Personal social views as a central part of a game critique

@mctaters said:

This seems like a strange response to the industry's over-reliance on Metacritic. Should every game just get a top score because a reviewer doesn't want to be responsible for layoffs? If not, where do we draw the lines for what is reasonable criticism to include in scoring? Reviewers have to be allowed to write reviews that reflect their experience, because that is theoretically what the review is intended to reflect.

In the case that precipitated the thread, Gies found the sexualization so off-putting that it pulled him out of the game. Others did not find it so. Everyone's scores reflect their experiences. There isn't an objectively "correct" way to feel about it, so saying you must/must not include certain aspects of your experience in the score is...a really weird thing to say.

Reviews have a purpose, to inform me if a game is sufficiently designed and integrated in it's components. I do not mind the reviewer commenting on material according to their own bias, as long as they cover the salient points of, at the end of the day, is it 'good' or not. My prejudices are the same as Alex's, and not Jeff's in an earlier posted example. As long as they told me the objective info, I am fine with social issue commenting. Thus I will be avoiding Blackwater as a bad game I dislike, or Mortal Combat as a good game I dislike. Or even the GTA series, not including Vice City (guilty pleasure)

Pretty much that. Stay Pro as a Reviewer. I myself am looking for more than opinion.

For a long time I have thought that reviews should contain two separate scores/analyses. An objective score based solely on the technical and mechanical aspects of the game. And a subjective one based on story and theme.

Now, I understand that this is a lot to ask and ultimately leads to a similar end result to what we already have. But it would give a platform for both types of reviews without people feeling that the reviewer is injecting their social/political views without cause.

"Objectivly, I give this game an 8. However, subjectively I give it a 6. Here's why..."

Edit: Although, in the end they would have to give it a single score or it could cause confusion.

So perhaps something like this:

"Objective score: 8

Subjective score: 6

Overall score: 7.5"

So what do you do if a game as control scheme that is controversial, but not unresponsive? Or if a game has rough textures, but outstanding art design? Where does the objective part end and the subjective part begin? Gamespot did away with the "objective formula" because they realized it was a poor representation of how game reviews should be and it did their reviews a disservice. Claiming objectivity opens more cans of worms than it closes.

@thatpinguino:

Well, I guess the simplest way would be to present fact and then opinion. Although this already happens.

I think I just like the idea of presenting unbiased information and biased opinions as two separate parts of the same whole. Although how practical that is as a reviewing scheme is a different story. Lol.

Reviews are subjective. One persons idea of tight and responsive handling could be another persons idea of too sticky and finicky. Someone could find a certain art style visually pleasing while another may find it visually obnoxious. I don't think there is any "truth" when a person reviews a game besides, maybe, the cost of the game, the system or systems it runs on, and things like the frame rate and screen resolution. Everything else, controls and the feel of the game, art direction and style, graphics, sound design, writing and plot, etc are all things that are up to personal taste. I love the feel and flow of Borderlands Pre-Sequel combat so far and it doesn't feel clunky or slow, but Jeff on the Bombcast seems to think just the opposite. Many people think Drive Club had great feel to the driving, again other people playing it feel the opposite. How is any of that objective? It can't be, it's all subjective.

It sounds like people want a reviewer to disclose whether a certain element in the game lowered the score and then how much the score was lowered. That seems really picky to me. What if a reviewer said that they mentioned fan service as a detracting element, but only deducted 0.25 from their overall review score of 7.75, making the final score a 7.5 total? Would people actually believe that if the reviewer attempted to disclose something like that? I think not. If you look at how high to almost perfect review scores were for something like GTA V, people still flipped when a reviewer mentioned their personal feelings regarding characters and plot. The score was still almost perfect, but I guess not perfect enough? What's the point? I feel like we're trying to tilt at windmills here.

