Best Description of Critics -- Ever

[Torillian]

Desroko said:

mike_intellivision said:

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so.

 

For those who do not recognized this, the above words are the beginning of the speech by Anton Ego (food critic) in the Pixar-Disney film Ratatouille.  

But I also thought it was a great statement in general on the self-importance and lack of real importance of critics. This seems to be especially relevant to game reviews this generation.  

Thoughts?

Personally, I feel it provides perspective to the philosophy that  reviewers define AAA games (where the term's generally-accepted origin was the emphasis the developer/studio placed on the game).

Mike from Morgantown

 

 

I think there's a difference between a critic who attempts to qualify a work, and a reviewer, who merely seeks to quantify it. The best critics can incisively analyze a work, pull apart its themes, pick apart its details, and put them back together in such a way that that the reader can follow and achieve a greater understanding, as if they'd had a window into the artist's mind at the time of creation

A reviewer watches or plays a movie or game and assigns a number based on whether it was "bad-ass," "awesome," "okay," "boring," or "gay."

The videogame industry, from what I've seen, has no critics. It has a ton of reviewers, who sustain on themsevles on blind loyalty/hostility to a given system, schwag, and a rather pathetic sort of pride that comes from the towering achevement of their lives - getting their games website listed on Metacritic.

While I agree videogame reviewers don't live up to the lofty expectations you have for a critic I disagree that as a group they are as bad as you say in your last paragraph.  I personally have no towering sense of pride from reviewing, have thrown away most of the "schwag" recieved with review copies, and definitely do not have a blind loyalty or hostility towards any system.  In fact I don't personally know any reviewers that act as you have described.  I think that most reviewers are just people who like to play games and write about about them to inform people who are unsure of whether or not the game is worth playing.  I haven't met any that are the self righteous pricks you make them out to be.  Poor guys are just doing a job, some of them love it and some of them don't, but they don't deserve to be called pathetic.