at best a conversation, and in either instance, we can both be the wiser for it.<br /><br />Review scores are for the lazy, the unengaged, and the inarticulate. They're for stickers on boxes and press releases. They're understood differently by different people, and they're applied differently by different publications. They're an attempt to inject some sort of science into someplace it doesn't belong and the sad irony is that they mean nothing. I don't know if games are art, but so long as we're branding numbers into their flanks, they're certainly consumer products.<br /><br />Now I have the luxury of saying all this, because unlike some of you (well, John and Dan, at one point), I don't have to run a magazine or website. To folks dealing with lazy, unengaged, and inarticulate readers, I don't envy you your job selling stuff to them.<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">N'Gai Croal, Level Up/Newsweek: </span>Harry, you came up as a journalist and critic alongside hip-hop. You wrote for The Source, with its famous one-to-five-mics rating system and all the arguments—inside the magazine and among its readers--that were stemmed from its reviews. You also worked for the Village Voice, an outlet that didn't apply scores to any of its reviews—with the notable exception of Robert Christgau's monthly Consumer Guide, which introduced letter grades to music criticism—yet fueled legendary debates nonetheless. You worked for Rockstar Games. You're even writing a book about architecture in computer and videogames. (I bow.)<br /><br />What do you make of all of this? There's nothing new under the sun, so you must have been in or around discussions like the one we're having right here—does it bring back any memories you can share? Are Jeff and Francesca correct when they say that scores are a legitimate part of consumer reviews, regardless of how some readers may respond to them? Are Tom and I right to argue that review scores help engender the all-too-often juvenile discourse that surrounds videogames? Is Stephen onto something when he suggests that the case against scores is tenuous, and that as long as some readers find scores edifying, reviewers who choose to score games shouldn't agonize terribly over doing so? Is John right that Rolling Stone's editors, not its writers, assign the star ratings? (I had to try, man.) And finally, what's it like being on the receiving end, watching scores and reviews trickle in, and—tell the truth, now--which mattered more?<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Shawn Elliott, 2K Boston: </span>Before we finish this section with a final question on the real consequences that review scores can carry (an elliptical response to Stephen's repeated "What's the problem?"), I want to take a moment to address any unanswered inquiries. Note that, for the moment, I'm withholding my thoughts on the intersection of mechanics, meaning, and the stories that games try to tell (the short, unsubstantiated version is that I agree with Robert that it's largely fruitless to look at these in isolation).<br /><br />Kieron commented that he thinks "AAA-popular-sequels tend to start with 9/10 and lose marks, while games with less expectations start with 5/10 and have to gain them." This strikes me as especially true for enthusiasts. Anecdotally, it also seems as though critics are more inclined to take the gloves off with less-anticipated, lightly marketed games or, conversely, to forgive their faults. In addition, Leigh wondered about the wisdom in bringing an awareness of a game's budget to our analyses. Thoughts?<br /><br />And then there's John's Rolling Stone rumor. What do we make of a critic submitting copy and his or her editor supplying the score? It's an interesting thought experiment. I do think that the policy would encourage writers to explain themselves more carefully, and that it might erase much of the discrepancy in words and numbers, but what ramifications would it carry?<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Jeff Gerstmann, Giant Bomb: </span>I find Kieron's comment about big budget games catching a bit of a break in reviews to be possible in isolated cases, but I don't think it's the norm at most publications. I've also seen the opposite, where the big budget game gets trashed for not living up to the insurmountable mountain of marketing hype while the low-budget indie darling catches a break because it was made by a team of five people or something. And I've certainly seen little, unmarketed games get absolutely thrashed in reviews. Sometimes it seems like the reviewer is doing this because it's "safe" to do so, like it was part of some sort of "see? We totally use our entire 1-10 scale" chest pounding. This is why it's important for reviewers to have an editor (or editors) that can keep them in check and ask questions about a review and its score before it gets published, especially at outlets where that one review is meant to represent the entire publication's view on a game.<br /><br />While I've never been a party to anything quite like this Rolling Stone rumor, I've spent a great deal of time as an assigning editor for reviews. The most important part of that position is working with the authors on clarity, to make sure they actually mean what they say, and that they aren't coming off as more positive or negative than they intend. Sometimes that involves changing the score to make it match the words more closely. This would happen most often with freelancers, as they can't really be expected to be experts of how one publication's scoring system differs from another. But except in extremely rare cases where the reviewer wasn't available at post time, those changes were made after discussing it both with the internal staff (as part of a review vetting process) and with the author. I wouldn't want to do things the way Rolling Stone supposedly does them, but that might say more about my faith in most freelancers than it does about the policy itself.<br /><br />Lastly, I really don't think a game's budget matters when reviewing a game. High-budget console games and mid-budget console games cost the same $60. The only dollar amount that matters is the retail price. While bad games certainly don't get dramatically better as their retail price drops, it's a lot easier to overlook some of a game's flaws if you're getting it for $20 instead of $60. But at the same time, it's probably fine to mention a game's budget in passing. There's a big difference between a brief mention of the budget and using it as the centerpiece of your entire article.