We're here to talk about "objective videogame reviews", something that has come up again and again within the GamerGate hashtag. Now, I will point out that a lot of people posting on the hashtag claim they want objective news and reporting and agree that reviews are better off as subjective pieces. To those people; fair enough! Granted, people a lot smarter than me have pointed out in recent weeks that objectivity really isn't a positive thing for journalists to strive for and often leads to misinformation. For a crash course example check out John Oliver's take on climate change which gives a great visual example of how "objectivity" is inherently misleading.
But we're not here to talk about that, OBJECTIVE REVIEWS, even before GamerGate there were rumblings of people thinking that they should be a thing...or that it's even possible for them to be a thing. In an attempt to understand the agenda of people using the GamerGate hashtag, Jenni Goodchild created a poll of questions regarding common GG topics to gather up as many responses as possible, and one of the topics was about "objective reviews". I'd like the thank Jenni for her work, because without her spelunking into the dark depths of that hashtag for me there's no way I would have had the patience to not immediately rage quit this piece during researching.
You can read all of her findings regarding GamerGate here.
I have read through every single response she gathered on the topic of "objective reviews" and have separated four common arguments within them that are actually worth responding to. The responses were mostly anonymous, but all quotes in this piece are from the responses in the above link.
Okay full disclosure; there was also a "fifth" argument regarding reviewers not sleeping around/taking money but most of those responses were grounded in personal insults and slander so I'm choosing not to address them. Obviously a developer/publisher exchanging money to get a positive review is a bad thing, but let's keep the conspiracy theories and arguments about "corruption" involving non-existent reviews out of it yea?
Anyway, let's tackle the four kinds of arguments for why websites should strive for "OBJECTIVE REVIEWS":
1) Fear of politics and/or agendas in reviews
"I think the “objective gamer reviews” idea has a bit of a range with people satisfied with having disclosure of any personal/financial connections, those who just want gameplay/technical details, those who want to avoid politics (having to be PC) when they play games, etc."
"For me an object game review is simply a review that covers both the good and bad aspects of a game e.g. graphics, game play, story etc. No agendas to be pushed i.e. let the customer weight up the pros and cons."Okay, so to break down the argument, politics should be left out of game reviews because it's unprofessional for the writer to impose his/her political feelings on the reader; and that their job is strictly to articulate a game's core quality as fairly as possible and leave the matter of politics up to the consumer.
I don't really follow this argument for three reasons. First, politics are, no doubt, likely to affect a reviewer's opinion in some form. When you ask the writer to not mention any kind of opinion that could be deemed "political" you are asking them to throw away part of their own feelings on a game and instead make assumptions on what the "reader" (which is a lot of people) want, which if you ask me can only lead to dishonest writing that neither the writer or reader can put any confidence in.
Secondly this argument seems to assume that by a writer interjecting their own personal politics into a review they are somehow forcing them onto the reader. If you really can't stand a particular reviews tone, or that you feel it's coming from a position that you personally can't relate to; that's fine! You can find another review to read, for pretty much any mainstream release there's literally dozens if not hundreds of alternatives. It's your choice whether you want to go elsewhere for a review, in my opinion you should read multiple reviews of games anyway, but this isn't in any way an argument for the review you disagree with to not exist. And furthermore; let's say for example, someone writes a mostly positive 9/10 review of, I don't know, let's say Grand Theft Auto V, and it has a paragraph or two in it raising concerns about the treatment of female characters. If you personally couldn't care less about this topic (and if so, feel free to NOT follow me on Twitter) then clearly this paragraph isn't relevant to you...so ignore it. Why does it offend you that this paragraph exist, why must every syllable of a review be catered to specifically YOU?
As for my third point, well let's talk about it after reading this little gem of a response:
"(We want) Game reviews that focus on artistical and technological merits vs execution of concept. Politics are superfluous commentary. Gaming is apolitical."Okay WOW. So my third and final point is basically against the assumption that politics are inserted by reviewers and not a part of the core game design itself. Listen up champ; game developers are affected by their personal backgrounds (as we ALL are), games get funded by publishers because they're likely to sell, and advertised to target markets whose politics and outlook on the world are part of what products they choose to consume. Story writers have politics, game designers have politics, advertisers have politics and the market has politics. Games have overtaken movies as the biggest entertainment industry in the world, they are a part of pop culture, not only do they play a part in moulding how we think they themselves are moulded by how we think. To assume that games are stuck in this bubble and that nothing they have to say matters both highlight your ignorance about how art and entertainment is made and your lack of respect for videogames in general.
For further reading on how literally all of videogame design is political, check out this recent Midnight Resistance piece on the subject.
