Do you still like games?

Games
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Ordinarily I don’t respond to stuff like Steve’s recent editorial where he goes on about the assorted demanding, vindictive and pissy behavior gamers show towards game developers and their products. But this one got me thinking about movies, and movie reviews, and game reviews.

When a movie gets reviewed, and I mean a review, not the splash lines that everyone issues, they tend to be pretty similar. Game reviews, overall, tend to be pretty similar. They focus on this-or-that genre of game, and how games in this genre should have such-and-such-features, and how does this game compare, or how does it overcome the fatal flaw of a predecessor? Again, a lot like movies.

Game reviewers tend to be really hard on games, comparing them to games that have come before, citing real or ephemeral qualities possessed by those forerunners and measuring up the new games to older, often nostalgic views the reviewer has long held about older games. Just like movie reviewers.

I’m not saying this is necessarily bad, but maybe the thing isn’t how much people in general rail against games they don’t like so much as how much they love the games they enjoy. Many of my favorite movies will never even catch a scent of Oscar gold. A lot of reviewers hated movies that I really enjoyed. A number of games I really enjoyed were not all that successful (Sacrifice, Empire of the Fading Suns) or even that well-liked by reviewers (DOA Volleyball, BOTF, many, many more). But like that movie that manages to be fun without being at all significant in whatever way the reviewers applaud, I still like them.

I think reviewers of games maybe need to ask themselves how much they like games from time to time. CGW had a head-to-head of Bruce Geryk versus Tom Chick in Age of Mythology. The whole game lasted like a half hour. It took me no time to realize that a game of me versus one of these two would last like 10 minutes. I’d be archaic age and they’d be “Innocence Lost” Age, wiping me out with spaceships and freaky mental powers. Fred Flintstone versus Flash Gordon. In all fairness I did get the impression that they were having fun for most of the game. But how much of the game did they really see? A few units they specialized in, buildings built for select improvements. Do they ever play a “mature” civilization, or is it just the rush to dominance?

I like movies, but for reasons that I think are very different from reviewers. I like games, but I think for different reasons than reviewers. Can you see the forest, or are you counting trees?

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Still, a critic’s job is to make comparisons, to say “this is good” and “that is bad” (whether there is any absolute foundation for such judgments is another question entirely). According to the law of, um, Robert Silverberg I think? who said that “90% of everything is crap,” most games will get relatively negative, or at least lackluster, reviews. (edit: or was it Theodore Sturgeon?)

I am coming at this from a different angle of course. I am not a game reviewer, I am a movie script reader. I’ve covered about 3,000 scripts in the last few years and I’m pretty tired of movies overall. I very seldom go to see films anymore. So there is perhaps some element of burn-out or overexposure; maybe a reviewer would feel the same way about games as I do about movies. Personally I would hate to be a game reviewer – I’d hate to be playing some highly anticipated game knowing that I must finish it and must bang out a 1,000 word review as soon as I’m done. But on the other hand, there are critics – of both games and movies – whose passion for their medium seems stronger than ever. I think they are just increasingly impatient with entries that provide no new information, that merely recycle the basics.

I think if you begin to analyze any art form or medium critically, it does affect your tastes. You might become less patient with cliches, for example, or with areas of technique that you consider deficient. There are extreme examples of this (I have a brother who has trouble with the movie Patton because they used the wrong type of tanks; I saw an interview with a cinematographer who walks out of any movie where the lighting uses diffusion because it’s “too easy”), but to a certain extent I think it’s unavoidable. It goes with the process of systematized critical thinking that your job entails. Of course, all of us on this board are critics up to a point – we’re all fairly passionate gamers who think (and yammer on) about games quite a lot. So we all have opinions that are pretty well articulated. And we all have our pet peeves.

The interesting thing, in my experience, is that I still love the games and movies I watched/played when I was younger, even though I can now go back and see the flaws. I can look at Star Wars and see problems with the acting, the dialogue, etc.; and I doubt it would make such an impression on me were I first seeing it as an adult. But then I can still love it because it meant so much to me as a child. (Also, with enhanced critical faculties I can see strengths that I may have missed before – such as the audacity of the opening FX shot, or the brilliance of the musical score which spackles over the silliness and gives the whole thing a sense of sweep and conviction.) I can look at Ultima III, and realize how simplistic and repetitive it really is, but I can still love it now because I loved it when I was ten. Such is the power of nostalgia.

I don’t think I can as easily be entranced by the same things now that I am older, though. To take an example, I enjoyed the Lord of the Rings movies but they affected me nowhere near as profoundly as either the Star Wars movies, or the LOTR books, did when I was a kid. I don’t know why this is. They are just not particularly my cup of tea any more, though I acknowledge they are well done.

Getting back to gaming, I am feeling pretty tired with a lot of genres. RTS’s, FPS’s, and even my favorite genre, CRPG’s, are all starting to feel stale to me. I wonder if the world of gaming is reaching a point where some fresh blood needs to be injected, where some new genres need to be forged. I don’t think I am the only one experiencing ennui. But, maybe I am. Maybe I just need some time off and I’ll be right back into the thick of it.

Sorry, this post rambled a bit. :)

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I love games, just not the bad ones.

