And I don’t mean that in a bad way.
There’s a traditional idea that the critics – that’s us guys who write stuff about games and lob a number between 6 and 10 at the end to drum up a comments thread and/or death-threats – have rarefied and/or completely counter-populist tastes. We’d more happily hail a game made entirely of the string and weeds that’s emerged blinking into the sunlight from the anus of a man quoting Proust than a good four-square solid meat-and-potato game like our mum used to make. And, to a degree, it’s true. Problem is, it’s just not true enough.
But I think it’s growing more so, and there’s a chance this year could be the turning point.
The thing to understand is that while you may think games writers pretty hoity, in reality, the vast majority of our taste matches the mass majority of gamers. In terms of games aimed at gamers, the games which get the highest score are almost certainly the most popular ones. World of Warcraft. GTA4. Oblivion. Take your pick. Scores highly. Sells well.
(At which point you’re probably saying “I’m a hardcore gamer and I hate GTA/WoW/Oblivion” ergo critics aren’t hardcore enough and… silence, mortal. Bear with me. You’re right, but we need to go the long way round to get there.)
Most cultural forms don’t work like us. You look at the critical end of year lists in music or film, and you’re going to get a far greater proportion of works more akin to the string+weeds-constructed/anus-emerging/Proust-quoting of the opening and less of the just lovely, nice and fun stuff. Sure, the populist will show its face, but they’re not nearly as naturally predominant. On average, critics will hail odd stuff more, because… well, mainly because it’s more interesting and worthy of note, but people like to think it’s because critics are a snooty bunch of toe-rags. Point being, games don’t. In games, we’re voting the equivalent of The Dark Knight universally to Number 1 in the end of year round ups. The peaks of mass-market entertainment. And, yes, I’m sure Dark Knight may be on some lists as film of the year… but it won’t be on all of them. If films were like games, if Dark Knight wasn’t topping your list, you’ll probably have to deal with 2000 comment-thread posts and death-threats.
The exceptions are interesting. There are games which sell enormously and score badly, but they’re actually the equivalent of pop music. Most pop music sells a lot, but doesn’t get in the NME’s (or else actually credible) list. A few years ago, I sat through a seminar of Paulina Bozek, Producer of Singstar, talking about how she was disappointed its marks grew more lacklustre in games magazines with each versions. The mechanistic changes those magazines desired just weren’t what the audience would be interested in, and the magazine should understand that. I wish I’d put her straight – the people who buy her game don’t care about magazines and the people who buy magazines don’t care about her game – and it’s for /those/ people who critics are writing. To follow the music analogy, you don’t see genuinely trashy fun pop bands get much time in the traditional music press. Just make do with your enormous sales. It takes a certain sort of weirdo to want to read about any cultural form, and they’re rarely interested in what’s culturally predominant.
(As an aside, there are of course REALLY weird weirdos who are deeply into obsessive analysis of absolutely mainstream pop records. Hell, I’m one of them. But there’s never been enough of them to sell a magazine solely based of it, and the critics who attempt to hail it do it as part of forwarding a grander aesthetic. And the ones who are /really/ radical may go end up having to actually put their entryist theories into practice. I suspect the same is true of games – I think of Ste Curran Ex-Edge forwarding his PARTY GAMES ARE THE BEST GAMES mandate, who I suspect by crossing over to development may be videogames’ Paul Morley. But I’m really digressing now, as I’m drinking.)
Returning properly to games – in end of year lists you’ll generally get the big hits which appeal to the audience (i.e. Things which appeal to the same part of the hindbrain as the Terminator) interspersed with random pop-esoterica that have caught people’s eyes. Eurogamer – who become important later in this piece – are a good example, with their last few years Top 10s including things like Brain Training and Wii Sports, much to the ridicule of a certain sort of fan. This is, returning to the analogy, is the equivalent of Rhianna’s Umbrella: a pop-song which transcends and appeals to even cold-hearted critics.
But in games what you don’t often get is the really fucking odd stuff in end of year charts. For even the equivalent of pop-records which show up have the maintream’s level of production and accessibility – both in terms of being able to pick up and play and the fact they may have actually seen a copy. There are two problems in getting genuinely indie stuff hailed. Firstly, the problem in that not enough critics have actually experienced it. Secondly, the problem of expectation, with critics failing to understand their emotional response to the game is what counts, not some odd check-list of what a “great” game should be. On the 360, Earth Defence Force 2017 is a better game than Gears of War. Stepping more PC and indie, Desktop Tower Defence is a better game than Supreme Commander. Until critics are willing to actually fight for stuff they actually believe in, we’re screwed.
