bugrimmar said:
Wrong. Games have so many dimensions that can easily be critiqued objectively. The facts of low resolution and low framerate are facts. You can't hide that behind any kind of hyperbole. Whoever is watching, you can compare one game has smoother frames while another doesn't. Run a PS4 game vs a PS1 game and anyone can tell the difference.
But with music, how to compare? One sounds better than another? If you listen to bohemian Rhapsody be from decades ago and some miley Cyrus crap, do you notice the quality difference? No. All people can say is either they like the song or not. They prefer this genre or not. that's it. Games have objective differences over time that you can compare while music does not. |
Are you serious? You can absolutely, objectively compare sound quality of music tracks, just like you can compare resolution and FPS. You can listen to two guitar riffs from two rock songs - even two versions of the same rock song - and objectively compare the sound quality (as in: how high is the bit rate in this conversion? How clean does it sound? What's the quality of the sample?). Don't tell me objective, technical sound quality doesn't exist! For example, even on the low-quality version of Spotify can you hear sound quality differences between modern music and music from the 80s. Of course there is more to music than "does it sound good"! And of course you notice the quality difference between Bohemian Rhapsody and a Miley Cyrus track! Sound quality has gotten so much better since the 80s, just like resolution in video games. Obviously, the next question is: Which version of Bohemian Rhapsody are you referring to? The original? A certain live concert version? A remastered version, and if so, which remastered version?
And of course, an audiophile person with a 1.000$ sound system wants to know if the latest album by his favourite band matches his quality standards: Is everything mixed correctly? Do the vocals sound too tinny compared to the last album? Are there too many highs or too much bass? Just read the sentence you quoted in the OP again: It's not nonsense, it tells you very important things if you listen to music through high-quality headphones! Just like resolution and FPS teach a hardcore gamer important stuff that a casual gamer doesn't care about.
To rephrase your statement: "You can't objectively compare video games! How do you compare a Jump 'n' Run to a first person shooter? All people can say is if either they like the game or not!" I mean, you can even use maths to determine which music is good and why it makes you feel a certain way. We know for a scientific fact which music / melodies will be perceived as pleasurable by the human brain and which ones not! By the way, this is the reason most albums score highly these days: We simply know what sounds good, or at least the experts know and thus the catchiness of pop songs in particular goes up and up. How objective do things need to get?
Of course some people will like Jazz and others will prefer Hip-Hop or Rock. Just like some people will prefer an RPG to and FPS. But that doesn't mean you can't objectively score an FPS game or that any rating of video games is moot and totally subjective. We can compare pixels just like we can compare sound quality, but how do you "objectively" score fun during gameplay? I don't see where the advantages are for game reviews here. In the end, isn't the reviewer simply saying "the game is technically well made [objective statement] and was fun to play [subjective statement]"? Because music reviews are the same: "The sound quality of this album is high [objective statement] and I enjoyed listening to it [subjective statement]".
