How well-learned does a critic need be?

[Gene Park]

Originally Posted by David Stone

Remember, video games are NOT a passive medium. You can't make any level of comparison to ciriticizing any other art form due to the active interactivity. This is the inherent flaw here in the Totilo Teardown.

You kinda prove Brad's point here by saying this.

Video games aren't a passive medium, that's why to be a well-rounded authority on games, you have to have "active interactivity" with a spectrum of games.

But who says you have to make games? You make the comparison to movies, and bring up Ebert, but nobody said you have to create a game to be able to critique it. It's an argument that comes up time and time again against critics, including those on this site, and it's one that doesn't get very far.

So sportscasters, you're bringing up their experience as players and their knowledge of the game. That's exactly it. You don't have to be a professional Ryu player. You just kinda know how to play the game. Like football.

Critics are meant to be voices of authority. They need the experience to back them up. So I agree with Brad's point that videogame critics have to work that much harder to gain that authority in the gaming community and beyond.

Chi I swear I'll blog this today. lol

[David Stone]

Originally Posted by Gene Park

You kinda prove Brad's point here by saying this.

Video games aren't a passive medium, that's why to be a well-rounded authority on games, you have to have "active interactivity" with a spectrum of games.

But who says you have to make games? You make the comparison to movies, and bring up Ebert, but nobody said you have to create a game to be able to critique it. It's an argument that comes up time and time again against critics, including those on this site, and it's one that doesn't get very far.

So sportscasters, you're bringing up their experience as players and their knowledge of the game. That's exactly it. You don't have to be a professional Ryu player. You just kinda know how to play the game. Like football.

Critics are meant to be voices of authority. They need the experience to back them up. So I agree with Brad's point that videogame critics have to work that much harder to gain that authority in the gaming community and beyond.

Chi I swear I'll blog this today. lol

(Boo! I keep forgetting the one line that makes my post make sense. Serves me right for typing something important in three minutes in between things at work.)

About the Ebert thing, I was trying to show that the Ebert agrument was the FLAWED one, which is what people are trying to leverage at Totilo. My brain was one sentence ahead of my fingers. Sorry about that.

As for the sportscaster analogy, you didn't read what I wrote. Let me re-interate: Yes, while some of them are former players, many of them are simply educated analysts. You can't expect them to get on the field and be able to accurately perform the actions they speak of. A conductor doesn't have to play every instrument just to be able to conduct an orchestra. Does it make them less of an authority? This is, to me, the heart of the matter. Unless I'm missing something.

*cue Gene: Dave, you're missing something.*

[Brad Gallaway]

Maybe we're having different discussions here, but like Gene said, I don't think anyone is saying that a Critic has to be able to produce the thing they critique... the heart of the matter is that the Critic must expose themselves to and be knowledgeable and authoritative about the subject. in games, the only way to do that is to play a hell of a lot of games in a wide variety of genres. i'd expect a book critic to be a major reader, sports commentators to have detailed knowledge of facts and stats, and a film critic to have seen a huge number of films.

...and just to be clear, i'm not even talking about Totilo here (although i definitely think he should be feeling quite embarrassed right now) i'm just talking about what makes a great game critic in general. to get to the top of the Critic heap, anybody (IMO) would need to spend a serious amount of time playing games and increasing their personal knowledge and experience with the industry overall, and that includes spending time with things like SFII, the Mario canon, Zelda, MGS, Halo, Half-Life, Deus Ex, Diablo, Ico, and a ton of other games that are all clearly-recognized benchmarks of videogaming.

is this type of effort required to be a critic? no, but i do think it's required for someone to be a well-rounded, knowledgeable, and experienced critic who's ready to examine and comment on things in a way that's worth writing (and reading) about.

[David Stone]

Then is it time that we have sub-genre critics? After all, we have jazz music critics, classical music critics, rock music critics, etc. Should we be moving in that direction as far as criticism goes?

Lord knows we've had this discussion before, but let's bring it up again: should criticism only come from someone who's extremely well-versed in one particular genre? Are our expectations of critics too high, that because we dabble in videogames we automatically must know all of them? If a player was only into RPGs, given how long they take to complete, I think it's reasonable that they may have let the Halo series fly by (I know I have, but for different reasons for another time ).

[Gene Park]

Originally Posted by David Stone

Then is it time that we have sub-genre critics? After all, we have jazz music critics, classical music critics, rock music critics, etc. Should we be moving in that direction as far as criticism goes?

