Press Fire to Start

It’s all about the review.

Let us first accept that. That is the primary reason why people are reading games media. Sure there are also the news and the interviews and other stuff but these are merely the stones paving the path to the review. We’re out for the review here.

Naturally if something bad happens, it happens in the reviews. Reviews are the gauge of good and evil. If a certain website is good it’s because of the timely and well written reviews and vice versa.

Maybe because of the similarity between the two mediums, but more probably because video game reviewers are aspiring to become like their more respected counterparts, this whole thing is quite similar to movie reviews. Except that game reviews are a lot more confused than movie reviews.

A typical game review is a huge text that can be as long as 8 pages if the game in question had a lot of press coverage prior to release. In comparison a movie review occupies usually only one page. Why is that so? Are games really about eight times more complicated than movies for the purposes of a review?

I wish they were. I really do. But sadly that’s not the case.

The difference is in the method. Movie reviews had plenty of time to get refined. A professional movie critic like Roger Ebert usually writes a relatively short text about the movie. The text is short because he instantly gets to the point; the point being him liking or disliking the movie and his reasons for liking or disliking it. The point is this because this is essentially the information people want to obtain by reading a review. Not more, not less.

You won’t ever see Mr. Ebert writing about different devices used by the grip crew or what kind of things foley artists used to create the sound effects or what sort of lenses the DOP preferred when he shot the action scenes. That would be an in depth analysis of the movie, and it would only interest an academic or a student.

Regardless of its detail a game review is usually needlessly long. The writer gets lost in trivial and technical details giving frame rate or polygon counts. If that’s not the case you can find the reviewer writing a huge page detailing a personal memory or sharing with the reader an irrelevant anecdote meant as an introduction.

No one is interested in these things. Therefore most people don’t even read these things. They skip right to the end of the text where they can see a score, which gives them the exact information they were looking for: Is this game any good?

And apparently games are good. Unbelievably good in fact. David Jaffe is interested in this phenomenon as he could not hide his amazement at the review scores games are receiving. It appears that many games are in the top 25 percent on the ever popular percentage scale of awesomeness. In comparison only a few movies seem to have achieved the same feat so far. Naturally Jaffe asks himself if all games are really that good and if the industry really produces a few dozens of timeless classics every year…

The mystery lies in the difference between arithmetical interpretations of those scores. In short, the math is different. A game which scores over 90 is good, one that scores over 80 is average and a game over 70 is “meh”. Everything else is equal to pure garbage not worthy of anyone’s attention. As you can see, there are only 4 ratings: “Awesome”, “Average”, “Not Bad” and “Total Disaster”. However they still insist on using the percentage system. Apparently we need this kind of fine tuned scores to review games. Apparently there is someone out there who knows what exactly the difference between 90 and 91 is.

The situation is made even more complicated by several sub scores, each with their own criteria for success. Add to this fact that every single reviewer seems to have his own set of criteria for judging games — which, by the way, is the reason why Japanese Turn Based RPG games are often criticized for not having enough action — and you can easily understand why it is entirely impossible to draw a logical or at least a coherent conclusion from any game review.

“A real gamer doesn’t read reviews. Who cares about the review? Don’t read them. Just play the game and decide for yourself,” they started to say on the net.

They, whoever they are, may be right, especially considering the fact that the online revolution in gaming now allows many people to try out any game before buying it. But doesn’t that defeat the purpose of writing reviews, or for that matter, writing anything at all? If no one is supposed to read something, why are we writing it in the first place?

The solution as usual lies where the problem is. And while everyone is focused on “the how” as detailed above, I think the main problem is “the what”.

Games journalists are not really sure what it is they are writing about. This, of course, as previously mentioned, includes people who accuse turn based strategy games of not featuring enough action, which is pretty much like criticizing a horror movie for not being funny enough. But the problem is deeper than that.

People are not really sure about the definition of games.

The aforementioned Roger Ebert had to endure a lot of hate from gamers and game journalists because he said games are not art. Many people saw this as a belittlement of their favorite pastime. It is not necessarily that way. Ebert just makes a comment based on his, admittedly limited, observation of the medium. He says games are not art. Many things in life are not art. That doesn’t make them less valid or less valuable as a thing.

Ebert simply thinks games are products. The game developers’ focus is on making money, rather than producing a piece of art. He says that people who make games don’t intend to make art. Therefore games can never be pieces of art.

