This has been bothering me forever so I decided to just write about it.

Why does everyone always try to throw out the opinion card in when i cocmes to video games? You know exactly what I am talking about. For some, just saying that it is their opinion it automatically makes the game good on some level, and it is accepted as a valid argument. Does that just mean that the game isn't bad because there is a bunch of people who like it? Does that make it good?

Since there seems to be a lot of talk about games being art recently I'd like to compare this phenomena with other media. Let's lok at movies, I bet you that there are thousands and thousands of people who will tell you that Avatar is better than The Godfather, or that Star Wars is better than Citizen Kane. When it comes down to it, just because huge amounts of people who have a given opinion does it make it right? In movie no it does not, if you tell a person the above statements, you run the chance of looking like a fool.

Then you have music. If millions of people tell you that Nirvana was better than Queen, or The Beatles, would that make it right? Obviously not. You would probably get slapped even more often than in the case I outlined with movies.

The same thing also applies for drawn art. Don't even get me started on books, just ask someone to compare Twilight to say, Catch-22. I know I have personally punched a guy because he stated that idiotic statement.

So my question is this, why do people even tolerate this? Is it because the medium is still just so immature that it is still seen as a valid? It certainly cannot be because we don't have objective measuring sticks. The gameplay is the onlny new aspect gaming brings o the field, and even that can be quantified by this time in the medium's life. So it is because of the fact that people involved in gaming are still too immature to realize that their opinion may differ from a laid down fact? That's certainly more plausible, but there are a ton of older gamers as well and they still seem to have the same immature thought about the issue. I can only hope that whatever the cause is, it will go away as the medium maures, because you cannot have a valid form of art without being able to say objectively what's good and what's not.

eh, I think nirvana is better than the beatles (not level of musicianship) but I'd rather listen to them than the beatles (by just a little bit).
and I like them more than queen. And neither of those 3 are my favorite.

But I think things can be a sum greater than their parts... as the saying goes, if it relates to you in someway, however I like atmospheric games over the gameplay itself, and those tend to fit tastes.

Hell blade runner (my favorite movie) was panned, originally and now its deemed by many as a classic. So it's hard to argue what is good, and what is bad.

I think graphics you cannot argue from a technical sense but you can an artistic sense
I think gameplay is preference... you can argue about sloppiness of the mechanics though but I think it's taste, style of game matters.
I think open world, non-linear. Can be said, but I don't think linear is without its merits.

I kinda strayed from the topic, but at the same time, I don't really care if I look like a fool, to anyone other than the people I care about. I would say like you did, the godfather is better than avatar. However if people go to movies to look at pretty things, avatar is a better movie for their purpose of wanting to go to a movie.

It is like that to an extent. If someone says Halo is better than Deus Ex, they usually get laughed at.

but it is better than deus ex... looks at sig :D. But kinda I mean even that though... deus ex, is a FPS, with a lot of other elements.(maybe all FPS should have this I dunno :P)

whereas if your looking for a game where you go in guns blazin... or multiplayer shooter. Halo is a better pick (I don't like halo)

atleast thats what I think. Things are better at certain purposes, some things suck granted, but yeah.

And movies have acting, and books have literary style, and so on and so forth. As for your question, I can find you hundreds and hundreds of high cores for Twilight, so saying something that gets high scores now is just laughable. I mean, according to IMDB, The Shawshank Redemption is the best thing ever to happen to cinema, when it was just a very amazing damn good movie.

People easily compare books and movies across genres. Hell, they even compare across drawing styles in drawn art. Same can be done for video games.

i never said they couldn't

I know what you mean, however The Shawshank Redemption is not the best movie ever made, even from movies I don't enjoy I know that it is not considered the best movie ever made. Just because I like some other movie more though, doesn't make it better than the Shawshank Redemption and that's my point, it seems all too common in video games where opinion is actually defended, when it should be absolutely irrelevant when talking about the quality of a game.

Maybe, but not one of them would survive.

A few flaws in your examples.

Star wars >> citizen kane

Queen >> .... all

My opinion = fact

(now to your question... how do you punch a forum poster? you don't, so you just accept his opinion, expose yours, then walk aways ....)