Good suggestion. Video games aren't quite mainstream enough to constitute this, but someday it will. But considering how the industry is going for published writers (print or online), I'm not sure how feasible it would be for companies to hire and designate subgenre critics.

[Chi Kong Lui]

Originally Posted by David Stone

Then is it time that we have sub-genre critics? After all, we have jazz music critics, classical music critics, rock music critics, etc. Should we be moving in that direction as far as criticism goes?

Lord knows we've had this discussion before, but let's bring it up again: should criticism only come from someone who's extremely well-versed in one particular genre? Are our expectations of critics too high, that because we dabble in videogames we automatically must know all of them? If a player was only into RPGs, given how long they take to complete, I think it's reasonable that they may have let the Halo series fly by (I know I have, but for different reasons for another time ).

I think that's already true based on our own perspectives/experiences/preferences. Mike Bracken brings an unique perspective to horror games based on his knowledge of horror movies. I think few people could write the reviews on UFC and Pride FC that I did due to my love of mixed-martial arts and in-depth knowledge of its history.

Everyone has a right to an opinion and is free to express it. But whether that opinion is just more noise fodder or adding something interesting to the discussion is dependent on what they bring to the table. I'd just as soon laugh at a critic who might have completed every game that ever existed, but never touched a woman (and I bet the net is filled with a lot of those). And that will ultimately come across in that person's writing.

Funny, but somehow this relates to some of the Fallout hating going on. I don't know exactly how yet. I hope to make sense of it in a review of Fallout 3.

Chi

[MoriartyL]

Originally Posted by David Stone

Then is it time that we have sub-genre critics?

Oh boy.

Okay, here's the problem with that. The boundaries between kinds of games (and between games and other art forms) are really fuzzy. Walking back and forth over those borders isn't just acceptable, it's encouraged. Say you're the platformer critic, and a 3D platformer-fighting game hybrid comes along. (It could happen.) How do you judge such a thing? Do you get your friend the fighting-game critic and each of you will contribute half an opinion?! And what if the actual genre (and here I'm using the term as it's used with other media) of that game is horror- do you get the survival-horror critic to help out? And then what if it's got a flying minigame? What if it's got a cinematic story? What if it's got puzzles every now and then? Who decides whether the whole is any good?

[Gene Park]

Originally Posted by MoriartyL

Oh boy.

Okay, here's the problem with that. The boundaries between kinds of games (and between games and other art forms) are really fuzzy. Walking back and forth over those borders isn't just acceptable, it's encouraged. Say you're the platformer critic, and a 3D platformer-fighting game hybrid comes along. (It could happen.) How do you judge such a thing? Do you get your friend the fighting-game critic and each of you will contribute half an opinion?! And what if the actual genre (and here I'm using the term as it's used with other media) of that game is horror- do you get the survival-horror critic to help out? And then what if it's got a flying minigame? What if it's got a cinematic story? What if it's got puzzles every now and then? Who decides whether the whole is any good?

Good point. Like for example, Fallout 3 kinda sucks as a first-person shooter.

[Mike Doolittle]

Originally Posted by Leizerbeam

Whilst I do believe that a well-learned critic is generally more reliable and more experienced, I do not think a person's lack of experience with Street Fighter or Space Invaders etc. has any effect on their quality as a critic.

A newbie's opinion of a game is just as valuable as a vet's, they're simply targeting different audiences. After all, how does a rich comparison of Sim City 5 to Sim City 1-4 in a game review explain anything to those who haven't played either? If I'm a newcomer to the reviewed game's genre, I want to know how good the game is on its own merits, not in comparison to so-called 'compulsory' classics that I've never had the opportunity to play in my life.

Experience is great, but it's in no way the be-all and end-all for game reviewing.

Everything that needed to be said was said in this post.

Sub-genre critics are great for people who are diehards for that particular sub-genre. For everyone else, it's not such a big deal. For example, the best review I read of Lord of the Rings Online was from a guy who started off the review by making the point that he didn't play a lot of MMOs and wasn't about to get into the minutiae of the gameplay compared to games x y and z. That was helpful to me, because I don't play many MMOs. That critics' experience was no less valid simply because he didn't have 4 level 70 characters in WoW; his experience just spoke to different people.

This is why things like the second opinions we have here are so great. I'm openly a shooter junkie, and I could babble on forever about the finer nuances that separate the best from the rest, and that would be great for anyone else who is really into shooters, and not so much casual fans of the genre. Someone like Brad, who's not so much into shooters, can provide a nice contrast to my opinions.

