The Problem with Experience-Based Writing

How is one really supposed to write about a game? Most major game reviewers spend at least some of their review stepping into the shoes of an imaginary Everyman, attempting to impartially value a game based on ostensibly universal metrics. But there has always been experimentation with a more “gonzo,” experience-based writing approach, focusing on a writer’s personal exposure to the game world, something that doesn’t pretend to be objective at all.

One of my favorite examples of this type of journalism is Tim Rogers’ wide-ranging “review” of Mother 2 / Earthbound, as fierce an argument as any that a game can mean something– that a game can be important and artistic and affect people in significant ways. But, much as I want to believe that, I have only ever played a few minutes of Mother 2 myself. In comparison to the article, where it engrossed, confounded, and ultimately transformed the writer, the game to me was nothing so special.

Whatever your own feelings of Mother 2 may be, my point is that problem of the gonzo approach is that it works best as a piece of writing when the reader hasn’t played the game. Because if he has, he then possesses his own primary experience of that game world, and the experience-based review becomes obsolete, or at the very least, secondary– a travelogue of a place with which he is already familiar. People often take away startlingly different impressions of the things around them, and to a reader with his own experience to compare against, experience-based writing ends up inadvertently becoming about those disparities.

Before anyone leaps to the defense, this is not meant to be an argument against experience-based writing. It is not wrong or undesirable, it is just not necessarily the precise solution to the problem of how to write about games. We still need articles like Rogers’ passionate, plausible and consequential interpretation of Mother 2, but we also need something more. There is an important and unfulfilled place for synthesis in game writing, even though it is made especially difficult by the very thing that makes games so compelling– their interactivity (not only do players bring their own personal biases with them into the world of the game, they can also act upon them in such a way that their actions feed back into the simulation).

Real synthesis cannot be achieved in the intellectually lazy mishmash of the Everyman review, nor can it just naturally arise from the ferment of message boards and blogs. Someone will have to take the initiative.

Comments

[Michael Eilers]

I think this an interesting start to the conversation. One of the unspoken elements of game writing (not just reviews, but game writing in general) is the fact that there are two games being discussed -- the game that exists, and the game that the reviewer/critic/wannabe designer actually desires to play. Many, many reviews or analysis pieces conflate the two, repeatedly; this isn't a "gonzo" act of kicking the deceased equine of objectivity, but an unconscious act that comes from sloppy thinking. So many articles about games discuss what the game could have been -- an assumption that is equal parts pretentious and presumptuous -- instead of what the game is and where that leaves us. The poor, neglected postructuralists roll over in their graves at this plebian mistake, but game writing is riddled with it. Sure, movie reviews, auto reviews, sports writing et al also suffer this fallacy, but game writing hasn't matured or settled down into a "form" like those genres, and thus the problem is, well, more problematic.

[Jim Rossignol]

I think the answer is in smart commissioning on the part of editors. The old fashioned Everyman review is what most magazines and websites and print, and they get quite upset if we deliver anything other than that.

Some editors are smart enough to see that writers have more to say than is allowed by traditional templates, but that's hard to deal with in the commercially-strangled magazines. PC Gamer UK published a series of articles commissioned by editor Mark Donald which were brave and passionate, but controlled. And I think they're the best example of what you're talking about here.

I think blogs can do it, and will do it, when they're organised enough and well-edited enough to deliver the kind of synsthesis you're talking about. I believe we will get there with Rock, Paper, Shotgun, but we're currently hamstrung by that kind of writing being difficult and time-consuming. For now we all end up blogging what is easy news and writing what actually pays the money: those old fashioned reviews and previews.

[L.B. Jeffries]

I remember Costikyan posted a similar argument about the need for a greater critical movement and I agree with all your points here. Even the best blogs out there devote themselves to mere fan service with maybe advice on how to improve a game. Although it's fun to both read and write that stuff...someone is going to have to sit down and design a structure for critically examining the interactive portions of games.

Personally, I'm not surprised there aren't many people out there doing it. It's a brutal, thankless gig to elevate the critical discussion. It involves going up to games that people love and tearing them apart and going up to games that people hate and explaining why something is interesting. I think we all do the best we can but...it won't be an overnight thing.

[Andrew Armstrong]

It'd certainly fill a gap which is lost for me - reviews of "10/10" games are vapid, completely over the top, works of rubbish from what I've read (be it past or present). They usually take more from the experience-based side from what I can tell, with tons of comparisons and thoughts, all usually being "this is so much better then...".

Critical writing would be great, I'd read droves of it. It can be simply film-like reviews, but since games are larger, longer, more deep, it might be they can never fill the same small amount of inches. I read the Escapist for some nice articles, although they are certainly never reviews. It does take a lot of effort, and I'd bet too it'd cause a lot of work.