In the end, I view reviews as a thing to read to get a feel for a game. Hopefully the reviewer mentions the really bad stuff like bugs. That's what I really want as a consumer. I want someone to tell me if the game doesn't work, if the thing is broken. I don't care if they decide to write a few lines on a character's design because that is something that I can view as their personal opinion and therefore it carries less weight to me. Also, I believe review scores are pretty much bunk at this point. They mean nothing to me. There are too many games that I love that I bet reviewed poorly, and yet I still love them and got much enjoyment out of them, and too many games that have perfect scores that you couldn't pay me to play. If you enjoy it, who cares what a reviewer says or what score it gets?

Yeah it would be great if you could apply some kind of subjectivity filter to get to the objective parts of a game. But if you really think about it, there is no way to review games, or any media, that way. The GB approach is the best I have seen so far: let your writers write based on how they feel, state that all reviews are subjective, and give the audience all of the information required to see the staff's biases. Now if we could just get rid of review scores entirely I think reviews would be in a much better place. No more false equivalences between games based on review scores. No more complaining about a score being too high or low or just right. No more metacritic based bonuses for devs. Some day a major publication will take that step and I think the industry will be better off for it.

www.objectivegamereviews.com?

@dr_insane: I don't see any reason that the site can't be both. Why can't they talk about the fun aspects of video games AND the serious social issues that are effecting the industry? If you don't particularly like social commentary, you can stay away from those articles and focus on the other stuff. And people who do think that these issues are worth talking about can do so too.

Every piece of content on the site does not have to appeal to every single user.

@thatpinguino:

yeah, you're right. Instead of translating feelings into numerical scores, it really does have to go off of feeling and experience.

I really liked the way Brad summarized destiny a few weeks ago,

"It's the worst game I can't stop playing." Or something like that.

That one line said more to me, personally, than any review score could.

I'm already at that point. I unfollowed Brad on twitter because its becoming a vortex of "this side is winning and the other is losing" mentality. Gaming sites are becoming tabloids now by reporting everything about anything and getting hundreds/thousands of comments on it.

@excast said:

That's probably one part of it. I think what a lot of people are also missing is that it's not just that they're centralized in a liberal part of the country, their audience is international with a wide variety of cultural differences in regards to any issue. I mean, just look at that GB duders map. You have people following this site in more or less every corner of the world. And I am sure that's accurate for any website that's in English. It's global. But that also brings with it the possibility of global culture crashes, so to speak.

Because reviewers currently aren't good at being respectful to their audience when the serious social issues they bring up in their reviews cause people to get upset. Even Giantbomb openly mocks people for getting bent out of shape for the scores they give. It's like the gaming industrys favorite thing to do. My problem with adding social commentary in reviews is how irresponsible the reviewers tend to be about addressing their audience whether it is about a disagreement over a score or something with more meaning.

Why should anyone let alone an author respect a reader who gets bent out of shape for a score of 7/10? Suggesting it is the author's problem is loopy. And what does "respect the audience" mean? If the author writes up something that is tonally and thematically towards the target audience then that is more than enough. If the author writes up something one doesn't like people shouldn't mistake that for disrespect.

Why shouldn't you just treat everyone with respect?

I would like to believe I do but suggesting any author needs to cater to some unknown person because they may whine or complain isn't about respect. Demanding they change their material because someone is whiny and complaining shows disrespect.

Another way to look at it: It is funny people get bent out of shape over "a video game review score" so the GiantBomb crew should be free to joke about it. Is it appropriate to put that in a review? Probably not but that is for the editor to decide instead of some random reader.

People have been losing their minds over scores for years. 8.8 y'all.

This fandom has never ever reacted well to any sort of criticism, valid or otherwise. I can never remember the gaming community treating critics who actually tried to be critical well.

The social commentary aspect + social media just pours gasoline on an fire that's been burning for decades.

