I’m trying to write an impression of CIMA: The Enemy. Also, I’m working on a piece about Cave Story, so I can finally let everyone know why I think it is the most perfect game ever crafted. Some issues have come to my mind though.

Games journalism is terribly annoying, and often ineffective. Why is it, and what can we do to stop it?

Also, why even read a review? If you know what you like, you can find everything you need from the game’s score and it’s genre label. Is anything beyond this even necessary?

I don’t really answer any questions (but I think they could lead to interesting places), and much of the first part is ranty.

Article after cut.

The First Issue:

Games journalism, in its (printed) forms, annoys me. I mean, really annoys the hell outta me. I can tolerate it a little for the sake of learning about new games and such, but the writing isn’t that great. It’s always full of cliches. And not just regular press cliches, it has its own lexicon of game magazine cliches that are really irritating once you take a close look at them. I find it offensive!

The internet should be better, right? The true words of honest fans. There’s no requirement to dumb the writing down to please a magazine-buying public, an editor or a corporate entity. Too often though, I see people on the internet writing well-intentioned reviews and copying the same mistakes that “the pros” make. Usually just because they’re following the example of published writers.

Cliches are bad for a number of reasons, for one: they’re often idioms and can have hidden connotations, and two: they’re a burden to your own writing style. Write like yourself, and you will bring your audience closer.

Words in general though… Why don’t I just get over it? Part of this comes from being a copy editor. I have to know when a writer is trying to pull a fast one, like using a word without understanding its full meaning. Or, worse, using a word that’s completely out of place. It sticks out like a sore thumb to those who know its meaning, and to those who don’t, the worst case scenario is that it’s too confusing and the article is rendered meaningless. Usually though, it amounts to a distraction for the reader.

A less obvious problem is when a writer uses a word or phrase just outside its normal scope, or just a little wrong. When it’s just a little wrong, people who know what it means don’t get it, people who don’t know gloss over it and forget it. Noone gets the real meaning, except those who read far into it and make their own guesses. You shouldn’t have to, journalism is about readability and conciseness.

But, obviously, most readers are not copy editors. I can concede that most people don’t even care about the intricate mechanics of what makes good text.* There’s the problem though. Subtly bad writing is still bad writing, and drags down the quality of the message. If a word is confusing, but not confusing enough to make the reader get out the dictionary, they will just forget about it. The writer has then dropped a piece of his or her message that can’t be picked up, because the reader didn’t even notice.

I feel like games journalism is alienating to those who aren’t interested in games, which sucks because it alienates gamers as a group, and makes me feel extra dorky when I actually read a magazine.

Want some class though? Check out The Gamer’s Quarter, it’s in the links in the sidebar. It’s like the New Yorker of game magazines. I’d copy edit for them free in a second, if I had more spare time.

The Second Issue:

Scores, genres, preferences, and reviews.

Who’s to say what a good game is and isn’t? Things are marketed towards different people, like genres of pop music, and there wouldn’t be a metal fan reviewing a Celine Dion album.

If a reviewer hates a game, there’s two possibilities: it’s not for that person, or the game really sucks. How do we differentiate between those? One good way is to check if a game gets consistently bad reviews. Metacritic is good for this. Suppose a game you’re interested in gets terrible reviews in general, but a little spike from a couple reviews? If you’re a fan of the type of game, you just might like it. If it has no good or even slightly positive reviews, chances are that it sucks.

This raises an interesting issue also, because if a review’s final score plus your own genre preferences are all you need, then what is the purpose of the text of the review?

Furthermore, why even have a score? How about “thumbs up” or “thumbs down”? Playable or not worth it?

Back to the review text though: it’s like a sort of spectacle. We like to see bad games trashed, and good games praised. That’s not so important. We can also learn about nifty features or annoying things before we play though. However, if the game is ‘worth playing,’ as judged by your preferences, these things won’t stop you from trying it at least once. If it’s still worth it, you keep playing, and if it’s not, you stop. You still took the plunge though.

This seems to suggest that a player’s subjective experience is the only important factor in the enjoyment of a game, and that makes perfect sense. In fact, it’s almost redundant. So, why have a review? Everything I come to says that the review text is ultimately meaningless.

I can see two effects of reviews: 1.) make a potential player aware that a game exists and 2.) increase the anticipationof the game, deviously making it more enjoyable, or inversely, steer people further away from a bad game. Though, if the game sucks, why make people aware of it (will people play a game that they’ve never heard of?), and why drag down its value by insulting it? They won’t play it anyway, since they know it’s bad from the score or the thumbs down.

So, negative reviews shouldn’t exist?

tim rogers admitted that he never finished Ico. That’s bold. I finished it, I loved the game in all respects (’too boring’ is the usual criticism of it), and he didn’t find it that engaging, so it probably appealed to me more in the first place. So, he shouldn’t review it, and I should. Right. I don’t think he did. But he did write a review of Romancing Saga: Minstrel Song that trashed it in many, many very long sentences and oblique references. He’s able to tell you exactly why it fails, and who made it fail, and what the signifigance of its failure is to gaming as a whole. I love his writing.

So. Negative reviews can exist. If you haven’t read through an entire tim rogers review, try it once. It nearly justifies the existence of video game reviews, even though they’re easily the longest things I’ve read on a single webpage. I think they’re great, but then again, I liked Ico a lot.

A handful of people can do this writing-about-games thing well. Learn from them, then try not to be so wordy, and you might be the savior of games journalism.

*Short defense of my own writing: I’m a writer and a copy editor, but I’m never both at the same time. You don’t copy edit your own writing, because of your biases toward your own work. You can’t be impartial with your own work. I do edit though, and I try to make everything as clear as possible, but on occasion I’ll screw up. If I’ve made errors in this particular article though, I’m going to look like a huge, pompous ass.