VGA Game of the Year Nominees: This Is Stupid

Here's the nominees for Game Of The Year in the upcoming Video Game Awards. Tell me how this works:

Zelda: Skyward Sword, a game that's not released yet and hasn't been played by the majority of players is up for Game of the Year. Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is also there.

Since an award show processes the ballots before the announcements are made, that means that the ballots probably went out about a month ago to give everyone time to fill it out.

One month ago, only one of those games (Portal 2) was currently released.

The other four games weren't released yet. Since many times a game is not released until it is complete, some of these games were "reviewed" in an incomplete state, where they were christened nominees for Game of the Year in that state.

Here's the kicker: Is anyone surprised by the list? Is there any game on this list that surprises you? Or, is it correct to say that the games you thought would be on the list are there, more or less?

And we wonder why people have problems with video game criticism.

Kirby and Battlefield 3: A Study In Contrasts

Kotaku does their Gut Check series and asks whether or not you should buy a certain game based on their gut instinct. The placed a big, fat "NO" on Kirby Return to Dreamland. Their explanation?

"The game is an ordinary platformer, a one to four-player game of running, jumping, inhaling enemies, appropriating their powers and occasionally wielding timed hyper-powers like a sword or hammer that are almost as big as your TV screen. In a five-minute session that's charming. At length, it's numbing and asks its players to make no interesting decisions. Kirby has an amazing amount of moves in this game, but few that make a difference... The problem is that this new game is simple without excelling at anything."

"It looks like the sort of game that will be just as entertaining a year from now as it is today, and that's why I'm giving it a pass for the time being... If my only gaming platform were the Nintendo Wii I'd be rather depressed. As it stands I am a well-adjusted multiplatform gamer, and Kirby will still be there when I'm ready for him."

Compare this to Battlefield 3's Gut Check, which received a Yes from all three writers:

"This is the new bar for online first-person shooters, when it works... [on single-player] Worse still, the Xbox 360 version of the game shows significant slow down during key firefights. I'm not sure why the game stutters and slows, but I suspect it has to do with the destructible environment, something that's a nice touch but isn't worth the cost if that's what is causing this problem."

"I'm giving it a conditional yes. A half-assed response, maybe, but this seems a half-assed game."

OK, so let's review:

Kirby is a side-scrolling platformer which provides exactly what it advertises. Battlefield 3 is a first-person shooter which provides exactly what it advertises. The multiplayer in Kirby is boring according to some. The multiplayer in Battlefield 3 is great according to some. The single-player in Kirby is entertaining. The single-player in Battlefield 3 is boring. Kirby is polished.  The 360 version of Battlefield 3 has some slight technical issues with slowdown and early server problems.

Yet, one is worth your time and one is not. Gotcha.

This sort of thing bugs me. I'm not the kind of person who looks for bias and screams about it when it's not there, but come on. It's so obvious that the writers were predisposed to like Battlefield 3, so therefore they gloss over its issues. They were not predisposed to like Kirby Return to Dreamland, so therefore the minor issues they find are magnified.

I've harped on this before but I'll say it again: Game reviews need to change. You can't look at them through the lens of what you want the game to be, but what it offers itself up as. Kirby offers itself up as a Kirby game updated for the Wii. At this, it excels. Battlefield 3 offers itself up as a competitive first-person shooter. At this, it excels. It's not a binary function of "this game good, this game bad," nor should it be.

I Know Why The Caged Reviewer Whines

I've been trying to figure out why game reviewers hate Wii games so much.  Is it because they have some predisposed bias?  Is it because they represent some mysterious "hardcore" gaming cabal who is hell-bent on the destruction of the Wii at all costs?  Not really.  The answer is actually much simpler.

Consider this:  Many early Wii games got great reviews.  Metroid Prime 3 is holding at a score of 90 on Metacritic.  Zelda: Twilight Princess has a 95.  Super Mario Galaxy has a 97.  Those are arguably some of the most motion-intensive games around for the Wii. Reviewers liked those games and had no problems with the motion controls.  They might have thought of them as a slight inconvenience, but the reviews usually rated that games on their own merits and didn't throw in backhanded compliments like, "It's good for a Wii game."

So what changed?  Well, there's no denying that the Wii had some lean times through 2007 to 2008.  There were virtually no games that came out during that period.  We had Smash Bros. Brawl, Mario Kart Wii and Wii Fit.  That was it.  However, if you're a reviewer you still have to review something, right?  You can't just ignore a console for an entire year.  So, if there are no good games coming out but you have to review something anyway, you end up reviewing some incredibly crap games.

