The Dialogue of a Games Review
The entirety of this blog has been dedicated to gaming. Some
of it is dedicated to the industry, some of it is dedicated to criticism, and
the majority of it has been dedicated to game review. However, this most
dominant of things is actually the thing that I loathe and love the most.
Games review is inherently subjective. It’s also largely
used as a compass, and in this sense it is viewed as an objective tool with
which one can guide him or herself to their desired gaming destination. In this
light it’s easy to see why the ambivalence exists, and so strongly: who really
knows where they want to end up, and how many of those people actually know how
to get there? And yet therein is my implied task: to guide and direct the flow
of fulfillment.
What I’ve discovered to be helpful in this effort then is to
establish an internal dialogue with myself whenever I’m faced with the task of
reviewing a game. This doesn’t reduce its loathsomeness, but it does make the
process smoother. Unfortunately, it’s become increasingly apparent to me (and
my readers) that properly receiving the information presented in one of these
reviews is difficult without knowing the process and purpose behind it…
SO THIS IS HOW IT
GOES
Someone asks, Is this
game worth playing?
This is a valid question, but it isn’t a good one. Most
people confuse the idea of “validity” with “quality”. Just because a question
is valid doesn’t mean it’s worth answering. It could just be that the question
makes sense but that its answer is completely worthless. And a worthless answer
to a valid question makes that question a reasonably worthless question. And
yet, this is the question most often used as the propellant for the creation of
a review.
And so I respond,
Before I answer that, let me ask you a question.
One should never answer a bad question with a straight
answer. In fact, doing so only perpetuates the act of asking bad (but valid)
questions. So I instead initiate a conversation, a dialogue, that ends in the
formulation of a better question.
They say, Fine.
Only unreasonable people would say NO. Don’t be unreasonable.
I say, Why do you want
to play this game?
Now, the answer to this question is the key to the
formulation of the better question. Most people need to be led to this point
because they can’t be bothered to ask themselves this question more seriously.
And with good cause: the answer to this particular question is never a complex
sentence. It’s usually not even a compound sentence. A possible answer:
I’m bored.
Unfortunately this disyllabic phrase doesn’t inspire many to
deep, meditative self-reflection, but within its depths lies that better
question. It just requires a bit more dialogue to draw it out.
Why are you bored?
The power of the question “why” lies in its tedium. It can
always be asked, again and again, digging deeper and deeper into the core of
its target. But, like any act of digging, it is a means and not an end in
itself, and overzealous application of the word “why” may dig one past the
stratum of interest. As interesting as it sounds to reach the core of a target,
that isn’t the purpose of this line of questioning. The purpose is to provide
an answer to the question “Is this game
worth playing?”
Don’t get distracted now.
SPANNING THE DIVIDE
So I’ll stop here and for a moment elaborate on the danger
of getting distracted from that purpose of asking why, because the truth is
that once we set ourselves on a course of “why” it’s often hard to know when to
stop and get off. The inertia of “why” is tremendous due to its promises of
uncovering cores and essences and other cool catchwords. But the intent here is
not catchwords. It’s information.
As a result, I’ve come to understand that my job when I
review games is not to speculate, criticize, or destabilize some kind of core
or essential argument, it’s to elucidate it. My job is to report facts both
qualitatively and quantitatively, to the best of my ability and the extent
which the game lends itself to be measured in these two modes. The process of
elucidation then is by means of this dialogue. By asking and answering the
question “why” in varying degrees and with increasing precision I can dutifully sift out the dross from the gold, not unlike the
pioneering gold pioneers of the pioneering era of gold pioneering as they
pioneered for gold with their…pioneering materials.
The question of “why” beyond the point of boredom is as far as I find myself
needing to go in order to clarify the intent of a game and in turn relay it to
a reader. This means that anything outside and beyond the scope of that stratum
of interest is totally and utterly outside the scope of my responsibility as a
reviewer. This means a lot. This is where things go wrong.
THIS IS WHERE YOU
COME IN
This means that the burden of significance in evaluating the
quality of a game largely falls upon you, the reader and ultimately the player.
But this is an unpopular contention because readers (rightfully, in some
measure) assume that the bulk of the responsibility in a review falls upon the
reviewer. The reason this isn’t true and this assumption is so completely
unrightful is because no one ever seems to ask what exactly that responsibility
is.
Just because 90% of the word “reviewer” is comprised of the
word “review” does not mean that the “reviewer” shoulders 110% of the burden.
In fact the relationship, and hence the responsibility, is purely and literally
nominal. The rest of the responsibility, the philosophical responsibility,
falls upon the reader. This is because the philosophical argument for “Is this game worth playing?” is in fact “Why should I play this game?” which is
in fact a question that no one can answer except yourself. And the correct
answer to this question is contingent not upon a concise and well-argued
presentation, but on clear and unadulterated facts. And that is the part that
the reviewer is responsible for.
The answer to the question “I’m bored” is the answer that the reviewer needs in order to
present the cornucopia of experiences and facts contained within a given game
in such a way that you, the reader, can compile and categorize them so as to make
the best possible decision when it comes to spending the various forms of time
that have on your hands.
THE MORAL OF THE
STORY
Reviewing games is about facts, which is why it falls under
the realm of journalism. But reviewing has fallen out of its element mostly
because it’s gotten confused about its purpose and has been tempted by the
glory and attention garnered by humor, wit, and greed.
Publishers leverage the fact that people aren’t
introspective; that they don’t find and build these necessary foundations for
making reasonable time-consumption decisions. Those foundations must be built
in order for the decision to be made, but they don’t need to be good ones. This
is what publishers exploit with hype, marketspeak, and catchwords. And this is
what reviewers are beginning to understand as well. Reviewers have begun to
leverage the void in their audience, implanting expectations, ideas, and
arguments and then simply fulfilling them. They simply do it with a bit more
flash and much fancier words.
This is what I hate. The pressure to create “readable”
material is in fact the pressure to fabricate a desire in the consumer to
play the game. It isn’t about transmitting or distilling or extrication, it’s
about making people feel good. And when I succumb to this pressure, this increasingly
enormous pressure, I falter. I fail because I can’t suppress the feeling that I’m
being disingenuous or telling people what they ought to think and not to think
for themselves. And what really ought to be happening is that reviewers should be
expected to report 2 things: what the game is, and what the reviewer thinks
about what that is. In turn, the greatest pressure that a reviewer should feel
isn’t the pressure to produce something readable.
It should be the pressure to keep their opinions and their
facts separate.