<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Leigh Alexander, Gamasutra/Sexy Videogameland/Variety:</span> I'm super eager for Shawn's discussion point on the impact of the scores, and I don't want to drag everyone down a side trail, but wanted to note something on the Rolling Stone rumor.<br /><br />No idea what they do at Rolling Stone, but I've actually been in situations more than once where the final star ranking or number was suggested by my editor. It's not as sinister as one might imagine—it isn't as if a person who didn't play the game is independently applying a number with no input from me. In fact, it's more of a collaborative review process between the editor and the writer to be sure that the final rating really does correlate to the text as it's written. Limits in what you can express within a word count, which I'm sure Rolling Stone is constrained by, can make it useful to have two pairs of eyes on the situation.<br /><br />In fact—and I think this is especially true for those who write for more mainstream print—many reviewers in that context want to avoid the wham-boom core market number hysteria. They want to write articles, they prefer to write crit, and don't want to calculate numerics. They may be non-traditional reviewers (as I'd assume Rolling Stone's are). In that case, especially where Metacritic is involved, in my experience an editor may volunteer to apply a score that's correlative with the review text simply to offer an option for those writers who don't want anything to do with the numbers game.<br /><br />In those cases I have always elected to have input because I feel comfortable that way—but keep in mind that scores can cause headaches and PR arguments for reviewers, and in that case, an editor stepping up and saying "point them to me if they hate the number" may be one way of allowing the writer to do his or her own most honest work with impunity. When an editor plays a role in the score, he or she's essentially "backing" the writer's text by shouldering all those burdens a number can provoke. It's a pleasant reversal from the nightmare scenarios we hear about where writers catch flack from their bosses or even get canned because some publisher flipped their lid.<br /><br />Again, I don't even know anyone who writes for Rolling Stone. I wish I did, because I'd tell them to write about good music again. But my suspicion is that scenario doesn't so much involve some sinister overlord stealing scoring power from the reviewer, rather an editor who wants to make room for the writer to do what the writer's being paid to do—write well and thoroughly on a title.<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Shawn Elliott, 2K Boston: </span>The editor in me empathizes with Jeff, especially in cases where a green writer's copy is in apparent conflict with the rating he or she attaches to it. Discussion is helpful here, as the writer may reveal anecdotes and a level of analysis lacking in their initial draft. How many of us remember the teachers who told us they wanted to read in our revisions whatever it was we'd just said?<br /><br />The writer in me, however, is just as wary of knee-jerk editing, and editors who've played -- and have formed their own opinions of -- the games they've assigned to freelancers. Here <a href="http://www.gamesradar.com/pc/call-of-duty-4-modern-warfare/review/call-of-duty-4-modern-warfare/a-2007110512090683184815/g-20070214121215902085">http://www.gamesradar.com/pc/call-of-duty-4-modern-warfare/review/call-of-duty-4-modern-warfare/a-2007110512090683184815/g-20070214121215902085</a> , for example, we find text apparently taken from PC Gamer UK's Call of Duty 4 review ( <a href="http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=175050&site=pcg">http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=175050&site=pcg</a>) transported to GamesRadar's 360 review page where a presumably miserly British 8.5 becomes a prodigal American 10. Bylines differ, too, as though we're to believe that two writers, an ocean apart, have arrived at the same sequence of words and altogether different assessments of their meaning (the editor's note states that the GamesRadar score was once a 9, which still doesn't explain discrepancy). That Francis's copy came first is fairly obvious in lines like, "If the whole game had been like that, or even just as inventive throughout, you'd find a frankly silly score at the end of this review. Instead it's a more restrained one[....]" My suspicion is that a comatose editor couldn't be bothered to read let alone edit the original. Frankly, that's a fucking insult to writers and readers if there ever was one. It says, 'Hey, fill some space for the cretins naive enough to not notice. We'll handle the hard work."<br /><br />Hopefully, this is an anomaly. The idea of dismissing the Rolling Stone idea for it is as dumb as it would be to eliminate governorship because of Blagojevich, but, again, we're all human.<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">N'Gai Croal, Level Up/Newsweek: </span>Regarding the Rolling Stone rumor, I'm think it's legitimate for reviewers and editors to discuss scores before assigning them, but I'm wary of editors assigning scores all by their lonesome. This point was driven home for me when, in the wake of Jeff's firing from GameSpot following his Kane & Lynch review (<a href="http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/levelup/archive/2007/12/05/reflections-on-videogame-publisher-and-employer-contempt-towards-the-enthusiast-press.aspx">http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/levelup/archive/2007/12/05/reflections-on-videogame-publisher-and-employer-contempt-towards-the-enthusiast-press.aspx</a>), Tor Thorson issued a statement explaining that "The copy was adjusted several days following its publication so that it better meshed with its score, which remained unchanged." (<a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2007/12/05/gamespot-addresses-gerstmann-gate-concerns-in-depth/">http://www.joystiq.com/2007/12/05/gamespot-addresses-gerstmann-gate-concerns-in-depth/</a>) Even given the force majeure of this situation, the question that immediately popped into my head was this: if changes had to be made at all, why wasn't the score changed to better mesh with the copy? If there are going to be scores, the individual reviewer should always be intimately involved in that process.