–Dave

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I’ve been doing this for years, I’ve burned out here and there… a key sign that I need a break is if I start playing consoles.

While I’ve gotten a little jaded about companies and development of games, I still love them. In fact, the only permanent scar I have is to never open a box that has “Acclaim” written on it. Honestly, it’s so bad that I do notice negative thoughts if say… someone’s hyping a press quote on a box “Most acclaimed RTS of the year”.

That and Mortyr. The Mortyr II announcement to me was devastating.

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!!Feb 11 2003 07:31:09 Windforce (Unique Hydra Bow)

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I have less patience with games lately. I dislike having to learn a new interface and new set of rules for each new game, especially since the majority of games now and forever are mediocre. I actually think that fewer PC games will be better because we’ve had a lot of crap over the last few years. Even if the ratio of good to crap titles stays the same, at least there will be fewer crappy titles.

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I found Gordon’s post to be inspiring, and he notes one of the key drawbacks to any criticism. Once you start doing something professionally, you lose the innocence of being just an enthusiast.

It doesn’t have to be just about the relationship between games and game reviewers. It can affect any trade. You start out doing something you love, but when you are put in situations where you push on because you ‘must’ do it rather than because you ‘want’ to do it, the act becomes more work than hobby, more science than art, more routine than spontaneous. Some might say it’s sort of like what happens to sex for married couples. :)

Why is this? Doesn’t it seem intuitive that people would naturally be better turning their favorite pursuits into work? I don’t have all the answers, but perhaps part of the problem is the transformation a passion for games takes as the duty of deadlines take precedence. There’s also the possibility that writers might shift away from the games they like most to the games that can be reviewed in a timely fashion, in a simple pursuit of efficiency. How many game writers hold back from RPGs even though those might be among their favorites? I am guilty of this at times, and I don’t think I’m the only one. My hat is off to Desslock for doing his day job and still finding ways to rifle through RPGs thoroughly.

But there are other factors. Seeing a large percentage of games affects reviewers. On one side, yes, sifting through the shit can burn them out and turn them into cynical bastards. The reverse is true too, and they have better than average opportunity to be exposed to the best. When they can articulate why a game or a competing product might be entertaining for a particular type of gamer is where I think readers would get some benefit from a reviewer’s experience.

The industry’s changed too. Like most software, games have become commodities. There was time when I thought a visit to the game store was something special. It seemed like all the games had something to offer, and each was magical in its own way. I’d cruise the game isles in the Egghead Software store, trying to ignore the dickhead clerk giving me and the other game fans the evil eye because he that thought games were useless. Of course, they all had CGA graphics or worse. Perhaps that extra challenge to the imagination had something to do with our getting jaded by granting a nostalgic foothold to the classics.

Yes, I still love games. But the innocence is gone forever. And I’m not sure if it’s because of having been a reviewer for twelve years, or because of normal maturation. Getting old affects the gaming hobby and few of us can spend the time on it that we did when we were younger. Still, games outlasted the evil clerk at Egghead, and so did a lot of us old gamers. We’ll keep watching for the occasional standout game or unique gamble.

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I gotta agree with Mark. I’m looking at the screenshots for Master of Orion III and thinking to myself that this game is way too much like work…

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I’ve been saying that all along. I think I even got some flames for suggesting that the interface is nothing but an amateurish Flash overlay which connects straight to a database and spreadsheet. Honestly, when I look at MOO3, I think “wow, I’m fiddling with a spreadsheet” not “wow, this is gonna be a damn cool game.”

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MOO3 is a special case though. So few games like that are made today. I’ll admit it looks like too much even for me. I just don’t have time for a game like that right now.

I’m skepitcal of these reviews too. A game that complex seems like it should have at least three weeks for review time. No way you can figure out if the AI is actually playing a good game in a week or so.

–Dave

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^^^^^^^^^^ Me.

–Dave

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Well it depends on the reviewer. If Tom Chick or Mark H Walker wrote one of those reviews I might believe it - but Jonah Falcon?
Someone said that they wouldn’t buy this game until they saw at least three reviews, but I won’t buy this game until I see at least six or seven. I’m a major MOO fanboy but I think this game doesn’t have the magic formula anymore.

If anybody here has played the game it would be great to hear an honest first impression…

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The best thing to do would be to wait at least two weeks and see how the players react. Check the messageboards and usenet. You’ll get a good feel for the strengths and weaknesses of the game. Reviews in mags and at game sites are good, but nothing beats a mass of player reviews.

Oh, and a demo always helps. Will there be one for this game?

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I’ve put about 10 hours into MOO3 (and enjoyed every one of them, including the first four which were just goofing around without having read the docs). Yet I feel I’d need to put in another 40 to write a really good, thorough review of this game, there’s such depth to the modeling, options, and available play styles.

So to read some sites expect reviews in 4 days? Ridiculous. Particularly when all these guys are paying is a free game.

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So what’s the difference between a free game and a paid-for game?

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I think Denny’s point is that a four-day turnaround time for a review is pretty unreasonable, particularly when the writer is only being compensated for his time with a free game.

 -Tom
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Thanks. I wasn’t sure what he was saying.