mind control

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGa0Dfwu0Kk

Disclosure for people who are close to their subjects, opinion is fine, but there's a point where people spend less time talking about the game and use the game as a platform for their political rant. Polygon did this with the Tropico 5 review they did where the writer complained because he played the game as a bully.

I'm a fiction writer, I write villians and assholes all the time, part of it is suppressing my personality and my own overly nice attitude to let them do what they have to do to progress the story. I've written stuff that I've turned around and cried my eyes out afterwards because I suppressed my emotions to tell a story.

And that's not just reviews, how many articles have we seen that highlight games? Previews? Now how many of those are done because the person was a roommate with an indie dev? How many AAA stories were gotten because the publication decided to cater to the publishers?

What about the article that lambasted Kingdom Come: Deliverance because of a lack of racial diversity...IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE? What about the fact that Stardock CEO Brad Wardell was taken to court for sexual harassment, a charge that wasn't only dismissed with predudice, but the court forced the person who brought the charge to make a public apology (This is almost unheard of too). Gamepolitics only issued an apology for treating him like scum last month, the case has been over and the documents made public 2 years ago. Kotaku has threw the guy into any mudpit they can find when they want to make a statement over the lack of women in games development...instead of talking about the women who are already there.
Oh, I forgot to say this earlier. As far as the artist goes, he's free to draw whatever he wants, that's part of the 'price' you pay for art, people will express themselves however they want. He's also allowed to apply for any job he wants too, but no one has to hire him, people can look at what he drew and go 'You know what, I'm not sure I want someone who's willing to do this', and not bring him in for an interview. I'm all for freedom of expression and artistic freedom, knowing that a lot of what I see probably isn't to my tastes or might even be offensive, hell look at political cartoonists, they've mocked politicians for DECADES, and they get away with it, and they're employed to do so.

This happens a LOT. Noticed that too - a lot of journo's just waffle and wax lyrical about bs instead of concentrating on the game and specifics or facts or details. If i wanted to read a story, i have books for it. And your right. More and more of them tangent off the subject way too much. I really wish they would be more objective and just get to the points of relevance..the political, moral, philosphical bs have no place in reviews. No exceptions. They are games ffs.

I have a sort of 'perfect' review in my head, which might go more in line with movies then games, but the idea I always come up with is, barring something like a sports game where you have to understand external rules, a reviewer should be able to look objectively at a game without putting too much of their biases in there, and let me explain.

Take Mario, or any platformer that exists, since they're the most basic game. Now, if you're a platformer fan, you should be able to look at a review, even a negative one, and take away if this is the kind of game you want. Are the controls tight, are the world themes interesting, are the stages well crafted. Is the sound dull or is it colorful and exciting, are the enemies varied or are we facing old school Final Fantasy recoloring. Does it all come together in the end or does each component fight one another?

Roger Ebert wrote an article about reviewing and to paraphrase, you might not even like what you're sent to see, but your reader might, and what they need to get out of your review is if it's to their standards. And that's the thing that I want to hear most, story's important but there's a balance issue with that and some people don't think the same way I do, it's all about getting a good team together.

I know it's completely impossible to remove opinion and subjectivity, but the reviewer shouldn't be the focus of the review, that's the thing with reviews that I want. For the rest of the articles like I mentioned, I'd like to see them behave ethically, I want to see more articles about more then just the games, and my favorite example is, Kickstarter, how did Wasteland 2 manage having so much extra to produce a great game, while something like Broken Age seems to be floundering so much?

I don't think it's illegal, but it is both incredibly stupid and incredibly dickish.
Disagree completely. There's room for more than just buyers guides, and I for one much prefer reading (and writing) reviews that critique games as art rather than reviews that just go over the surface elements.

The problem is that to do anything like this we as a people need to be at a certain level. The thing I tend to rely on is a lot of movies, you don't hear artistic critiques on a Micheal Bay film, or any of the Expendables movies, or a lot of mass market movies, or if you do it's probably a lot of scoffing at the very idea. And as much as I love Mario, I'm not sure where the art would come in, and I definitely know that there isn't a lot of room in Call of Duty for it.

Some things just aren't worth the effort for artistic critique, but it needs to be informed above all.

Edit: Then again, some of those guys can probably try to find artistic meaning in a bite of ghost pepper so I can very well be wrong.

Actually, as I'm thinking about it, I'm more talking about critiquing the aesthetics/artistic philosophy of games. Which is different.

I do feel that reviewers should be free to bring in philosophical/political/moral issues if they are relevant to the critique of a game. On the other hand, I'm hard pressed to come up with a situation where they WOULD be relevant enough to merit discussion. Or a game that actually deserves being discussed in a political/philosophical/social context.

In general, I'm actually quite against any philosophy of artistic criticism that sees social or philosophical relevance as more important than artistry. But I'm also really wary of people who are pushing for all videogame reviews to be nothing but glorified buyers guides. That's one thing I've seen GamerGaters say or imply that I'm against 100%


Isn't the wasteland of postmodern criticism wonderful?

There are certain games which would fall into the artistic category but come on, the bulk do not - i would guess many people read reviews for what they are worth - find out about the game and not about whether the artwork is the next Picasso :D (journo's can waffle all they like on games like Proteus and Dear Esther --- i dont play them not look at reviews on them in first place...)

Doesn't mean you can't discuss them from a certain aesthetic perspective, or from a particular artistic philosophy.

I, for instance, almost always read "real" reviews because I'm interested in seeing the reviewer's particular take on a game. I have very little interest in them as buyers guides. I can easily get the scant information I actually need (does it actually run, what's the general consensus of what's good and bad) from user reviews or forums.

This. People getting upset over review priorities shifting from purely describing the mechanics of a game to also discussing things like artistic merit never fails to baffle me. If people are so married to professional reviews, what exactly is stopping people from reading reviews that aren't written as buyer's guides, parsing out the information that is actually helpful to them, and ignoring the rest, aside from the short time it would take to read and think about what one has read? Hell, speaking of alternatives to professional reviews, you don't even need to go to user reviews; youtube is a source of information about a game that is cheap and 'objective'.

And the fact that gamergate is stuck in one subreddit is because otherwise there's nowhere to discuss. KiA, The Escapist, 8chan, and here are the only places besides twitter that I know of that will actually allow the discussion about it, and to be honest, I'm amazed we haven't seen a mod here giving us a stern lecture about being civil at moments myself. Things get heated, tensions get high, but most people I've met on this are civil, it's the anti's on twitter that make me want to hide.

We need another heated GOG vs Steam thread going......

I stay FAR away from those. Especially since I'm liable to get attacked by everyone for using both <.<. The Forum Mafia games are safer, at least there I know what's going on.