I think both problems are well on the way to a solution.
Last week I found myself on a press trip with Eurogamer’s Tom “Tom Bramwell” Bramwell. We ended up talking about what may end up top in Eurogamer’s Top 50. Which is always fun. It’s an absolutely democratic system – literally, the reviewers collating their votes and the numeric totals deciding the victor. No sneaking in things people haven’t voted for, which leads to major, major games missing their places, which drives the threads mad. But it’s fundamentally honest, which leads to some genuine and surprising results.
Two years back it was Psychonauts. A game from a major team which critically underperformed but created its own distinctive vision which enchanted the majority of critics.
A year back it was Portal. A game from a tiny part of a major team – an indie dev team snapped up by a supportive mother company – which charmed everyone through its wit and twisted mechanics. Tiny, yet perfect.
You can see the way that’s heading. But what’s it to be this year?
Tom suggested one dark horse.
Trials 2. After I introduced it to them, it obsessed virtually everyone at Eurogamer. If everyone votes for it at all – and, if they are honest, they should – it’d collect a healthy enough spread of marks to claim a high position. Hell, it could even claim number one.
Hmm.
And then I look at the rapturous, semen-throwing reviews of the rapture-and-semen-lobbing- provokingly-brilliant Braid, which is clocking up a metacritic score to rival pretty much everything. And I think of Audiosurf outselling Call of Duty 4 on Steam for much of the early part of the year. And…
The key thing is that these most obscure games are easily available. The console direct sale routes. The PC direct download culture which, I suppose that RPS exists to forward. That means more critics will have played them, because it’s so much easier to do so, which deals with the first of my problems. And the progression in Eurogamer’s Number 1 to ever-esoteric quarters shows the second is also beingdealt with. I think if people are considering voting for these games over the mega-hits, I think it’s not nearly as big a leap from those games to – say – an arty webgame or Sumotori Dreams or whatever. And suddenly critics are voting in these polls for stuff they find interesting rather than stuff which is just what people expect to be in it.
In other words, rather than an end of year list including all the games you know about, it includes many games you simply don’t. As a listener, I use music end of year lists as a way to catch up on all the great stuff I missed. Come December, I find all the incredible records which slipped me by. That’s a big chunk of the part of criticism for me – and games writing, traditionally, has been obsessed with talking about stuff people already know about, and ignored the Stuff You’ve Never Heard Of But You Desperately Need To part of the gig. But as gaming grows ever-more mainstream, the former loses importance – if you can find out about the latest Nintendo game by opening the daily paper, why read the game press? – and the latter grows ever more important, as those disillusioned by the mainstream pay attention to those who help them locate something to sate their ennui.
In other words, the weirder and more abstruse the critics become, the more chance they’ll be of use to you, the gamer who’s looking for something a little new. If they’re not afraid to say they prefer Trial 2 or Braid over GTA4, the chance of them doing their real job – that is, leading to you to nifty stuff – is increased hugely.
With any luck, the End of Year lists this year will provoke an unprecedented cries claiming these critics are crazy and just trying to appear cool. Because if they manage to do that, then we’re well on the way to doing our jobs the way we should be.
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Does every industry have to have a Paul Morley?
Interesting article. I suppose that it comes back to the old chestnut, that games are overwhelmingly technologically driven, far more so than any other medium. Sight & Sound and Little White Lies can exist in an industry of relatively static technology. Edge sort of fits the mould of advanced paper-based criticism, but gaming’s past few years have been indelibly shaped by the internet, which is where most of the powerful writing and thought seems to take place.
The problem with that is the braying herds, aka The Angry, whose ill-thought out, opinion-as-fact, ranting poison any intelligent discussion. This indelibly leaks into the web-based gaming consciousness and it all feeds back around.
The nature of the medium is a product of the state of the world that we currently inhabit, and the world that gaming inhabits is surrounded by scary things.
Fantastic, interesting article. A great read. I do find it facinating how eager videogame writers are to jump on Halo 3/GTA4 the minute they come out, covering them with 10/10s but then retrospectively slagging them off later. I suspect the truth lies somewhere in between.