I'm sure the groupthink that pervades a lot of outlets reviews doesn't help either but I don't think the primary cause of this mutual antagonism between reviewer and gamer is a generational issue. I think it primarily has to do with the hyper defensiveness a very vocal segment of gamers have about this medium.The difference today perhaps is the degree of the anatogonism, which does seem inarguably worse.

Because they're supposed to be the professionals. I just have always found it shitty how they do it on air and openly mock the community that they write for. It definitely doesn't help anything. So what if someone gets bent out of shape over a 7/10? They could be fucking 12 and not know any better. No reason to make fun of them.

I wouldn't say that mocking someone who gets bent out of shape over a review score is insulting your audience. You don't have to adjust your coverage to appeal to or coddle every viewpoint a potential reader could hold. You don't have to act like sending a death threat is an appropriate response to a low review score. You don't have to respect someone's opinion when they are complaining about the review score of game they didn't even play in language that shows that they didn't read the review. If someone is going through your review looking for a fight, that person isn't actually part of your audience.

I don't think that you have to pull punches to not offend upset 12 year olds. The sooner people gain a bit of perspective the better.

I'm not saying change coverage to appeal to them or coddle every viewpoint but they are insulting their audience. Just a small subset of their audience that the rest of the audience also seems to not like. I can't believe I have to even clarify this but I'm not saying that you have to think sending a death threat is an appropriate response to a low review score. Even mentioning that shows that you're not actually listening to what I'm saying.

I'm having kind of a shitty day so maybe that's effecting my opinion but I have started to get really turned off by the different levels of contempt that the gaming press has for their audience. They're bullys sometimes. I think it's a problem and is a much bigger problem when they're also including their personal social views because they're even more invested in proving people wrong. Most of the dialogue oozes condescension which just fires people up more. No one likes to be lectured at.

I am listening to what you are saying. I just gave an extreme example because that is the level of response that a reviewer can expect when giving a controversial opinion or review. They can and do expect that level of abuse from their audience. I just think that the level of vitriol that game writers receive for doing their job can be grating and constant. The extreme responses they have been receiving for years (decades in some cases) haven't changed or decreased. They keep seeing the same juvenile crap year after year and I'm sure it gets tiring.

I don't see calling out bad behavior on the part of your audience as bullying so long as you are clear in what you are doing. If you are intentionally antagonistic for no reason, that is a different problem entirely. No one in the reviewing business should be attacking their audience purely to hurt them.

As for espousing social views, it is becoming increasingly clear that there is a section of the audience that equates voicing an opinion in any format with lecturing and moralizing. I think it is on that section of the audience to become more nuanced in how they consume criticism. As for writing where the author is editorializing and is moralizing, perhaps more sites need a clearly defined op-ed section rather than one generic articles section to differentiate the news articles from the op-ed. Most sites post stories into one bucket and I suppose a reader could make the mistake of treating an op-ed like an ordinary article if the distinction isn't explicitly made.

It all serves a purpose. Let people write whatever they want. If they find an audience for their ideas- fantastic. The internet is the perfect capitalist environment- almost no barrier for entry nowadays.

This is why I come to Giant Bomb. I'm intimately familiar with the staff's preferences and quirks so when they review a game I have context for their opinion. Even if they were to include social critique (which they don't really do in their reviews anyway) I wouldn't be blind-sided by it.

I don't know what to say, yeah, they're going to have to deal with some bozos. It comes with the territory of working in any kind of press. I'm not denying that their job is hard. I just don't think they try hard enough to rise above the trash. They're down in the trenches slinging mud right back at their readers.

My general opinion is that personal social views are absolutely something that should be part of a review. Reviews are fundamentally opinions, and I would argue that it is largely impossible for anyone to prevent deeply held beliefs from informing their opinion on a particular subject, even if they try really, really hard. If a reviewer doesn't like Bayonetta because of how they feel it portrays women, that's perfectly O.K. That social view is part of the author's opinion, and if it was distracting enough to limit his or her enjoyment of a particular game, than that's something that should certainly be expressed in the review. That said, it isn't the social view itself, but rather how that social view is expressed that makes for a "good" or a "bad" review.

