#oneaday Day 116: Should you finish a game before talking about it?

I’ve seen some discussion about the above topic recently, largely as a result of some idiotic blowhard on the dying, burning remains of Twitter making the bizarre assertion that all games journalists should be obliged to upload full, unedited footage of them playing every game they cover to “prove” that they played it properly and to demonstrate their “authentic” reactions.

This is, of course, absolutely unworkable today, particularly for those working in the more “mainstream” end of gaming, where sprawling games that want to be your one and only game forever (or at least until their next annualised installment comes out) have been creeping towards being the norm for a while now. But it’s also unworkable for those working in niche spaces, be that esports, visual novels, role-playing games or any other sectors you might care to mention. There simply isn’t time.

Now, I have mixed feelings about this, because back when my brother was in charge of Electronic Gaming Monthly and The Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine at Ziff-Davis, I vaguely recall him saying that he expected his writers to finish everything they wrote about — and this was, in the case of EGM, a publication where each reviewer had to write approximately 50-100 words at most, given the way their reviews were handled.

The reason I recall this is that one time when my parents and I were visiting him in the States, I was able to spend the day with him in his office (and I have oddly vivid memories of someone’s computer in the office having something saying “Lucky sonuvabitch” every time they got an email) and he tasked me with playing through Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver (now available on Evercade, don’tchaknow!). I forget exactly why, but I suspect it was so he could make effective use of my time while I was there, get my thoughts on it, and then use my experiences playing the game to give him a head start on writing something. Possibly. Maybe. Anyway, regardless of the circumstances, I have a memory in my head that I’m fairly convinced is real that says “my brother once expected all of his staff to beat every game before they reviewed it”.

In the PS1 era, this was probably practical. RPGs were a thing, sure, but they came out relatively infrequently in English (even more infrequently if you were unfortunate enough to be European) and often long after their Japanese releases, so there was plenty of advance notice to get these done. And other games were significantly shorter, tending to be somewhere between 2 and 10 hours on average, with the odd exception in both directions. (Ridge Racer? 20 minutes. Dragon Quest VII? Yes, I know it’s an RPG, but 150+ hours.)

We also had a lot more in the way of “arcade style” games that were split into short levels or missions, or games that were highly replayable — Ridge Racer may be 20 minutes, but it’s 20 minutes you’ll be happy to spend again and again. Thus it seems perfectly reasonable to expect a games journo to play through everything they might be writing about.

These days? Absolutely definitely not, although there is still something to be said for allowing a writer to provide a full, in-depth discussion of a game after completing all of it. After all, it’s kind of absurd to suggest that it’s possible to “review” a visual novel without reading all of it, as the whole point of the damn thing is the story. Sure, you can probably give a wiffly-waffly “buyer’s guide”-type review saying what you think of the graphics, sound and interface, but if you want to actually discuss and critique it, you need to have played all of it.

I think the distinction between “review as buyer’s guide” (which is basically what a lot of people online want) and “review as quasi-academic critique” (which is what a lot of writers want, but rarely get the time to indulge in) is an important one here. The former can be done after just an hour or two of play at most. The latter requires more in-depth research. The former can be shat out for an embargo date. The latter is something best served for well after launch.

Unfortunately, the modern Internet doesn’t tend to really reward the latter approach at all until well after the fact — and then only if a game ends up commonly agreed to be some sort of “hidden gem” or “best game that no-one played” or whatever. It increasingly leads me to the conclusion that the very best approach to games writing if all you’re concerned about is the quality of the writing is to say “fuck it” to anything that is brand new, and instead focus on games that came out ages ago. Perhaps even generations ago. In-depth explorations of those games are the pieces people are still going to be reading for years to come — and it’s what I’ve always striven for with the stuff I’ve done on MoeGamer, because it’s what I like to read.

I don’t give a shit if the latest Assassin’s Creed is the same or a bit different from the last one. I do care if some obscure PS2 RPG from 20 years ago is actually the best thing ever and still kind of cheap because no-one bought it or knows its name.

Ah, who am I kidding. RPGs are never cheap.

Anyway, I guess my answer to the question in the title is “no, if you’re reviewing something current in a buyer’s guide style”, but “yes, if you’re aiming for quasi-academic critique or analysis”. And even then, there’s wiggle room. Even recently, I wrote about a couple of the games in UFO 50 before I’d technically “beaten” them, because I’d gained enough knowledge of how they worked to be able to comment on them authoritatively. (I then promptly beat them shortly after writing about them, much to my satisfaction!)

So no. Games journos should not be expected to upload full, unedited gameplay footage of them playing through (and reacting to) a game for review. That’s absolutely absurd. But I do feel like we should strive for better in our games criticism and analysis. Those “buyer’s guide” reviews do not stand the test of time very well, whereas articles that take the time to really get to know a game and find out what makes it tick are what insufferable SEO types like to call “evergreen content”. And, as much as I hate to agree with anyone who enjoys SEO, it’s those articles that people are going to come back to years after a game’s release to find out all about it.

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