Critics writing about esoteria is always worthwhile, though, especially if it’s stuff they are genuinely enthused about. But this article does point out why EG and PC Gamer are the only proper games publications worth reading. Aside from RPS, obviously. But that goes without saying.
Further and further down the slope of pretentiousness…
And that song is truly wretched.
“I do find it facinating how eager videogame writers are to jump on Halo 3/GTA4 the minute they come out, covering them with 10/10s but then retrospectively slagging them off later. I suspect the truth lies somewhere in between.”
Replace Halo 3/GTA 4 with Braid/Portal and I’ll agree as well. I’m not particularly happy with the over the top praise Halo 3 and GTA 4 get, but nor am I entirely convinced that Braid or Portal are the height of gaming achievement either.
The truth indeed lies somewhere in between.
@Cedge: Hey, at least pretentious can be interesting. Can’t quite say the same about its opposite.
Also, I agree.
@CrashT:
I’m finding it a teensy bit abhorrent your assertion that because you don’t ‘get’ something, anybody claiming to like (or love) must only doing it to avoid looking silly.
It’s rare you see that kind of solipsism used in anger.
Applying Occam’s Razor, it’s far more likely that it’s you that’s missing the point, rather than all those gushing about it, including myself.
@Cedge:
What’s going “further and further down the slope of pretentiousness”? RPS?
In any case, RPS is pompous, not pretentious. And frankly the RPS-pomp is almost entirely deserved. They are better than you. Don’t be bitter, accept it.
Crash: With you on Braid. I’m glad I bought it, glad I’m playing, enjoying it a bit but honestly… I don’t think it’s as good a game as people make out. As an experience, it adds up to something quite different. Having not finished it yet I can’t say what, but in terms of something to be played with, it’s too obtuse at times for its own good.
I wouldn’t get distracted by the pretension slope, gents. This is uphill from a load of stuff I’ve done. I’m like a inversed pretension-Sisyphus.
KG
I’m not the only one not to “get” Braid, in fact through discussion I’ve met probably an equal number of people who don’t get Braid as who do. Those who do seem generally incapable of vocalising why they love it so much. It’s always “oh it’s fantastic”, or as you said “Braid is love”, yeah but why? What about it is so impressive? Convince me and I’ll apologise.
I’m not saying people are only praising Braid so as not to look silly but that’s certainly an impression I get when I’ve yet to meet somebody who can explain in a straighforward manner what is so good about Braid. I can appreciate it as a technical achievement but is that all that people enjoy about it? If so it’s a very weird reaction to have to it to call it “love”.
I might well be wrong, but nobody has convinced me yet.
@ImperialCreed:
I agree I think everybody should play it, and make up their own mind; but then I feel the same way about System Shock 2. Braid is not a bad game, but it’s not this life affirming experience that some are claiming it to be.
I’ll be along with something stupid and reckless soon, don’t you worry.
Come on this is why we all love RPS. Pretension and knob gags in one place. ;)
I wonder, should RPS do some more top list style features? I mean, I know we had the advent calendar last year, but what about things like “the best ten games you’ve (probably) never played” or “RPS’s best games to play while Dunk” – or could that perhaps risk diluting the content within too much?
Although you could have the Ten Important RPS Subjects of the year – Number One: Piracy…
Ah.
You just wait till Braid hits the PC. I reckon we’ll need waterproofs with all the RPS wordjizz that will be flying.
Lists are boring.
@ Meat Circus
I’ll admit to not having got my grubby hands on Braid yet (no XBOX :(), but it’s going to have reach out of the bloody screen and jerk me off to top The World Ends With You.
Armstrong: You’ll want the game Laid then….
I’ll get my coat.
Can you actually say that critics preferring things like Braid or Audiosurf to Call of Duty 4 or GTA 4 is actually a sign of critical elitism? I’m not sure you can…
How many AAA (gods, I hate that term) blockbuster titles have come out on PC so far this year? Answer: not enough. This is because high-line PC game making is just too time-consuming and expensive these days to have more than half a dozen really awesome titles appear in the same year (unlike five years ago, when development costs and timescales were still something approaching sensible). So you’re going to get longer and longer gaps between the really awesome blockbuster games being released, which naturally allows critics and gamers to focus more attention on the indie scene and the quicker-to-produce casual games that still get released pretty frequently.
