1262: Review of Reviews

I’ve been pondering an interesting question with regard to reviews — primarily in the video games medium, but I imagine it also applies to other media too.

That question is the one of who you are writing a review for.

When it comes to an obviously mainstream piece of entertainment, it’s obvious: the review is for everyone, or at the very least the significant majority of people who enjoy mainstream entertainment. When a new Call of Duty or Assassin’s Creed hits the market, that review is aimed at everyone because the game is aimed at everyone. Theoretically, anyway — there’s plenty of room for debate there, but that’s something for another day.

But let’s take something that is obviously more niche interest; something that will obviously only appeal to a very specific set of people. Something that will appeal very strongly to that specific set of people, but which anyone from outside that group of people will not appreciate, for whatever reason. I’m hesitant to give specific examples because I’ve just started playing a game for review that very much falls into this category, and I will likely address this point in said review.

Here’s how I feel I should probably approach this situation, though: I would preface the review with a preamble that explains the things people from outside its target audience may appreciate and/or dislike, and the fact that the remainder of the review is primarily intended for people who do fall into the game/movie/book/whatever’s target audience. This step is unnecessary if you’re writing the review on a site that is specifically aimed at the media’s target audience, since it’s a given; if, however, you’re writing for a more “general audience” site, it’s worth noting, I feel.

The reason I feel it’s worth making this distinction is because of the subjective nature of opinions, and the fact that a “general audience” isn’t a homogenous bunch of people. Rather, said general audience can be subdivided into various smaller groups, each of which has their own interests. Should something be panned just because it’s not universally appealing? Of course it shouldn’t — unless it’s objectively actually broken in some way, it deserves to be given the benefit of the doubt and looked at through the eyes of someone who it’s theoretically “for”. It’s not particularly fair, otherwise; you wouldn’t review a saxophone case and give it one star for your clarinet not fitting in it, for example. Not precisely the same thing, I know; perhaps a more apt comparison would be a classical music magazine giving a dubstep album a low mark for not being classical enough.

This highlights a peculiarity of the games press, though: we’re short on “specialist” outlets. We may have specialist writers working on a single outlet, of course, but with the exception of a few, mostly enthusiast-driven rather than commercial sites, however, a significant proportion of game sites try and cover as much of “everything” as possible. This probably does a lot of games a disservice, to be perfectly honest: games have a perceived level of “importance” that is usually directly proportional to their marketing budget and/or likely sales figures. This can, in some cases, lead to games of “lesser” importance not being given the time and attention they deserve; the most prominent example I can think of this happening is Cavia’s Nier, which received middling-to-low review scores from pretty much every big outlet around, but which is absolutely beloved by people who have played it through from start to finish and engaged with it.

Why the discrepancy? Reviewers are busy; they might not have the time to delve into all of Nier’s sidequests and look at it from the perspective of someone who has the luxury of time to immerse themselves in the world and story. It’s a simplistic explanation, but it’s entirely plausible; in the rush to get that Nier review done before whatever big triple-A title hit that week, it’s entirely believable that some reviewers may not have given it the time and attention it deserved.

I understand. It sucks, but I understand.

Hopefully over at USgamer, since our focus is more on editorial pieces than traditional reviews/previews and the like, we can give these “lesser” games an appropriate degree of care, and subject them to an appropriate degree of criticism rather than making snap judgements. And, to me anyway, that criticism should take into account the game’s target audience; if it’s a game obviously designed for a very specific group of people, how successful it is at reaching that audience — possibly to the exclusion of others — should absolutely form part of its evaluation.

Anyway. I’ve waffled on enough. It’s nearly 1am. I should sleep. Farewell for now.