As reported by Gamasutra's Chris Remo, Chris Hecker (formerly of Maxis, now an independent developer) addressed the International Game Developers Association's Leadership Forum in San Francisco this past week. In the following excerpt, Remo digests Hecker's remarks and their main point - that games remain fixated on narrow experiences, revenue, and the easy appeal of proven forms of presentation - especially the "power fantasy," with its attendant explosions and special effects.

"If we continue on our current path, we'll end up in the pop cultural ghetto where [comic books] are," Hecker said. "An alternative path is where film, books, and music ended up." Such media certainly have their low-brow offerings, but on the whole are "relatively bulletproof" as accepted forms of art, worth scholarship and refined criticism.

But even on four tests of popular culture acceptance - revenue, units sold, cultural impact and diversity of content - games succeed at only one, Hecker argues. Revenue. "We f—k it up on the other three," showing that the medium is still an infant next to its supposed peers.

Here, in the words of Hecker as reported by Remo, is the bigger picture of how games, before aspiring to the old-money legitimacy of the fine arts, can first avoid a cultural ghetto.

IGDA Forum: Asking 'Why' Will Keep Games Out Of The Ghetto, Says Hecker [Gamasutra, Nov. 13, 2009.]

Like literature, music, film, and other forms, games offer their own intrinsic element to add to culture. For games, it's interactivity. That uniqueness is necessary for a form to carve out its own cultural space, and it's what will allow games to occupy such a space if the gaming community doesn't wall it off.

But that means designers must strive to convey some kind of "why," and when they do, it will ideally be conveyed through interactivity, not just cutscenes. Linear "theme park ride" games, as Hecker calls them — recently, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, et al. — can be great fun, and we have become quite skilled at making them, but they also represent something of a creative red herring: "The part that speaks to the human condition is in the cutscenes, not in the interactivity."

Furthermore, while gamers are highly resistant to decreases in graphical fidelity, they seem on the whole unbothered by regressions in interactivity, hence the flourishing of the theme park ride approach. And since, for technical reasons, it's safer and cheaper to decrease interactivity as you increase realism, the latter may well continue to suffer.

The booming market of casual and social games, Hecker points out, has a different problem. "It's great to have a game to play while you're waiting for a bus," he said, "but they're not trying to say anything at all."

That leaves the broad category of "systems games," which are more intrinsically predicated on interactivity and player-driven choice. They contain the best candidates for creating unique, meaningful works in games, Hecker believes, but at the present moment, "these games aren't really saying anything either, because we don't know how to say things through interactivity, how an authorial voice works through a system."

There's no easy way out of this arguably slippery slope except for the dedication and intent of the people making the games. "I believe this is the big question for the next ten years of game design," Hecker said. "We have so many opportunities."

Mechanics and systems can be continually evolved, but designers would do well to keep the following questions in mind, he said: "What are you trying to say, and why?" and "And are you trying to say it with interactivity?"

"If you can answer those," Hecker concluded, "you're on the right track."

- Chris Remo

Weekend Reader is Kotaku's look at the critical thinking in, and of video games. It appears Saturdays at noon. Please take the time to read the full article cited before getting involved in the debate here.

Knights of the Old Republic was a four-star achievement in role playing games, but I do agree with Richard Naik at GameCritics. The choices you faced - even in the dialogue - lacked a lot of subtlety as to what they said about your character. It might have been a lot to ask of a game at the time, but you were still presented with a binary good/evil character, and games still have not evolved much more into shades of gray since then.

Naik brings inFamous, KOTOR, BioShock Mass Effect and Fallout 3, all of them acclaimed games, in for some criticism. The choices in inFamous were simply about power acquisition, he argues. Mass Effect let you be either a paragon of virtue or a belligerent jerk. And he even says the choice outcomes in BioShock "barely change the game at all," although I disagree with that. Fallout 3 is the most open ended, but it leaves Naik wondering when, or if, a game will allow true open-ended decision making, and then react to that. Or has one already?

Decisions, Decisions [GameCritics, Sept. 16, 2009.]

