By Kieron Gillen on August 9th, 2009 at 12:38 pm.
Sundays are for sitting, drumming fingers, waiting for your new comic to be announced at WizardWorld Chicago and compiling a list of the (especially fruitful) interesting (main) videogame writing across the week and try and not link to -er – some poetry? That doesn’t sound very me. I blame womankind.
- Simon Parkin plays proper journalist over at Eurogamer, and does a beginners guide to the whole Timothy Langdell situation – fundamentally, Langdell aggressively pursuing anyone who uses the word “Edge” in videogames for infringement of trademark. Strong games journalism, to say the least. And, according to Simon’s twitter, Langdell is unsurprisingly threatening to sue. Go read.
- Gamasutra do a hefty interview with Rhianna Pratchett on games writing. Both about her and the craft generally, if you actually want to know how games writing works currently and who and what you should be blaming for its shortfalls, this is a great grounder.
- New Scientist on the race to make the ultimate Mario AI.
- Over at Maisonneuve, the Chris Lavigne questions whether him following the E3 expo with far more passion than the elections in Iran this summer is something to be worried about. I suspect many of us have had a moment like this, though him dovetailing to debates which probably should have sparked a debate (Greenpeace analysis of the environmental footprint of consoles) to those that did (L4D2!!!!!) rises it above a “I must go to the gym more often”-ism.
- Christian Donolan over at Eurogamer interviews PopCap about their working methods. Opening line: “Learning from failure is easy. Learning from success – particularly slightly unexpected success – can be a lot more difficult.” This strikes me as true. Fun stuff.
- Nullpointer throws up some notes on Entropy and Gaming.
- Rob Hale chews over the recent music-industry-failing infographics and wonders whether videogames actually did kill the music industry.
- Craig over at Gaming Daily on the joy of planning. That being, the calm moment before all the action kicks off. It’s interesting – we talk about games as interaction, but during these moments, no actual outwards interaction is taking place. It’s us, running internal simulations of how all these things work. Spinning in a different direction, I occasionally use this sort of thinking to semi-justify cut-scenes in games. As long as you’re running those internal simulations on the cut-scene – i.e. “What does this mean for me” – you are interacting with the game, no matter what the outwards appearance may say.
- Meanwhile, also at Gaming Daily, Chris Evans remembers the joys of bots. He misses them so. Me too, actually. Bots as a worthwhile endeavour are one of the casualties in the current multiplayer-uber-alles direction of the industry.
- Alex Hayter’s piece on the three-letter-acronym we don’t talk about here. “A sensible critique of NGJ,” said Jim upon finding it, “Extraordinary. Affective fallacy. I knew we had to be doing a fallacy somewhere. It wouldn’t feel right if we weren’t”. Strong piece, which holds together on its own terms, and I find myself guilty as charged – and not really caring. The point of culture is to move. An objective approach means nothing without the gold standard of something once having moved someone. Objectivity is a thin, deceitful veneer. Either you’re hiding you’re arguing for something you like – or you’re lying about its aesthetic effectiveness, so turning your criticism into a parlour game of argument-for-its-own-sake. “That said, we do like graphs,” adds Jim, sagely.
- Over at Resolution they are a-posting. Mr Poisoned Sponge talks about the effect of a third-person game versus a first person game – the most interesting observation being that sense of distance from a third-person avatar means you’re more able to accept game-dictated actions which are not what you’d have done. I’m not sure if he’s right, but it’s an interesting one. Also, there’s more Why I Play Games there – especially notable is Michaël Samyn of Tale of Tales writing about why he doesn’t.
- Tom Armitage writes about how media actually prepare us for strange and glorious future technology – specifically, how things are preparing us for how Augmented Reality will work. The Dead Space is a particularly good example, I think. I’m actually doing some AR stuff in one of my to-be-announced comics, and the “preparing the road to the future” is very much on my mind.
- PJ Holden lobbed a short 4 page comic he and I did together in 2006. It’s called “Horror” and you can read it here.
- John Hughes’ passing this week was a bit of a shocker. If you haven’t seen the piece by one Alison about her teenage-pen-pal-hood with him, you really should. There’s a John Hughes film in it, I swear.
- Time for some grueling American Realist Trailer Park photography, yeah?
- Laura Dockrill. Start with Heaven Knows, I guess, but it you ideally want her on stage, twitching, doing it at twice the speed to get its full effect.
Failed.
09/08/2009 at 12:45 Chris Evans says:
That Resolution Third-Person disconnect was by Phill Cameron ;)
The Langdell situation is very messy, and to hear that they are suing Simon? Disgusting!
09/08/2009 at 12:47 Dorian Cornelius Jasper says:
Writing in games usually does feel like an afterthought, so I guess it shows. Even worse, when you do manage to put everything together nicely, people take it for granted. (Actually, I guess that goes for everything in games.) That said, I read a remark somewhere that Rhianna Pratchett, as a game writer, is sorely underutilized.
09/08/2009 at 12:56 Kieron Gillen says:
Chris: Fixed. And Suing Eurogamer, I’d presume.
KG
09/08/2009 at 13:20 Lack_26 says:
Wouldn’t it be easier in copyright law, to introduce a clause that ‘A single and/or commonly used word, that is liable to be used without association to the party registering the claim cannot be copyrighted. This copyright is subject to challenge on condition that the holding party’s property in question is no longer commonly recognised and confusion is unlikely.’
Or words to that effect.
09/08/2009 at 13:25 dartt says:
I absolutely love how the NGJ article starts by spelling your name ‘Keiron’. I almost spilt my drink when I saw that.
09/08/2009 at 13:27 Kieron Gillen says:
Dartt: I resisted making a gag along the lines of “For someone who’s such a fan of close-reading, he should have perhaps tried to note how my name was spelled.” But that’d be mean, as I don’t really care.
Everyone, always gets my name wrong.