To be reductive, when a writer is saying that they like, dislike, or are kind of "meh" about a game, they are really making a thesis statement for their review. A "good" review is one that will take that thesis statement and defend it in an intelligent and cogent manner. Even if you don't necessarily agree with the ultimate score or opinion, you can at least see where the reviewer is coming from. By contrast a "bad" review is going to leave you feeling a disconnect between the score the game is given, and what the reviewer actually wrote about their experience. Consider the following examples, which I totally made up on the spot without actually playing the game. Maybe I can get a job working for a publisher's PR and Marketing Department? (Ha. I kid. Or do I?)

EXAMPLE 1 - "Bayonetta 2 is a game that has awesome combat, and an enjoyably ridiculous plot, all of which make for great fun when it works. However, its constant fetishization of the female form left me feeling uncomfortable and frequently embarrassed while playing. It's repeated focus on Bayonetta as a sex object instead of a kick-ass heroine is something which took me out of the flow of the gameplay and made me enjoy my playing time significantly less. Such a portrayal of the title character is as distracting as it is unnecessary - I don't need gratuitous shots of Bayonetta's rear end to enjoy the over-the-top story or addictive combat mechanics." - Score: 7.5

EXAMPLE 2 - "Bayonetta 2 is a blast to play. Whether you are chaining up massive combos using ridiculously over the top and beautifully rendered special moves or simply enjoying the zaniness and energy of the story line, Bayonetta 2 is a experience well worth the $60-plus price of admission. Years from now, it's a game we'll be talking about as part of the pantheon of great action games, right along side the best of the Devil May Cry and God of War series. However, the portrayal of Bayonetta leaves a lot to be desired, particularly given this is 2014." - Score: 7.5

Now, both reviews gave the game the same score, and both took issue with the way the character is portrayed. However, I'd argue that Example 1 was a "good" (or at least "better") review, because it did a better job of expressing exactly what it was about the portrayal of Bayonetta that was so off-putting. For example, the review mentioned what the reviewer felt was gratuitous focus on Bayonetta's body, and that he or she was uncomfortable and embarrassed to be playing the game. Not exactly something you would call a positive. It would be difficult to read that review and not guess that those issues were going to affect the score somehow. In other words, the author's social opinion was used to effectively explain and defend the thesis that Bayonetta 2 deserved a 7.5.

By contrast, Example 2 is what I would think of as a "bad" review. I can tell the author has an opinion about how Bayonetta was portrayed, but that opinion is never fully engaged with. Instead, it is thrown in right at the end as an afterthought. As a reader, I'm having a much harder time working out how, if at all, the author's social opinion informed the 7.5 score. Was the portrayal of Bayonetta really that bad, or were the story and gameplay not quite as awesome as the author made them seem? If the portrayal really was that bad, it would seem to demand more attention given the praise lavished on the game. But if it wasn't that distracting, why mention it at all? The author isn't taking their social view and using it to defend their thesis effectively. It's just sort of there to be there, which makes for an ineffective review.

I'll just rant with some observations I've made. I will agree that Metacritic is a problem, but it is NOT a problem related to social activist criticism. It was a problem before that and it continues to be a problem now.

The only problem that should matter is with writers viewing their personal social/political beliefs as the only truth and applying critique and judgement onto games or even threatening developers for violating that perceived universal truth in effort to force change by any means necessary. Honesty or integrity be damned. The problem is, we've only had a very, very small number of developers talk about this and as far as I know, they didn't name any names. Until that time comes, there's nothing wrong with expanding the types of critics we have critiquing games. Film criticism also has this "issue," but it's made up for by a large number fairly experienced and unique critics to balance everything out. As for gaming criticism these days, it seems like just about anyone can get hired to do that job at certain gaming sites regardless of their experience playing or writing about video games. If you look at some vocal social critics at a certain site, you won't see much video games writing prior to being hired. You will find Tumblr blogs, though. Also, veterans seem to always leave this industry to work elsewhere or go to work as a developer. That's a problem.

