Adam Creighton, Computer and Video Gaming: Video game criticism that matters

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Adam Creighton, Computer and Video Gaming (Subscribe)

Saturday, June 07, 2008

Video game criticism that matters

Here's a decent article (and part of a series) on more mature video game criticism: "Zarathustran Analytics in Video Games, Part 9: Flaws in Criticism Today".

You should read the article (and the series), but -- in essence -- it's a call for the importance of meaningful critical review of games as genuine feedback to the teams that make them, as opposed to the "this is fun" / "this sucks" or review scores model that is endemic to the review world today.

(As an aside, does anyone else find it ironic that versions of numerical scores are used to grade non-numerical, creative experiences)?

I do think a model that creates -- in essence -- post mortem input to creative teams is far more useful for driving the games industry forward in a meaningful way than the aggregate Metacritic scores currently used by publishers, and (unfortunately) sometimes used to penalize creativity.

I think there's probably some middle(ish) ground between the prevailing system, and ivory tower(ish) critiques like "Repressed Homoeroticism in R-Type" (no disrespect meant, but I'm looking for a subset of enabling criticism that helps development teams, as opposed to "just" cultural implication assessments).

I do have a pet peeve, though: historical pop culture memory gaps.

While I appreciate references to Lester Bangs and Alan Moore, why reference Enders Game, as opposed to Kobayashi Maru? Or perhaps more appropriately (given this particular article), why use Mirrors Edge, rather than precursor (and dead-on candidate for the particular point being made) Breakdown? (Admittedly, I'm perhaps overly a fan of Breakdown, and think that team did something gutsy and innovative and didn't get its due props.)

But those are nits compared to my overall appreciation of this article and its sentiment.

Check it out for yourself.

Labels: development process, game design, innovation, ramblings