2004: Some Idle Thoughts About Game Reviews, Game Criticism and Alternative Ways of Doing Things

I participated in an interesting conversation on Twitter earlier today (in fact, it’s still going on as I type this) on the subject of game reviews and game criticism.

It’s been pretty apparent for a while now that the current model of reviewing games is not ideal for the industry as a whole. From a consumer perspective, it’s arguably valuable to have some sort of thoughts up by the time a new product is released, but this leads to a “race to be first” (or, at the very least a “race to be up by embargo time”) when it comes to coverage which, in many cases, can lead to the sacrificing of depth in the name of speed.

Plus there’s the matter of opinions changing over time, and initial opinions being incorrect, ill-founded or based on limited exposure and immersion.

“I like how no-one criticises Nier now,” tweeted Mr Matt Sainsbury of Digitally Downloaded, one of my favourite places to go for fair, balanced coverage of the sort of things that I’m into these days. “Now everyone remembers it as pure art. Pity they didn’t realise this when the game was new. Actually, screw it. I’m calling this now. 50 years from now Nier will be the games industry’s Citizen Kane. Citizen Kane only got the respect it has now after a couple of decades. I think Nier will be that game.”

Matt has a point. Nier’s Metascore — a somewhat questionable aggregation of a variety of review scores from across the Internet through unclear, possibly not particularly scientific means — sits at 68 for the PlayStation 3 version and 67 for the Xbox 360 version. Taken as a pure figure, 68 is well above average, but in the world of games scoring, “not quite 7 out of 10” is regarded as a “bad” game that most people will avoid. (There are exceptions to this rule, of course, like me — someone who gladly paid money for Hyperdimension Neptunia despite its Metascore of 45 — but for the most part, people will avoid anything under about 80/8 out of 10 or so.) Consequently, Nier was regarded as “not very good” on its original release, and a lot of people avoided it as a result.

Zip forward to E3 of this year, however, and by far the most exciting announcement for many people was the impending sequel to Nier, developed as a collaboration between original director Yoko Taro and Platinum Games. Apparently, it seems, in the intervening period between Nier’s original release and its mediocre reviews, a number of people decided to take a chance on it despite its lukewarm critical reception and discovered that, contrary to what the reviews suggested, it is actually a beautifully crafted work of art that not only tells a compelling story, it actively subverts and deconstructs the audience’s expectations in terms of both narrative and mechanics. Unfortunately, that 68 Metascore stands as a permanent blot on its copybook, so it will forever be regarded as a work of “unappreciated genius” by some, and a game not worth bothering with by many others. It’s astonishing that we’re even getting a sequel at all.

The case of Nier highlights a key flaw in the current model of video game reviews and criticism, then: the fact that the value of a work doesn’t necessarily become immediately apparent, and that it’s often necessary to spend a protracted amount of time both engaging with the work and reflecting on it in order to come up with some truly meaningful thoughts about it. Meanwhile, the current review model doesn’t take into account the matter of specialist, niche interests, instead approaching every review from some sort of non-existent “everyman” perspective and concentrating far too much on a title’s immediate appeal rather than its lasting cultural contribution (if any) and, as business types are wont to say, its “long tail”. (This doesn’t even get into the matter of games that actively grow and change over time like MMOs, but that’s a subject for another day.)

I’ve been thinking about how things might be done a bit better, assuming money were no object — the reason we have today’s “race to be first” model is due to the press’ over-reliance on pay-per-click advertising, so until we find an alternative means of getting people to pay for content, whether or not it will make money is always going to be a determining factor here.

My ideal scenario would be an outlet or publication that employs specialist writers in various different fields, rather than a small team attempting to cover as many bases as possible. Perhaps the publication itself has a laser-sharp focus on a particular genre or style of game, or perhaps the writers, between them, divvy up the things they feel comfortable and confident writing about.

Specialist writers is a starting point, but it’s not enough. Take the “race to be first” out of the equation, too. Give writers sufficient time to immerse themselves in a particular work in order to be able to form some coherent, deep and meaningful thoughts about it, whether positive or negative. Allow them the opportunity to develop feelings towards a game that go well beyond “immediate impressions” and instead enter the realm of true criticism and analysis. Give the games the chance to demonstrate what their cultural impact, if any, is.

So how can this be done? It’s difficult to say, but I can’t help but feel that the return to a traditional magazine model would probably be a good way to go about doing this. There are a few reasonably successful Internet-distributed modern gaming magazines around these days — Kill Screen and Five Out of Ten spring to mind — but these tend to still have a fairly broad focus on titles with mainstream appeal that have already been talked about to death. The current Five Out of Ten, for example, features articles about Mario Kart 8, Bayonetta, The Binding of Isaac, Baldur’s Gate, XCOM and Magic: The Gathering, all of which are subjects that have had no shortage of coverage over the last 20 years or so. Granted, Five Out of Ten (and Kill Screen, for that matter) tends to come at these subjects from unconventional angles, but it’s still wringing out material from the same old games we read about on big sites like GameSpot, IGN and their ilk.

The reason I feel a magazine-based model is appropriate is because you can set a much more infrequent publication cycle. There’s no rush to get coverage out on day one, so long as there’s at least some relevant material in each issue. When you have a set deadline and publication date, it’s much easier to plan in advance what you’re going to cover when. And if you’re planning this far in advance, you can elect to focus on a much smaller number of titles and approach them from a specialist perspective rather than taking a scattershot approach of trying to cover everything.

Now, here’s the thing. A magazine is all very well and good, but given the average attention span of people on the Internet these days, it’s important to have some form of ongoing conversation up and running, too, so I feel the magazine itself should probably be supported by regular coverage of some description. Crucially, though, this regular coverage shouldn’t fall into the trap of being the usual news/reviews/previews model, because otherwise why bother with the magazine side of things at all. Instead, leverage the immediacy of Internet blogging and make the daily updates more personal to the individual writers; rather than an individual article being a review of a specific thing, perhaps it could be their thoughts on a pertinent topic of the moment — or here would be a good opportunity to present some initial impressions of a new game without giving a final judgement on it.

My idle thoughts on this would see a magazine released at regular intervals — perhaps every two months, particularly if it would have to start on a volunteer/contribution basis — along with one daily online update at a predictable time from the regular “staffers”. Ideally there would be enough staffers for there to be a different person writing each day, allowing the audience to develop a personal relationship with favourite writers and know that, say, they could read my thoughts on Tuesdays, or Writer B’s comments on Wednesdays, or whatever. This way the content is kept flowing and relevant on the Internet — as well as providing a “personal” touch that allows the readers to feel closer to the writers, which is the biggest strength of immediate Internet writing — but it affords the writers the time to immerse themselves in the things they want to write in more detail about for the more lengthy, substantial magazine articles.

As for funding, well, the ad-based model needs to go away ideally, though the use of daily updates could still bring in a few pennies if the content is compelling enough. Instead, the magazine — or indeed the content as a whole, including the website — needs to be compelling enough to convince people that they would like to contribute regularly to it through a service like Patreon or the like, or simply through purchasing individual copies of the magazine as they’re released.

I wonder if this is in any way a viable model for doing things. I’m actually quite curious to give it a go, but I wouldn’t be able to do it by myself by any means. If any of the above is of interest to you, then — and you’re interested in taking it seriously and giving it a solid shot to see what happens — then get in touch and we can talk more about hammering out some details.