Really, this is why I was always skeptical of writers who talked about moving video games reviews away from being "product" reviews where the criticism goes beyond things like graphics, controls, gameplay, features, sound, etc. In other words, critiquing games through a very narrow and specific societal view and providing outrageously harsh critiquing on the story, characters and setting. It's no wonder many of these people happen to also have something to say about violence in video games and were disappointed in Bioshock: Infinite after the first hour. You know, when you actually had to play the video game. In this way, virtually anyone can review a video game when you only really care about a few things within it.

I'm more concerned with the close relationship between the media and publishers and developers. No outlet should have to be afraid of losing access to a publisher. No one should have to play ball on a publishers terms in order to stay competitive. How many of you even read previews anymore? For many sites, they're utterly worthless and we know why that is. Go to any Metacritic page for a recent game release. How many of those sites would you even trust? Social activism is hardly the biggest issue regarding video game critiquing. There's a reason why people come to GiantBomb. These were singular video game personalities we all grew to trust from Gamespot when it was one of two or three major online review sites. I think that's also why YouTube criticism is gaining popularity. You get immediate access to a personality and can judge rather quickly whether they're worth returning to for serious games coverage or not. Hell, most younger gamers only go to YouTube for ALL of their gaming content.

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I think it's fair.

People should feel free to express their criticisms of certain elements of a game in light of their own personal beliefs. It's a review! Reviews are subjective opinions (redundant, I know). I mean, sure, when it comes to video games talking about less subjective things like length and, you know, features, is also a great thing to have in a review. But yeah, if someone wants to lose their shit over Bayonetta, that's fiiiiine.

It's also fine for someone to audibly roll their eyes if someone loses their shit over Bayonetta. AUDIBLY. ROLL. EYES.

Actually, Roger Ebert did exactly that when reviewing horror films many times. On Sneak Previews him and Gene Siskel even did what basically amounted to an episode very similar to Anita Sarkessian's Tropes vs Women series.

We are all, to some degree, shaped and mouled by our social experiences and our thought process affected thusly. I feel it's fair to raise these types of points as long as the message does not become "preachy". Make your point and I will decide if it is something that would bother me or not. If the issue at hand had an effect on the final score that's ok to as long as that is clearly stated and the salient points of the review have been covered. What may not bother me might be very important to the next person.

I think that's why, after time, we begin to learn which reviewers more accurately reflect our own personal views and we tend to come back and value these opinions more than others.

There are some games that would almost require social context, such as ones that contain heavy satire like GTA or even Postal. If a professional were to do social critique on it, it should either be as a separate opinion piece or attempt to be as unbiased as possible, similar to examining any other aspect in a review.

On the Bayonetta reviews, personally I think it's a bit "iffy" that they'd bring up the oversexualisation of the protagonist without discussing it in the context of the "over-the-topness" of the rest of the game.

Reviews, first and foremost, should be honest.

Reviewers shouldn't feel the need to tailor their opinions to fit the whims of the potential audience.

If a reviewer comments on social issues in a game, some readers will complain. If a reviewer fails to comment on social issues in a game, some readers will complain. So just write honestly about your experience with a game, what affected you, what you liked, what you didn't like.

As a reader of game reviews, if you consistently don't like a particular author or site's reviews, if you actually find yourself upset about what they write, maybe they're just not for you. There's no shortage of reviews out there, and there's bound to be a site you'll be happy with.

But if you read a review and simply disagree with an author's opinion (or parts of it), you can still respect an honest, well-written review for what it is.

Not every review needs to align perfectly with your views/gaming preferences for it to be valid criticism/commentary.

@leroyoctopus: great clip thanks!