Objective Game Reviews: Be careful what you wish for

I'm not sure if this is a phenomenon that is exclusive to GameSpot, but in recent years the review site has received an alarming amount of vitriol for its scores on many highly anticipated games including Zelda: Skyward Sword, The Last of Us, DuckTales Remastered, and now most recently Grand Theft Auto V. While some of the criticism leveled against GameSpot might be legitimate, it is mostly drowned out by a sea of seething hatred and completely uncalled for remarks. It seems that many people are coming to GameSpot not to get informed before making purchasing decisions but rather just to confirm their own egos and pat themselves on the back for having such great taste. I would like to take this time to remind anyone expressing these views that GameSpot's role is not to pander to its audience and tell you what you want to hear; they are here to express their own opinions and inform you about games both technically and critically.

Typical aftermath of a GameSpot review.

Putting aside the hatred and insults though, there is a recurring theme among many of the negative comments that GameSpot's reviews are being too "biased", or "not objective", as if implying that these are virtuous goals that reviews should be aiming toward in the first place. This kind of perspective shows a failure of understanding of how critical analysis of media is supposed to work, as the context in which these words are thrown around demonstrates that these people don't really know what these terms actually mean and how they should be applied. Video game reviews are fundamentally a subjective opinion-based medium, as critics are offering up their own opinion on the experiences they had. To remove opinion from a review is to remove the entire critique aspect of the review along with an accompanying score, as any score is ultimately a numerical representation of the critic's overall opinion, and thus cannot be objective. This would of course result in a very boring and uninteresting review, as Jim Sterling infamously demonstrated with his brilliant "objective" review of Final Fantasy XIII. However, it should be acknowledged that any good review generally supports and grounds its opinions in actual objective facts that it can reference about the game that it is evaluating. This is where the technical aspect of a review comes in. Obviously if someone just writes a review saying that a game's graphics suck, its gameplay is boring, and the plot is lame without bothering to offer any specific examples to reference in support of these points, such a review would equally be uninformative. By combining technical and critical analysis of a game, potential players can get a much greater sense of what the game might actually feel like to play. I want critics to touch on objective aspects of the game, but anything beyond pointing out technical specifics, the critic's personal opinions should be entirely welcome.

Let's look at some small examples of how to combine the two aspects I've been talking about so you can see how much it helps when a review contains both objective and subjective elements.

Example 1: "The leveling system in Guild Wars 2 sucks."

This is bad because it's only expressing an opinion and doesn't tell you anything about how the leveling system works.

Example 2: "Guild Wars 2 uses a unique leveling system that scales your level down based on the zone you're travelling in."

While this might seem more informative than the previous example, this is still bad as well because it's too plain and descriptive without offering any critical insight on how this might affect the gameplay.

Example 3: "While Guild Wars 2 makes it easier to group with your friends through its unique level scaling system, this also results in a feeling of lacking character progression because your avatar's strength is always being reduced based on the zone you're travelling in."

This is a much more insightful example because it touches on specific technical aspects of the gameplay while extrapolating potential consequences and problems that follow from it. Even if you might personally disagree with the critic's conclusions, you're much more informed about what to expect from the gameplay of Guild Wars 2 than through the other two examples, and that's the most important thing, as a review's primary goal should be to inform.

Now that I've hopefully established the necessity of subjectivity in reviews, let's jump back to Carolyn's GTAV review for a moment. What's particularly annoying to me about criticisms of the review is that many players are basically admitting that her points about misogyny and sexism are right, but they should just be ignored anyway, citing that personal politics shouldn't factor into the score. But why not? As I've already pointed out, a large part of doing a review is expressing the critic's opinion, and since enjoyment can certainly be affected by political messages in the game, then it's fair game to offer commentary on them. Yes, there can be a wide range of opinions where controversial issues are concerned, but such can still be the case for any other aspect of a game as well. Some people enjoy level grinding for example; others may find it tedious. Either way, it is completely appropriate to talk about politics in a game that deals heavily in political commentary. In fact to ignore it altogether would almost be dishonest. I'm not saying anyone needs to agree with Carolyn's opinion, but this idea that she shouldn't even be allowed to express it out of some strange notion of professionalism is ridiculous. Being professional doesn't mean you need to tap dance around controversial issues; you just need to be respectful when expressing your point of view, which I believe Carolyn certainly was. Another argument I've heard is that it's GTA so misogyny should just be expected, as if to imply that if something has already established itself to be morally repugnant previously that it somehow no longer becomes a problem in subsequent iterations. I'm sorry but that's not how it works either. Garbage is still garbage and it doesn't suddenly turn into decoration just because it's been laying on the floor long enough without getting picked up.

GTAV ultimately got a 9/10, which last I checked is a superb score and an editor's choice. In other words, in spite of Carolyn's annoyances with its sexist undertones, she still thought it was an amazing game anyway. At the end of the day I don't see what there is to fuss about considering this. Even if you disagree with her view on that particular point, it did little to affect the overall score of the game, and if we're seriously going to start complaining because of a difference of 1 point, this is clearly no longer about trying to get informed about a game but instead seeking validations for one's own ego, because whether a game gets a 9/10 or 10/10, with that high of a score, it shouldn't stop you from enjoying the game regardless.