The original Knights of the Old Republic is, as of the time of this writing, my favorite product of the Star Wars franchise. And its choice system generally serves the game well, but even a well-done implementation of choices such as this still leaves a somewhat odd aftertaste. To go down the evil path I have to make many choices throughout the game that lead me to the dark side, eventually leading to me becoming a cold, cruel, and calculating Sith Lord. But here's the thing-would such an intelligent Sith Lord (as dictated by the game) really waste his/her time with senseless acts of brutality such as common mugging? I would imagine that an up-and-coming Sith Lord would try to use his victims to their fullest extent, then dispose of them when they no longer had value. Instead I found myself being a run-of-the-mill asshole, and that somehow led to me conquering the galaxy. The moral extremes of sainthood and belligerent sadism were extremely stark and awkward despite the quality of the story, leaving me to wonder how the ideal choice system would actually work.

Mass Effect (which has been getting lots of discussion time on this site lately) does a better job here, but the problem of moral extremes is still evident. Most of the time the evil choice is represented by a simple act of aggression instead of a more subtle cruelty or self-serving action. Now to be fair, such acts are more believably associated with the character of Commander Shepard rather than my character in Knights of the Old Republic. However, the basic problem still exists-I can't be the scoundrel with a golden heart, only a universally loved hero. I can't be the insidious mastermind, only an arrogant bully. While Mass Effect does present a better moral middle ground than many of its ilk, that path is largely dull and uninteresting. In order to access more conversation options I have to go towards one extreme or the other, meaning I have no real reason to toe the line in the middle. So now that we have an area between the two extremes, what next?

[...]Where does the evolution of player choices go from here? Someday I'd like to see a game where I can make virtually any choice in any situation within the bounds of the game world's reason, and be rewarded or punished appropriately for it. Am I being too greedy? Is this impossible with currently existing technology?
- Richard Naik

Weekend Reader is Kotaku's look at the critical thinking in, and of video games. It appears Saturdays at noon. Please take the time to read the full article cited before getting involved in the debate here.

Speaking to Eurogamer - you really should read the entire story - Vertical Slice director Graham McAllister boils down the process to two things: backtracking through 154 Edge magazine reviews of games, and then analyzing what people say and do while playing the games. The latter, called behavioral or sequential analysis, was used by a marriage counselor who predicted, with 97 percent accuracy, whether a couple would stay together or break up based on the first five minutes of observing them.

"People think you can't predict a game based on quantifiable data," McAllister told Eurogamer. "What we can do is get these estimators. Some people will just have a hard job believing it. We have analysed the statistics to death, thorough and rigorous, and what we're saying is, 'You may not like it, but this is the best model that anyone has come up with to date.'"

In this case, McAllister's analysis is based on just a single minute of gameplay. "What's important about that first minute is that it's the time people play a demo for. That's super critical," he said. "After 30 seconds, we can predict if the game is going to be bad or good, to a certain extent."

The reverse-engineering of the Edge reviews involves the usage of certain words or phrases, matched to scores. "All the high-scoring games talk about certain aspects; all the medium-scoring games talk about certain things; and all the low-scoring games talk about certain things. And there's a very clear mapping between them," McAllister said.

Can You Predict Review Scores? [Eurogamer, via Go Nintendo]

This past week our lunch and dinner conversations centered on video games, because one naturally talks about work, and this is mine right now. But I also sense that he's increasingly curious about them - maybe from a big-picture standpoint. The guy's a Harvard MBA after all, and video games are an enormous, multibillion-dollar business.

So I've done my best to keep this in contexts he understands. I talked about Nintendo, and its strategy of exploring growth among casual demographics - unsaturated markets, in other words. There's a Wii bowling league in the retirement community club down here. He was especially fascinated by the back-and-forth between movie studios and game publishers, how one project will become an adaptation of the other, and why. We talked about military games - he was appalled by the concept of Six Days in Fallujah. A Marine colonel, he is familiar with that operation on a different level. I deliberately didn't tell him of Atomic's claims that they'd consulted with insurgents.

