The level of disingenuous strawmanning that surrounds discussion of “objective” game reviews has now reached a degree of frothing stupidity way beyond anything gamergate can be accused of.
Here’s how to do an objectively fair subjective game review:
• You (the critic or reviewer) play the game you are writing about. Thoroughly. (optional)
• You bring into your experience your particular (entirely subjective) biases and aesthetic sensibilities about what constitutes a good or bad game, what is valuable in art, etc. In other words you have a value system.
• You communicate to the reader what those values are, and (optional) make a case for why those values should also be valid for the reader.
• You describe how your game experience does or does not embody your values, and (optional) give examples of specific instances where the game did or did not embody said values, and (optional) contrast this game with other games which you felt did a better or worse job of embodying those values.
• If your roommate or daughter or boyfriend made this game, or if the developers mailed you a bouquet of flowers and sent you on an all-expense paid vacation, you should mention it or (optional) review a different game instead.
• If you ever write a second or third game review, please evaluate those games using the same value system that you used to evaluate the first game. If your values have changed, please communicate to the reader how those values have changed, and, (optional) why.
Congratulations! You are now an objectively fair subjective game reviewer!
I don’t think any of what you listed here is outside the realm of possibility, nor is it unfair. I can get behind pretty much all the points you bring up here.
Let’s not kid ourselves. Science is not some perfect, flawless, totally objective thing. It’s heavily tainted by personal biases, flaws, and bigotry. You can argue that “good science” wouldn’t be effected by such things, but then by that definition I’d argue there’s no such thing as “good science”.
No, I don’t think so… science is called science. Science journalism would entail describing scientific discoveries and events to the general public, hopefully in a way that doesn’t either flatten the issues or alienate the reader/listener by going over their heads with too much jargon. I think there are specific issues that has been discussed here before on science reporting, though.
Plus, I think the topic is gaming journalism (so back to the dreaded gamergate stuff, it appears).
But also, I have to agree with @dragonchild12 on the issue of objectivity in science. Human beings are flawed and biased and we bring those with us into our work. I find science to be at its best when the people doing it work to make their biases known and understood, so at least they are addressed when they present their work to the community. It’s, as they say, something of a dialectical process…
We speak of consensus because there is somebody claiming there isn’t. We also speak of it because there is consensus about climate change and it directly counters that lie. But that consensus is not part of the scientific method, nor is it part of the reason for accepting it as true. It is intended to influence politics.
Anybody who is reporting on climate change and saying there is consensus in the scientific community is not addressing the truth value of climate change, she is addressing the political character of that statement, otherwise she would say that our best scientific understanding is that climate change is a real thing, and that people who agree are scientists who either understand the science or people who trust in the scientific method, and that those who don’t agree, are also not able to disprove the studies, not the consensus.
Yes, science is consensus at best, but the language of journalism isn’t scientific so it’s not under any circumstances using consensus as anything other than in the political sense. Which fits into your larger point, just wanted to weigh in to say that this fake objectivity also strips meaning from words as much as it changes them.
I agree, but its a point of view, a “take” on the facts as well, the truth is if you don’t have a point of view it makes it harder for people to understand what you mean. Which is why news outlets strive for “balance”, that way they can claim objectivity as an informed attribute.
Moving on to the article, (which I liked), I do think there is a direct link between journalism downgraded as competition to entertainment and serious criticism losing favor with consumers of popular culture (which means everybody).
Using “Gaming journalism” to refer to game reviews is only possible because there seems to be no barrier between opinion and journalism, and this is only possible because we insist on consuming political statements as facts, which is only true because talking heads on TV/newspaper/blogs don’t challenge opinions, they (and we in turn) only accept them or condemn them. When movie critics are told they’re wrong because they didn’t like a movie, or people get mad that somebody else wants diversity in games, there is no objective other than to preserve an identity which feels threatened by discourse. That’s what quite a few people tend to mean when they speak of objectivity, the quality of having an objective.
Well, lets be clear, in this conversation journalism = game reviews. And when giving your opinion on art, its useful to be as artful as possible in order to convey the emotional core of a work. I don’t know if the language of cinema criticism is in itself appropriate for game reviews, but as far as helping people make better purchasing decisions? It’s completely apt at that, here’s a very artful example of this:
Oh yes, absolutely. By “broken down” I was just referring to the reviews that are divided up into separate sub-reviews and numerical scores for graphics, sound, gameplay, etc. I think some people believe, for whatever reason, that these are somehow “objective,” (because numbers?) when, as you say, they’re not only just as subjective as a review that makes no bones about being personal, but they also have rather arbitrary constraints because of that format. In that format, the game’s graphics or sound or whatever have equal weight with the gameplay, so a game designed around wonky graphics but with original, innovative, amazing gameplay necessarily gets dinged for the graphics, even if, as a whole, the reviewer thought it was a much better game than something that got a “better” score by essentially being highly polished but mediocre. It’s all down to assumptions made about gaming in the '90s (that don’t even hold true anymore) - that games are all aspiring to a particular style of AAA graphics (i.e. no one is trying to do anything stylistically different than anyone else), that gameplay is variations on known themes, etc. The people calling for “objectivity” in game reviews hanker after the time when this weird notion held sway - that games were being (or at least should be) made the same way, to do the same thing, in the same style and that basically all that varied was the competence by which they were being made. So I suppose actually that original assertion was correct - they are treating games like washing machines, but I don’t think they’re aware they’re doing that.
With apologies to Terry Pratchett, there is no atom of emotion, or molecule of entertainment.
Sorry, nitpicking, but this really annoyed me. Don’t use a quote (well, paraphrase) if you don’t know what it means. I’m assuming here the author is referencing Death in Hogfather:
TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
In other words, almost exactly what the author was trying to say (and trying to use the reference as the opposite point of view).
“With apologies” is frequently used for borrowing phrases, not for contradicting the authors of those phrases. I think you misunderstood the intent of the author.
I think that something approaching objective game journalism is both possible and desirable. Much to the chagrin of most people who seem to profess to this perspective, I do not even count reviews as journalism, they are mostly irrelevant. Most of what I consider games journalism is development information. Thesis papers, technical articles, application ideas, coding, asset creation, gameplay ideas, etc. Maybe a bit of trade info from "the games industry"thrown in there.
By the time games are being reviewed, they are already complete. It’s the dull marketing stage of the life cycle. The interesting stuff is all over by then.
