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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Best Description of Critics -- Ever

naznatips on 14 January 2010
mike_intellivision said:
Desroko said:

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.

I do not wish to get into an argument on semantics. However, I stand by the original point that those who provide reviews for video games think themselves self-important but are really not important.

(I also feel that critic as it is used with respect to restaurants is much more in line with reviewer than with traditional literary criticism).

 

Mike from Morgantown

Is it so silly to find meaning in what you do, and do something you enjoy? You never grew up as a kid wanting to review games? To be paid to play your favorite thing and have thousands of people read your viewpoints on it?

It's silly to expect reviews to be an absolute truth. Reviews are an analysis, and like most things there are multiple correct analyses to video games. I know of very few reviewers or websites which consider their reviews to be an absolute definition of a game's quality. That's not the job of a reviewer.

What's more ridiculous is how people take issue with reviews because it doesn't match their score (people who usually didn't even bother to read the content and find out why). What's more arrogant? The reviewer trying to give good detailed information and one possible analysis of the game to help people with purchase decisions, or the gamer who thinks that the reviewer is stupid for writing an analysis with a conclusion that differs from his, even if many others agree with the deduction?



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papflesje on 14 January 2010
naznatips said:
mike_intellivision said:
Desroko said:

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.

I do not wish to get into an argument on semantics. However, I stand by the original point that those who provide reviews for video games think themselves self-important but are really not important.

(I also feel that critic as it is used with respect to restaurants is much more in line with reviewer than with traditional literary criticism).

 

Mike from Morgantown

Is it so silly to find meaning in what you do, and do something you enjoy? You never grew up as a kid wanting to review games? To be paid to play your favorite thing and have thousands of people read your viewpoints on it?

It's silly to expect reviews to be an absolute truth. Reviews are an analysis, and like most things there are multiple correct analyses to video games. I know of very few reviewers or websites which consider their reviews to be an absolute definition of a game's quality. That's not the job of a reviewer.

What's more ridiculous is how people take issue with reviews because it doesn't match their score (people who usually didn't even bother to read the content and find out why). What's more arrogant? The reviewer trying to give good detailed information and one possible analysis of the game to help people with purchase decisions, or the gamer who thinks that the reviewer is stupid for writing an analysis with a conclusion that differs from his, even if many others agree with the deduction?

This is possibly even more true than the original statement.



.jayderyu on 14 January 2010

How about this. Game Critics should only come form the Game Development community. Simply because it's easy to flap a mouth and get drooling fans than it is to actually make something and get deserving drooling fans.



Squilliam: On Vgcharts its a commonly accepted practice to twist the bounds of plausibility in order to support your argument or agenda so I think its pretty cool that this gives me the precedent to say whatever I damn well please.

llewdebkram on 14 January 2010

I like what Stephen Fry said about critics when they go to heaven and they are asked what they did with their life:

"...I gave you 2 legs and 2 arms and a soul and you did that for all your life, you told people what was wrong with the stuff they were doing"



papflesje on 14 January 2010
.jayderyu said:
How about this. Game Critics should only come form the Game Development community. Simply because it's easy to flap a mouth and get drooling fans than it is to actually make something and get deserving drooling fans.

Yeah, because thank god every food critic is a cook and every movie critic is a director.... wtf



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Porcupine_I on 14 January 2010
naznatips said:
mike_intellivision said:
Desroko said:

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.

I do not wish to get into an argument on semantics. However, I stand by the original point that those who provide reviews for video games think themselves self-important but are really not important.

(I also feel that critic as it is used with respect to restaurants is much more in line with reviewer than with traditional literary criticism).

 

Mike from Morgantown

Is it so silly to find meaning in what you do, and do something you enjoy? You never grew up as a kid wanting to review games? To be paid to play your favorite thing and have thousands of people read your viewpoints on it?

It's silly to expect reviews to be an absolute truth. Reviews are an analysis, and like most things there are multiple correct analyses to video games. I know of very few reviewers or websites which consider their reviews to be an absolute definition of a game's quality. That's not the job of a reviewer.

What's more ridiculous is how people take issue with reviews because it doesn't match their score (people who usually didn't even bother to read the content and find out why). What's more arrogant? The reviewer trying to give good detailed information and one possible analysis of the game to help people with purchase decisions, or the gamer who thinks that the reviewer is stupid for writing an analysis with a conclusion that differs from his, even if many others agree with the deduction?

...and ultimately being a critic themselves



“It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grams a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grams a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it.”

- George Orwell, ‘1984’