Granddad's never played a game in his life but he looks like he might be interested in seeing what one looks like. He was amazed by the complexity of the PlayStation 3 controller I showed him, especially when I told him about the tilt control and rumble feedback. I told him I was playing The Godfather II - an exceptional movie he enjoyed greatly - for a review. That clearly intrigued him, but I didn't show any of it to him Had it been a better game, I probably would have at least shown him some of the cinematics.

The longer I stay here, the more inevitable it will become that he's going to watch me demonstrate a game. And that brings up a question I'd like to put to you:

If you were showing someone the first video game he had ever seen in his life, and you wanted to show him the very best the industry had to offer, what would it be?

Call of Duty: World at War, or really any military game, is straight out, because this guy was a first-person shooter on Okinawa, and it wasn't entertaining. But what do I show him? Bioshock? Do I try to impress him with the depth of a world in an MMO or a sandboxer? Do I keep it simple with something like Braid?

Would it only be a cutscene or an introduction? Would it be actual gameplay? Bear in mind my grandfather is an extremely intellectually curious man. But he's also, with a gentle smile, said that the hobby "sounds like an enormous waste of time." But he is genuinely fascinated that people would spend so much time and money with it.

"We're a creative business, and how do you put objectivity into it? But at the end of the day publishers will always want to do that, particularly if you're spending $20 million — you have to try and find that objectivity, and it's going to come from how much it costs, when it's coming out, and how good the game is," Hayes told GamesIndustry.biz.

Further, "If you're going for a high-end PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 game and you want to break out in the genre, or something like that, you have to target that quality - because otherwise you don't have a hope in hell," Hayes said. "There's too much evidence that shows games which score below a certain level in certain genres are not going to cut through."

Hayes said that "we won't say to every developer we work with that there's a target in there." Which sounds like, for some developers, there is. And the size of the deal seems to be a factor in how much a Metacritic score means to the project.

"Where we're spending a lot of money, and the score is essential to the success of the product, absolutely I think there's a value in it," Hayes said, adding "I don't think it's unreasonable for publishers spending that much money to have certain expectations of quality levels. But to demand it on absolutely everything wouldn't be right at all."

Metacritic Helps Business Objectivity says Hayes [GamesIndustry.Biz via play.tm]

On July 31, 1928, the paper announced they would be using a three-star reviewing system from then on out to rate movies. And almost from the same day, movie critics starting hating the system.

It took video game writers a bit longer to adopt the ubiquitous system for rating games, but the hatred was right on it's heels.

Recently game reviews and the use of ratings have become a target of constant navel staring, with critics, writers and box-standers killing obscene amounts of pixels to talk about what should be done. Last year, we just threw ratings out the window, reinventing how we reviewed games.

I don't expect the same sort of reaction from movie critics, but at least they're starting to talk about their hatred of the system.

"We don't seek to reduce our arguments about a particular piece of art to a number, or letter grade, or golden spatulas, or whatever," says Sam Sifton, the New York Times' culture editor told the Wall Street Journal for a recent article on the subject. "These are numbers that aren't based on any rational or countable thing." However, restaurant reviews in the paper have long included rankings from "poor" to four stars. Mr. Sifton, the former dining editor, calls those "the exception that proves the rule here."

The article is a fascinating read for anyone interested in the subject. It talks about the history of reductive criticism, the good and bad, and how sites like Metacritic have helped bring the issue to a head.

One critic's pan of "Pearl Harbor" originally was ranked 40 out of 100, until he contacted the site to say it was more like a 10. Marc Doyle, co-founder and senior product manager of Metacritic, which is now owned by CBS, says the site's employees read reviews carefully, will change scores if they are protested by reviewers, and will reconsider them if readers object. "It's just a tool, like any other tool," he says of the site.

Doyle, for his part, says that Metacritic is exploring improvements.

Let's Rate the Ranking Systems of Film Reviews [Wall Street Journal]

"Look at film in 1908 — there was no sound, you viewed it through a nickoleodeon, there was a limited filmic language developed. If at the time you had said film would be the literature of 20th Century, you would have been laughed at," said Chris Swain, assistant professor of interactive media at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. "Games could be the literature of the 21st Century. But it takes vision."

The soundtrack is also another evolution in, or departure from, the linear model of visual and recording arts.