KG
09/08/2009 at 13:33 Magnus says:
On the subject of 3rd vs 1st person perspective, I always hear people parrot the line that “1st person is more immersive” when I don’t feel it has that distinction at all. For me, if a game world is well presented and coherent, the perspective doesn’t matter.
09/08/2009 at 13:38 Echo says:
The article by Allison on John Hughes was really amazing and touching, a must read for all.
09/08/2009 at 13:39 Professor says:
Awesome comic Kieron! Very nicely done.
09/08/2009 at 13:52 Tei says:
Third Person View is a disease. It was created on the Console market, because the console market the games are more a Video you play, so stuff like Quick Time Events made sense (the console play the game, and make cool stuff on the screen-). Designed to look cool for the player AND other people on the area. On the PC we play (the human play the game) and is not designed to be cool… the player could be ABSOLUTELLY MESMERIZED by his actions, but is something interior, another person in the room could be in the other side of the spectrum.
Now that is created, It make games look 2009-ish.
The problem is that this style will look 2009-ish in the 2010. And will look 2009-ish in the 2015. Is something that will go away, because is ackward, and ugly, and stupid.
09/08/2009 at 14:00 The Colonel says:
Maybe that really is the difference I’ve been grasping at ever since my stupid friends began drooling over their consoles at the age of 12. Interior vs. Exterior.
09/08/2009 at 14:07 JKjoker says:
whats up with the obsession with Rhianna Pratchett lately ? i keep reading her name everywhere
i wouldnt be proud about the games she wrote, her stories are mediocre(overlord2) or right out irrelevant (ME), the devs might have a hand behind the “sucking” but if she is signing with her name she should fight for certain level of quality, personally after O2 next time i read “this game was written by R.P.” the game will turn into bargain bin material
09/08/2009 at 14:15 The Poisoned Sponge says:
As Kieron has pointed out to me, there’s a rather large concept I’m missing, which pretty much disproves the whole idea; MMOs, in which people become a third person character on the screen, sometimes more than they are people in real life.
Then again, my article was kind of focusing on story driven singleplayer games, so maybe my oversight is ok.
09/08/2009 at 14:21 qrter says:
That interview with Pratchett possibly explains why the writing on Mirror’s Edge was such utter garbage. I am amazed she says she’s still proud of the world they’ve created, her cheeks should be burning with shame instead.
09/08/2009 at 14:24 Delboy says:
Re: the Langdell situation – does anyone know where i can chip in to help with mobigames legal costs? I’m not in the software games dev. instrusty (I write software for Financial Services companies – for my sins!) – so joining The Chaos Engine group/forums doesn’t seem an option. (right now I don’t care whether Tim is right or wrong /legally/ – morally he’s as wrong as it gets).
09/08/2009 at 14:27 Thirith says:
I love how some people can turn the first-person vs. third-person thing into yet another PC-vs-console battlefield with utter conviction.
Someone should have told me back when I played Ultima VI and Ultima VII that the perspective made it less immersive, because by god, I was fooled into a strong feeling of immersion.
Tei, can you honestly write sentences such as “Third Person View is a disease” and not think that this makes you look like a complete twit?
09/08/2009 at 14:40 Kieron Gillen says:
Delboy: Donation info can be found here.
KG
09/08/2009 at 14:43 theSeekerr says:
Thing is, though, third person perspective lets you do things that just don’t work in the first person “I have no neck, so I always look where I walk and” perspective. Don’t think Gears of War, think Max Payne and Splinter Cell.
Or, as an example from the opposite perspective, think back to Call of Duty, and watching all your squadmates vault smoothly through a window, while you stood there crouch-hopping like an idiot. Not that COD should have been third person (nor should it have chucked a Riddick, and switched between the two). But third person does allow you to move differently to first person, which makes it more appropriate for some games.
Admittedly, sometimes it’s a bit weird – Hitman, for instance, where you could see things your avatar couldn’t have.
Anyway, point is that it’s not black and white, and I really don’t think it’s about identity – it’s about the gameplay, stupid.
09/08/2009 at 14:56 Stu says:
That music sales graph looks like a series of boss ships from a never-released Nemesis-style game for the Atari 2600.
09/08/2009 at 14:58 Legionary says:
You know, I really love The Sunday Papers. Thanks Kieron.
09/08/2009 at 14:59 Cooper says:
That debate about ‘NGJ’ seems oddly similar to a current one about some ‘new’ writing styles being found in the social sciences.
By deviating from norms of opinion, explanation and reasoning, (i.e: writing more personally, less detachedly) and moving outside of the kind of writing which people have developed critical faculties to assess, people get anxious about how ‘good’ a piece of writing is – about ‘getting’ to what it has to say on its subject.
Unfortunately, that does leave such writing to seem have a severe lack of rigour – a criticism of much of the stuff I’m currently working through and seemingly of NGJ too. But so what? Not everyone’s writing like that, and I don’t think anyone’s seriously making the argument that they should, and who knows – maybe a new, or at least shifted, set of ideas about what counts for rigour in critical writing may emerge. And again, who cares anyway if it’s a good read?
09/08/2009 at 15:01 Funky Badger says:
Rogue Trooper was a third person shooter, written for PC if memory serves. but still, blame TeH ConsolEs!
(Happen to think 3PS invokes a more tactical (slower) pacing to games, which works well with joypads, tahter than mouses – slower pan, etc.)
09/08/2009 at 15:04 Gassalasca says:
I is weird that I’m starting to enjoy the non-gaming related stuff more than the main dish?
09/08/2009 at 15:09 Funky Badger says:
Also: that (ahem) cock gag in the HoI piece, was that the NGJ, the NNGJ, the NNNGJ or just the plain old vanilla GJ?