After a while of playing awful games, what happened to their perception of the system? Instead of seeing the Wii as the Next Big Thing, they started seeing it as a nightmare. Every time they put in a game, they expected that it was going to suck because that's what usually happened.  Since they had to wade neck-deep into the waters of crapware and stay there for a long time, they thought the Wii is bad.  That's totally understandable.  Nintendo's awful Wii Music-revealing 2008 E3 conference didn't help matters either.  Instead of seeing a future of better games, they saw a bleak future of awful minigames and worthless ports, leading to no hope in sight for Nintendo's white monster.

Gamers at large, however, don't have to buy a new game every week.  They don't have review schedules or deadlines.  They can sidestep crappy games if they so choose, and for the most part they do.  Therefore, the Wii keeps selling because their perception of the Wii is completely different than the people who've been forced to play awful games for a year.

The next step to this process comes when the game reviewers look around after all this time playing crappy games and they see that the Wii is STILL SELLING.  They reason, "The Wii sucks!  I've played more crappy games for the Wii than for any other system!  These people must be idiots!  It's my job to steer people away from it so they don't get burned."  They become anti-Wii advocates and end up turning more gamers away from the system.  However, the vast majority of consumers don't care about reviewers or reviews, and instead rely on first-hand accounts and recommendations from friends.  Their friends are buying the Wii and Wii games, so they keep buying them too.  This makes the reviewers even more upset, since they're being ignored by the gaming public at large.  That makes them even louder. Remember, as a reviewer, it's your responsibility to be an advocate for games that are good and a warning for games that aren't.  When people keep buying the Wii, the reviewers get desperate because they assume that the public is buying crappy games for a crappy system.

Add to this the fact that lots of people are being exposed to gaming for the first time through the Wii, and you can see why reviewers are even more upset.  If the Wii sucks, and people are getting their first exposure to gaming through it, then these people will assume that gaming sucks.  However, since the Wii doesn't really suck, these people aren't drawing that assumption, and more people keep buying Wiis despite the protests of reviewers, and the circle continues.

When we analyze it from this angle, we can understand why reviewers see the Wii like they do.  In many ways, it's Nintendo's own fault for not spacing their releases a little better and giving reviewers a reprieve or even throwing them a bone once in a while. However, now that there are better Wii games, it's also the responsibility of the reviewers to put aside their prejudices and review the games for what they are, not what they could have been.

The Curious Case of Modern Warfare 2

Would this happen in any other type of media?

From the moment Modern Warfare 2 was announced, was there any doubt as to what its final review score would be?  To paraphrase Tycho, reviewers are torn between trying to decide whether the game is awesome or too awesome.  To a man, they all state that it's fantastic.  Here's the Frankenreview from Kotaku.  What's telling is the little two line sentence at the end:

Anyone surprised?

Isn't this a little weird?  I mean, everything has its detractors.  If you ask 15 different music reviewers what their album of the year is, they'll more than likely give you very different answers.  However, you ask 15 reviewers what their Game of the Year is, and you can be guaranteed that a good chunk will mention Modern Warfare 2. As soon as it was announced, you could pencil it in as most people's Game of the Year, sight unseen. Yes, it's well-crafted. That's not the issue. It is a very good game, but the accolades heaped upon it prior to release are a little weird, and the resounding reception that it's received from day one is intriguing.

So, the question becomes "Why?" Some have ideas revolving around conspiracies between the "gaming media" and the "gaming industry," and others decry that it's just marketing in action, nothing else. There's actually something going on that's far less insidious and shocking, but exposes a very large flaw in the gaming firmament.

If you're reading this, more than likely you are a male under 40 years of age. Since you are a male under 40 who is on the internet, you probably like Star Wars. You've probably seen and enjoyed some war movies in your time. More than likely, you have a passing interest in kung-fu movies. I'm just throwing possibilities out there, but my point is this: Males under 40 have some pretty standard interests. It's not hard to figure out what we like, especially if you're another male under 40 years old.

The gaming industry, gaming journalists, and the playerati alike are mostly populated by males under 40 years of age. Therefore, it's only natural that a game that's as well-crafted, adrenaline-soaked, and explosion-heavy as Modern Warfare 2 would excite your average male under 40. We kind of get each other. The industry knows what we like since we are the industry. The only difference between most game devs and gamers is what side of the screen they're on. So, when devs make a game such as Modern Warfare 2, they're aiming it straight at our flabby hearts because they are us. That's why it's getting such great reviews, because it's a love letter to us from us.