<br /><br />*****<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Shawn Elliott, 2K Boston: </span>To finish this section and finally return to Stephen's point that scores, despite 'damaging the discourse about games' and 'obscuring the value of words,' aren't an actual problem, I'd like to ask one last question.<br /><br />Review writing carries real consequence because some publishers do base developer and PR bonus pay on aggregated ratings. This shouldn't concern critics, but once-warm PR people and game producers can become cold upon our publication of undesirable review scores, diminishing or eliminating our ability to secure subsequent interviews and access. Postmortem discussions and exclusive looks at the publisher and/or developer's forthcoming products are less likely. Conversely, a few publishers will permit us to post reviews before competitors, provided our review scores are favorable. Do such pressures produce a subliminal background—especially among members of the enthusiast press—or even enter our thoughts as we write or edit reviews and assign reviewers or scores? The stock answer says, "Only if you're a bad apple, and I'm not." But isn't the seeming impropriety of business in a bad barrel a problem in itself?<br /><br />Consider special instances such as the Gamespot Kane and Lynch review that N'Gai cites. Jeff, are you contractually able to discuss that episode in any detail? John, Francesca, and Dan, as well, serve/served as EICs of enthusiast publications and presumably face/faced such pressures and repercussions.<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Dan Hsu, Sore Thumbs Blog:</span> Exclusive reviews stink...it’s a lose-lose situation. If you score high, then readers call shenanigans...even if there were none. If you score low, then the game makers get mad and won’t want to work with you in the future.<br /><br />Plus, most companies want a guaranteed score or range of scores. We did play with this fire once at EGM...the very first time I was faced with it. I thought I could deal with it by protecting the reviewers from that discussion—I’d let them review the game independently and then see if the scores were high enough for us to secure that exclusive. But because I had final say on all magazine content, I’m still a part of the reviews process. In the end, I didn’t feel comfortable promising any certain scores, so I backed off and made a rule to never entertain these offers again. If we don’t even have those discussions to begin with, then we’ll have preserved the integrity of the reviews from start to finish.<br /><br />Besides...if the reviewer caught wind of the deal, how can it not spoil things, however so slightly? Let’s say the reviewer’s 50-50 wavering between an 8.5 and a 9.0, but way back in the deep recesses of his mind, he knows that a 9.0 will get his website or magazine the exclusive review, which translates into revenue-producing traffic or sales. Will that load the dice? Maybe not for everyone, but that’s not the point. Once that process is tainted, it’s tainted. Just ask the reader what he or she thinks.<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Leigh Alexander, Gamasutra/Sexy Videogameland/Variety:</span> I think in Jeff Gerstmann's case, the fact that the editors took liberty with the final text and scores are evidence of the "Rolling Stone System" not working in practice—again, I support the idea of editors protecting their writers (as Shoe tried to do with his folks, it seems), and doing whatever they can do to keep the heat of publisher response to scores out of the way so that the writer can do his best work. The "protection" obviously didn't take place with Jeff, and while I've no inside knowledge of that situation it sure looks to me like they let him take a bullet, which is at the very least evidence that making any kind of bargain with a publisher regarding a review—its exclusivity or otherwise—is a BS proposition.<br /><br />I hope that this reason, coupled with the evolution of Internet media, means that exclusive reviews are going to go the way of the dinosaur (or of the console exclusive, har har). I wholly believe we now work in an environment where quality and depth can be the primary competitive advantage, and less timeliness.<br /><br />I also can't speak for Totilo, and don't mean to put words in his mouth, but when I agreed heartily with his response, I was agreeing with the idea that scores only cause problems for the industry and for us—neither of whom is the audience we serve, and therefore that they create stress is not a compelling argument against the fact that plenty of readers find them useful. Hell, I hate scoring as much as most of us do, and I prefer scoreless criticism and blah blah blah—but in all honesty, when I really want to know whether I should pay attention to a game, the very first thing I do is go to GameSpot and see what number they gave it, for whatever it's worth.<br /><br />I never buy based on a number (let's take bets on how many—or how few—year-end top ten lists the 10-rated MGS4 or GTA IV get), and I don't think readers do either, which further takes the piss out of this idea of their damages. Believe me, I'd love to stop scoring. I'd love if we could enforce an industry-wide moratorium on scores, so that we wouldn't have to think about 'em and so that our audience could re-learn to focus on the words we write.<br /><br />But I think we hate scores because of the undue importance that has been placed on them and the ways they've distracted from our work, and this is credited in part to editors balancing the needs of the publishers with their management of irrationally hostile reader reactions, neither of which should be their focus. None of this means they in and of themselves cause harm to the readership or to the art of the review.