09/08/2009 at 15:10 Caiman says:
Langdell keeps comparing his “Edge” situation to that of Apple or Midway, yet neither of those companies are pursuing any use of their trademarked names when referring to common usage of the English language. A game called “An Apple a Day” should fall outside Apple’s trademark, but “Big Apple Computers” should not. Similarly, a game called “Edge of Extinction” should also fall outside Langdell’s trademark but not a company called “Bleeding Edge Games”. Langdell has every right to defend his trademark where there is serious risk of confusion, but in the cases he’s pursued including Mobigames there is no obvious risk of confusion over a brand that nobody has heard of for over 15 years. The fact that he’s been such an obvious ass about it with an independent developer while sitting on the IGDA board that is supposed to champion their rights is seriously wrong.
The sad thing is, I remember The Edge from the days of the Spectrum. They published Fairlight amongst other things (a great game for its time) although reading around it seems that the author of that game was also treated unfairly by Mr Langdell. It’s a sorry tale of someone who appears to have acted like an asshole for decades and somehow gotten away with it. Not this time, I’ll wager.
This tigsource summary really puts everything into perspective: http://www.tigsource.com/pages/edge-games
09/08/2009 at 15:23 Funky Badger says:
Caiman: a sociopath at work it seems.
09/08/2009 at 15:37 Andy`` says:
“Third Person View is a disease. It was created on the Console market, because…”
…the devs wanted to look at Lara Croft’s behind?
I’m not really of the opinion that first person or third person is more immersive or better than the other, or whatever, by default. These tend to be lovely side effects of how the game as a whole has come together. Where the viewpoint matters is in the feel of the game you’re trying to create, which factors matter most, and whether the game has a particular goal that needs special attention.
Is it about precision shooting, or precision moving? About efficiency, or style? Overt spatial awareness, or focused spatial awareness? Sensual assault, or consideration and planning? Is the playable character the focal point of the gameworld, or are they a little more in the sidelines? Things like that.
There’s also “does it look cooler this way?”, but that’s more something for the sloppy designer’s wardrobe, or cutscenes.
Any one of these factors can override all the others if the design target demands it. As in Max Payne – it’s a game all about precision shooting, and yet moving and lots of spatial awareness are the keys to survival, and the focus on Max as a character is vital to the story. Mirror’s Edge – while spatial awareness and movement are vital and the character is a central part of the story, which would suggest a third person perspective, the aim of the game is to assault the player’s senses as much as possible with the feeling of momentum, risk taking and what have you, story be damned. Tomb Raider, which isn’t about looking at Lara Croft’s butt – it’s all about the movement puzzles, spatial awareness, planning ahead. Half-Life’s focus is on the world around Gordon, how it changes and deforms, and not really the character, even though everything seems to happen near or because of Gordon, and even though the world changing around him makes a character that you can care about a bit too.
This isn’t to say the other goals can’t be achieved at the same time as the primary ones, and once a developer realises what potentially unintended side effects they’ve tapped into, they can try to make them intentional side effects too. But to me all the analysis of how one viewpoint is more immersive than another or whatever is more the analysis of happy coincidences, or (in the case of things like driving games) personal preferences.
In essence: the driving sim example at the start of the article makes sense, someone that drives or likes the driving experience more than the sight of the cars may prefer the first person view to the third person view as it’s more comfortable. But the extrapolation of that information into why a certain viewpoint has been chosen feels a bit off base, and it feels more like a discussion about the accidental positives and negatives created by the viewpoint. Especially when the only examples chosen are of games with “bad” characters that do horrible things, and the discussion is on how the viewpoint happens to shield the player from, or expose the player to, all the horrible things that they’re doing.
That could be an amiable goal, of course – hitting the player in the head with their conscience and making them thing is one of the reasons why I love science fiction, and am saddened to see Just Another Space Marine Shooter XII come out each time. It may not be impossible for one viewpoint to have a more powerful effect on rational morality than another, but I’m pretty sure we’re lacking data there. But in all the examples chosen, that they can achieve one effect over another seems to be more coincidence, or the author’s personal observations, than a real reason why the developers chose each viewpoint.
And I suspect the modern day QTE is either a side effect of a limited number of buttons on a gamepad, or more likely 100% the fault of that lovely Farenheit game, but I dunno.
Wrote too much about many subjects I don’t actually have irrefutable numbers for; just jumped in the crosshairs of lots of people; think I made a grammatical error somewhere; should be doing important things,
– Andy“
09/08/2009 at 15:54 Stuk says:
I do love the Sunday Papers. Fantastic comic Kieron, and some great articles as well.
09/08/2009 at 15:55 Tei says:
“Tei, can you honestly write sentences such as “Third Person View is a disease” and not think that this makes you look like a complete twit?”
Humm… to be honest, no, I can’t. And to be honest.. I was honest. Honesty could be really ugly, like my other post.
09/08/2009 at 16:04 Dante says:
It was inevitable that first person vs third person would become a PC vs Console thing, because the consoles do third person better (and the PC does first person better).
Perhaps the reason third person keeps more distance between you and the decision is that third person is more often used to create a strong character. Whereas all too many first person characters are blank slates.
09/08/2009 at 16:07 Dante says:
It’s very odd to hear that the story in Mirror’s Edge was decided after the levels were built, given how strongly creative the game is and how the story is a big part of its overall image. Can you explain the process more? How much did DICE have when you were brought in, and how much freedom did you get?
And let the world go henceforth from this place that I totally called this.
09/08/2009 at 16:08 Anon says:
Did videogames kill the music industry?
Short answer:Yes.
Long answer:We only have so much time and money to spend on entertainment.The more specialized entertainment becomes,the more balkanized its consumer base.Of course,the RIAA isn’t helping.
09/08/2009 at 16:09 Meat Circus says:
Rhianna Pratchett is a *terrible* writer. My heart sinks every time some well-meaning game studio retains her to spew her stodgy prose and inane plotting across some unsuspecting electronic entertainment.
It is perhaps testament to the contempt the games industry holds decent writing that nobody cares that she’s a dreadful writer.
Sometimes sharing a surname with somebody who can write is enough.
*sigh*
09/08/2009 at 16:10 Dante says:
Jesus Tei, that’s a little ridiculous.
