Ben Kuchera attacks critics again.

If you're the kind of person who talks about games as if they are a value proposition like '$5 a pound for meat', '$5 an hour for game' then you're probably not gonna like games in the vein of Gone Home anyway.

Because video games should not be seen as a product like a car, a laptop, a screwdriver set or whatever that you can OBJECTIVELY say if it's good or not.

Video game reviews are becoming like movie reviews, you have to find the critic with who your views most align with. It's becoming more subjective as reviewers write about their experiences. Knowing how a reviewer thinks and knowing their experience with the game (or film) I think reads more honest as to how they feel about the game rather trying to be objective. Writing about game length and price is also purely subjective as well. What the reviewer has to focus on is his/her experience and "convincing" the reader that they should either buy into it or stay away from it.

"Purchasing advice" still ends up being more the opinion of the reviewer and it's reflected in the actual score of the game. I mean, if you want purely "purchasing advice" rather than the critical review you need not look further than the score. It's indicative of how the reviewer saw the experience and reflects also how they felt about the game length and maybe sometimes the price without having to explicitly state it.

The reviewer can't be in the head of an entire broad audience, but what they can do is put themselves out there, make their tastes known, and find or have the audience find them.

I don't hate people for buying games based on length.

For those on a budget, it is prudent. If I am strapped for cash, and can't afford many games (like when I was in college with not much income) the 100 hour Skyrim is probably a better fit than Gone Home. Most of us growing up can remember back to the days when we'd get games used, or for things like christmas or birthdays - we'd inevitably look for the game we'd get the most time out of, since those occasions were so few :)

I am saddened that people in this situation might not experience wonderful titles like Gone Home or Journey, but I can understand the logic behind using that as a deciding factor for game purchasing. This is also why I think PS+ and the instant game collection are great.

My problem with Kuchera's article is that he's doing what far too many writers do these days. He is commenting on gaming press, not on games.

I don't hate people for buying games based on length.

For those on a budget, it is prudent. If I am strapped for cash, and can't afford many games (like when I was in college with not much income) the 100 hour Skyrim is probably a better fit than Gone Home. Most of us growing up can remember back to the days when we'd get games used, or for things like christmas or birthdays - we'd inevitably look for the game we'd get the most time out of, since those occasions were so few :)

I am saddened that people in this situation might not experience wonderful titles like Gone Home or Journey, but I can understand the logic behind using that as a deciding factor for game purchasing. This is also why I think PS+ and the instant game collection are great.

My problem with Kuchera's article is that he's doing what far too many writers do these days. He is commenting on gaming press, not on games.

Too bad, the moment you slapped a 5-star rating on it, it became buying advice regardless of your intent. You could have done something like Danielle Riendeau and written an opinion piece in addition to (or instead of) a review.

The thing is, again, I don't really want reviewers to write their reviews with price and length in mind, I just think that's (even by Patrick's admission) important advice for the reader to take into consideration after reading the review and coming to a purchasing decision. Whether or not reviews are written as buying advice, that is what they effectively are. There's a box of information next to reviews that include things like platform, release date, developer, etc, and I think it would be trivial to modify those boxes to include launch price of the product and the estimated length of time to completion based on the reviewers experience.

That information, if considered important by the critics themselves, should be surfaced somewhere for the readers benefit. Walk the talk.

Different strokes for different people. I'm a broke college student and I play one maybe two full priced retail games a year. I bought Bioshock Infinite and The Last of Us and that's probably it for me this year (even though I want to play Gone Home, and buy a PS4, and really really want GTA V). I understand the unique position that reviewers are in and I understand that games are evolving as a medium where qualities like playtime matter less and less.

I'd still like reviewers to acknowledge something like a higher than average price point though. I think a long time ago on a bombcast, Gerstmann said that ultimately reviews are for consumers. You can write a thought piece about how great or meaningful a game is, but don't call it a review (OH MAN THE TORRENT OF YOU CAN'T DEFINE A REVIEW IS INCOMING) unless you want people to use it for a specific purpose. That specific purpose in my eyes is to act as a buyer's guide. It helps me weigh the value proposition of a game and gives me some peace of mind when half of my gaming budget for the year disappears with a single click.

Some people say that reviews for games grounded in more material concerns such as playtime or replay value keep games from being elevated to the lofty standards held by other artistic forms. Some people believe that games must cross over into the murky and intangible; we must abandon all attempts at defining an objective view of a product. We have to look past the trivial and shallow entirely to appreciate a game's artistic merits. I respectfully disagree. We can have reviews and criticism. Reviews help people like me decide why they should spend sixty dollars on one particular piece of plastic as opposed to another. Criticism analyzes a game and what it tries to do within in the context of the medium. You can have a negative review of a game citing lack of replay value or little mechanical innovation followed directly by a piece praising the exact same game for tackling an untouched social issue in an interesting way. Likewise, you can have a game absolutely bashed by critics for having racist undertones but still review well because of the well put together multiplayer. I love reading game criticism for games I may never play and game reviews have saved me from quite a few missteps. We can have both. Movies do. Books do. Why not games?

Anyway, I get where people are coming from. The average gamer today is 35 (I read that somewhere, I don't know). That means (hopefully) that most people playing games have a job and more money than time. My situation may be somewhat unique in that I have more time than money (though these days it feels like I have precious little of either). I think that Kuchera, as aggressive as his article may seem, has a point. It bugged me a little after reading Patrick's review that he didn't even mention the $20 price for Gone Home which seems to be at most a 2-3 hour game. I'm glad that he went back and later acknowledged his unique position. As @sergio pointed out though, the instant you put something like a score on a game, it signals a review. I've been reading reviews for games since before I ever started playing them and I've grown to believe that the purpose of articles with a score attached is to help consumers make the call on whether or not to invest their hard earned cash. Maybe common perception of what a review is and what it's meant for will change, but I don't think it has yet.

These are my two cents on this whole thang. Sorry for the wall of text.

I totally agree with Ben on the subject. For me Gone Home was worth the 17 or 18 bucks or whatever it was that I paid for it. But I also got a pretty big check the day before, and only had time to play through something short before I had to move. But for two months before that, I was temporarily out of my job and every penny I spent on entertainment mattered. If Gone Home had come out during that period, and I had spent nearly 20 bucks on an experience that I didn't realize was 2 hours long, I would have been livid. The quality of the game would have been the same, but my experience with it would have been dramatically more negative. Price matters, and I don't understand why anybody would choose to ignore it. It's not like acknowledging value will diminish games as an art form or something.

And I get the argument that value is too subjective to assess, but you only have to compare this game to it's peers to notice the disparity, Gone Home is 5-10 dollars more, and 2-3 hours shorter than even the shortest of them. It's an obvious outlier. I would just like to reiterate that I love this game, even though I seem to do nothing but talk shit about it.

There is that word again.

"pretentious"

I think it's the duty of a reviewer to inform the customer what they're in for. Gone Home, no matter what you think of it, is not a long game and at a relatively high price, by any estimation. It's not a good value for the kind of player who wants a long and 'valuable' experience. It seems at worst disingenuous to not tell the consumer that this isn't the game for them if it's that kind of person and nothing about this game, to me, justifies an influential reviewer to say "go out and buy it now" when it's obviously going to be divisive. "Go out and buy it, if you like x and x and x," would have been an appropriate replacement.