<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Shawn Elliott, 2K Boston: </span>Dan, do you see where this can apply to cases less extreme than exclusive reviews? Let's say that a publisher puts one game in the market this month and is also looking for an outlet to announce a forthcoming game a few months from now. No conspiratorial conversations or conniving occurs. Nonetheless, you have to know that by giving the available game a negative review, you could risk reducing the likelihood that the company will allow you to reveal their other title. Scruples aside, the cost-benefit equation is simple: A first look at the unannouced game is probably better for business than the bad review, provided nobody calls bullshit. And compromise comes in shades. An EIC can always assign the review to a specific staff writer who he suspects will appreciate the game more than his peers, and argue afterwards that he hadn't touched the score itself. I have no idea whether or not this happens. I do, however, know that commercial publishing is cutthroat.<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">N’Gai Croal, Level Up/Newsweek:</span> From the outside looking in, I’ve been conditioned to expect that review cover = exclusive review = 8 or above. That led to a bizarre reading experience last holiday when I picked up a copy of Official Xbox Magazine with Turok on the cover, touting the first review. I can’t lie, I immediately flipped to the end of the review to see what score had been handed out…only to be shocked to see that it had been tagged with a 7! What went through my mind next was:<br /><br />a) Damn, that took guts for Francesca to stick to her guns and let reviewer Paul Curthoys call it like he saw it.<br />b) there goes Christmas for Josh Holmes and the rest of the guys over at Propaganda Games, to say nothing of Graham Hopper and the folks at Disney Interactive.<br />c) I would not want to be the publicist who brokered that exclusive. Her/his job is to suss out the most favorable outlet when determining who’s going to get that first review, because you only get one chance to make a first impression. But a first review score of 7 means that something went terribly wrong—and from PR and marketing’s perspective, the “something went terribly wrong” in this kind of situation is /not /the finished game’s quality.<br /><br />At last glance, the Metacritic rating for the Xbox 360 version of Turok was 69, so OXM’s review was right in line with the critical consensus as calculated by that aggregation engine. I’m sure that was little consolation for Propaganda and Disney, though.<br /><br />John, didn't you write about the pressure surrounding review exclusives when you first started blogging?<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Dan “Shoe” Hsu, Sore Thumbs:</span> Shawn, that’s why this business is so messed up! Publishers want good reviews. Editors want exclusives. Magazines and websites want advertising. Advertisers want good reviews.<br /><br />Sometimes, the companies know their products aren’t that great. They have internal research (via their own gut checks or “mock reviews”—early evaluations done by outside consultants) that give them a rough idea of how a game may score. If you’re dealing with a reasonable PR team and you’ve scored within their expected range, then you’re usually spared the grief. But woe is the outlet who’s at the bottom of the Game Rankings or Metacritic lists. We’ve had PR people complain to us that we’re “outside the average” (on the low end) on those sites, which John and I would always laugh at. Of course someone has to be outside of the average. If everyone was ON the average, there’d be no point in averaging them!<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Jeff Gerstmann, Giant Bomb:</span> Exclusives are yet another by-product of this business' print roots. Between magazines stories getting scanned, website text getting pasted into message boards, and the way that most of a site's traffic doesn't come in through the front door (where the big promotion of the exclusive always is), exclusive stories are waaaaay more trouble than they're worth. Exclusive reviews doubly so. On top of that, in my experience, most big exclusives don't really move the needle that much, traffic-wise. They've always felt like a huge waste of time to me. Attracting users by differentiating your coverage from the pack has always seemed like a better goal.<br /><br />But are we talking about a problem that doesn't really exist anymore? Isn't IGN the only publication still doing exclusive reviews? And if so, they're probably getting them because they're the only ones asking for them, right? I think they've deflected questions about their integrity with the ol' "well, we're not on the take, case closed" routine, which the majority of the public seems completely fine with.<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Stephen Totilo, MTV News:</span> Many of you were struggling to make a decent argument for the elimination of review scores. Here, I think you just did. Don't put scores on your exclusive reviews in your magazines. Add them via your website two weeks later when everyone else's reviews run. Then everyone's happy.<br /><br />Or…just don't take exclusive reviews. This would be a challenge for a magazine that needs to secure something notable months in advance of press time. But for websites, is there really a need? You can get the game when it comes out, play through it and have a review up within a week of it's release. No tricky politics. No stink of compromised values. And your readers are served.<br /><br />The threat of publishers withholding cooperation in the future because of a review strikes me as absurd. I don't doubt that it's a real threat, but there are countless ways to report and edit around any blackballing. Besides, getting blackballed usually makes for a good story.<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Robert Ashley, freelancer:</span> Just to add to the list of reasons why reviews create editorial drama, it's my understanding that retailers take into account review scores when stocking new games, which means that scores can directly affect sales. I had a PR rep from Deep Silver tell me last week that Target bases their game orders exclusively on Gamespot scores (so, of course, he was bitching about all the snooty divas at Gamespot). I can't vouch for his claim, but just having the guy go off in a room full of other pro enthusiasts noticeably changed the mood of everyone in earshot.