I've been saying for a while now that game reviews have become inflated, and anything that receives less than an 8/10 is regarded as a failure. For some well-established franchises, even a 9/10 is starting to become no longer enough. This madness has got to stop. The more we inflate game scores, the more we just devalue the scores anyway until they become meaningless. Ask yourself before you hand out that next 9/10 or perfect score; does this game really stand tall above all the rest as a game that will truly be memorable and revisited for years to come? I'm finding more and more games receiving very generous scores that I end up buying and being sorely disappointed by. These are games that are from genres I normally enjoy as well. As a result, it's becoming harder and harder for me to find critics that I trust.

I literally read from another commentator on Carolyn's GTAV review that if game reviews weren't objective then the scores wouldn't all be the same; as if implying that this would be a bad thing. Oh my god, really? You mean... people might actually have... A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION?!

Someone call the Gamestapo Secret Police! Such dissent must be silenced at once! Unbelievable that this is a commonly shared opinion among seemingly many gamers. There is value to be had in varying opinion being that no one shares exactly the same tastes. If all reviews shared the same opinions then many people could not find critics that they can relate to and trust. As much hate as Tom McShea got from his review of Skyward Sword for example, I actually gained a great deal of respect for him since then. I like many others ignored his review initially, thoroughly convinced that he couldn't be right, but when I actually sat down to play the game myself, I had to honestly admit that the controls were as problematic as he had described. Not game-breaking, but enough of a nuisance that it took a high toll on my experience. The fact that Tom was willing to take a step back and not automatically assume that a Zelda game is entitled to a very high score just because of its established pedigree, and instead gave a score that accurately reflected his true experience with it, I became much more trusting of Tom's insights from then onward.

The bottom line I guess I'm trying to get at here is be careful what you wish for. If you want truly objective reviews, you're asking for a snorefest. An uninformative, bland and boring snorefest. I welcome opinions, and lots of them. Gamers need to stop using terms they don't understand or they might just get exactly what they want, much to their own detriment.

BattleForge: A glimpse into the future of gaming?

EA has recently announced that they're essentially flipping the kill switch on their free-to-play real time strategy game BattleForge, terminating all server support for it by October 31st. As the game requires an Internet connection to play, this means in the absence of a server to host the online content, the game will be rendered totally unplayable in the coming months. Though I have never played the game myself, looking over some reviews of it, there were many players who were quite fond of the game and had much praise to say about it, even though the game has failed to reach the mainstream market penetration that it might have deserved. What's more from what I've read, it is technically possible to solo through the game by yourself without necessarily needing to interact with any other players; in fact some missions are exclusively single player by design, and in-game currency can be earned through playing the game and without necessarily needing to spend real world money.

With these points in mind, this begs the question to all those always online digital future supporters a few months ago, who ardently supported Microsoft's DRM policies: What happened to all that good faith you had that these companies will provide an offline patch later? I've been told on several occasions that surely if it ever came to this, these benevolent corporations who think only for what's in the best interest of the gamer will simply provide a patch for offline play, and thus problem solved! Nothing to get worked up about, so see? What's the big deal? You're all just making a big scene about nothing. Well here we are; that theory has been put to the test now and it failed. Even though BattleForge theoretically has enough of a framework in place to offer an offline option, none will be given even in its final hours.

It's worth noting that BattleForge is far from the first video game ever to suffer this kind of digital fate, as there have been many free-to-play style web browser games that have come and gone over the years as well, but BattleForge is particularly unique in that it's a much more advanced and in-depth game produced from a well-established AAA publisher, which gives us a frightening glimpse into what we can truly expect from this grand "digital future" for hardcore gamers that always online proponents speak of so fondly. Some players have actually invested well over $100 into this game and now they will have nothing to show for it. BattleForge wasn't originally free-to-play either; it came in full retail boxed copies, which have now been effectively repurposed into paperweights too. Isn't always online great guys? I love it when my software discs come with an arbitrary ticking time bomb attached. In fact, I think I want all my games always online. That's the world we live in after all, isn't it? #AdamOrthLogic

Where's Batman when you need him?

In EA's statement, they remark that they find it unfortunate and never easy to shut down an old game like BattleForge. That was a nice sentiment, but wait a minute, BattleForge was released in March of 2009. The game is only four years old! This is considered an "old" game? Even World of Warcraft is still being supported after all these nine years and counting. Of course, one could argue that Warcraft is a significantly more popular game, and as long as a game maintains a healthy level of player activity, it will always be supported. Perhaps, but the lasting value of a game really shouldn't be left up to the whims of the majority. If a player feels like revisiting a game they paid for with their own money even many years into the future, there's no reason that option shouldn't still be left open to them, regardless of whether that game ever managed to achieve popular widespread appeal or not. It's their game; they should decide when they feel like playing it or returning to it, especially when the game theoretically should have been capable of offering offline content in the first place.

BattleForge may not be one of the more iconic and well-known games to suffer this fate, but it raises a warning flag for what we can expect from bigger games to come as more AAA mainstream games are fundamentally integrated with online functionality. The clock is ticking for some of your favorite games, and someday many classics may be lost to future generations because of arbitrary restrictions created by an online service-based approach to gaming.