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.
Shaky writing skills.
Grammatical mistakes, leaden or awkward phrases, and blatant typos richly populate the output of the gaming press. It’s arguable that the instantaneous nature of Internet publishing, combined with journalism’s always-tight deadlines, don’t make for an environment where perfectly constructed sentences can be fashioned every moment. But some writers who cover the industry show that it can be successfully done. And while you’re proofreading, how about check for banalities or excising some overused clichés? You may very well indeed cry when you encounter yet another game with those blasted quick-time events. But nobody wants to hear the shopworn wisecrack about your “salty tears,” your “bitter tears,” your “hot tears,” or whatever tears you’re crying today. If you don’t have anything new in your bag of tricks, how can you successfully take game developers to task for the same thing?
Regurgitation of marketing materials.
The big publishers sometimes view the enthusiast press as extensions of their marketing departments, and it’s pretty easy to understand why. If you’re flown out to a studio for a preview, why would you just note down everything the demonstrator says about how awesome the game will be, and publish that as your article? It sounds dumb written out here, but I see this happen with alarming regularity. And if the title genuinely doesn’t look like it’s shaping up, don’t say you are “cautiously excited” for the game, or that “hopefully, these issues will be addressed in time for release.” You know how much time there is left – if it’s just a month or a few weeks before release, you understand as well as anyone in the industry that the game you’re playing is pretty much exactly what will be on store shelves.
Disrespect of opposing viewpoints.
“I was never a fan of this game series,” you say, but here’s a news post about it. If you’re posting news, nobody cares what your personal opinion of the game or game series is, especially if you have nothing good to say. Reviews are one thing, where you can support your arguments with exact details on how the game succeeds or doesn’t. Knee-jerk reactions and flippant comments are another. You’re not some random dude posting on a forum – you’re a journalist, supposedly engendering respect, someone who’s opinions are carefully considered, backed up with evidence, and meant to be taken seriously. If all you really, dearly want is for everyone to just see things exactly the way you do, you’re in the wrong business. Consider a career in auteur film direction.
Skimming the surface.
Don’t lazily write things like “the music is about what you’d expect for this type of game.” Do you realize how silly that sounds? Imagine a wine reviewer saying “this wine tastes about what you would expect for a Cabernet,” or an architectural critic saying “the building looks like what you’d expect a building of this type to look like”. Who’s expectations are you even talking about? How about describing the experience of the music? Was it generic and forgettable, memorable but unevenly produced? You might point out that average consumers, the kind who are going to throw this game into their Wal-Mart shopping carts, just won’t pay that close attention to the music, or any other aspect of the game you glossed over in your review. You’d be right – and that’s precisely the point. You are an expert, someone who is supposed to have deeper and better knowledge of your subject than most.
Don’t be cleverly dogmatic.
A lot of game reviews end up being a list of comparisons to the reviewer’s preconceived notions on what good games are “supposed” to be. Instead of evaluating the game on its own terms, they find and point out pretend flaws by imagining that all games set out to be their version of The Ideal Game and invariably fall short. This isn’t real critique. Unless you can universally define what The Ideal Game is (in which case, please go ahead) then don’t compare the game you are reviewing to The Ideal Game, because no such thing exists. No amount of witty scorn and jokey-jokes will hide the fact that you have no theory on what games should actually be, and thus your clever review actually has no intellectual teeth. If you get mad when people like Roger Ebert say games aren’t art, then step up and start evaluating games like art.
Comments (8)
Hear hear! The standards of game "journalism" have steadily falled over the years until we are where we find ourselves now; mere fanboy ejaculations wrapped in the false respectability of "journalism". It's so bad, in fact, that the few good writers really stand out, far beyond and above the usual crowd of trogladites.
Try to count all the game news sites out there. I read about two of them regularly. A sad reflection on the tripe that is out there.
Posted by JC Barnett | November 27, 2007 4:11 AM
Posted on November 27, 2007 04:11
It's 'troglodytes'. And you just made your whole pointed reply moot. ;)
The continuous rise of gaming blogs and home-brand news reporting are to blame for the downturn in quality. Though, to be more accurate, it isn't a downturn per se; it's a sign of the scale of the industry and how many people feel entitled to a high profile public opinion - educated and well thought out or otherwise.