<br /><br />While reviewing for EGM, I felt like there was always barrier between me and PR, thanks to the reviews editor. But when I would venture out to write other stories, visiting studios and going to game reveal events, I would often get snippy comments from people about my reviews. I was once accosted by a developer from the True Crime: New York team about my review of his game. We had, by chance, ended up in the same two-person sleeper car on a train from Paris to Venice. And I was on a family vacation, not some gaming press junket.<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Dan “Shoe” Hsu, Sore Thumbs:</span> Stephen, getting that first review up the weekend before a game’s out versus a week after launch can be a huge, huge difference in traffic. So most website editors would find an exclusive review very appealing. Can’t blame them.<br /><br />Those threats from publishers can come in many different forms. Sometimes, it’s just one very specific team or division that wants to blacklist you. For example, we were supposed to get an online exclusive as part of a package deal with our Saints Row 2 cover story, but after they read Robert’s article, THQ told us that the developers didn’t want to work with us anymore. So that online exclusive went to someone else instead.<br /><br />The Mortal Kombat team and Sony’s sports division banned us as well. But the interesting thing is, these three blacklistings didn’t carry over to the rest of THQ, Midway, or Sony Computer Entertainment. They were very specific to those specific products, because they felt we had it out for them.<br /><br />Then there are situations where the blacklistings go company-wide, like with Ubisoft after our Assassin’s Creed reviews...and after we wanted to do a story about how outlets were allowed to break the universal AC reviews embargo if they scored the game high enough. That “non-cooperation” on our part was the last straw for Ubi, and when I reported on this blacklisting in EGM, it just further cemented their hatred for me as an individual (even though Sam Kennedy, Patrick Klepek, and just about every other editor wanted to run those stories as well).<br /><br />Now, I don’t really think Ubisoft or any of those other companies have done anything wrong here. It’s their right to work with whomever they want. But it just goes to show how uncomfortably and inappropriately cozy the industry and enthusiast press are expected to be. You cooperate, you benefit. Simple as that.<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Kieron Gillen, Rock Paper Shotgun: </span>*Yeah, Shawn, regarding exclusives, on the UK side it's pretty similar. On the print side, perhaps even more intensely. There's just more magazines and the competition has always been fiercer. The former is primarily due to the size of the country - the shipping costs don't cripple you, and a smaller magazine can be more profitable. The second is due to how British games magazines are sold. The vast majority of magazines are sold at newstand, not subscription. Subscriptions are cheaper, but not a straight loss leader for ads. When I was on Gamer, the majority of our money came from actual people buying the bloody thing rather than via advertisers. On the bright side, this abstractly means that in a real way, the bills are paid by people who want to read your mag. On the bad side, since there's an enormous floating readership which you have to fight for every single issue, meaning even more importance is placed on exclusives. An enormous amount of effort is thrown into chasing them, and it can totally lead to the sort of issues others have picked up on.<br /><br />When I'm chatting to modern day magazine staff, one of my favorite stories to tell is about an old pre-me Future major-mag editor. He didn't speak to any PRs. The Dep Ed did all of that. If any of them tried to speak to him, he just blanked them. He just made the magazine. And when I roll out that anecdote, the look of disbelief which it's always greeted with is akin to what I'd have got if I claimed he was capable of flight.<br /><br />As I said, they're an enormous waste of energy—I always remember that it seemed that due to the inevitable pissing off of PRs, the exclusives we chased went to our major rival as much as not, and the ones that they went for went to us. But it's also a game which I think magazines—and publishers—are loathe to get out of it. Because as long as one other organ in the room is making exclusives, you are at a distinct disadvantage. And it works both ways. One major games publisher, working on similar logic to me above, stopped doing exclusives for a few year. The amount of coverage suffered—because their rivals were still making deals and they weren't—and they went back on it.<br /><br />That's the problem with stopping exclusives. It requires a conspiracy of doves for it to hold.<br /><br />Regarding changing marks and having marks changed... much like others have said, I've done it. It's really not a problem per se. Discussing it with the writer is fine (And an art form in and of itself). Explaining how they're not marking to your mark-scheme is fine too. And most commonly, the review and score just don't match up, where you have to ask that one or the other is changed. If a reviewer is having fun comparing part of the game's mechanics to cancer and still give it in the sixties, either the overwrought writing goes or—if they actually mean the overwroughtness—the mark needs to drop like a stone. In my experience, I've argued far more marks down than up.<br /><br />On the other side, I'm fine with that too. Sometimes I really don't agree, in which case I ask for my name to be removed from the review. Not in a prima-donna way—just because I don't believe in it, and ultimately, your name is all you've got and you're going to give enough review scores the readers will tear you apart on your lonesome without someone else making them for you. This is one of the first things I say to any writer getting into the business, because—bless 'em—not many are even aware that it's something they can ask to do. And if the editor says no, it's about as good a sign that you should get out of that job sharpish.