There’s a natural tendency with all gamers for the last decent thing they played to be “the best game evar!”, so if the last decent thing you played happened to be Audiosurf or Trials 2, rather than GTA4, I don’t think you can call that preference for the little guy elitism. It’s more just a natural reaction to the state of the market. When you’ve got an absolute vacuum in terms of hardcore (or rather, traditional gamer-focussed mainstream) titles being released, it’s natural that you’re going to get all vocal and enthusiastic for things like Desktop Tower Defence or Dwarf Fortress. It’s not like we’ve been given much else this year to shout about…
Iain: The reason not enough top PC titles have come out yet is because they’re all slated for release this September/October…
And we’re getting Bully soon… which is nice.
Secondly, the problem of expectation, with critics failing to understand their emotional response to the game is what counts, not some odd check-list of what a “great” game should be.
but isn’t having some kind of external criteria – or at least striving for it – the only way to move beyond self-obsession?
@ImperialCreed: Indeed. Which means that between Mass Effect coming out in May and Spore coming out in a couple of weeks, we’ve had absolutely nothing of any note at all to play on PC. Arguably. Certainly nothing I’ve been inspired to buy… And how many of those titles currently slated for Q4 this year are going to slip into 2009? Place your bets now.
So, almost six months of utter game release desert… of course you’re going to look to the indie scene to fill the gap. I’d say it has less to do with elitism and more to do with having feck all else to write about.
@dhex:
What makes you think that Mr Gillen wants to ‘move beyond self-obsession’?
Iain: The Summer PC Game Drought is a well known phenomenon. Even when games are ready, publishers always seem afraid to let big titles out of the blocks between the months of May and August. I’ve been filling that time with copious amounts of Team Fortress 2.
Anyway, at least we have Clear Sky, Spore, Fallout 3, Mercs 2, Dead Space and RA3 to look forward to now eh?
A good example of elitist critics in my mind is Action Button dot net they’re currently doing their manifest of the top 50(maybe) games, and so far I’ve been trying games I’d have never bothered with beforehand.
@ImperialCreed: “The Summer PC Game Drought is a well known phenomenon.”
I’ve been playing PC games for 14 years, but this summer’s has to be the worst I can remember. Normally you get a couple of titles worth buying, but this year it seems like the whole industry has just gone on holiday for half the year. And it’s a bizarre phenomenon in the first place – holding back a title to when the release schedule is more packed seems like madness to me. I can only imagine it’s something to do with the trade shows (E3, Leipzig) and building hype there, but delaying the release of a game to when there’s more competition in the market just strikes me as a way of throwing away revenue. If a publisher would care to explain why it works like this, I’d be fascinated.
Can Eurogamer’s Tom “Tom Bramwell” Bramwell always be referred to as Eurogamer’s Tom “Tom Bramwell” Bramwell? Cheers, thanks.
On the pop music front, can someone who likes to get all meta on disposable pop explain to me exactly why its not just scavenged hooks from better songs, repackaged for the convenience of the vast majority of people who are simply not into music enough to go looking for it? Like a musical uncle bens? I propose ‘poppy’ pop (charty pop, ephemeral pop whatever) as an epiphenomena generated by mass media and individually produced music colliding. Am i wrong?
INDAPENDANT GAEMS
Iain: Eurogamer is a cross-format site. A downloadable PC game even being a contender is noteable. So – er – that’s what I did.
KG
On the Umbrella front (get this song in a Resident Evil movie ASAP) I reckon that ‘crossed over’ to critical approval at least partly because its more old school sounding than many hit songs have been in a while. It’s simple but melodic, particularly compared to the prevailing herky-jerky minimalist R&B and slam bang dance numbers that dominate the charts. It’s got more appeal for older listeners, basically.
What makes you think that Mr Gillen wants to ‘move beyond self-obsession’?
rps, for starters.
Bravo. Well said. That is all.
Kieron: Point. Far be it from me to decry elitism as being a bad thing (being one of the worst culprits of elitism on State, that would be too hypocritical, even for me), I was rather trying to point out that in this most barren of barren years (and not just in PC gaming), the fact that we’re talking more about indie games rather than franchise games strikes me as more being meritocratic than elitist. Not that there’s anything wrong with trying to be self-consciously trendy and down with the kidz (*chokes*), but this year in particular, I think it’s been easier for the smaller games to get noticed and be recognised as being good, because the mainstream release schedule this year has been as poor as I can remember.