Are you telling me you want all games everywhere to be in first person, because third person is so inferior?
Good luck with your platforming.
09/08/2009 at 16:13 Dante says:
Don’t rag on her too hard Meat, I’ve only seen one success and one failure from what I’ve played, and her reviews were always worth a read.
It’s weird that she gets treated with far more status than other game writers though, I’m not sure why that is. Maybe it’s because of her famous dad, maybe it’s because she used to be a journo, or maybe, saddest of all, it’s because she’s female and rather attractive.
09/08/2009 at 16:14 Dante says:
EDIT – I meant in terms of news about her, interviews with her and so on, not the jobs she gets. She’s more of a ‘name’ than any other games writer I can think of.
09/08/2009 at 16:19 Xercies says:
I hate this PC Versus Console thing, even though sometimes it does apply sometimes. i have a console and am very happy with the games that are on it. Its elitism like the one above that makes video games be static and stagnant.
Anyway have to say with the EDGE thing, I can’t believe there are people like Langdell breathing the same air as me. He is so slimy and hateable its unbelievable, picking on small people so he looks big and so he can get a bit of money. I say the sooner someone shoots people like him the better.
Also I’m a gamer and i do hate that some gamers(usually younger as i was like it younger) take the PS3, Xbox, Wii console wars seriously. Sometimes I have a laugh about it but I’m not really that bothered about it, and I do stay up to date with goings on..though I don’t believe in Man Made Global Warming as the writer clearly does.
Also I do feel more games designers should do story, some of the best games come from Games Designers also doing the story as well like Ken Levine etc. I do feel that there definitely should be a push for writing at the start of the game so you can actually put the environment with the story(You really can’t do this in RPGs, and Adventure games you can get away with it in everything else but i feel a game is better when the story and the world goes together). And as for Rhianna, I believe she has a very tough job creating stuff when she gets in later so I don’t think you should write her off to much yet. Though I haven’t played Overlord so I can’t really say.
09/08/2009 at 16:28 Alex Hayter says:
Thanks for the linkage Mr. Gillen. I really only wrote that piece to make the Cleanth Brooks essay more interesting, by thinking about video games instead of Russian poetry. So yeah, you could probably call it ‘argument for its own sake’.
Indeed, moving forward is far more valuable than staying put. Also, I didn’t realize that the three-letter-acronym was even considered “out” these days? Guess I was preaching to the converted.
09/08/2009 at 16:30 Dante says:
Also I do feel more games designers should do story, some of the best games come from Games Designers also doing the story as well like Ken Levine etc.
Some of the worst too, it just hinges on whether the designed can actually write or not, otherwise you just end up with a bunch of Gears of War style derivative macho bullshit.
Basically it’s the same thing about having the writer in from the start, only with a non-professional writer. I’d say that’d lower your chances, but with what passes for games writers these days…
09/08/2009 at 16:33 Noc says:
Tei: That’s entirely bullshit. Games have been in third person for much, much, much than QTE events have been happening. It’s not a “2009″ thing; it’s a “Since people started making games” thing.
And the primary reason to put shit in third person is so you can see what you’re doing. Yes, this happens more often on consoles, because consoles host more platformers, and when platforming it’s very helpful to be able to see your feet.
Relevant to shooters, which I assume you’re talking about, third person gives you a much wider peripheral vision. Try playing Mount & Blade (a game very much in the PC tradition of functionality over prettiness) in first person and you’ll see what I’m talking about. It may be more “immersive,” but it’ll increase your chances of getting blindsided and decapitated by about 300%. It’s not terribly uncommon for primarily first-person shooters to switch to third-person when you pull out a melee weapon – not to look cooler, but because with a ranged weapon, enemies are most likely to be in front of you, because they’re far away and would have to circle some distance to get out of your field of view, while if you’re in melee range it’s much easier for them to end up beside or behind you, where being given back some peripheral vision really helps.
Over-the-shoulder views are a compromise between these two extremes. Your line of sight is closely enough aligned with your weapon’s line of fire that it doesn’t become unreasonably difficult to shoot, but you’ve still pulled back far enough that you gain a fair bit more peripheral vision.
So yeah. This shit: useful, and an important design decision. Not all games are necessarily better in third person, but there are definitely good reasons for it being there.
09/08/2009 at 16:33 Kieron Gillen says:
Alex: It’s less what the acronym means and more the acronym itself which is out. We don’t mention “it” when we’re doing it.
I didn’t say in my post – but I suspect I did say it back in the day – that it was totally only one approach and one I thought lead some interesting places. A more formalist approach does something very different, and is also worth pursuing.
KG
09/08/2009 at 16:38 bill says:
Did EDGE mag copy Landell’s font, or did he copy theirs?
If he copied theirs, i assume he paid to license it? right?
I can’t believe this part: The EDGE, a movie starring anthony hopkins, released by 20th century fox under license from EDGE
???? Wow. If all these people (sony, fox, datel, etc..) are really forking out cash to these guys, i just need to go and trademark a common noun….
09/08/2009 at 16:54 Funky Badger says:
Dante: GoW is actually very well written in terms of characterisation and dialogue – in a similar way that Aliens is well written. That’s its a well worn cliche is true, but its nontheless a well written well-worn cliche.
09/08/2009 at 16:59 Post Maker says:
They’re sinking the cities with a giant worm!
09/08/2009 at 16:59 Larington says:
I think its dangerous to regard third or first person as right or wrong, but we’ll all inevitably have our preferences. It all depends on what sort of experience you want out of your game…
09/08/2009 at 17:01 Funky Badger says:
Post Maker: I didn’t mention plot…
And anyway, that’s Gow2…
09/08/2009 at 17:08 EyeMessiah says:
@KG:”Objectivity is a thin, deceitful veneer. Either you’re hiding you’re arguing for something you like – or you’re lying about its aesthetic effectiveness, so turning your criticism into a parlour game of argument-for-its-own-sake.”