<br /><br />And, of course, some editors do change marks without asking and keep your name on it. Just don't work for them again.<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Harry Allen, Media Assassin: </span>Greetings, everyone.<br /><br />I just want to say that it's really a privilege to be able to read all of your thoughts. I'm a fan of you all. I read your words and listen to your podcasts, in many cases. So, it's great for me to hear your thoughtfully written ideas about this very trenchant aspect of your work.<br /><br />I don't know that I have anything to add. Much of what I was thinking has been said by other people, and I know we're about to change topics. For example, a very early concern of mine was the relationship between scores and advertising, so I'm glad that some of that was addressed recently.<br /><br />I will say that one of the first statements I read that directly connected to my own work was N'Gai's comparison of the reviewer and the critic. Though I use different language, I know that when I started writing about hip-hop professionally, in the late '80s, I made it my objective to never talk about an album in terms of whether I liked it or not. Instead, I always saw it as my job to explain the artist's intent to the readers. I've never called myself a "music critic." I've always said that I am a Hip-Hop Activist.<br /><br />To me, number scores are mostly an attempt at giving the illusion of numerical precision to functions that cannot possibly bear the same.<br /><br />For example, take a look at Robert Motherwell's 1961 painting, "Elegy to the Spanish Republic, 70," here: (<a href="http://www.metmuseum.org/TOAH/HD/abex/ho_65.247.htm">http://www.metmuseum.org/TOAH/HD/abex/ho_65.247.htm</a>)<br /><br />Is that a 10? An 8.5?<br /><br />Most curators and art historians would call the bold canvas "a masterpiece," and leave it, more or less, at that. If they did quantify it, or one of the others in the series, they would only do so in extremely hushed whispers, among themselves, if at all, but never do so for public consumption. This is actually part of the way that they frame their field, which is commercial, but which is mostly a repository of serious, high culture: By avoiding quantifying numbers ("It's an 8"), which would be seen as crass.<br /><br />Quantifying a Motherwell, then, would be analogous to asking how much the Maybach is: If you have to ask, you can't afford it. They're not saying you can't afford the Motherwell financially, but you "can't afford it" aesthetically. In other words, the experience of the painting is far too rich to reduce to a digit, and if you don't know that, you shouldn't be here.<br /><br />I think a reason similar to this is also why I always resisted, during that brief period of my life, when male friends would ask me to assign a number to a girl I've seen. In hip-hop / Black slang, a "dime" is a girl who's a 10...but what does that mean? According to what objective scale?<br /><br />And indeed, isn't that the core idea that disproves the fantasy: That without an actual 10 to which one can point—the theoretical perfect game—the numbers become meaningless?<br /><br />That is, on a foot-long ruler, "4" only means something because there's a "7," and a "9," but, most of all, because there's a "12." However, "12" only means something because there's a "13" and "25"; an agreed-upon metric, in other words.<br /><br />When it comes down to it, game numbers facilitate the purchasing decisions of the buying public, and advertising, and I think that's it. I could have told John Davison that his CGW readers would revolt. It's like all those Americans who claim they only watch PBS and the news, yet, somehow, reality shows are a phenomenon, and porn even more so.<br /><br />But, clearly, the focus on numbers is leading people to overlook something important, namely the subtle interplay of parts that is a videogame.<br /><br />I've not played Gears of War 2 yet, though I did have the nerve to write about the game's marketing on Media Assassin, here (<a href="http://harryallen.info/?p=1863">http://harryallen.info/?p=1863</a>).<br /><br />But when I look at stills and video from it, and hear descriptions of what Cliff Bleszinski and crew were trying to do, it's clear to me, Roger Ebert be damned, that we're dealing with a moment here. Gears is a work of art expressed in the videogame medium. It's that simple.<br /><br />Here's a prediction: A hundred years from now, collectors will purchase copies of Gears, Katamari Damacy, System Shock, Crysis, Ico, Dead Space, and every Mario iteration the way many, today, buy coin banks, first edition books, fine watches, and music boxes.<br /><br />I'm sorry to say this, but, by that point, those collectors will not care if these games were given sixes or nines. They will collect them as beautiful art expressions of human craft and intellect. For many of the artists who work on these games, it will only be then that, aside from the thoughtful critique of people like you, they get their just due.<br /><br />###Shawn Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16301045945239475897noreply@blogger.com170tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992091653802364493.post-63913205779989277562008-12-06T11:52:00.000-08:002008-12-06T15:10:49.191-08:00Commencing CountdownThe symposium is now underway.<br /><br />Participants (in alphabetical order) include:<br /><br />Leigh Alexander <a href="http://sexyvideogameland.blogspot.com/">http://sexyvideogameland.blogspot.com/</a><br />Robert Ashley <a href="http://www.myspace.com/icometoshanghai">http://www.myspace.com/icometoshanghai</a><br />Tom Chick <a href="http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/">http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/</a><br />N'Gai Croal <a href="http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/levelup/">http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/levelup/</a><br />John Davison <a href="http://www.whattheyplay.com/welcome/?orgpage=%2F">http://www.whattheyplay.com/</a><br />Jeff Gerstmann <a href="http://www.giantbomb.com/">http://www.giantbomb.com/</a><br />Kieron Gillen <a href="http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/">http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/</a><br />Dan Hsu <a href="http://sorethumbsblog.com/">http://sorethumbsblog.com/</a><br />Francesca Reyes <a href="http://www.oxmonline.com/">http://www.oxmonline.com/</a><br />Stephen Totilo <a href="http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/">http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/</a><br /><br />I trust you will recognize these names. In addition, journalist, photographer, hip hop activist, and radio host Harry Allen ( <a href="http://harryallen.info/">http://harryallen.info/</a> ) has agreed to contribute to the conversation when appropriate (i.e. whenever the fuck he wants). We're fortunate to have him.