I agree that this year might actually be a turning point. Either developers are going to continue to push the mega-graphics and end up releasing a game every five years that’s utterly uninspiring, and PC gaming will finally pop it’s clogs, or they’re going to realise that continuing to develop games this way is untenable and that they’re better off taking lessons from the indie crowd and the console market by making easily accessible, more innovative games that are cheaper and quicker to produce and don’t require a PhD in Computer Science to grasp the UI.
The PC is already showing signs of being squeezed out of the high street retail market (feel free to blame the consoles, internet retailers or direct download services like Steam, as appropriate) – if the big mainstream developers don’t start taking notice of the kind of games the indie scene is putting out (games that people want to play, if you look at how well things like Audiosurf and Sins of A Solar Empire have sold) and continue to batter away with the “graphics are everything” approach, the PC indie games scene may be all that’s left in a few years’ time…
There is a certain journo in the employ of GamesRadar whose work I refuse to read on the grounds that he’s an arrogant, self-righteous misogynistic homophobe of a cunt. Does that make me the elitist one?
Also, Dark Knight – awful film.
What you are calling “elitist” criticism here isn’t elitist. I like to call it “actual” criticism, and you should never feel the need to apologize for engaging in it. Everything else is just a product review.
If we are talking music analogies, are we in the process of seeing a radical shift from airplay based top 100 lists to sales based top 100 lists, that allows what the people really
listen tocare about enought to put their money where their mouth is to be celebrated?I don’t think so – unfortunately. The games market is so fragmented, poorly documented and understood – especially on the PC side where one of the major players: Valve, refuses to publish its sales data on a regular basis, and another set of major players (the game portals) have no industry standard for measuring the popularity of games played (Although Alexa is a good substitute).
Audio Surf might be gaming’s Nirvana – wake me when they do their successful second album.
Nice piece Kieron, more of this sort of thing please.
I for one urge RPS to rightly pursue its ongoing abstinence in regard to the manic listomania vitiating every other gaming/music/media/anglosaxon publications.
More seriously, this article pretty much spells out why I lurk around here. And Brother None makes a good point.
@Tom Camfield – How about Eurogamer’s Tom “Eurogamer’s Tom “Eurogamer’s Tom Bramwell” Bramwell” Bramwell”?
The more ‘elitist’ ‘critics’ become, the more irrelevant and parasitic they become.
Meh @ you & your inane wafflings.
I agree with Jodi, but only because “Bramwell Bramwell Bamwell” pushes all the same mental buttons as OM NOM NOM NOM is at the moment.
Also; wonderful piece there. This sort of thought-splurge is the meat of RPS’ meat-and-potatoes to my mind. Obviously PC games are the potatoes and the and is something else.
Let’s see if we can’t start some serious pop music discussion. Kieron: What do you think of Rhinna squeezing a fourth syllable out of umbrella?
Pop music overcomes.
KG
But does it have a good framerate?
(This is me seconding the point that at least half of a game reviewer’s job should be to make sure games are actually working and playable).
I don’t think we need critics to tell us about obscure must-play games, we have various fancy web 2.75 social aggregator doodads for that.
I like the idea of being a meme. On the other hand, I took four attempts to type http://www.eurogamer.net just now, so I shouldn’t be adding to this thread today.
See, this is why I like Play Magazine. They make an effort to inform their readers about some lesser-known games, and their end-of-year lists often vary wildly between writers. Oh, and Dave Halverson can see into my brain and tell me what I’ll like. It’s creepy.
With this medium, only satisfactory mediocrity truly languishes in obscurity.
Excellent article by a consistently superb writer. It’s pretty obvious that someone was drinking when they wrote this as there are numerous spelling and grammar errors.
Braid is the best 2d game I have played since Super Mario World 16 years ago. I didn’t like GTA4. The story was cliched and rubbish and I wanted to kill my cousin Roman. Sad but true. GTA made me want to murder my own cousin. ;)
What I want is pretty much diametrically opposite to what actually works. I would rather hear not a single word about GTAIV/CoD4/GoW/Halo/etc, and rather hear only about smaller, more niche games. The reason being I can hear about fucking Halo or some shit just by walking outside, or turning on a TV.
Tell me about the Psychonauts; the Stalkers (err, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.s); Natural Selections; Dungeon Keepers, etc.