cormack12
Gold Member
Source (1 free article): https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2021/10/12/video-game-reviews-bad-system/
What’s the point of a review? No less than to answer the weighty question of how people ought to spend their limited time on this Earth.
That’s some task, and different reviewers approach it in different ways, though in writing about video games there are two main schools of thought. Some writers attempt to give readers a broad picture, weighing a title’s gameplay, story, stability, features — or lack thereof — and the number of hours a player could foreseeably invest in the game. (Here we return to the language of spending time.) Others endeavor to enlighten readers, unlocking new or instructive ways to understand a game. But both of these approaches are hurt by the way video game reviews are done these days.
In advance of a game’s release, media outlets are usually granted early access to the title alongside an embargo agreement, which, if agreed to, specifies when an outlet can publish its coverage. Embargoes can also delineate what details are off limits; some developers, for example, will request that plot twists and endgame content be kept out of reviews.
I played 25 hours of “Far Cry 6” in the six days between receiving the game and the embargo lifting. In that time, I cleared roughly a third of the game’s map, though that likely amounts to less than a third of the game’s story.[...] In other words, I played the game the way any normal person would — and as a result, had nowhere near enough experience to evaluate the game fully at the specified time the embargo lifted.
As a result, the overwhelming majority of video game reviews are written in a burst, immediately following a marathon session with the game. For every prestige, 5,000-word review that lands a week after a game’s release, 25 more are cobbled together in a frenzy with the goal of hitting the embargo date, which is the same for every outlet. Vanishingly few reviewers command an audience that will treat their work as appointment reading. As such, most writers are at the mercy of Google’s search engine, and time their work to the peaks at which people are seeking out reviews. Take an extra day to polish your prose, and you’ve given up pageviews to your competitors. Google’s search engine takes a lot of factors into account, but I doubt it has any perspective on the artfulness of a much-agonized-over introductory paragraph. The system rewards speed.
Does that approach benefit anyone? A cynical reader might say it serves a game’s PR apparatus. In some cases, this compressed schedule leaves reviewers with too rosy an outlook on a title — especially titles that have the benefit of polish, or whose astonishing qualities require little unpacking. But everyone else ends up worse off. The current regime is bad for writers crunching under a deadline, not to mention the harassment they might face if they get something wrong. It’s bad for readers, too, if the reviews they turn to are written by someone playing at a completely different pace, whose objective is to get through the game rather than to enjoy it.
So what of games? Surely compressing an experience that most players will have over the course of several weeks and even months into three days — tied to a looming deadline, no less — will change the valence of the experience. The levels in “Deathloop” are artfully constructed references to specific time periods and historic trends. But as I sped through the title, I didn’t have the opportunity to consider those finer details — adding another point of frustration. So, was the game well served by its roughly three-day review period? The profile of a default gamer is a person in their 30s or 40s who buys two or three games each year, into which they sink innumerable hours. Is that reader well served by a review written under the conditions outlined above?
But interest peaks around a game’s release, which traditionally comes a day or two after reviews drop. You might write the most thoughtful, measured evaluation of a game. If the review arrives past that peak in search interest, though, it risks finding virtually no readership. In journalism, the answer to the thought experiment about whether a tree falling in a forest makes a sound if nobody is around to hear it is a resounding, “No.” Is there a good reason for the system currently in place? I’ve never seen one given.
The system in place is bad for reviewers. It’s bad for readers. And it’s bad for games. In college, an art professor of mine remarked during a museum tour that one could conceivably spend an entire day considering just one work of art. Critics and casual observers alike have argued for decades that games are, in fact, art. But more than that, games are vast museums. Every in-game vista, narrative and mechanic is the work of one or many artists — and each is potentially worthy of examination on those terms.
Now, imagine speedrunning a museum visit, and being asked afterward to explain the merits of the gallery’s collection. Does it seem like what we’re doing is sensible?
What’s the point of a review? No less than to answer the weighty question of how people ought to spend their limited time on this Earth.
That’s some task, and different reviewers approach it in different ways, though in writing about video games there are two main schools of thought. Some writers attempt to give readers a broad picture, weighing a title’s gameplay, story, stability, features — or lack thereof — and the number of hours a player could foreseeably invest in the game. (Here we return to the language of spending time.) Others endeavor to enlighten readers, unlocking new or instructive ways to understand a game. But both of these approaches are hurt by the way video game reviews are done these days.
In advance of a game’s release, media outlets are usually granted early access to the title alongside an embargo agreement, which, if agreed to, specifies when an outlet can publish its coverage. Embargoes can also delineate what details are off limits; some developers, for example, will request that plot twists and endgame content be kept out of reviews.
I played 25 hours of “Far Cry 6” in the six days between receiving the game and the embargo lifting. In that time, I cleared roughly a third of the game’s map, though that likely amounts to less than a third of the game’s story.[...] In other words, I played the game the way any normal person would — and as a result, had nowhere near enough experience to evaluate the game fully at the specified time the embargo lifted.
As a result, the overwhelming majority of video game reviews are written in a burst, immediately following a marathon session with the game. For every prestige, 5,000-word review that lands a week after a game’s release, 25 more are cobbled together in a frenzy with the goal of hitting the embargo date, which is the same for every outlet. Vanishingly few reviewers command an audience that will treat their work as appointment reading. As such, most writers are at the mercy of Google’s search engine, and time their work to the peaks at which people are seeking out reviews. Take an extra day to polish your prose, and you’ve given up pageviews to your competitors. Google’s search engine takes a lot of factors into account, but I doubt it has any perspective on the artfulness of a much-agonized-over introductory paragraph. The system rewards speed.
Does that approach benefit anyone? A cynical reader might say it serves a game’s PR apparatus. In some cases, this compressed schedule leaves reviewers with too rosy an outlook on a title — especially titles that have the benefit of polish, or whose astonishing qualities require little unpacking. But everyone else ends up worse off. The current regime is bad for writers crunching under a deadline, not to mention the harassment they might face if they get something wrong. It’s bad for readers, too, if the reviews they turn to are written by someone playing at a completely different pace, whose objective is to get through the game rather than to enjoy it.
So what of games? Surely compressing an experience that most players will have over the course of several weeks and even months into three days — tied to a looming deadline, no less — will change the valence of the experience. The levels in “Deathloop” are artfully constructed references to specific time periods and historic trends. But as I sped through the title, I didn’t have the opportunity to consider those finer details — adding another point of frustration. So, was the game well served by its roughly three-day review period? The profile of a default gamer is a person in their 30s or 40s who buys two or three games each year, into which they sink innumerable hours. Is that reader well served by a review written under the conditions outlined above?
But interest peaks around a game’s release, which traditionally comes a day or two after reviews drop. You might write the most thoughtful, measured evaluation of a game. If the review arrives past that peak in search interest, though, it risks finding virtually no readership. In journalism, the answer to the thought experiment about whether a tree falling in a forest makes a sound if nobody is around to hear it is a resounding, “No.” Is there a good reason for the system currently in place? I’ve never seen one given.
The system in place is bad for reviewers. It’s bad for readers. And it’s bad for games. In college, an art professor of mine remarked during a museum tour that one could conceivably spend an entire day considering just one work of art. Critics and casual observers alike have argued for decades that games are, in fact, art. But more than that, games are vast museums. Every in-game vista, narrative and mechanic is the work of one or many artists — and each is potentially worthy of examination on those terms.
Now, imagine speedrunning a museum visit, and being asked afterward to explain the merits of the gallery’s collection. Does it seem like what we’re doing is sensible?