Therein lies the problem. That's kind of unsustainable. In case you haven't noticed, the majority of people aren't males under 40. We're actually a pretty small group. Now, we buy a lot of things so that makes us valuable to advertisers and executives, but we're less than a sixth of the total world population. That means that there are lots of people who really aren't getting served, who don't have an interest in a game like Modern Warfare 2, and who are wondering why the heck we're wasting so much time with our Nintenders, Playwhatsits and Xwhatevers.

That's the challenge facing designers in the 21st century.  They've figured out what we like.  Now it's time to figure out what the rest of the world likes, too.

Saving Game Reviews From Irrelevancy Part 2 - Electric Boogaloo

In the first part of this article, we discussed the challenges behind game reviews. Let's now go into how these challenges can be overcome. One of those challenges is the perception of collusion with the companies themselves. This is a tough problem to handle, but not without a solution.

Most major reviewers in other media don't work for magazines specifically geared toward their interests. Roger Ebert writes for the Chicago Sun-Times, for instance. Pauline Kael wrote for The New Yorker. When you work for a larger company, you don't live and die based on your access. If Ebert pans a movie and the movie company threatens to not let him see their movie beforehand, he doesn't care.

Take a look at your average review on Rotten Tomatoes, for instance, like this one for Slumdog Millionaire. It's about 50/50 between movie sites and news agencies. There might be more news agencies than movie sites there. Now, take a look at the Metacritic reviews for Street Fighter IV. It's almost ALL game sites.

A big part of this is our own inferiority/superiority complex as gamers. I say "inferiority" because we still think of ourselves as geeks and nerds for liking video games. I say "superiority" because we feel that no one else understands our hobby quite like we do. Here's what that does.

First of all, by feeling that we're somehow a marginal culture, we relegate ourselves to the back pages of newspapers and magazines. We don't assert ourselves the way we should. We never ask for video game reviews, because why should newspapers care about us? We're just nerds. Secondly, by feeling that no one understands our hobby, we discount reviewers who aren't in our "clan." It's like we put up a sign that says "You Must Be This Much Of A Dork To Enter," along with requirements that they name-drop Kid Icarus or Shining Force.

Put another way, we don't ask for game reviews from the mainstream media, and when we get them, we pooh-pooh them because they're not made "for us." How is this helping? Gamers are so afraid of the mainstream that they forget what the mainstream truly brings: Acceptance, organization and variety. Can you truly say that books, movies and music are worse off for being mainstream? Oh, sure, you have your movies like Paul Blart: Mall Cop, but you also have movies like Iron Man. For every Fly Me To The Moon, you have a Gran Torino. Stop worrying.

There's another way that reviewers can help push the hobby mainstream. There are many gamers who are very reluctant to allow their precious little hobby to go mainstream, and reviewers seem okay with this. They talk about certain games being for the "hardcore" or the "casual" audience. We need to stop making these distinctions. There are just games, and there are different flavors of game. It's the same thing in movies and music. There are some that are more popular, but "popular" is not always synonymous with "bad."

When these things are done, the end result will be a better review, because the reviewer won't have the appearance of collusion. They'll be able to speak more honestly and openly than they might have otherwise, thus avoiding fiascos like the overly-positive tilted reviews of Super Mario Sunshine.

Next up is the problem of game length. Most games can't be played and digested within a few days, and we're always nervous about reviewers missing the point of the game and changing their tune later on. Here's my rule of thumb: If a review comes out the same day a game comes out (or before), it wasn't played enough. Simple as that. If it's been a week or two, then it got enough play.

This requires patience on our part. Sure, we want to know everything about the games that come out NOW, but does it mean we should? Does it make more sense to wait and get a better review, or to leap at any old review that comes out the day of release? When we wait, we get better reviews and a clearer picture of the game. It just makes sense.

Take a look at the Zero Punctuation reviews. When do they come out? The day of the game's release? No, there's usually a delay of at least a week or two. Part of that is because Yahtzee's in Australia, so they get games a little later than other areas. However, there's another reason: He takes his time. His reviews are usually more thought-out than other reviews. He finds things that other reviewers don't normally find because he's not playing the game in a hurry.

There are always going to be bad reviews and bad reviewers. There are always going to be games that get excoriated in the press and later become "hidden gems," and there will always be games that will be pumped up in the press and later are revealed to be awful (anybody want to guess what rating Resident Evil 5 is going to get in most gaming rags?). It's our choice to listen to them or not.

Game reviews will always be skirting the line between relevancy and irrelevancy.

