It’s a common mistake to assume that the delivery of some big message or the exploration of some weighty modern theme indicates the possession of an underlying intelligence. Thus, there’s an incorrect perception by some commentators on the game industry that games which do feature these elements are necessarily “smarter” than their counterparts that do not.

This naïve and unfortunate attitude is on display in full force in a new interview on Gamasutra with Derek Littlewood, the Project Lead of the forthcoming Haze—not by him, but by the hysterical game industry journalist that is interviewing him. “Did you make Haze because you were simply fed up with the stupidity of most video games?” he asks at one point. Later on he repeats much the same thing, in an accusatory way: “Why are games so stupid? Who's to blame?” Beyond being bad journalism, this is a completely misguided line of questioning. A game (in fact, any form of art) does not need to have a message to be smart.

A good counter-example is Portal. Erik Wolpaw, its writer, made this point in a sly way in his own recent interview:

Also, there is cake. Why’s that?

Well, there are lots of message games coming out now. Like they’ve got something really important to get off their chest about the war in Iraq or the player is forced to make some dicey underwater moral choices. Really, just a whole heck of a lot of stuff to think about. With that in mind, at the beginning of the Portal development process, we sat down as a group to decide what philosopher or school of philosophy our game would be based on. That was followed by about fifteen minutes of silence and then someone mentioned that a lot of people like cake.

I count at least five of them.

Level 5
Factor 5
Red 5 Studios
5th Cell Media
G5 Entertainment

“The first half of Assassin’s Creed is a truly clairvoyant experience. You’ve never played anything like it. The sagacious story, incalculable crowd interaction, and unprecedented freedom to traverse the environment how you choose are landmark moments.”

– GameTrailers.com.

Anyone who’s worked in the game industry for some time has been on a project that came in under the wire– so much so, in fact, that this is unfortunately many people’s exclusive experience with shipping games. Aside from the obvious negative effect this has on our quality of life, and our desirability as an industry for the world’s best creative talent, the last-minute cuts and the seemingly heroic hacks show through in the shipping product as well. Here are some elements to look for in determining how a game’s production went, from smooth sailing (mythical as that may be) to the worst bare-knuckle stress and drama.

Before I begin, I’d like to note that Mass Effect is a great game that I thoroughly enjoyed. I use it as an example here because it’s fresh in my mind, and because I get the feeling that it was meant to be more– maybe much more– than what ended up on the gold disc. I don’t know anyone personally who works at BioWare Edmonton, so everything you’ll read here is just a guess on my part. I mean them no ill– Mass Effect is all the more a triumph, and the team all the more laudable, for overcoming the adversities I’m certain the project faced.

Scott Sharkey of 1UP.com wrote a list of “tips” for game developers to help improve review scores for their game. I don’t want to sound like I’m on some kind of vendetta – I’m actually quite happy with the review scores for the last title I worked on – but it occurred to me that this exchange of tips might fruitfully go both ways. Just as the 1UP piece isn’t (I hope) meant to implicate all games or all developers, I don’t mean this little response to be a blanket indictment of anyone who has ever written about games, either. Like its companion piece, it is simply a list of pet peeves… except without any funny pictures.