Scuba Steve
Posts: 3740
Registered: 11-02 |
I'm going to run with this thread and say that gaming journalism has a severe issue we in education call "Grade Inflation". I don't see this problem with film critics nearly as much and it seems to be unique to gaming.
One of the major gaming websites needs to actually spend more than 30 seconds devising a rating system... design a rubric of some kind to actually fucking rate things. I think part of the problem is the reviewers are not knowledgeable enough to rate games. Critics of Movies/Art/Music, many times, have a background in the history and development of those mediums. Game critics are just "Durr I liek teh gamez... can I write about teh gamez?" Their reviews are devoid of critiques about the medium besides things like "It is short" "It is Fun" "It looks gud".
Let's quote some segments of the joystiq review...
Just an experience, with a six-hour (or so) campaign, a deep and compelling multiplayer match system, and a set of co-op missions paired with a survival mode.
Unfortunately, Modern Warfare 3's story still doesn't hold much water
Still, the unbelievable amount of resources that went into the game can't help but give rise to an important question: Could Modern Warfare 3 have been even better?
4/5
The whole article reads like a laundry list "You can shoot people this way, you can shoot people that way, it has these maps..." I wrote the cacowards stuff for years... and I'm a terrible writer... but I'm not getting paid for this shit. These people do... and they are no better than myself or any other newstuff reviewer!
My argument might be boiled down to this... Gaming journalists need to either know more about their subject matter (not just "I play games and like them"), or they need to develop a rubric like the one I wrote about here. Pick 5 categories and score them 1-5. and when awarding '5's, that doesn't mean "it's good" it means, "beyond what is expected/98%tile". Yes... this means that... there might only be 1 or 2 games a YEAR that score a 5 in a category. When teaching, I often only give 1-2 highest grades, and much more 3s.
Let's extend this post... let's make a rubric here...
* Graphics (compared to other games when it was released)
* Concept (Was it a novel idea when it was released)
* "Fun-ness" (How fun is this game to play)
* Story/Narrative (Does it engage the player and make you want to know what happens next?)
* Presentation (How "complete" does it feel, does everything feel cohesive?)
I think those are 5 very important areas of a game (some might want music/sounds... but I wrapped those with presentation). Now... let's rate MW3... (3,2,4,2,4=15/25) so 15/25... a decent score to apply to something. The game is fun, the presentation is solid... but those are the only things it has as a standout. If I gave a student that score, that would mean they are doing well, meeting the standards set by the state, but they wouldn't be gifted. Some might argue the presentation is a 5, fun is a 5... fine, whatever, so it's 17/25 still average. You could apply this rubric now to ANY game and get a much more accurate comparison of games across genres.
/Rant Modern Warfare 3:http://www.doomworld.com/gbd2/misc/snorkel3.gifhttp://www.doomworld.com/gbd2/misc/snorkel3.gifhttp://www.doomworld.com/gbd2/misc/flipper.gif
Last edited by Scuba Steve on 11-12-11 at 18:19
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11-11-11 00:38 