That kind of transparency — openly discussing your experience or lack thereof — is often very helpful. Let's face it, even though most of us have probably played a lot of big milestone games, it's completely impossible to keep up with all of them, even if you were paid to play games for a living. Games are simply too time-consuming and there are too many of them for any of us to ever really sink our teeth into every single important one.


Hmmm... maybe I should type a "response blog" to Gene's post....

[Gene Park]

Originally Posted by Mike Doolittle

Everything that needed to be said was said in this post.

Sub-genre critics are great for people who are diehards for that particular sub-genre. For everyone else, it's not such a big deal. For example, the best review I read of Lord of the Rings Online was from a guy who started off the review by making the point that he didn't play a lot of MMOs and wasn't about to get into the minutiae of the gameplay compared to games x y and z. That was helpful to me, because I don't play many MMOs. That critics' experience was no less valid simply because he didn't have 4 level 70 characters in WoW; his experience just spoke to different people.

This is why things like the second opinions we have here are so great. I'm openly a shooter junkie, and I could babble on forever about the finer nuances that separate the best from the rest, and that would be great for anyone else who is really into shooters, and not so much casual fans of the genre. Someone like Brad, who's not so much into shooters, can provide a nice contrast to my opinions.

That kind of transparency — openly discussing your experience or lack thereof — is often very helpful. Let's face it, even though most of us have probably played a lot of big milestone games, it's completely impossible to keep up with all of them, even if you were paid to play games for a living. Games are simply too time-consuming and there are too many of them for any of us to ever really sink our teeth into every single important one.


Hmmm... maybe I should type a "response blog" to Gene's post....

Bring it Doolittle.

[Chi Kong Lui]

Demiath post this long response on Gene's blog:

To demand that game critics should be "well versed in all genres" seems rather extreme. Most reviewers (regardless of whether they're working for mainstream magazines or niche websites) have more than one genre of expertise, and at the very least also have some superficial knowledge about most types of games available. But why would their writing improve significantly - and also be of greater interest to the general public and/or more well-established critics - if they were demanded by their editors to acquire extensive knowledge about ALL genres? It's unclear to me exactly why, to take just one example, a critic primarily reviewing Japanese RPGs need to know anything at all about, say, American flight sims...

Indeed, if gaining credibility within the mainstream is what you want it would probably be a much better idea to spend less time with games and more time learning about so-called "high culture" and conventional art and then write about gaming in a wider context; much like film critics like to discuss the implicit political "message" of a particular movie. For example, if you're able to write a piece on "Xenosaga: Der Wille zur Macht" which simultaneously reviews the game mechanics and discusses the impact of Friederich Nietzsche's philosophy on popular culture, this would surely boost your credibility far more in the eyes of mainstream critics than being able to boast about how many different types of video games you've played.

Also, the analogy with other forms of criticism doesn't hold up to scrutiny. It may well be true that most film critics have seen "Annie Hall", but presumably just having seen a particular movie a few times and written a review about it isn't enough to make you "well versed in the genre" as a whole. While it's probably easier to know more movies genres intimately than it is to know a lot about different game genres (simply because a game can take 20-50 hours to complete while a movie is usually over in less than 2-3 hours), I nevertheless have a hard time imagining that there are that many film critics out there who can write equally trenchant articles on, say, Woody Allen comedies, film noir, French New Wave, Danish Dogma, Italian Neorealism, Communist Era Eastern European filmmaking and so forth (it's not uncommon to read articles in which film critics admit that they've missed quite a few great movies that they feel they're "supposed" to have seen).

And if not even critics working with more established art forms are likely to ever live up to such demanding standards, then why should game critics be expected to do so? Why isn't in-depth knowledge about the particular games/genres being reviewed combined with an obvious talent for writing enough to make a game critic worth taking seriously?

Full disclosure: I've been playing games for 20 years (mainly FPSs, RPGs, RTSs, action adventures and platforming titles) and never ever performed a hurricane kick. Does that make me less of a gamer? Of course not; it merely means that I'm not a fighting game/beat 'em up expert and if I were a game critic I would obviously stay away from reviewing such titles...

[GuitarCrazyo]

Ideally i love to get 8 hours each night but when im working thats impossible. I can manage on 5 hours minimum, but anything below that im a little dysfunctional the next day
At the moment im getting 6 to 7 hours per night, how many hours sleep do you need each night to function properly the next day ?