Brown University ethnomusicologist Kiri Miller points out, the use of radio in "GTA IV" lets gamers choose their own soundtracks: speed metal for a high-speed chase, bebop for a nighttime cruise around the city. Choosing a station lets players set their own mood and illuminate their own character ... "In 'GTA IV,' the radio is speaking more to the player and not so much the avatar," says Miller, "and in 'San Andreas,' you could hear the radio really speaking to the avatar, and that, I thought, was an incredible achievement."

The story's peg is the upcoming release of Chinatown Wars. And there's not much in the profile that's going to tell you what you don't know. (Although Rockstar does have an office dog named Niko.) It's interesting because it's mainstream media, of course, raising a point probably not yet considered by many among its readership.

And the lede, I'd never really thought of it this way: "Books let us imagine the impossible. Movies let us see the impossible. Video games let us do the impossible." Can't wait to do some impossible tonight.

Is Grand Theft Auto IV the Greatest Writing of the Century? [Chicago Tribune, thanks weber12]

Ray Huling argues that the next crop of Final Fantasy games will be, like theYamato, obsolete by the time they hit the ground. Impressive in their size, yet obsolete at the time of their completion. Huling says that the games have become such giant enterprises, it's sapping the fun out of the whole production (does that mean 'obsolete' or simply 'not fun anymore'?):

... the optional elements that demand so much effort to achieve on the DS represent only a bite-size version of the gaming Gargantua Final Fantasy has become. Mini-games, bestiaries, accessories, rare monsters, rare weapons - Christ! The humongousness of it all defies belief, defies completion. Sure, people have achieved all that can be achieved in a game like Final Fantasy XII - one of its FAQs, not even the largest, is spread across more than 770 pages. But people built the actual Battleship Yamato, too, which now lies in two pieces on the floor of the ocean off Okinawa.

Just as has happened with the main plot, the sidequests of Final Fantasy have become ends in themselves, separated from any notion of the fun they were supposed to provide. Final Fantasy has the most compelling profile of any videogame. It bristles with guns - but what can actually be done with all of that firepower?

I suspect there are many that would disagree, and while I didn't like FFXII for a variety of reasons, I just turned it off and hoped the next iteration would strike my fancy (and if not, oh well — there are plenty of other fish in the gaming sea). I'll agree that plenty of aspects of the games are ridiculous, but that's hardly confined to the Final Fantasy series. Is the game formula 'obsolete,' or just tired (or is Huling just tired of it?)? And what does obsolescence (of a non-technological variety) really mean in the context of RPGs or games more broadly?

The Battleship Final Fantasy [The Escapist]

Instead of arguing about reviews and criticism, he argues, maybe people should just set aside a little space and do criticism. A lot of really talented journalists already do this in their own blogs, and it's always nice to read. And what about the kerfluffle over reviews?

Nor is talking about how to review games even relevant. They're fine. IGN writes good reviews, questions about their scoring aside. Nor does anyone need to care or start suddenly doing things the same way for reviews. Hell, my views on games are completely batshit: I don’t think game design has to innovate to be relevant, I factor in outside reviews, and I need to beg Ralph Koster to forgive me if I ever meet him for being such a brat about not liking mastering rules. But my take on reviews doesn’t matter because I don’t consider them criticism. They’re consumer reports on the elements of a game that advise the person of what they’re buying.

I sort of agree; on the other hand, I don't see any reason other kinds of reviews couldn't move toward the 'criticism' side of things (that's probably the academic in me talking). Whether people would want them to is another matter. I think we can all agree that debating about things is all well and good, but it comes down to action or inaction, as the case may be.

Louder Than Words [Banana Pepper Martinis]

In a response on his blog to a reader's comment regarding New York Times games writer Seth Schiesel calling Ebert an inspiration during a round of Slate's second annual Gaming Club, the film critic explains that while games are getting better, he would rather follow other dreams.

I am still not sure video games can be "art" in the sense that we use it in this thread, but I am convinced they are getting a lot better. However, if I had at the beginning of my career been told I would spend the next 41 years playing video games, I would have taken up professional knitting.