Sorry, I’m not sure I follow — but I’m intrigued! What are the two options?
So someone who is claiming to be making an objective argument in favour of a game they like is either a) pretending that the reason they liked it is because of its objective qualities (and not just because they liked it), or b) they didn’t actually like it and are just arguing for arguments sake.
Is that a fair paraphrase?
09/08/2009 at 17:10 Psychopomp says:
@Funky
Also, GRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIND
09/08/2009 at 17:18 Matt W says:
WRT the Chris Lavigne piece, it seems that he’s saying gaming culture is worrying because of its insularism, but at the same time failing to consider whether this is unique to gaming or whether it’s common across a wider range of hobbies/cultures. This strikes me as mildly ironic.
09/08/2009 at 17:29 Funky Badger says:
Mmmmm, GRIIIIIIIIIIIND.
See also: HU-MAAAAAANS.
09/08/2009 at 17:55 Noc says:
@EyeMessiah: Not to speak for Kieron, but I think part of the idea is that there’s a difference between analysis and objective judgment.
Our responses to most things are emotional. Things push our psychological buttons, and make us happy or sad or frustrated or gleeful or what-have-you based on what buttons they push.
Analysis involves trying to pick our experiences apart and figure out what exactly happened, and how what the game was doing lead to our reactions. We played for a bit and ended up frustrated . . . so, why? What about the game made us frustrated? Why did this game bother us, while another, similar game didn’t? And so on.
Eventually, after a bit of analysis, we can start to take a stab at some conclusions. And we can come up with principles like “Games that do this are frustrating.” (And, of course, the Holy Grail of video game analysis, “Games that do this are fun.“)
The point here is that this process goes from honest observation of experiences to analysis of those experiences to suggestions of what principles may lie behind those experiences.
. . .
“Objective judgments,” however, go the other way. They take these principles and try and judge games by them. Making an “objective judgment” involves saying “We have found that these are the things that make up a good game. Since this game has (or lacks) these things, it is a good (or bad) game.”
This is a little silly, because these principles are speculation in the first place. There’s a very big difference between saying “This is how I reacted to this game, therefore this is how the game probably worked,” and saying “This is how games work, therefore this must be the reaction it provokes.” The first is analysis, the latter is speculation masquerading as analysis.
So someone liking or not liking a game is a matter of what emotional buttons the game pushed.* The “Objective merits” of a game are simply rough predictive values: a game that’s “Objectively good” is simply one that we thing should be enjoyable.
So if someone’s arguing the “Objective merits” of a game, they’re either disingenuously trying to justify their own emotional reaction, or they’re making an entirely academic argument.
. . .
* It is worth noting that it’s quite possible to like a game for intellectual reasons, because you know enough to recognize good examples of whatever craft your expertise lies in. But even “I liked (or didn’t like) the game because, as an animator, I could tell that these animations were put together by someone who really knows what they’re doing (or is a complete amateurish hack),” is an emotional reaction. And isn’t really any more relevant to a game’s “Objective merit” than anything else, because the greater portion of the audience isn’t likely to notice.
Confusing “Objective merit” with “Technical sophistication” is another thing people do more often than they should, but that’s another thing entirely.
09/08/2009 at 18:07 Kieron Gillen says:
Eyemessiah: Noc basically hits most of what I’m talking about.
If you are moved by something – either positively or negatively – the objective arguments are prompted by and seek to explain that experience. The question is “How did this thing create this response?”. Even if you’re trying to analyse responses in other people which you don’t necessarily share, that *these creative decisions did something* is the thing which all the theory rests upon.
So, purely objective critics are either…
1) Covering up the fact they’re really talking about their own responses and trying to explain them.
2) Playing Meaningless Games, because you’re talking about rules in the abstract. If no-one is ever moved by a piece of art, any criticism in its favour is plain bullshit.
I’m fine with people trying to draw general rules from their own responses – fairly obviously, it’s what I tend to do. But to pretend they don’t come from your own response is duplicitous. The subjective response is the reason for our consumption of art. Analysis which denies it, denies the art.
KG
09/08/2009 at 18:12 Tei says:
Man, how I hate these platform games. Pitfall II. Manic Miner. Arggh.
09/08/2009 at 18:21 Andy says:
wow for Laura Dockrill. I just watched everything I could find of her on youtube, had to take a break every few minutes to reconstruct my mind though. very nice.
09/08/2009 at 18:29 Dante says:
@ Funky
I’m sorry, but I have to disagree with you, gears’ writing fails on basically every level, the characters are cliched, uninteresting and unlikeable, the plot is nonsensical, derivatice and impossible to follow, a basic sense of structure and narrative flow is missing and the dialogue itself is ugly, clunky, and fails to flow.
And it’s not by far the worst example of designer driven story, the worst ones are the ones we don’t remember, because they were that bad.
09/08/2009 at 18:29 Kieron Gillen says:
Andy: Should have totally have linked to the Youtube.
KG
09/08/2009 at 18:43 Andy says:
hehe, it seems you forget this knew technology KG, theres videos on teh intewebs now! :).
I love how she’s almost like a rapper, but with no beat she can change the tempo how she wants for great effect. So it was interestesting to see she calls herself Dockers MC aswell.
09/08/2009 at 18:45 Funky Badger says:
Dante: that’s just, like, your opinion, dude. ;-)
Not wanting to get into a “yeah but, no but” discussion, the “writing” (to lump it all together) in Gears is clearly subservient to the action, which is, after all, the point of the game. I’d, however, say a large part of the success of the game was the rich characterisation of the main characters – the bickering and interplay is done very well (cliched, yes – but still well done). Clearly inspired by, and in large part, on a par with Aliens, I would say. My example would be how they’ve clearly delineated 4 seperate primary characters identifable from the tone and content of their dialogue, and not just relying on the excellent voice acting. In a way in which, Halo or Half Life, for example, signally fails to do – telling, to my mind, that the 2 most memorable characters from HL2 are the Vortigaunts and Gordon Frohman…
09/08/2009 at 18:51 Shalrath says:
On the first vs. third person debate, I enter the following:
In third, I lose 1/4 to 1/3rd of my screen to seeing the back of my own head and body. However, I can see through walls/around corners from six feet.
