Are you guys tired of the "what's wrong with the games press" discussion? No?
Actually, I'm totally tired of it, but when I got invited recently to be on the ReAnimators podcast to chat about it with a couple of animators for a developer audience, I had to. If you think gamers can have animosity toward us writerly sorts, you should see how often devs hate us more.
Having the discussion going on from both perspectives, and considering both perspectives, was not only really fun, but really enlightening. I've said it before, but it's rare and weird how rarely people who make games and the people who cover them actually talk directly. So if you're not totally fatigued with either the topic or the sound of my voice, you should check out ReAnimators -- those guys, Mike Jungbluth and Ryan Duffin, were cool to talk to!
20 comments:
Lol, within the first few seconds you've gone "WOOHOO!". This is gonna be good.
Del, I promise I wasn't drinking during this one!
Always nice to hear your voice Leigh. =)
You reminded me to pick up a Zone of the Enders game when you were talking about Kojima. At one point I was really interested in the series and completely forgot about it.
It's interesting you bring up Atlus and Baroque. I bought and played it over the summer mostly because of Atlus and my experience with Persona 3. It was the first time I played a rogue-like and I found it to be very unusual. It got panned by critics, but like you mentioned, I felt it was good at what it was trying to accomplish.
I hope you pick it up soon, as I'm really interested in what you can get out of it.
Thanks for the tip off, this sounds really interesting.
It saddens me to hear talk of "serving the audience" as a goal rather than an unfortunate business necessity. Mass appeal is in direct opposition to useful criticism.
Alex -- that's a fact, yeah. So I like to think of how I can bridge the medium and the audience in a way that is useful, which is how I define "service."
Leigh,
First off, thank you for giving me a label for myself. All this time I've been a Casual Hardcore Gamer, and I never knew it! That's much easier than explaining, "Well, I only buy a few games a year but I play the hell out of them and like following the gaming industry in general."
Second, I really enjoyed your explanation about how you keep your focus on your target audience, but think it's important to keep the skills to be able to branch out. Your opinions on keeping perspective when not only reviewing but playing games as well are very refreshing. Not every game is for every gamer, but it IS important to be able to recognize a good game regardless. Respect it, even though you don't like it, I guess.
I was surprised when I saw how long the podcast was, and again when I realized how much floor time they gave you! But it was a great listen on a boring and ball-shrinkingly cold day in Chicago! Thanks!
~Jim
"Contribute to making games into a medium that attains widespread cultural respect."
And now I must play Persona. Well played, Alexander, well played. Your brain-scrambling subliminal messages did their job.
Tape ain't gonna fix it, honey, it ain't gonna stick.
Six kinds of glue won't hold you :)
That is my favorite song by them. Stop gaining opinion-credibility.
Are you guys tired of the "what's wrong with the games press" discussion? No?
I'm a little tired of the discussion, at least insofar as it goes around in circles.
I'm reminded of this segment from a recent episode of the Daily Show where Joe Scarborough decries his own show for spending an excessive amount of time following the Obama children's first day at school.
I think the problems have been identified and the solution now is to actually get out there and do it. There are a bunch of people out there doing interesting things with games reporting and criticism and if you're unhappy with how the rest of the press is covering things simply don't visit them. That's the beauty of the Internet.
You have a very melodic voice, Leigh. Kind of like a cross between Para-Medic and Cobie Smulders.
I think what impressed us the most Leigh, and what made your case all the more valid, was the fact that you said you have no aspirations to be a developer. I know my misconception was that all game journalists were using it as a stepping stone from working at Gamestop to working for a game developer. And the fact that you called that out, and made your case so perfectly on your final muse question, cemented the fact that you are the real deal.
I also loved that you said that there is a need for a universal language/vocabulary, because that has always been 100% my biggest gripe. Without that, there is no accountability and no way of knowing how to grow without A LOT of trial and error. And while that is a great process in moderation, there needs to be a strong base that everyone can build on first without having to do so.
Anyway, even if the topic is getting old, I know you converted two bitter codgers like us into believers that the gaming press isn't ALL evil.
Thanks again!
I just finished that podcast and I have to say that I got more out of it than I expected to. Definitely a good listen.
~sLs~
@ michael
I think you're right about the circular nature of the discussion... that was (sadly) my main takeaway from the first round of Shawn Elliot's Symposium, which I think is still a cool idea, and in a way it's kind of nice to see a discussion that is messy when internet entropy makes so much else so miniaturized... Oddly enough it was sort of like a gimped podcast where each participant was only hearing the last person to speak. I think Shawn will probably come up with a better way of managing it next time, and I hope Leigh and all the others will continue to take part.