<br /><br />This is a big, ambitious project that will span several months as the following paste should suggest. In the meantime, Mitch Krpata ( <a href="http://insultswordfighting.blogspot.com/">http://insultswordfighting.blogspot.com/</a> ), Troy Goodfellow ( <a href="http://flashofsteel.com/index.php/2008/12/01/reviewing-criticizing-and-games-media/#more-1112">http://flashofsteel.com/index.php/2008/12/01/reviewing-criticizing-and-games-media/#more-1112</a> ), and Michael Walbridge ( <a href="http://etelmik.blogspot.com/2008/12/shawn-elliotts-questions.html">http://etelmik.blogspot.com/2008/12/shawn-elliotts-questions.html</a> ) offer their insight in response to questions taken from the Review Scores and Reviews Vs. Criticism sections.<br /><br />**The invite**<br /><br /><strong>Subject:</strong> You're invited...<br />to participate in an email-based symposium on the practice and politics of writing game reviews.<br /><br /><strong>Categories:</strong><br />Review Scores<br />Reader Backlash<br />Reviews in the Age of Social Media<br />Reviews in the Mainstream Media<br />Casual, Indie, and User-Generated Games<br />Review Ethics<br />Reviews vs. Criticism<br />Evolving the Review<br />Optional: Response to Symposium Readers<br /><br /><strong>Schedule:</strong><br />Ideally, you'll complete one section every two or three weeks, starting as soon as next week. Each section will include five to 10 questions. Rather than regarding this as a questionnaire, we're encouraging critics to consider and react to one another's commentary when so inspired (which will, of course, require volunteers who on occasion agree to respond first). We're welcome to publish categories serially as we complete them.<br /><br /><strong>Structure:</strong><br />One question/topic every two days<br />Initial response: one paragraph minimum, six maximum<br />Subsequent responses: no minimum: six paragraph maximum<br /><br /><strong>Suggestions:</strong><br />Don't be afraid to throw elbows, name names, etc. Respectful confrontation is a good thing.<br />Every participant will be free to publish the resulting transcript ontheir respective site or blog.<br />Try to engage one other in your responses, including asking additional questions where appropriate.Shawn Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16301045945239475897noreply@blogger.com123tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8992091653802364493.post-6408410733729351372008-11-30T10:55:00.000-08:002008-11-30T11:46:01.022-08:00Unrealized reviews symposium<strong>The One That Got Away</strong><br /><br />Prior to departing 1UP.com, I prepared two sections for a symposium that never got off the ground. Newsweek's N'Gai Croal, WhatTheyPlay.com's John Davison, and I agreed to generate questions for eight episodes:<br /><br /><br />Review Scores<br />Reader Backlash<br />Reviews in the Age of Social Media<br />Reviews in the Mainstream Media<br />Casual, Indie, and User-Generated Games<br />Review Ethics<br />Reviews vs. Criticism<br />Evolving the Review<br /><br />Sadly, the symposium hasn't happened -- blame me if you must. Below are the questions I suggested for the Review Scores and Reviews vs. Criticism sections. In addition, I've attached a clip from an early email exchange on the topic.<br /><br /><br /><strong>Review Scores</strong><br /><strong>Question 1:</strong> How much is on our minds before we begin playing any given game for review purposes? Will we imagine a range of probable scores that a heavily marketed, highly budgeted, and hugely anticipated game will get? What when the game is branded “budget” or is the work of a lesser-known, less-storied studio? If so, how closely have actual scores correlated with our assumptions?<br /><br /><strong>Question 2:</strong> Ought reviewers settle on a score before, during, or after writing a review? How consistent are our practices with our prescriptions? Have we, for instance, revised a score after writing our reviews, even though we advocate against it, and if so, why?<br /><br /><strong>Question 3:</strong> When possible, do we look at the scores that other critics give to the games that we're reviewing, as we review them? If so, are groupthink or iconoclasty potential problems?<br /><br /><strong>Question 4:</strong> Often times we will have repeatedly played and/or previewed games in development prior to reviewing them. Does this familiarity with a particular game's developmental process influence the scores that we assign to the final product in the way that a professor will take into consideration her students' limitations and proven potential when she evaluates papers at the end of the semester?<br /><br /><strong>Question 5:</strong> Review writing carries real consequence, especially among members of the enthusiast press. Once-warm PR people and game producers can become cold upon our publication of undesirable review scores, diminishing or eliminating our ability to secure subsequent interviews and access. Postmortem discussions and exclusive looks at the publisher and/or developer's forthcoming products are less likely. Conversely, a few publishers will permit us to post reviews before competitors, provided our review scores are favorable. Do such pressures produce a subliminal background or even enter our thoughts as we write reviews and assign scores?<br /><br /><strong>Question 6:</strong> Is grade inflation an ongoing problem?