So to me, if the game is remotely realistic (Imagine stalker in Third Person… /shudder) it needs to be first person, for me. I don’t mind Mass Effect in third person, but I do Fallout 3 for some reason. And even people I know who like third person stay in 1st person in Fallout.
09/08/2009 at 18:53 Andy`` says:
Probably to do with the animations and character movement being absolutely horrendous in third person. What were they thinking?
If you’re going to do third person, you at least have to make it look nice. Extra kudos to Batman for apparently getting that very, very right.
09/08/2009 at 18:54 Funky Badger says:
Did find myself crouching a lot in Batman so I could see more of the screen…
09/08/2009 at 18:55 Dante says:
@ Funky
There is objective badness to Gears’ story. If only in the area of structure, where it does not so much have plot holes as much as it has a hole with occasional plot in it.
And I wouldn’t say it’s so much ‘inspired by’ Aliens, and ‘its about the only film the writers have ever watched’.
It says something that they’ve even managed to miss the terrible macho stereotype characters they were aiming for so badly that most people think they’re gay.
09/08/2009 at 19:00 Funky Badger says:
Dante: because its impossible to be macho and gay, right? ;-)
09/08/2009 at 19:07 Fumarole says:
Good god, duct tape on the window?!
09/08/2009 at 19:10 TheFool says:
Wait a minute. We’re talking about the war now?
09/08/2009 at 19:15 Psychopomp says:
You know, for all the homosexual undertones, there’s surprisingly little Gears of War yaoi.
09/08/2009 at 20:00 drewski says:
I’ve never been able to get my head around in cockpit views in racing games. Front bumper view ftw.
09/08/2009 at 20:04 Radiant says:
In Langdell’s defence; if I trademarked the word “Paper” I’d have everyone pay me money till they made me stop.
Edge is a hell of a trademark.
09/08/2009 at 20:06 Gap Gen says:
Dante: The macho stereotype *is* pretty gay.
09/08/2009 at 20:26 EyeMessiah says:
@KG & Noc
OK, that makes sense. The thing that made it hard for me to parse was that “objective criticism” makes me think of something different to what you are talking about.
Your (not personal, btw) so-called “objective judgements” sound plainly subjective to me. I mean, you can analyse your own introspective observations all you like but even if your analysis is good in terms of your logic being self consistent you are still just manipulating assertions about subjective things and producing more assertions, still about subjective things, based on your extrapolations.
It might seem obtuse but I think that if you forget about the impossible possibility of talking about the Art Experience in objective terms then you free yourself from having to worry about all these broken, unsolvable critical “problems”.
But then you have to give up on the possibility of ever elevating your opinions about Art to the level of OBJECTIVE FACTS, thereby compelling right-thinking others to assimilate them. So its tricky.
So I suppose I agree (surprising because I assumed I didn’t!), you only really run into problems when you start casually mixing your categories – usually by dressing your opinions up objective fact.
…
How do you guys feel about the usefulness of your writing in terms of acting a buyers guide?
This is the bit I think I disagree on – and which made me suspect I might disagree with your original statement which I was having trouble grokking.
Do you (and the Hive generally) think that a description of your subjective experience is a better communicator of the qualities of a game, and by extension its buy-worthyness, than a crass summary of its functional merits? (I.e. is it 60fps? Does it do wide-screen properly? Are the controls laggy on common hardware? Do you have to jump through DRM hoops to get to the menu screen?)
09/08/2009 at 20:28 EyeMessiah says:
@Dante: ” … objective badness … ”
“Badness” is about as subjective as it gets!
09/08/2009 at 21:19 Dolphan says:
EM etc – There’s a difference between criticism (in the sense in which you’d take that word if it was preceded by ‘literary’) and a ‘buyers guide’ – I swear there’s a better word for that kind of description, but it’s slipped my mind. Games reviews often try to do both (and are expected to do both). It’s pretty difficult to do. The latter is more ‘objective’, sure, but it’s fundamentally inadequate to, well, pretty much anything. Most relevantly, to giving you an idea whether you should buy a game.
09/08/2009 at 21:29 Noc says:
@EyeMessiah: The thing to understand (not necessarily you, but in general, but I figured I’d bring it up because you used the word) is that “subjective” does not mean “meaningless.” Or even “Of sharply limited relevance.”
My favorite way to explain this is by comparing it to physics. Things like “position” and “velocity” are very subjective, and are very much relative to your current frame of reference. But they’re also very real, very measurable things that can produce very predictable results if you’re aware of the principles that govern them.
(Notably, the difficulty in measuring things like “Human experience” and “Predisposition” and “taste” are why “objective judgments” about art are so questionable: we don’t understand the mechanics nearly as well as we’d need to to make predictive judgments with any accuracy. Not only does it deny the experience in art, it’s also really unscientific.)
(On the other hand, considering the amount of shared experiences and similar taste people possess, “I liked (or hated) this and I suspect a lot of you folk will too” is a perfectly valid and relevant thing to say. And a lot of art writing, I believe, is about plotting out your position relative to the thing you’re talking about in enough detail that other folks can extrapolate their own position from that, and figure out how they’re likely to react to the piece in question.)
(Which really is a “buyer’s guide” thing, if you get down to it, Dolphan.)
I’ll stop rambling now, since I know my opinion isn’t the Informed And Relevant one you’re looking for. But the use of “subjective” as a pejorative is common enough that I felt it worth expanding upon.
09/08/2009 at 21:29 Stella Q says:
Screw Mobigames, where can I donate to Autumn’s college fund?
09/08/2009 at 22:05 Kieron Gillen says:
In passing, if anyone was interesting, the comic announcement I was waiting on: S.W.O.R.D. ongoing from Marvel.