I was actually wondering what discussion was up for discussion. I think on the one hand Leigh's talking most immediately about the issues developers have with criticism of games, which seems to stem from the use of metacritic as a basis for determining where money in the games industry goes, which unfortunately codifies antagonism between game critics and game creators, who both love games.
A lot of developers have a kind of "how dare they!?" attitude because they feel that the stakes of those reviews are a lot higher than they are for some of the writers. Since metacritic is a big automated aggregator, developers don't have the option to simply read something else... For those of us lucky enough not to have our livelihood tied to things like that, we're definitely able to vote with our page views, but still that doesn't necessarily mean that just by going to what we like most we're going to do more than what a thoughtful discussion of goals would do for games journalism.
For those of us lucky enough not to have our livelihood tied to things like that, we're definitely able to vote with our page views, but still that doesn't necessarily mean that just by going to what we like most we're going to do more than what a thoughtful discussion of goals would do for games journalism.
No, this is true and I didn't mean to imply that thoughtful discussion was completely useless; just that I feel as if the best way to develop the 'universal language/vocabulary' is by doing. I don't believe these are things you can work out by committee but are instead best developed by example. Here's to more critics/journalists like Leigh :)
Luke,
"... For those of us lucky enough not to have our livelihood tied to things like that..."
This statement sounds odd to me when there are still people in this world who shovel shit for a living.
See, developers don't expect special treatment simply because there *might* be cash on the line; we don't work for tips. The clash comes from having one to six years of your blood and sweat put up for judgement by someone who may not know what all went in to making it.
It's the classic artist/critic relationship and it's made worse by the fact that the two sides are given so little chance to communicate and better understand each other. And that's why these conversations are important.
Thanks again for doing the show, Leigh. Whether it's a tired conversation or not, I sure learned a lot.
Hey Ryan,
Not sure how you took it, but basically I was saying this, because it seems to be a factor that contributes a lot of energy to this topic: executives who base their decisions on metacritic are passing the buck, and putting the developers they serve through something stupid. It is not a responsible form of performance review, and it is a sign of disrespect. Or possibly just indifference. That doesn't make working at such a company The Worst Job in the world, but one may justifiably take umbrage, and be glad not to have to deal with it, at least in one's current industry job.
I do kind of feel that there's a certain obtuseness to the whole "they don't get it, people worked for six years on that" argument that is so often trotted out. Many things take longer to make than to use. As a piece of entertainment, a game is going to judged on its final product. Somebody who knows the game industry well enough to know the effort, to say nothing of the people, that it takes to develop a game might not make certain jokes about a game's developers knowing how much it takes even to create something simple. But their final estimation, numerically expressed or otherwise, will not necessarily change just because they're better informed, and nobody's doing anything wrong if it doesn't, because there's still a subjective component, and its importance is big enough to explain a very large range of variation in public opinion.
A game several years in the making will sometimes not provide a good experience despite the hard work of much of the team. Developers should always strive to do everything they can to contribute to the quality of the final product. But sometimes you're going to have to know that you did a good job and fought to make your game better everywhere you could-- we're lucky, in many ways, that we get to make something that can be judged at all, because a lot of jobs don't really produce tangible artifacts in that way. But I don't feel that we can demand so much of the audience we invite in, writers included.
I never said devs deserve sympathy scores because 'making games is hard'. Hell, I wouldn't really argue with the metacritic scores of most games I've worked on except for one, even considering how flawed the system is.
The problem in that case is scores that don't seem to reflect the review.
"This game is really fun... 70".
"This game clearly wasn't finished... 90"
"This game is almost identical to it's 85 scored predecessor: 92"
"This game is almost identical to it's 85 scored predecessor: 55"
The other problem is that not all of the press are informed as to how games are made (you can spot them easily; they like the word "lazy")but assume they know better anyway. I just read the other day someone slamming TR: Underworld for having 'a balance animation that looks like someone who can't balance'. Lara's mocap actress is a career stuntwoman and a gymnast. That's the kind of shit that gets us mad.
But in the end, we all knew when we got into games that the price of having our work in the public eye is that it will be judged. We grumble about it like people grumble about the the rain but with more mutual understanding, maybe we can reduce the grumbling on both sides.
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