Aha, but his hypothetical conversion to professional knitter would have eventually led him right back to the world of video games! Gaming is everywhere, Mr. Ebert. There is no escape. Join us.

Roger Ebert's Blog [Chicago Sun-Times via MTV Multiplayer]

It's pretty damn funny, and touches on a lot of the current issues without being pedantic. Here's 'CliffyB's' advice on streamlined writing:

4.) Treat Words Like Lovers, Be Picky: If you don’t choose your words carefully you will piss off readers and they will leave unproductive comments like “U R MR GAY.” Even if you are Mr. Gay, which is totally fine, you want a discussion in the comments, not aggressive statements.

For example, say a journo writes, “I think CliffyB’s friggin neat and he does neat stuff.” In reality, the journo knows I’m fan-friggin-tastic, I have perfect hair, and I make for a solid best friend. Now, don’t be verbose, but try to express yourself entirely and concisely with charm and wit. And if you’re lucky, your readers will want to be your friggin best friend too.

Welcome back, guys at Hardcasual — this piece is definitely good for a read, as are several of their more recent pieces.

The Cliffster’s Badass Plan to Fix New Games Journo [Hardcasual]

Taking a look at the Guardian piece, as well as Leigh Alexander's musings, an older piece responding to an earlier essay by Leigh, Croal argues that reviewers may not always get it right, but 'policing the discourse' won't do us any favors:

... We opine in order to point out that while our fellow critics Alexander, Fritz and Stuart are undoubtedly well-intentioned, we'd prefer that they simply make the case for the aspects of various titles they find worthy rather than attempt to police the discourse surrounding said games. Criticism isn't crucifixion. Championing is great—it's one of this generation's must-try titles; we urge anyone reading this to at least try the demo; and we suggest that EA at some point decouple the Time Trial demo from the exclusivity arrangements with various retailers—but praising the praiseworthy aspects and criticizing the failed ones is better. And Mirror's Edge isn't a masterpiece—it's laudable but profoundly flawed—nor would its equivalent be widely considered so in any other medium. Because for the discerning critic, regardless of the medium being critiqued, both execution and innovation matter. The fact that Mirror's Edge, by our lights, excels at innovation but falls short on execution does not and should not render it immune from the criticism it's received.

Everything is worth a read through, if you haven't gotten to it yet — part of me says that an attempt at 'policing the discourse' is just human nature, and is something that happens as formats get codified and standards crop up on 'how to do things.' Of course people aren't always going to agree, and while I think Leigh Alexander and others are the cat's meow, I can't really see them 'policing' the discourse so much as suggesting alternate avenues.

The Big Idea: Are Videogame Reviewers Missing the Forest for the Trees When It Comes to Assessing Important and Innovative Titles? [Level Up]

No. Not if one of us is Electronic Arts and the other is anti-games campaigner Regina Pfeiffer, sister of Criminologist and anti-games campaigner Christian Pfeiffer, previously responsible for getting Army of Two refused classification in Germany, among others.

Shouting from the audience at the Computer Game and Violence conference in Munich, Regina called EA “a pig of a company.” in protest at the company being outside the reach of her lawsuit-throwing powers. Rather than taking the high road and ignoring the comments, EA have decided to lock horns and have demanded a full apology.

“ I can only recommend that she apologises in full – at least, [she should] if she wishes to be taken seriously again in the future,” said Martin Lorber of EA Germany.

Oh, snap. etc.

EA gets into war of words with woman

When I browse my RSS reader everyday, I'm consistently impressed by the quality and originality of the reporting being done by the video game press. I say this not only as a member of the gaming press but as a fan. In addition to all the games reporting I read as part of my job (and to sate my love of games as a hobby) I also read tons of news about movies, music and television. I can honestly say that games are covered just as well, if not better, than other forms of entertainment. Don't go thinking that those guys writing about movies are that much more serious about journalism just because their medium has been around fifty years longer. My RSS feed was rife with rumors and speculation about the casting and plot of the next Batman movie, despite the fact that not a single iota of work has been done on the sequel. Rumors that Johnny Depp would play the Riddler were carried by respectable newspapers around the world. Games aren't the only medium that feed this kind of reporting. If anything, the fact that we have an organization as capable and agile as Kotaku to keep tabs on this kind of thing is a sure sign that we've arrived.

