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MTZehvor on 25 August 2016
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KLXVER said:
MTZehvor said:

Again, it all depends on what you think makes a good game. If you enjoy...whatever the heck it is that Wii Music does...then Wii Music may very well be the best game to you. Maybe some person who enjoys music but hasn't played video games much before enjoys it for its (I'm assuming a bit here) simplicity, and as a result, considers it the best video game ever made.

The point is, everything we assess a game on is subjective. Even attempts to be "objective" about things are, in and of themselves, based on what the video game community has subjectively decided is good or bad in the past. We praise Dark Souls for its exploration and lack of hand holding because the majority of us in the community think that is good. We degrade Skyward Sword for its hand holding because the (rather large) majority of us in the community think that is bad. Any attempt at objectively invetiably finds itself based in a subjective assessment that someone or some people made in the past. You can call that "having no idea what a quality game is," but that's based on your notions of what a quality game is (which, in turn, may be based on the larger community's notions of what a quality game is). Or to bring this back down to a more practical level; the original Halo was, by and large, considered a mediocre game at best in Japan. And yet, in the West, it was praised universally. The very notion of what does and doesn't make a good game shifts drastically if we simply cross an ocean; trying to make an objective assessment for games is a futile notion at best.

No, the quality of a game isnt just in the eye of the beholder. It comes down to the talent of the developer. Games like GTAV, The Last Of Us, Super Mario Galaxy etc...are quality games because they are made by talented people who knows what makes a fun game. Halo may not be popular in Japan, but that can be said about most FPS games. Just because they are not popular there, doesnt mean they are of bad quality.

Quality comes down to great gameplay, design and how well the game runs.

Sure you can argue how fun a game is, but you cant really argue quality.

And what exactly determines what makes gameplay, design, story, and whatever else "great?" It's entirely based on subjective notions (with the possible exception of how well it runs). Granted, these are subjective notions held by the majority of the gaming community, but they're subjective all the same. There isn't a single thing you can point to in gameplay that you can find a purely "objective" foundation for; everything comes back to a set of presuppositions that most people agree are "good."

If you disagree with me, then I'd invite you to come up with a definition of what makes a good game without referring to any subjective qualities. That means that your definition needs to be something that everyone could apply equally across all games and come to the exact same conclusion of which games are good and which games are not. In other words, you can't use something like "it is a fun game," because what people find "fun" will vary from person to person.

(Here's a hint: It's not possible)