Criticism Isn’t Desired

People don’t want it. That’s the argument the site, ironically called Game Critics, puts forth in response to Costikyan’s article. They want reviews, they want buyer’s guides to tell them where the best place to spend their hard-earned dollar. Sure, I don’t doubt that most people don’t care about game criticism. Movie reviews are popular, movie criticism much less so. This is particularly true with literary criticism.

Parallel to that, perhaps, is the fear that game criticism will become as esoteric and referential as literary criticism. Personally, I think game reviewing has already gone a long way towards this. If it weren’t for Nintendo out there trying new things and bring in new markets, and new people (and forcing the ‘old people’ to look at things in new ways), there would be no major player pushing for it at all. And new games would be nothing but riffs on the current popular game, becoming more and more specific to their market all the time. And new people could never pick one up, even if they could understand the language used in the reviews.

Criticism is for Art
Games aren’t art aka, as someone on this Boing Boing post says, “Dude they’re just games.“. Roget Ebert makes perhaps the most literate argument on his blog, where he says, “they[the things we do in games] have more in common with sports.” I think that, like the review/criticism debate is a false dichotomy. Some things really are one or the other, and some could be both.

Certainly, if we think of art as a designed thing meant to emotionally affect the consumer of the art, then games are certainly art. I know that definition is severely lacking, but I don’t know a good definition of art. I’m reasonably beyond the question, and have accepted it as true. A lot of games are really bad art and some are closer to crafts. I think that I can tell the difference, particularly as I’ve watched my wife’s work go from crafting to art. There is something fundamentally different between the two.

Honestly, I can’t find any more arguments for why we shouldn’t do this. One seems to say we shouldn’t do it because it’s not financially feasible or the market isn’t sophisticated enough to care. The other that the subject matter isn’t somehow worthy. Most novels aren’t considered worth by their criticism experts, but I think the the effort to place a meaning within a cultural context of any game is possible.

I’d certainly like to hear from anyone who disagrees with me, or knows of another position being held out there on the vast Internets

Yesterday I outlined Assassin’s Creed, and discussed how the narrative was failed by the gameplay. All of these things: narrative, gameplay, control mechanisms, and the art and sound of the game combine together to create the collaborative story which is created in the mind of the player as they traverse the game, and to some extent as the people around them watch the game being played. The goal of a great game is to combine all these elements so that they support each other in framing the emotional state of the player, and their understanding of the game, its thesis and its aesthetic.

In terms of Ataïr’s story, the game does a reasonable job. You get a feeling for the message here: peace is the goal, but only via freedom and knowldege. This counterpoints with Desmond’s story, where he has no freedom, little knowledge (or reliable sources), and is constrained in what he can do. This becomes a metaphor for the player of the game who only has two choices: follow the narrative where it leads, or quit the game. Desmond can quit, but will die if he does; the player can quit, but then they will fail at the game. Ultimately, we know from the start of the game that Ataïr will survive, but that he won’t achieve peace.

As a player, I most strongly identified with Desmond. He, like me, was a controller, the puppeteer. His goal was to live Ataïr’s life as closely to the way Ataïr lived it. As you do so, you get closer to the key game-ending memory, and are rewarded with more “synchronization” with Ataïr, which in game terms serves as your health bar.

This, and the notion of “socially acceptable” and “unacceptable” (or “low” and “high” profile) actions are real successes in the game. The parkour style movement, the climbing is fun except when Ataïr jumps in a way that’s unexpected, and too easy when he does too much for you. I found myself missing Prince of Persia in this case, where the Prince’s movements (mirroring my first feelings about Tomb Raider) were precise and predictable. This led me to, on two occasions, kill an innocent and lose one of my tick points. I had so many of those that it no longer mattered to me in the penultimate memory block (the next to last level) when it happened.

In fact, this highlights one of the problems with the game: it is too easy. I don’t think of myself as a hardcore gamer. I’m the best at these kinds of games amongst my peer group, but I wouldn’t put myself next to a serous FPS’er, nor a just about anyone in the hardcore gamer age (15-25 or so). At almost 40, I’m above the marketing age for “gamers” by a year or two (and always will be, as gamers age). That’s fine with me, I like juvenile games sometimes, but I long for truly adult games — both in emotion and content.

So, when I say that Assassin’s Creed is ultimately too easy, I think I know what I’m talking about.

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By all rights we’re down 4 points in the game now. One from our first week, and a whopping three from last week. We don’t have any excuse, and truthfully can only offer one reason for one day. Since we feel that attending Girl’s graduation overshadows any IntarWeb blag, we’re going to play one of our cards. (We might note that the process of making “Get Out of Blogging” card took us as long as writing a small blog entry, so we’re not sure it was worth it, even though it was fun.)

That still puts us at 3 points down. We should have had some essays “in the can” as it were, but we wanted to get, well, writing. And writing is going on! So we have every confidence that with our writing (or mad photoshop) skills, we’ll be caught up in no time.

I was working on today’s essay when I discovered that I couldn’t link to an older article that expounded slightly on some of the ideas that I want to develop. The article is only two years old, but has already disappeared off the internet. Thankfully, I was the one who posted it, and it still sits on the lovely SarahBellum in a database we never deleted. (It seems that the original content of CoTT was wiped by a later WordPress install. There are some good posts there, and they will be migrated over as time allows.)

We here at Cult of the Turtle come from a long line of packrats, and we’re particularly packratish about data. As we are also down one in the posting game, failing to write on Friday, we decided to post it here, unedited and without comment.

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Greg Costikyan recently wrote an article demanding “Game Criticism” with the corresponding urge that reviews aren’t game criticism. He certainly has his detractors, and those in the industry who agree with him. Some think we don’t need it at all, and some believe that we already have it (and perhaps need more). You can get a good snapshot of that just reading the post that sparked the controversy, Game Criticism, Why We Need It, and Why Reviews Aren’t It

Greg’s article is controversial, occasionally foul, and emotional. He is a known pot-stirrer, claiming the industry is ‘dead’ or dying, and usually has some talk or rant this time of year. He stirs up a controversy and gets his real aim– getting people to think about and talk about whatever it is that concerns him. In his defense, Manifesto Games, an indie game publisher/portal is the direct result of one of his rants, and he’s one of the founders; so he’s put his money where his mouth is.
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