Of course, the first comment on the article heartily disagrees (surprise!); I think it's healthy and necessary to do some self-criticism of where we do go wrong, but it's always nice to read well-reasoned pieces on what we do right, as well.

The Case For Games Journalism [GameDaily via GameSetWatch]

Basically, I think another way of saying what Leigh's getting at is that many game critics, particularly those who write for avid fans, can obsess over controls or menu design problems in titles that are doing something innovative in tone or theme, but downplay the same types of faults in games that are essentially improvements on the ones they already love.

The result is that we don't value innovation or attempts to do something big and new, like make a funny game that's thematically consistent with an all-time great TV show or create psychological impact through artful storytelling integrated with gameplay, because we obsess on the mechanical problems or the length of the cutscenes. Not that those things don't matter. But they don't matter that much, especially for an artistically immature medium in desperate need of innovation and freshness.

If we re-arranged our priorities, I think we'd have more critics "championing" certain games or developers. In the end, that's what I'm calling for and I think that's what Leigh's implying. In the film world, there were critics who championed the then-radical filmmakers of the '70s who transformed the world of cinema. Wouldn't it be great if there were more videogame critics who championed certain titles or artists, while acknowledging their imperfections, the way Leigh does "Silent Hill: Homecoming" and Hideo Kojima?

I'm not sure it's simply a matter of rearranging priorities, but overhauling the culture of game reviews and how we talk about games. It shouldn't be either/or — criticism is usually a range of grey, with polarizing opinions at least inspiring spirited debate. Does the audience at large really want 'real' criticism, though? Or just a concise roundup of whether a game is good or bad? We already have various types of 'reviews,' ranging from the generic thumbs up/thumbs down to detailed reviews that pull apart every conceivable part of the game. Certain types of criticism are rarely meant for a general audience — and that's OK. The average consumer looking for a title they'll enjoy isn't going to care if Kojima is a visionary or not; they just want to know if the game is worth spending money on. But are critics comfortable with the idea that their championing and detailed criticism is going to put much of the potential audience to sleep? Are we OK being irrelevant to most people other than the 'hardcore' and each other?

If critics did more championing and less obsessing over details [Cut Scene via Sexy Videogameland]

It's been a while since the Space Giraffe kerfluffle where Yak Minter threw a hissy fit in his blog regarding poor scores given to the XBLA psychedelic shooter (and the point where it was compared to Joyce's Ulysses, but I came across an interesting piece recently that talked about Space Giraffe in reference to (wait for it) a piece of literary theory known as 'authorial intent.' The post-structuralist conception is (at least in part) that the critic's will and opinion always supercedes that of the author. What does this have to do with Space Giraffe? Well, it's one way to look at why there was such heated discussion over Space Giraffe:

The collision between the Llamasoft's eccentric design aesthetic and the expectations of entire modern internet did not fall in Minter's favor .... At least a couple of online discussions link to a post on Minter's personal blog where he expresses muted optimism at the game's tepid sales after its launch last summer, and another on the game's official development blog where he angrily rebuffs players (and reviewers) who find the game too difficult or unfriendly to "man up and grow a pair", ranting that the expectation of the modern gamer to encounter some easy tutorial levels followed by a steady-but-gentle difficulty curve is more pandering to the masses than a time-tested refinement in game design philosophy.

This alone paints an interesting portrait of a truly old-school game designer discovering the sort of controversy that would arise only as a result of the almost anachronistic insertion into the XBox Live Arcade catalog that Space Giraffe represents - a brand-new, high-definition, surround-sound game that still somehow feels like it's from 1985. What brings it all around to my thoughts on authorial intent are articles like this one, where Minter insists that Space Giraffe is not a followup to Tempest. Except... it totally is. I put forth that not a single person who has played the original Tempest, and who has had no contact with Minter's own thoughts on Space Giraffe's design, will fail to immediately think "Aha! Tempest!" upon seeing the newer game. Furthermore, even if they like the game enough to stick with it and discover all the ways that it's different - and there are indeed many - they will still consider it a Tempest offshoot.