Sure, there are a lot of lousy writers, but a lot of great ones need to start somewhere. A lot of the time, their only shot at breaking in is to contribute to one of these indie sites and hope that they stand out from the chaff.
Posted by Bill Smith | November 27, 2007 8:47 PM
Posted on November 27, 2007 20:47
Absolute agreement on all points. Much as I'd like to criticize criticism of criticism, there's not a lot of opportunity here.
I could try to cobble something together about how most writing about games is done by young people with no journalistic background for little or even no pay, but that really doesn't really excuse the bad writing. Just helps make it more apparent where a lot of it comes from. Unless there's an awful lot of dedication, the experienced writers often end up defecting to PR, or some other kind of journalism.
Also, there's kind of the popular stigma of being a professional twelve year old. I get off on it, but I can see it being trying for some people when your parents think you're a bum, your significant other thinks you're immature, and someone else is waving a lot more money at you to do something apparently more respectable.
Posted by Sharkey | November 28, 2007 12:10 AM
Posted on November 28, 2007 00:10
Damn and blast! Hoist by my own petard....
One trend I find very worrying is the prevalence of non-news. In the race to always be the first a lot of sites are reporting useless items like "Publisher X to make announcement next week on something".
Posted by JC Barnett | November 28, 2007 12:10 AM
Posted on November 28, 2007 00:10
What my coworker said -- should it be reviewed and approved, that is.
The one thing I actually can't wrap my head around, though, is the extremely vocal concern about the current state of games journalism. I mean, I was flipping through a magazine from 1991, and it was like a cereal box that had slipped past copyedit.
Posted by Jenn Frank | November 28, 2007 12:27 AM
Posted on November 28, 2007 00:27
I think the sense of sudden concern might be due to the fact that the industry as a whole is (supposedly) maturing. We’re always talking about having better writing and getting more serious in the games themselves, for instance. That may or may not be really happening – there are still plenty of games with bad writing – but I personally like the idea of rising standards all around.
Posted by Matthew | November 28, 2007 8:51 AM
Posted on November 28, 2007 08:51
When - whether we like to admit it or not - the majority of game journalism content produced by the bigger players is digested by a rather vernal, quantity over quality market, can we really blame the conent providers for dumbing down, or to put it a better way, not smartening up?
Of course, there's also the other end of the spectrum where the actual journalism comes before the games, where gaming is just another area journos flaunt their pretentious penmanship and give their thesaurus a workout. The popularity of this lamentable style in the UK's Edge magazine and the seeming exceptance that this is how games - as a mature cultural entertainment medium don't ya know - have to be covered has led to a real downturn in the quality of games coverage, particularly in the freelance market.
Posted by Ozzy 8 | November 28, 2007 9:24 PM
Posted on November 28, 2007 21:24
I agree with almost everything you say;I find game journalism to be borderline unreadable,generally. It almost seems like the industry still thinks that the average gamer is twelve or something.
As you said, reviews often seem like an extension of marketing. You can pretty much guarantee that a game's score will be directly proportional to its hype. Not to mention that scores are so inflated; if a game gets a seven it's probably a piece of crap even though logically it should be above average.
What is more infuriating is the reviewers seem to know they are doing this,yet they continue to do so. I often see something like, "It might sound crazy giving this game a 9.5 with all the flaws pointed out,but...". Yeah it does sound crazy! What makes it all the more infuriating is that they'll often criticize a game several months AFTER a review in other articles! Why the hell didn't you bring these things up in the original review?
I also like how you pointed the thing about exclusive previews. Almost nothing bad is ever said about a game in a preview. If a game isn't turning out that great or it's just flawed from the ground up, so say. Tell me it sucks.
Are game journalist afraid of hurting devs feelings? Is the industry just so relatively new that the creation aspect is just way too close to the critical aspect? Were movie reviews this bad early in the twentieth century I wonder?
Posted by random_person2000 | December 6, 2007 5:31 PM
Posted on December 6, 2007 17:31