I disagree. But that is irrelevant. Whether he’s right or not is an entirely different issue.

The issue here is the reaction of the games media. For the first time the whole games media united against the Evil Ebert Overlord, claiming that he is a stupid old fart and reciting names of games they thought of as art. That was very sweet.

The same media however keeps on criticizing games for being expensive or short for instance. This can be. Perhaps the game is too short indeed. But have you ever seen a game being criticized for being too long?

That’s because while they are trying to review the games as art, somewhere in their minds games are still products. They see games as objects which give your x hours of entertainment for y amount of money. The higher x/y is the better the game is. Let’s face it, that’s a game reviewer’s chief concern. And precisely this is the definition of a product.

Last year 1UP said they would substract 1 whole point (10 points on the percentage scale) from Incognito’s “Warhawk”, if the game’s price was higher than $ 30. Back then the game was still unreleased. According to 1UP, a multiplayer only game which can be digitally delivered wasn’t worth anything more than $ 30. The main question here is this: Does the arguably high price make it an inferior game? When you answer “yes” to this question then you really have no right to be angry at Ebert for saying games are not art.

There is a reason why any self respecting academic work starts with a definition of its subject. That is the key to knowing what you’re doing.

I’m sure Mr. Ebert knows what he’s doing when he’s reviewing a movie. I just think it’s time for game reviewers to figure out what they want to do.

Right now, media ethics is a very hot topic. It’s not only about video game journalism. It’s about any kind of media. People who care for this kind of stuff propose that we promote something called “Media Literacy” as a solution to all our problems.

“Literacy”, as you all probably know, is the 10 point perk which allows you to read this thing. Nowadays it’s not worth that much since many people learn it in elementary school. “Media Literacy” is different though. It’s not about merely being able to read things in the written media, but it’s more about seeing media and understanding its messages as they are. It is a sort of Brecht-like approach to our interaction with the internet, TV, movies, newspapers and similar stuff. It’s about knowing what’s happening behind the scenes and not simply looking at the shiny images we are presented and grinning like a moron. Reading the first issue of Tintin is literacy. Understanding that it is anti soviet propaganda on the silliest level of absurdness is media literacy. It’s a very nice thing.

Of course, promoting media literacy is a sort of acceptance of ultimate defeat. In a way, media literacy is a means to determine if anyone in the media violates the ethics of the job and how they do so. In a way it is accepting that the media is everything it’s claiming or trying not to be. Or maybe it’s a sad acceptance of reality instead of defeat. The goal may be stopping all the wrong things the media is doing by breeding a media literate generation of humans and rendering the aforementioned unethical practices useless. After all, what media literate person can claim Halo 3 is the video game sensation of the 21^st century. Please…

The reason for all this is the existence of ethics, specifically media ethics, the source of which is journalism ethics. People who practice journalism are called journalists. Journalism, however, is not an easy thing to practice. This is why there are universities teaching it. Rules of ethics are usually important when a certain set of people are able to wield great power. As Spiderman’s uncle said, “With great power comes great responsibility.” These schools teach the responsibility needed to do the job. And it’s important since everyone would easily say the greatest power in this century is information. Journalists are merchants of information. They earn money for carrying pieces of information to society, and during that procedure they are perfectly able to modify or manipulate the information or create it outright. People act according to the information they possess. If you can control information, you can control people. And this, as no one can argue, is a great power. Therefore some rules are needed so that people do not exploit this fact.

Journalism ethics has three basic rules. Only two of them are important for the sake of this argument. These two are: Accuracy and Objectivity. And saying video game journalism doesn’t count as journalism at this point is akin to saying oral sex does not count as sex. So don’t do that.

Accuracy is about facts. Your story has to be truthful. Ideally it should contain the answers to the questions “what, where, when, who, why and how”. You have to tell the whole story. No fact should be omitted, for doing so would disturb the accuracy of the story. It is a journalist’s job to uncover reality. Rumors are not part of reality. A journalist can of course report on the latest rumors but they should be clearly labeled that way to separate them from facts. The job of an editor is also to check the written piece for its factual accuracy. Many organizations have “fact checkers” whose job is to make sure there are no factual errors in the story.

