A Few Fundamental Truths About Game Reviews So Stop Being So Mad
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| Always remember: If it makes lots of money, it is perfect and immune to criticism. |
To catch you up: Theres a game called Grand Theft Auto V. Maybe youve heard of it. Like all games in the series, you commit horrible, violent crimes. Arguably, in V, those crimes tend to be a bit more on the gruesome, appalling scale than in earlier games.
Reviews are coming out. Greg Tito of the Escapist gave the game the shocking, war-crime level rating of 3.5 stars out of 5, saying "only buy Grand Theft Auto V if youre prepared to play as characters with no justifiable motivation for doing awful things to people."
Predictably, their forums exploded into haterage, as a huge portion of gamers are nothing but giant, ambulatory, exposed nerves mainly good for the spraying of spite.
So Greg Tito had to back up the largely obvious, expected, self-evident points he made earlier with a long follow-up article. Its worthy reading.
Man, I loves me some good internet drama. Its like fudge. I can eat it all day. Keeps me from working. But ...
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| oh god why am i trying so tired so tired |
A Few Sanity Comments
1. Evaluating the worth of a work of art with a number, a clump of stars, or the positioning of ones thumb is completely arbitrary and useless. We know that, right? Ignore it. You cant judge a work of art with a number. Its not like theres some Art Scale you can put art on and weigh it and say, "This weighs 7.32 Arts, so its good."
2. The point of a critic is to criticize. Anyone in our developing art form who actually tries to stand up and make real points is worth applauding, even if we dont agree.
3. If you, as a critic, dont ever make a bunch of people angry at you, youre wasting your time. If youre never challenging anyone, why are you bothering?
4. Also, ProTip: When a carefully reasoned comment makes someone angry, that means youre on the right track. When you are being calm and thoughtful and people still rage at you, it means you hit a nerve that probably needed hitting.
5. As the art form matures, you have to expect that really egregious crap is going to get called out more and more. Sure, youre allowed to make a game thats morally repellent. But realize, as gamers grow up, have kids, and start to lose family members, they�re learning just how funny death isnt. The voices saying, "Why are the biggest, most glorious, most expensive worlds in the game industry being used for such a horrific end?" are only going to get louder.
6. This just makes me appreciate Saints Row IV so much more. Practically all of the comical violence in it is directed against evil, invading aliens or computer simulations. Makes it go down easier for us olds. And, yes, I am plausibly pointing out Saints Row as the sane, mature option, which is how we know that the world has gone mad.
7. A lot of the comments claim everything Greg Tito says is invalid forever because he gave Dragon Age II 5 stars out of 5. One, if youre wrong once, it doesnt mean you cant be right 500 times after that. And, two, read Sanity Comment #1 again.
8. That Grand Theft Auto V depicts what it does and yet is as popular as it is is very interesting. I think it says something about us as people. And Im not about to get all liberal and sensitive and say that its something inherently bad. I think the game addresses less the desire to do wrong and more a deeper, fundamental frustration. Not sure. Just a hunch. Bears more thought.
9. Finally. If we are going to assign numerical values to represent the value of a work of art in a storytelling medium (which we shouldnt, because its dumb and useless), it is necessary to take the quality of the story into account. I mean, right?
Yeah, Ill probably play GTA V one of these days. For as long as I can stand it, anyway. It sounds like a stunning technical accomplishment, the sort of thing a game designer has to play to keep ones skills current. I just dream of a day when the most technically spectacular games can be played with my kids in the room.