<br /><br /><strong>Question 7:</strong> Do scores determine our tone? Can a “3” encourage us to explain an aspect of a game in clearly negative terms where our attitude is actually less decided? Example: Game X's camera obscures the action, combat is irritatingly difficult, and “save” stations are few and far between. In our reviews, is Game X's plot, which we're still thinking through, more likely to become miserable than plain?<br /><br /><strong>Question 8:</strong> Do scores encourage our readers to conduct a sort of text-to-number calculus where the two obviously negative statements in an otherwise positive-sounding review necessarily translate into every point deducted from the “10” that the game didn't get? Does this make reviews with high marks more likely to overlook fault, and reviews with low marks less likely to celebrate accomplishment?<br /><br /><strong>Question 9:</strong> Which is more important to us, our scores or our copy? If the latter, have our responses revealed any inconsistencies between our attitudes and actions? Are we still convinced of the importance and power of scores?<br /><a name="txtMsgBody"></a><br /><strong>Related suggestions for Ethics section:<br /></strong>Have we ever submitted review scores to publishers prior to their publication? If so, why?<br /><br />Have we ever submitted review copy to publishers prior to its publication. If so, why?<br /><br />Have PR people suggested that specific critics review specific games? Have we complied with their suggestions?<br /><br /><br /><strong>Reviews Vs Criticism</strong><br /><strong>Question 1:</strong> What is the object of a review? What are the review writer's obligations?<br /><br /><strong>Question 2:</strong> If the purpose of a review is to suggest to consumers how they should spend their time and money, why do we avoid less-granular grading scales such as Buy, Try, or Avoid? Example: Giant Bomb founder and former Gamespot editorial director Jeff Gerstmann told MTV's Multiplayer blog that “'How can I save people money today?' is basically the kind of mentality that I tackle this stuff with.” Under Gerstmann's directorship, Gamespot reviewed games on a hundred-point scale. Is a 9.6 different than a 9.7 when the wisdom of a purchase is what the reviewer wants to communicate?<br /><br /><strong>Question 3:</strong> Actual sales rarely correlate with review scores in cases where games are not also heavily hyped and marketed. Increasingly, gamers pre-order games prior to the publication of reviews. Interactive demos allow our audiences to decide for themselves whether or not a game will be worth their dollars. In addition, word of mouth and message board discussions inform our potential audiences' purchasing decisions with an intimacy and directness that we cannot provide. Finally, review aggregation sites such as Metacritic mute the bias of individual reviewers and provide a bigger picture. Do these circumstances suggest that our self-perception is, well, delusional – a throwback to a time when magazines and websites were gaming's gatekeepers? If our audiences believe this, even if we do not, what are they really reading for?<br /><br /><strong>Question 4:</strong> Can criticism (concerned with telling our audiences what they're spending time and/or money playing as opposed to whether or not a game is worth spending time and/or money to play) coexist with reviews? Is a competent review also a critique -- as is so often the case where lit, movies, and music are concerned -- or should we separate the two?<br /><br /><strong>Question 5:</strong> What can (or should) such criticism take into account? [Note: I don't want to jump the gun on the Evolving Reviews section here, so bear with me if you're wondering why I'm not yet asking certain obvious questions about the shape and challenges of videogame criticism.]<br /><br />Email snippet:<br /><br />Perhaps the ethics angle is unavoidable -- at least as it ties into larger concerns about what a review intends to accomplish. Look at the latest bit with Metal Gear, where what all message board posters really reacted to was the irrelevance of the game's install issues. Meanwhile, reviewers agreed to talk around the fact that the game's content is at least fifty percent non-interactive (by most accounts). How can you either review or critique the game under these compromised conditions? This is even bigger than issues outlined in Stephen Totillo's Bill of Rights. Which leads to another concern of mine that might make sense to tackle in the "reviews vs. crit" or "reviews in the age of social media" sections....<br /><br />Spoiler-phobia leads to a lack of substantiation. Because we won't cite specifics, we're all fluff. N'Gai, you must be familiar with the journalistic notion of a ladder of abstraction -- where concrete, specific details are at the bottom (showing), and the most general or abstract ideas are at the top (telling). The problem is that with reviews we don't reach high enough, nor do we come right down to the bottom. In the mucky middle, we get IGN's reviewer telling us that MGS4 "recast[s] the entire series as nothing less than a re-telling of the Messiah story." As for convincing evidence to argue that the allusion isn't cockamamie? That would be spoiling the story. BioShock and Portal reviews ran into trouble here, too.<br /><br />I also expect influence and propriety to play a part in the "too harsh/too soft" section. There are real repercussions associated with writing negative reviews. Whether or not we're writing with future exclusives (or even normal, non-exclusive access) immediately on our minds, it's there. In addition, I'm convinced that some inexperienced critics imagine an acceptable range of scores for any given game, even prior to playing. When the press sheet says "budget series", we know it's no holds barred. And finally, we have PR teams whispering in reviews editors' ears that this reviewer is ideal or unsuited to that review assignment.<br /><br />The sample topics seem suited to allow diversions in any direction I'd want to go with one or two exceptions. Are we interested in talking about craft at all? I'm disturbed by the fact that the enthusiast press hires gamers first and writers/thinkers second. Not once in my career have I sat in on a serious discussion about how we do what we do. Compare this to newspapers with full-time writing coaches.Shawn Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16301045945239475897noreply@blogger.com103