Saving Game Reviews From Irrelevancy Part 1

When you ask the majority of gamers their opinion of game reviewers, they usually have a very skeptical view. They may not believe, like some conspiracy theorists do, that reviewers are paid for a good review, but we've been burned repeatedly.

Consider, for instance, the curious case of Super Mario Sunshine. When Sunshine was released in 2002, reviewers loved it. On Metacritic, it has scored 92/100 and recieved the "Universal Acclaim" tag. After playing Super Mario Galaxy, a game which is truly amazing, I decided to go back and play Sunshine, a game that I had missed before. I was really excited for more Mario. I mean, if Galaxy was one of the best games I'd ever played, Sunshine should be great too, right?

Wrong. Dead wrong. Super Mario Sunshine in one of those games that gets worse the more you play it. There is no way now that you could possibly say that it is "universally acclaimed." According to this article from IGN, "Because it is uneven, Super Mario Sunshine is probably the closest you can get to labeling a Super Mario game 'bad.' "

Oh, sure, tell us NOW. After we've already bought the game, played it, gotten frustrated with it and sold it on eBay. I only paid $17.99 at Gamestop and I was disappointed. I shudder to think of the poor souls who paid $50 at retail.

This is not an uncommon occurence, which leads many to be understandably skeptical about game reviews. Why do we have problems with them? How can they be improved? How can we learn to trust them again?

There is a major issue behind reviews that's the "elephant in the room" of most gaming publications. In order to make ends meet, most gaming mags and sites rely on advertising. What types of companies willingly advertise in gaming publications? Why, game companies, of course. So, in effect, the game companies are paying for the gaming publications, who are supposed to be giving objective reviews of the games that the very companies are paying them to review.

Now, that's not to say that every review is bought and paid for. Far from it. There are many outstanding reviewers out there who consistently are objective, and will take a game to task for being bad. Not all companies are as scrupulous, though. It's a business, and some will do whatever it takes to get their bottom line

By now, everyone knows the story of Kane & Lynch, Eidos Interactive, Jeff Gerstmann and Gamespot, but I'll recap for those playing at home who've never heard it: Before the game's release, Gamespot had ads plastered throughout the site for Kane & Lynch, and on the game's release, Jeff Gerstmann panned it. Eidos was angry, pulled their advertising, Gamespot fired Jeff Gerstmann, and there was a huge PR fiasco for all involved. Was this a case of Eidos wanting the ballet box stuffed? There's a lot of circumstantial evidence, and no one has ever come out and expressly said anything, but it's safe to assume that it was. Is this common? No, it isn't.

When writing reviews for a game site myself, I ran into a similar problem. These companies would send us a game and ask us to review it. What are you supposed to say? If you say that the game blows, will you get the next big release? If you say the game is great, will you anger your audience? How do you properly review a game when you're getting it from the maker?

Years ago, a wise man told me the phrase, "Perception is reality." In other words, if people think you're unscrupulous, then it doesn't matter what you say. You are. If people think that you handle issues well, then you do. People think that game companies are in collusion with review sites, and incidents like these only serve to make the issue worse. Therefore, in the public's eyes, they are.

There's also another tricky issue with game reviews: Length. It's easy to review a CD. You listen for a half hour to an hour, and then you put it down. If you want to listen to it again, you listen to it again. It's easy to review a movie. You watch it for two, maybe three hours maximum. Then you go home and digest what you've seen. Games are different animals. You have to have a certain amount of skill to play a game, and the experience can take anywhere from 5 hours for a short game to 100 hours for in-depth RPGs.

On top of that, when do people (and game companies) want game reviews? Two weeks after the game comes out? A month? Of course not! We want the review NOW. We want to know all about how good or bad the game is NOW. There's no way. You can't review 100 hours of content in a couple of days. At most, you're getting a sniff of the game, and at worst, you're missing the entire point of it.

I always point to this Gamespot review of Chrono Cross, a fine game that somehow got a 10.0 rating. I was willing to give it the same rating myself for most of the game. For 2/3 of the game, I was enraptured. Then you had to seek out 8 dragons and do...something with a frozen sea? And...what were we doing again? Why do I have thirty characters that I can choose from when all of them play basically the same?

See, for twenty hours, it was one of the finest games I had ever played. Then, it all fell apart. How can you review that? Was the 10.0 review the right review? Was it wrong? How far can you really review a game before you say that it was good or bad?

There are some reviewers who doesn't fall prey to these issues, like Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw. He's the diabolical mind behind Zero Punctuation, and his reviews manage to skirt these problems. Other reviewers manage to avoid these problems as well. What do they do, what lessons can we learn, and how can reviewers make their reviews relevant again? The answers are coming on Monday.