KG
09/08/2009 at 22:10 Dante says:
@ EyeMessiah
I’ve never agreed with that. There is such a concept of being objectively bad. After all, if a game can be objectively badly coded, can it not be objectively badly written?
09/08/2009 at 22:30 l1ddl3monkey says:
The comic was my favourite from todays papers.
The Edge thing caused me a small moment of nerd rage and lead to me imagining a number of amusing scenario’s in which the guitarist from U2 and his army of highly paid soul eating ninja-lawyers sue Langdell into oblivion on a whim.
The trailer park pictures were depressing but very well taken.
09/08/2009 at 22:45 Leeks! says:
Tim Langdell’s emails sound like an evil robot wrote them.
09/08/2009 at 22:59 Dolphan says:
@Noc – Yes, which is why criticism is valuable from a ‘should I buy this?’ point of view, and why “buyer’s guide” is really the wrong term for a list of features + technical accomplishments and failings.
09/08/2009 at 23:04 EnglishStudent says:
None of the following things exist:
‘objective structure of the work ‘
‘structure of the thing composed’
‘the intended objective structure of the craft’
The real thing is – as we are – what is percieved. We can alter perception by changing how we look at something: engaging in a so-called close reading, for example. But in reality we have not moved out of our synthesis of emotion, memory, sensory images and the medium of ‘meaning’ in which all these seem to move. However, using spatial metaphors such as ‘close reading’ and ‘medium…move’ only distracts by use of a helpful example. The only criticism is a lively criticism which is composed consciously in the attempt to relate thought as thought, that is to say, a compound of everything we are capable of feeling, sensing, remembering – to be.
Brook’s arguments are contextualised by their time, by him. Reading is never an objective process, in my opinion (ha ha! get my coat etc.).
09/08/2009 at 23:05 EyeMessiah says:
@Noc: No, your opinion is both informed and relevant and definitely what I’m looking for.
I agree completely with doing away with the pejorative on subjective. Subjective assertions are literally *the best* you can do if you wan’t to say something about something subjective, and that’s not too shabby really.
Subjective can mean meaningless, and can be of limited relevance if you are talking about certain things in a certain way though. I can make an assertion about some subjective aspect of my experience of the world, like “Its too damn hot!” for instance, but it in a lot of contexts a more useful alternative might be an objective assertion such as “Its 28 degrees Celsius!”, but this isn’t to say that the former is worthless or that it should be deprecated.
I disagree about the relationship between subjectivity and relativity though. An observer can make accurate assertions about my position and movements relative to other objects because all they have to do is calculate everything from my frame of reference. They cannot, however, make accurate assertions about my subjective experience of being in that position relative to other objects. They can guess, but for all they know I dropped a bag of psychedelic mushrooms before putting on my space suit and am currently flying through the special effects sequence from the end of 2001.
Both relativity and subjectivity seem to be concerned with looking at things from my perspective, but the similarity ends there afaik. Observations made re. my position relative to other objects are objective facts, but subjective experiences of those facts aren’t.
“On the other hand, considering the amount of shared experiences and similar taste people possess, “I liked (or hated) this and I suspect a lot of you folk will too” is a perfectly valid and relevant thing to say.”
Its perfectly valid, and as I say shouldn’t have any pejorative attached to it, but I’m not convinced its that useful – but I suppose it depends if believe people have more in common than not. I’m of the opinion that the answer is “not”, but that we tend to prejudice the overlaps in memory. So my problem with NGJ (only as a buyers guide, I love it as art\entertainment) is that I don’t believe that the readers experience of a game can be reliably related to the writers – particularly once the experience has been “massaged” for readability and art\entertainment value(no offence intended writers, though I know we are getting into delicate (but interesting?) territory!).
@Dolphan
Yep, games writing that solely focuses on the genuinely objective characteristics of an art of object is deficient in lots of ways, but imho, for games this is the best you can do for a strictly-buyers-guide.
@Dante
What do you mean by “badly” coded?
“Bad” doesn’t mean a whole lot on its own, it just denotes a subjective value judgement. One which other people might disagree with without contradicting you. Subjective opinions aren’t mutually exclusive. I hate the colour blue, I think its a “bad” colour, whereas you might love it – but there is no contradiction.
The fact that you are making the value judgement about (e.g. game x lacks widescreen support) might be objective – but the value judgement itself isn’t.
Either game X does or does not support widescreen monitors – if you are right then I can’t disagree with you without being wrong, however I can disagree with you about whether or not this is “bad” without contradiction.
09/08/2009 at 23:07 EyeMessiah says:
Damn, I done wrote one of those long comments I always tldr.
Curses!
09/08/2009 at 23:45 Ergates says:
Just for future reference: Gears of War should probably be shortened to “Gears” or something like that – GoW is ambiguous. I was trying to remember the dialogue from God of War and why someone might think it good/bad for several minutes.
10/08/2009 at 00:16 Matt W says:
“Yep, games writing that solely focuses on the genuinely objective characteristics of an art of object is deficient in lots of ways, but imho, for games this is the best you can do for a strictly-buyers-guide. ”
I’d argue the exact opposite – for the vast majority of the potential audience, the buyer’s-guide role is probably served better by two or three paragraphs saying what’s subjectively valuable (“fun”) about the game, what’s subjectively a turn-off, and what sort of person the reviewer thinks will think it a worthwhile purchase, rather than a dry three-page listing of features and their implementational details. Ultimately, a buyer’s-guide review’s function should (IMO) be to answer “will you enjoy this entertainment product?”, not “is this a worthy piece of software?”.
And if reviews had this sort of format, it might leave more room for proper post-facto critiques of games which can focus on what’s interesting/worth discussing about the title without worrying about recommendations or spoilers. Which would be nice. Currently many reviews are trying to be recommendation, feature enumeration and critique all in one go, and as a result I don’t think they’re really excelling at anything. YMMV.