It's not a particularly long piece, and many may cringe at the collision of literary theory and, uh, gaming, but it's not that often we see such a visceral response from an auteur to critics that stretches out over a period of time.

On Authorial Intent and Space Giraffes [The Gameshelf]

There's a lot of dissatisfaction regarding how games are reviewed coming from a number of quarters; there is an equally vociferous defense of the typical numerically-based reviews. Over at GameSetWatch, Simon Parkin takes up the issue of the reviewer-reader divide, especially in terms of what readers want out of a review (even if they don't know it):

The average reader (even if they don’t know it) is after a complete objective, scientific comparison between game x and game y with data and statistics and, finally, a numerical point on a linear scale by which they can compare, for example, Mass Effect with Rock Band and see which one is empirically better.

Except, of course, video games don’t work in the same way as toasters or digital cameras. Sure, they have mathematical elements and measurable mechanics and it’s possible to compare the number of polygons between this one and that and spin out ten thousand graphs detailing how two specimens compare. But, unlike with the Canon EOS400D, I would have no idea at the end of those 25 pages which game was better or where they would sit on the ‘true’ scale of quality.

On the same issue, the Taipei Gamer proposes a new system that will more evenly balance aesthetic issues that aren't directly related to game play and the interactive elements that are unique to games:

... I am proposing the use of a system which consists of two scores, one measuring the game's excellence from a ludological perspective and the other rating the narrative as it applies to the game. For lack of better terminology I will refer to these as the L-Score and N-Score, respectively ....

The L-Score is the score which is most closely related to the uniqueness of the medium .... Mechanics, systems, and level design are the key components measured by the L-Score.

If the L-Score is a measure of a game's design, then the N-Score is a measure of its artistic achievement. The narrative, in this case, is defined rather broadly. It consists of the game's music, writing, visual style, sound design, overall setting, etc.

I think there are plenty of people who prefer the type of reviews that lend themselves to flash decisions (certainly easier to do when you have a number versus a bunch of text); I don't think the number necessarily needs to go, just perhaps the importance should be mitigated by a different kind of writing.

Video Game Review Scores: Pointless or Pertinent? [GameSetWatch] & Reviewing and Scoring Video Games [Taipei Gamer]

It gives developers feedback, real insights into their game, so they can go back and improve their work. There simply isn’t a way for people to properly explain criticism in the current culture of “I’m not having fun” reviews. Nor is there a way to reward innovation or successful elements of games beyond gushing “I’m having fun” praise. It’s one thing to say you like a game, but figuring out a way to go beyond that gives developers a better understanding of their audiences reaction.

In any case, it's an interesting essay that ties in with a lot of other criticism of the gaming press at large; the other eight parts are also a good read, if you're not scared off by the "Zarathustran Analytics" in the title.

Zarathustran Analytics in Video Games, Part 9: Flaws in Criticism Today [PopMatters via The Brainy Gamer]

... change to the fan sub-culture appears inevitable, but yet so are reactionary responses from the fans. But those responses are soon swallowed up by the progress of the sub-culture on the whole. Given this inevitability, is there reason for concern?

After all, the course of history has already begun to unfold. In the same way we gaming old-timers may look down on PlayStation fanboys (for the record, I'm a Nintendo man), those same gamers who cut their teeth on the PS2 may denigrate the n00bs who are just learning to waggle their Wii-motes. Wilson's critique may in fact stem from his own nostalgia for the good old days before a series of tubes became the internet we now know and love, and flame wars became easier to ignite.

Si, Ceci Est Un Gamer [GameSetWatch]

Less has been written about the defining role television plays in the design and presentation of games, especially sports titles. Long-running franchises like the Links series of golf games have gone by the wayside, largely because their simulation of the sport relied more on playing the game than watching it played.

The market is what it is, but I think the CNN-ization and ESPN-ization of video games comes at a cost. It limits game design to the visual and structural framework of television, and it removes the player from a true simulation experience. I want a video game to offer me something more than a simulated sports broadcast. The more Madden talks, the less like Payton Manning I feel.

What do simulations simulate? [The Brainy Gamer]