Before we move on, here's a brief example off the top of my head about how leaving politics out of reviews can make them less informative. Let's take David Cage's latest emotional wasteland of a videogame Beyond: Two Souls, one of the most bafflingly terrible games ever made. In an attempt to "emotionally connect" with the audience, the game has multiple scenes that involve some kind of attempt of sexual violence or rape upon the main character Jodie. Now, maybe you personally aren't offended by this treatment of a female character or cheap usage of rape imagery, but the fact that this game's attempt at an "emotional story" uses them so frequently is a key point to mention in why it doesn't work. Cage regularly throws violence and rape at his main character to attempt to make the player uncomfortable because it's the best he can do, he's deliberately throwing out these sensitive issues to manipulate the audience into having a response because of lack of investment in the story or characters. If you argue that a reviewer shouldn't discuss this because "rape is bad" is too political of a point for you to tolerate, you're forcing the reviewer to overlook something that highlights so many of the game's core problems.
You're essentially demanding less honest and less complete reviews.
2) Not Knowing What "Objective" Means
"An opinion piece makes it personal. A review shouldn't be personal. If you want an opinionated piece on a game, so be it but don´t destroy a game with a bad score because you as a reviewer didn’t like something."
"A review has to be objective. As games is a interactive and complex media, the experience vary, therefore can only be an opinion."
"When the reviewer goes beyond that and starts interjecting personal biases, the review itself becomes less objective.”
"By “Objective” reviews, we are asking for Game Journalists such as myself, to review video games fairly, without bias or outside influence."Do I even have to say anything here? I mean look at these responses, I've read the second one like 80 times and I still have no idea what the guy is talking about. Nevertheless, I think we can cover this one quickly.
The problem is these people are saying that a review shouldn't reflect a personal experience, but when you play through a videogame what do you have but a personal experience? There's no "objective" good narrative or good writing, maybe you can argue there's objective functional writing or game design or whatever, but that's definitely not the same thing as "good".
You have to understand that reviewing a game without "bias or personal influence" is IMPOSSIBLE. There's nothing in the world you could say that would convince me it's possible. Hell, what kind of controller a reviewer uses while playing through a game can be considered a personal bias, and that's without diving into the muddy waters of taste and education and politics etc. Some graphical styles will look artsy to some and crap to other, some people will hate how a game feels and others will love it, some people feel ripped off by a game that's five hours long others feel that most games are way too god-damned long anyway. All a reviewer can do is try to take their personal time with a game and articulate their experience in the most useful way possible. Pretty much everyone will have a different experience with a videogame; hence why I recommend reading multiple reviews and following writers you personally identify with!
“This is a bit of subjective thing. I think that one of the problems is you have people with strong opinions expressing themselves in reviews, which is fine, but gamers aren’t looking for that. They’re looking to be informed. Here’s a potential analogy. Imagine you’re reading the review for a product, for example a toy on Amazon, and you run across one that starts off with a rant about how the toy cultivates unhealthy representations of gender to children, but ends with some minor issues with the toy’s joints, stickers, etc. The next review just details the issues without an opinion on what the toy represents. As a toy collector, I’m more interested in the second than the first review.”Wait, how can any review be objective if the concept of objectivity itself is subjective, wait that doesn't make any sense...oh...my brain...I feel kind of dizzy of a sudden.
But I'm glad you made an analogy about toys though, that leads us nicer into the next category. You guys scroll down to that I'm just...gonna just sit down a bit over here...
3) HEY! Games are about the GAMEPLAY man
“When we say objective game reviews we mean that. Some of us believe a “game” cannot be described as a whole but as a sum of all it´s parts. Story, music, graphics, control, gameplay… It´s the whole deal or nothing. Pretty much what happens with movies. When a “biased review” happens is when they disregard all of the other elements inside a game for one thing a reviewer doesn´t like. You have probably heard about polygon´s infamous Dragon´s Crown review, which many of us see it as unfair.”
“Not really, unless I could find magazine articles from the 90s. I can outline one for you though, it’s pretty simple; no lifestyle oriented nonsense, all the available facts about it, all the technical aspects, from performance to music to writing to art – without any ‘this art is sexist and offensive because i say so’ nonsense.
“Well, I don’t. But if I did, I’d say it’d be a review that focuses exclusively on things that are without debate. “This game runs at a solid 60FPS,” “This game has accurate and responsive controls,” “This game is buggy to the point that it hinders the experience.””
“i would prefer reviews to make a clear separation between critique of mechanics and cultural analysis. total biscuit does this pretty decently"Admittedly I'm probably failing, but I am trying to not be a jerk in this piece, but aren't these just the most boring people in the world? I kind of want to record these quotes in Microsoft Sam and sell the audio on iTunes as a cure for insomnia.
First things first, videogames aren't dishwashers okay. They shouldn't be reviewed as pieces of technology, a game being technically functional should be a standard not a main focus of a review. I'm not saying that a game being technically non-functional isn't worth mentioning because it definitely is, but seriously, this is all you care about?!