Objectivity is about the difference between opinions and facts. A journalist’s job is bringing facts to the reader. The reader then takes these facts and forms an opinion. Ideally, a journalist should express no opinions about the facts nor write the story in a way that it influences people into forming a certain opinion. Of course, journalists are free to express opinions too, but opinions and news should clearly be separated. In fact, many newspapers maintain entirely different staffs for opinion stories and news stories. This is not enough. Editors should make sure no opinions are presented in news stories.

Partly related to objectivity is independence. The independence of a newspaper is its guarantee of objectivity and truthfulness. Therefore, advertisements should clearly be separated from the main body of the story. You cannot, for instance, change the logo of your newspaper to look like the ExxonMobile logo as an advertisement even if your stories are not biased in favor of that company, because simply doing so would create a nasty question mark in the minds of your audience. A question mark about your truthfulness and objectivity.

If you think about it even for a second, video game journalism today totally ignores these rules. You often see factual errors in news reports and reviews. More often than not, rumors are presented as actual news. News headlines almost always contain hidden opinions or cynical remarks, which to many game journalists seem like a good way of showing off their wittiness. No one seems to wonder why real journalists don’t do this kind of thing.

And how many times have you seen your favorite video gaming site totally skinned in that new AAA title’s colors with several previews describing how awesome that game is?

Sure, AAA titles from big companies attract more attention than the indie title from some unknown company, but that’s neither the journalist’s problem nor the reader’s. By giving more exposure to the bigger game, these journalists cause the death of the smaller fish in the sea and act as the right arm of the bigger companies. This might be in the best interest of the magazine or website in economical terms, but economical dependence on an outside source is hardly proof of your independence, objectivity or accuracy.

What should the journalist do if he has no other choice but violating these rules? Well… the journalist should quit his job. If all journalists do that, the firm grip of corporations over media have no choice but loosen up. Of course this happens if the journalist cares about being truthful, objective and independent in the first place, or in fact, if we are talking about journalists at all.

Because I think we are not. And this is at the heart of the problem.

You cannot really blame these people for not acting according to the ethics of journalism the same way you cannot blame a faith healer for not acting according to the tenets of the Hippocratic Vow. A faith healer can perfectly choose not to help save someone’s life just because he doesn’t like the color of his eyes. This would be a very immoral choice, but it would not be ethically incorrect simply because the faith healer is not a doctor and therefore not bound by the rules of being a doctor. He never learned the importance of those rules. He never thought about the philosophy behind the rules. Therefore you also cannot expect him to act like a doctor.

And because he is not a doctor, he cannot violate their ethics just like a coconut cannot commit murder. In the rare cases a coconut causes the death of a person we don’t call the event “a murder”. We call it “accident”.

The so called game journalists today are not really journalists. Most of them didn’t study it at all. Quite many of them have trouble writing coherent sentences in their own language.

They are not journalists. They are kids. Fans of games who have just grown up a bit and are now earning money by writing down their schoolyard conversations. They are doing okay because they know more about games than most other journalists, but that’s it. Similarly my cat knows more about being a cat than me but that doesn’t mean she should write about the subject in a magazine.

Some video game journalists stay really true to these ethical rules purely by instinct and write really well because of a thing called talent. What can I say? They should not take offense. I guess with enough cats running across enough keyboards, you’ll eventually get a good article about Halo 3 (only monkeys write Shakespeare).

What video game journalism needs most is journalists and some really serious websites or magazines which take the ethics of journalism seriously. This is the first step towards building a reliable and functional games press. We should simply thank these guys for what they did so far and find a way to replace them with proper journalists somehow.

Before enumerating each and every thing that’s wrong with so called video game journalism today I would like to tell you a story. It may or may not have anything to do with video game journalism. The moral of the story is yours to discover.

This story is not about Jeff Gerstmann.

Once upon a time in a land named after a bird so fat that it’s earthbound, there was only one video games magazine, which was named after the company who produced probably the most enduring computer hardware ever. It was published by people who imported said computer into that land. It was serious. Its tones were a mixture of black and white and boring.

Then came a fat guy who was named after a sort of blade and decided to publish another magazine. Now the fat man knew that only kids owned this computer in this land, however popular that computer was. And all kids cared about were games. “So,” he reasoned, “how about making a magazine dedicated entirely to games?”

