Are mainstream videogame reviews like mine missing the point?

In the category of things I meant to write about long ago but am finally getting around to now is N'gai Croal's essay from two weeks ago titled "What's Missing From Mainstream Reviews of Videogames? Oh, That's Right--Gameplay."

In part, it took me a while to think of exactly what I wanted to say, since this is a very interesting issue, and in part I just got busy and forgot for a little while. But I've finally got a free moment and I really do want to respond, especially since N'Gai called me out by name (or the name of my publication, anyway).

In it, Newsweek's Croal includes my review of "Grand Theft Auto IV" in a list that, starting with the New York Times, he says uses pop culture references that are "designed to stamp 'GTA IV' with the imprimatur of older, better-known artists and hustlers of culture; points of reference that lull the reader into believing that This Medium Is Like Other Media You Are More Familiar With. We searched in vain for a chunk of the review that would approximate the experience we had while playing the game, and found none." He then says that my review, along with a few others in the mainstream press, are "variants of the same thing."

I feel like I must say, in my own defense, that my review didn't contain a single pop culture reference (go ahead, read it for yourself). So that seems a little unfair. But is it fair to say that I (and others) don't manage to "approximate the experience we had while playing the game?" Perhaps. But it depends on what you think the "experience" of playing the game is. To the extent that the answer relies on finding a place on the admittedly crude spectrum of critiquing narrative vs. interactivity, I think N'Gai falls to far on the "interactive" side of the spectrum, while perhaps I'm too far on the "narrative" side.

To wit: In a Newsweek piece he links to, N'Gai writes "[O]n ['The Sopranos'], you only watch Tony and his minions kill their enemies.In Grand Theft Auto IV, you also direct and star in a story that unfolds over as many as 100 hours, depending on your skill as a gamer." (Yes, he admits the hypocrisy of his pop culture reference). He also praises a piece (one I must say I like) in Slate by Chris Baker that goes into the issue of boundary pushing and choices. It particularly focuses on a moment in the game where you have to decide which of two unappealing people to kill. Clearly, he thinks a good reviewer should be focusing on these kind of choices.

I think this is fundamentally wrong. Playing "GTA IV" is very much not like directing and starring in a story. It's a very specifically written story that gives you a few key choices along the way (mainly about whether to kill someone or who to kill), allows you to choose the order of missions to a small extent, and also lets you do a limited number of amusing but silly things at your leisure, like shoot people, get in crazy car races, play pool with a friend, get a lap dance, etc. (Holding aside the multi-player, of course).

Sure, I have spent lots of time exploring the city and testing what I can and can't do in it, but when I do that, I'm struck by how the details I notice -- how traffic changes from day to night; where the hookers hang out; what people are talking about -- than what I can make happen It's about the experience Rockstar created, not what I can choose to do.

Fundamentally, there's too much writing to allow a lot of choice, especially in the main story missions. Don't like killing hundreds of cops? You're not going to get very far. Want to stop doing favors for your idiot cousin? Not an option. Not interested in the theme of people fighting for their scrap of the American dream? You're playing the wrong game. This isn't "The Sims." Far from it.

In fact, as I wrote in my review and expanded upon in this blog post, to the extent that the game allows free roaming craziness, it contradicts itself. The fact that you can kill a few people and get in a dozen car accidents while on a date is quite simply asinine.

My overall  point here is that "GTA IV" is a game with sharply drawn characters, a deep plot and setting, and important themes. In my opinion, any review that doesn't delve into what "GTA IV" is about is really missing the point. Baker does this to a limited extent and Croal not much at all. It's something I'd like to think I did pretty well.

Did my review explain what it's like to play the game? Possibly not as well as I should. One thing I really liked in N'Gai's piece, for instance, was his description of how "GTA IV's" world starts in a small neighborhood in Brooklyn and grows physically through relationships that manifest themselves on your phone. That's something I wish I had described better in my review, because it's an important part of the experience and it's very videogame-specific.