"A review that focuses exclusively on thing that are without debate" this isn't a review then. That's a list of features you stick on the back of the box, or maybe in a press release. If you seriously can't handle critical analysis more complicated than back-of-the-box quotes in your reviews then you should probably just give up on reading anything forever.
We covered the political/cultural analysis part in the political segment. All game design is political, for most games you can't separate art/mechanics/story/politics and still give an accurate summation of the product. YOU CAN'T.
And then there's the concept of breaking games down into graphics/sound/story/gameplay/replay value whatever. Yes, this is what videogame reviews mostly did in the 90s, and guess what, most videogame reviews in the 90s were terrible! Once again, it's pretty insulting and shows lack of understanding for the creation process that some people believe a good review is one that breaks a product down into the sum of its parts.
For example; if I hire the best level design, best story writer, best composer and best artist in the world, lock them in separate rooms for two years with no communication to one another, then by "sum of their parts" review logic they would still make the best game ever made. If this example makes even a lick of sense to you please refrain from eating any more paint immediately.
Whether you consider videogames to be an artform, braindead popcorn munching entertainment or somewhere inbetween, surely we can all agree that they are experiences. A review should be about that experience, not coldly and mechanically breaking the product down into arbitrary categories. A bad ending can completely ruin an otherwise decent two hour movie for someone, a videogame can be incredibly janky and still connect with a lot of people (Deadly Premonition), good points like hot graphics can become entirely irrelevant if they don't gel with the rest of the game, and giving the game "bonus points" for it would be silly and dishonest. Criticism is not as easy as some of you guys seem to think it is! We have to actually think about this stuff a lot.
4) The Youtubers
This isn't really a rebuttal to an argument but rather something interesting I noticed within these responses. In her gathering of opinions, one of Jenni's questions in the "objective review" category was asking for an existing example of what GamerGate would consider an objective review. Most responses didn't really answer the question; either posting "I can't think of one right now" or praising their favourite Youtubers. Seriously, almost no writers were mentioned, just a barrage of Youtube personalities.“Probably the best one would be Angry Joe. His reviews are as objective as you can be without becoming a robot. “"If you look at any of TotalBiscuits ‘WTF Is’ videos on Youtube or if you remember what IGN’s reviews were like 5 years ago (but certainly not anymore).”“Any review provided by Youtubers such as Jimmy BGaming, ProJared, ReviewzoneHD, ThatOneVideogamer and many others. Some like JonTron and Lord Karnage provide comedy while still being insightful and objective.”
This is interesting because Youtubers don't really identify as journalists usually, and most games journalists consider themselves in a different business to Youtubers. This is not a comment against Youtube content, because I personally am I fan of some of the personalities quoted above, but I think this highlights a core problem within GamerGate itself.
Without going into the whole harassment campaign and misogyny stuff, my personal biggest frustration with GamerGate has been the lack of understanding and almost childlike ignorance of how games journalism actually works. Common misconceptions of how freelancing works, or what the relationship between journalists and developers/publishers are, or relationships between journalists themselves are constantly in the background eating away at the credibility of GamerGate arguments.
I guess I'm just highlighting how unsurprising I find it that most GamerGaters seem to follow Youtubers and can't actually list any examples of writers they enjoy...probably because they don't pay too much attention to games journalism in general. This seems to be one of the boundaries between journalists and GamerGaters and is probably where a lot of the culture divide comes from.
Wrapping It Up
I've made it clear by now that I find the concept of "objective reviews" hilariously silly, and the arguments for them seem to come from people who don't want to discuss games at all. Look, you don't have to be invested in videogames beyond viewing them as a toy or a timewaster, but that doesn't mean game reviews should be filtered down to cold analysis of mechanics and feature lists.
A lot of the fear seems to come from this idea that a journalist will use their political disagreement with a videogame to duck a games score and hurt its Metacritic...thus lowing sales and taking those games out of the market entirely. I feel dumber just for typing that out, but this fear once again shows his misguided a lot of GamerGate is. Take Duke Nukem Forever for example, the game was almost universally panned as a shooter and offended "social justice" writers by having a god-damned rape cave in it as well as generally being a tasteless, misogynistic and unfunny waste of time. Regardless, the game still has a 51 on Metacritic! Why? Because it says "Duke Nukem" on the box, and some people like that about it.
The point is if your fears are about review scores being imbalanced or Metacritic having too much influence within the industry, then your angst against "political" writers is solely misplaced and these issues are far bigger than that.
In conclusion, find writers and publications you identify with and speak to your interests. Read multiple reviews, get alternative perspectives, find out what matters to you about videogames and hey maybe in that process you'll find out what matters to some other people at the same time and grow as a person! But don't try and argue the ongoing and increasingly intellectual discussions about videogames should go away...or even be moved out of your sight for you.
Videogames grow as an industry every year, and eventually the exclusionary "gamer" culture bubble is going to pop and you'll have to let everyone in to play with your toys. May as well get ready for it!