That was a good idea. That would sell. Yes. Only one problem: How would he find journalists or computer experts who specialize on games? Games, being an activity exclusively designed for children, were naturally played and therefore known by children only. Surely no journalist would spend his time engaged in such a pointless activity.

Therein lay the solution to the problem. Why not hire kids as writers? Surely some of those kids are studying at a university or a high school, institutes which usually make literacy a requirement for their students.

Together with these literate kids and a logo stolen from a famous German magazine, the fat man quickly set up an office and published the magazine. When he did this, many people thought it was a crazy idea. Professionals thought it was a joke and their opposition didn’t even take notice of the magazine. It was doomed to fail.

When the sales number started to trickle in, it was quickly understood that the magazine was a smash hit. And soon it turned into a cultural phenomenon. As a magazine written and published by gamers and for gamers, it was infinitely more likable than the official tones of the other magazines. Everyone was happy. The readers felt like they were talking to their friends. The writers were writing about the things they love most. It was a perfect match, the stuff of dreams. The rare mixture of amateur excitement and the innocent aspiration to become proper journalists produced a unique voice that was instantly likable.

In time every single writer developed his own voice. The magazine itself became a symbol of rebellion for all the young people. They weren’t only supporting video games, they were supporting heavy metal, too. At one point they gave out a huge poster of a heavy metal band which was founded by the pissed off former lead guitarist of yet another, slightly more important heavy metal band, the name of which was interestingly stolen from a magazine. Soon fans were gathering to host their own heavy metal/video game events, while other magazines were trying to imitate the success.

An epidemic of similar games magazines started, each with their own interpretation of the rules of journalism. None of their writers were journalists. And soon each of those writers thought they knew best.

Now all these magazines, including our friendly heavy metal one, were using the ever popular percentage system to rate games. Each writer was strict in his own way. But being gamers, each of them had different tastes. After all, there wasn’t a clear cut method to reviewing games. It’s not like this is an exact science. No one graduated from a games school, or come to think of it, a school of journalism. So opinions varied as readers who are now called “fans” rallied behind their favorite writers.

Then something very weird happened. Somebody released a game in that country named after a fat bird. It wasn’t the first game released there, but it was surely the biggest and the most expensive project. This historical strategy game, named after a sort of knife, occupied three times the space of an average game at the time, used a very popular game engine, was designed by a team of visual artists, and for all intents and purposes it was pure, unplayable crap.

This game was reviewed in all the games magazines. Naturally everyone expected a different score from each and every magazine. But the weird thing here was that the game not only received favorable reviews from everyone, but also the exact same score. What did this mean? Did the writers finally come up with a unified theory of game reviewing?

A closer inspection revealed that the texts of each and every review were identical down to the tiniest typo. For a moment, it was eerie and mysterious. But the magazines were content. Their bank accounts and owners just grew fatter.

What followed was even bigger disarray. A game which all the writers in the magazine hated would receive a high score from the reviewer of the same magazine. Writers would either call each other names, or claim illogically that it was all decided in unison. Fans started digging trenches, calling each other and their favorite authors “fanboys” and claiming their magazine was the best.

Still the heavy metal magazine had the most fans in the middle of this game journalism circus. Then they did something unthinkable. They reviewed a new game released by a famous company. And they gave it a perfect score of 100 percent. There was an uproar. Again people pointed fingers, and called each other names. The editor of the magazine, though, was very calm. He said, “Yes, we think this game is perfect. That is why we gave it 100 percent. If we are not going to give that 100 to any game, what’s the point of having the percentage system?” It was a valid question and perhaps an honorable thing to do.

The silly thing happened when the same company released an even better game later. And because that game was clearly better, everyone was confused. What would they do? They thought for a long time. And they came up with a great idea.

The review score of this new game was 101 percent.

The rest was a blur in which other magazines used a variety of systems based on 200 points, 150 points, 10 points, letters of the alphabet, different number of stars, joysticks, LEDs, disks and pumpkins.

Until the whole thing collapsed when everyone lost interest. No one trusted the magazines anymore.

Today the same country has very few game magazines, and everyone says: “Reviews don’t mean anything. Real gamers play the game and decide for themselves.”

I know this doesn’t make any sense. But I hope that the importance of these events will be made clearer during this series of articles.

This story is not made up. It’s all true. Some of these things already happened on a global scale as well.

I am still waiting for the first game to receive 101 percent on site indexed by Metacritic.