Welcome to our newest member, ShawnElliott
Hell, I thought you were kidding.
Maybe he feels like flaming the one who felt like flaming him and doesn’t feel like having his prime banned?
Eitherway, free servings, tab’s on me.
Or read the last two year’s worth of CGWs or read GFW magazine.
You realize that Shawn was on the historically most Jeff Greeningest podcast available, right?
the questions asked in this symposium doesn’t ask the hard and presumptuous questions, like “why the hell don’t you guys play the games you review”?
Why would Mr Elliot assume that the people on this list do not play the games they review?
Of course reviews have been written where the reviewer has played less than the entire game, but I just don’t buy your assertion that countless reviews are written where the reviewer has played only two hours of a game. Still, would your question, as posed, be interesting to answer and discuss. Let me try it out:
Doug: Should reviewers play the whole game before assigning a review score?
Everyone: Yes.
Riveting.
Now this is interesting! I share your observation that a lot of reviews seem to quote directly from PR sheets. But don’t these symposium questions ask exactly what you’re talking about?
This is also something that drives me nuts. I hate reading a review of a game that spends more time lamenting that the game isn’t something it was never intended to be, instead of discussing what it is. I hope the answers to the symposium questions address this. Of course we have no idea what most of the questions are even going to be, so it’s a little premature to say that this won’t be addressed, isn’t it?
FYI: Just talked to Shawn–he had to create a new account because he forgot his password on the old one, which was linked to his old, now-dead ZD email addy.
No, I never did. So it’s possible I’ve missed all of his insight, which makes me wonder if I’m not paying enough attention (possible) or that people aren’t doing a very good job calling these types of articles out when they do appear.
Articles, I’m not sure. I came to GFW Radio about three months before the magazine was canceled (I was totally going to send in my card that month), so my exposure to his specific broader catalog is somewhat limited, but I always really appreciated the things in that vein that I did find from him (and I can think of some things on his ZD Blog). I will freely admit that I am prejudiced against haughty intellectual discussion about video games on account of most of them don’t deserve that kind of attention and analysis, but I never felt like Shawn was going over that invisible line in my head the same way that, for example, some of the recent blog discussion about reviewers penalizing innovation in games has. I’m kind of looking forward to the upcoming symposium.
Then again, I’m just the sort of crazy apologist that will sit here and say with a straight face that you shouldn’t reasonably expect a game reviewer to play through every single individual campaign in the latest Dynasty Warriors before he pronounces it more of the same and gives it a fat C, so maybe my opinion doesn’t count. I have weird ideas about how game review should work - that’s probably why I stopped doing it altogether before I even got properly started.
Funny that you would pick that as an example. Lately, the ‘Warriors’ series has occupied my time and my thoughts more than I ever thought it deserved, based on what I had read about it. The unapologetic Romanticism of its setting, the way it represents the ebb and flow of battles… so many unique and fascinating aspects about it.
And yes, now that you mention it, I do think it’s very difficult to judge Dynasty Warriors 6 correctly without playing every single individual campaign. I’d have to think more about it to put my finger on exactly why that would be; but I don’t want to interrupt the flame fest any further. :)
I don’t remember Shawn from any of the 1UP-related podcasts, for sure – Jeff aside, they all sound like the same reedy voices and largely unmemorable personalities to me. You could interchange 9/10ths of the 1UP staff in those podcasts and I wouldn’t miss a one. In fact, I think I mixed him and Shane Bettenhausen up most of the time, the rare exception being the painful Denis Dyack Too Human release interview, where Shawn was merely the less pandering and verbally anemic of the two non-Dyack participants.
That said, this isn’t supposed to be an indictment of Shawn – hey, if he’s great, I’ll take your word for it in the interests of furthering this discussion – but rather a nasty little complaint about the sort of wankery I see on the 1UP (current and former) editors’ blogs, and among the new games journalism set in general. Do movie critics go on and on about their processes and editorial shortcomings? Do Owen Gliebermann and Roger Ebert wring their hands over poor reviewing standards for movies? Does anyone even CARE what Gene Shalit thinks?
Cut the woeful self-recriminations and start setting better examples in your reviews, period. Play the damn games. Talk about the damn games. When Tim Rogers is doing a better job than the current lot of “major editorial voices” out there, it’s a sad day in the “games journalism” community.
I would agree on the Dynasty Warriors point IF reviewers even did that much. I’ve seen several DW reviews where the reviewer used the space to create some story about being given the game for review and being unhappy about it. I KNOW the DW games have their issues, but they clearly have an audience, review for them. Even the best review in the world will not shift such an old series into a larger demographic, so what’s the problem assigning the review to someone who might actually like the series a little?
I would be ever so fine with ANY reviewer actually playing through the majority of a DW game and giving it a C, if that is what they actually did. If I see a magazine or major site review give a Dynasty Warriors release the same critical attention that a Madden yearly release gets, I will choggle my pants so hard Gary Whitta himself will turn the internet trademark over to me.
That’s a direct attack on AP standards, not a hand-wringing “symposium”. Try again?
That is not the first time Ebert has brought the topic up in recent months.
You don’t find him to be “hand-wringing?” It sounds like the definition of “hand-wringing” is highly important to you; mind clarifying?
I’m not sure I need to read anything you ever say again.
Massive apologies for not manufacturing celebrity distinctions around videogame fans. I’ll keep that in mind should I ever decide to make a career change and barrel headlong into the world of internet fame!
It would have been a good idea to know who you were talking about before creating, essentially, a strawman thread. Elliot was often guilty of inspiring too much Inside Baseball talk about the review process on GfW podcasts, but he then attempted to critically apply the group insights to his own writing. Confusing Elliot and Bettenhausen is absurd.
You’re sounding like a self-taught high school dropout with a chip on his shoulder against folks who use fancy words. It’s certainly a meta topic though. Navel gazing about perceived navel gazing.
Certainly! He knows his own mind, and isn’t looking to the community for validation. He practices what he preaches, and is offering commentary for the puposes of elucidation, not justification. You REALLY think Roger Ebert cares what the community thinks of his critical style?