The other important thing to remember is that different games have to be reviewed in different ways. If I had spent much of the time in my review of "Boom Blox" focusing on the game's minimal story, for instance, that would have really missed the point. It's about the experience of interacting with those puzzles, as well as building your own. On the other hand, I focused primarily on the humor in "The Simpsons Game," because to me, that was the point of the game and the primary way in which I experienced it (others disagreed and focused on the merely adequate gameplay, which is why I gave it a better review than virtually anyone else). Different games fall at different places on that narrative/interactive spectrum and reviews should adjust accordingly.

Finally, we can't forget a simple point that N'Gai makes: "Mainstream critics must sum up an experience that's anywhere from six to 100 hours long-one that's fundamentally non-narrative, as we keep insisting--in the same amount of space or less that's devoted to 90-120-minute movie. The end result is a review where so much effort has been spent distilling the game into something that's understandable to non-gamers that no-one ever asks how truthful the distillation is."

That's true. And it makes writing videogame reviews hard. Particularly, I would add, because there are certain conventions in a review. An extended first person description like the one Baker gives just wouldn't be appropriate in a newspaper like Variety. It's not what a "review" is, for better or worse.

So yes, as critics we do need to find better ways to describe the interactive experience of playing a game. But it's not entirely correct to say, as N'Gai does, that "games are not a fundamentally narrative medium; we all 'see' games with our hands; we videogame journalists need to develop a critical vocabulary that will enable us to better explain the unique qualities of this art form."

"GTA IV" is, to a large extent, a narrative piece of art. Not in the exact same way as a movie or book, of course, but it's definitely not the opposite -- it's not all about what I do. When I play "GTA IV," I'm keenly aware that I'm playing through a story written by somebody else using characters created by somebody else in a world designed by somebody else. That plot, those characters, and that world mean something and inform my playing experience  at least as much, if not more, then the choices I make. To me, any review that misses that fails to give me "a feel for what it's actually like to play the game."

Comments

[DrD]

@count I think it's silly to defend lame reviews with 'subjectivism.' It is cool for everyone to have their own opinions, but if your opinion is UNINFORMED then I, and most rational people, would consider it invalid. Is it cool that you have an uninformed opinion and are spouting it out your arse? You tell me.

I prefer the experience of driving my jag to your beat up pinto, even though they both have steering wheels and gas pedals.

[Count Zero]

But the mechanics and gameplay ARE a part of the Experience. You can't separate the two without loosing "the Experience" because they *contribute* to it. These are not separate functions. How the game world functions to create the experience is, well, "mechanics". Trying to separate mechanics from experience is similar to saying: "This car has such a great-looking interior and makes me feel so awesome! It's a great car! The only downside is that none of the buttons actually work, I get horrible gas mileage, and it breaks down on me every now and then. But hey - it's still a great car because it looks good!"

What this all boils down to is subjectivism. Games are not Science. Reviewing a game is a subjective venture - people will always disagree on the nitty-gritty portions of the game because the game meant different things to them. One person may have thought the story was in-depth and the gameplay intriguing...others might not have. Case in point, many of the (so-called) old sk00l gamers dislike many of the newer games because, in their minds, they see millions of tiny functions and conventions taken from previous games. So to them, they are not playing a new game experience. Thus, they are much more critical of the game.

It's like saying Roger Ebert gives bad reviews simply because he can't wrap his noodles around a film. No - he gives bad reviews because the combination of his subjective, personal, relative tastes....along with his vast repository of film knowledge....result in him not liking a movie. Compared to someone nearly one-fifth his age who didn't live through almost the entire history of film making who finds Resident Evil: Apocalypse to be a damn fine film.

[Joe Mamma]

Nice retort! These days games are as much (or more) about the experience the players has, than the mechanical game play he/she uses to interact with. A lot of old school gamers/game devs have trouble wrapping their noodles around that.