| WereKitten said: It's not about evaluating the quality of a single term of comparison - that's perfectly legit, it's about dismissing the value of diversity. "Nintendo makes the best games" would be akin to "caucasian girls are the most beautiful". |
I don't agree that claiming that Nintendo makes the best games is the same as dismissing the value of diversity. I think it would be easy to both believe that Nintendo makes the best games and also uphold diversity as a value--there's no contradiction there. You're making the position I'm defending sound more like "the only good games are made by Nintendo," which isn't something anyone I know would claim.
Even if someone thought that "caucasian girls are the most beautiful," again, that's not necessarily the same thing as a dismissal of diversity; such a person could still find a woman of any given ethnicity beautiful, right? The analogy sounds unpleasant, because it seems to suggest some sort of latent racism (though I don't know if I'd agree there, either), but surely any such idea would be tough to translate into our video game discussion (apart from the worst kind of fanboy, who just likes games based on the system and/or developer).
|
If at the same time the same person tells me that no, he actually has a great deal of experience with girls of any ethnicity, thank you - excluding a) - then it must imply b) or in other words that however beautiful an Innuit girl is, he will prefer a caucasian girl. Here's where I say that I respect his tastes, but it must mean that he doesn't appreciate the peculiarities of Innuit girls, what makes them different from his preferred type. |
I don't want to get too deep into the Caucasian vs. Innuit debate for a few reasons, but allow me to say that this "however beautiful an Innuit girl is, he will prefer a caucasian girl" is not necessarily implied by "caucasian girls are the most beautiful." Sure, I think it must mean that, however beautiful an Innuit girl, there must be some Caucasian girl(s) that are preferred... but it wouldn't mean that every Caucasian girl is preferred to every Innuit girl. A given Innuit girl could be found quite beautiful and preferred to many Caucasian girls.
Or, to bring it back to video games, someone who feels that Nintendo makes the best games could still believe that any given non-Nintendo game--say Little Big Planet--is superior to 90 or 95 percent of Nintendo games. Just not 100%. It wouldn't mean that the worst Nintendo game is preferable to the best non-Nintendo game, though I feel like that's what you consider the position to amount to.
|
As for comparison in itself being the real issue, the subject is intriguing. But basically what I'm saying is that to compare unlike things you have to find some common criteria. The more different they are, the more abstract and relieved from the actual, detailed reality these criteria become. In the end you can express such an evaluation and justify it in the terms of such vague criteria, but at the price of losing all the intrinsic value of what doesn't fit them. |
I think I basically agree with what you've said here. Yes, there must be some level of abstraction to compare a door knob to the color green... but what do you gain by it? And yet, we're talking about comparing video games with video games. :) While I agree that comparing across genres can pose difficulties--and on reflection, I think I agree with you that the separation in video games is bigger than in movies... but I feel that video game players tend to be less rigid than moviegoers in willingness to explore other genres--I don't think it's insurrmountable, or that it makes such comparisons nonsensical as I believe you've implied.
I mean, people can and do make these comparisons all the time, as consumers with their wallets, retailers with their shelf space, and journalists with their GOTYs. And, retroactively and in community, we also make these (more difficult) comparisons over time, trying to assess the "best games of all time," etc. And quite often when we do that, Nintendo tends to do quite well for itself... so much so that, were not personal opinion enough of a justification, I think that a person is on solid ground to claim that Nintendo makes the best games.
Not to say that I'm arguing that Nintendo makes the best games, only that a person making such a claim is not necessarily either out of his head, sheltered, or the video game equivalent of a racist! :) A person can appreciate all genres, all games, and still feel that some developer "makes the best games," Nintendo or any other.
(BTW... wonderful discussion & you can have last word; I'm turning in for the night.)