10/08/2009 at 00:21 Funky Badger says:
Dante: from a grammatical and syntactic point of view The Da Vinci Code is better than Finnegan’s Wake. Creative writing – especially dialogue – just doesn’t work like that.
10/08/2009 at 00:37 Flimgoblin says:
If Langdell sues Eurogamer does that mean you get to redo this piece at some point Kieron, tearing him apart at least as thoroughly but giving a slightly higher number at the end?
(boom boom!)
10/08/2009 at 00:45 Matt W says:
PS re Horror: breathtaking. Good work.
10/08/2009 at 01:47 EyeMessiah says:
@Matt
“Ultimately, a buyer’s-guide review’s function should (IMO) be to answer “will you enjoy this entertainment product?””
The problem is that this question is incredibly hard to answer, for any given reader, and given this difficulty I wonder if its not worth trying. I don’t really know what the hit-rate is for significant games reviews in general, but I suspect its fairly low (do console gamers really think that all those big releases are *really* 10/10s after playing them for a few hours?). As I say I don’t really know & ymmv ofc – but I’d love to see some big research.
The more I think about it the more I reckon that a game doesn’t even need a buyers-guide if its not substantially broken.
Internet coverage of games provides plenty info saturation so its hard not to know what you are getting yourself in for for any given title that your interested in – particularly in the run up to release.
I knew that I was going to be interested in Arma II for instance from all the pre-release coverage, but what was useful from the release coverage was getting a heads-up that the implementation was broken and that it was probably worth holding off and seeing how the patches go.
10/08/2009 at 02:37 We Fly Spitfires - MMORPG Blog says:
Great round-up thanks! :)
10/08/2009 at 05:50 SofS says:
One thing I’d like to mention, though it doesn’t matter much to most people, is that some people (such as myself) find first-person perspective hilariously disorienting. I don’t know if this is common among other people with little sense of direction in real life or not. It’s not like the perspective induces motion sickness or something, but it does make being lost the norm rather than the exception. I’m very thankful for a game with a good minimap or some sort of diagetic direction, like CoD4′s fellow soldiers making it relatively clear where the hell I’m supposed to go. It isn’t such a problem in exploratory games, but in general it just makes me disinclined to play an FPS unless there’s something in specific to draw me in.
10/08/2009 at 05:57 Susan says:
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Susan
http://onlinemariogames.net
10/08/2009 at 06:50 MD says:
Flimgoblin says:
If Langdell sues Eurogamer does that mean you get to redo this piece at some point Kieron, tearing him apart at least as thoroughly but giving a slightly higher number at the end?
:D
10/08/2009 at 06:51 MD says:
Man, I stuffed that one up. I was just trying to express my appreciation of that joke, but ended up making it look like my grinning face was part of the original quote.
10/08/2009 at 08:27 Dominic White says:
On the subject of subjectve/objective reviews, I’ve seen some amazingly terrible reviews which are bad largely because they throw out any kind of objective analysis and just go for the reviewers gut feelings – and I’ve seen these on some of the major networks, such as IGN, which means people got PAID to write it, which is sad..
I’ve seen points knocked off a (better-than-perfect) arcade port because the writer doesn’t like arcade games.
It’s why you don’t get someone who slow strategy games to review Hearts of Iron 3. Yeah, you’ll get a great review written for people who hate slow strategy games, but that doesn’t help anyone. You send in someone who knows the genre, and can tell people who hate the genre that they probably still won’t like it, while at the same time being able to inform people who would be interested of its specific perks and drawbacks.
10/08/2009 at 08:38 Kieron Gillen says:
Which doesn’t devalue the debate, it’s worth noting that Mr Hayter wasn’t talking about reviews – he really was talking about criticism. In proper criticism, the buyers-guide nature of the review doesn’t even get a seat.
KG
10/08/2009 at 09:53 Vasagi says:
The photo’s were incredibly moving
10/08/2009 at 10:38 Paul Moloney says:
By one of those bizarre coincidences, I fired up a Spectrum emulator last night and went looking for a game I remember loving as a kid, named Brian Bloodaxe. Imagine my surprise to see “The Edge” as the company on the loading screen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Edge_Software
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Bloodaxe
I’d be tempted to say that anyone involved in BB can’t be all bad, but needless to say that’s not a hard and fast rule.
P.
10/08/2009 at 11:03 Dante says:
@ EyeMessiah“What do you mean by “badly” coded?
“Bad” doesn’t mean a whole lot on its own, it just denotes a subjective value judgement. One which other people might disagree with without contradicting you. Subjective opinions aren’t mutually exclusive. I hate the colour blue, I think its a “bad” colour, whereas you might love it – but there is no contradiction.
The fact that you are making the value judgement about (e.g. game x lacks widescreen support) might be objective – but the value judgement itself isn’t.
Either game X does or does not support widescreen monitors – if you are right then I can’t disagree with you without being wrong, however I can disagree with you about whether or not this is “bad” without contradiction.” All right, I’m as arty as the next man (unless the next man is Kieron) but, I’m sorry, there is such a thing as being objectively bad. If a game is full of bugs, crashes randomly and chugs even on a poor system then it is badly coded. If a house falls down for no reason then it is a badly made house. There are no ifs or buts here, this isn’t subjective art, it’s a basic, practical failure of craft.
And yes, I think this can be extrapoloated to art (or entertainment) mediums, this doesn’t mean that they can be judged totally objectively, but that there is an objective layer underpinning the subjective one. For instance, I might think that ‘Titanic’ is an awful film, but it’s definately made solidly and competantly, so you wouldn’t say it’s objectively bad, but ‘Plan Nine From Outer Space’ fails repeatedly at the basic craft of filmaking.
The seems self evident, extrapolating it to writing I can agree is an area of debate. But I think that while theme and character are subjective, and depend on how much you relate to the subject, there are aspects, like storytelling, that can be judged objectively. Simply put, if you have failed in your goal to tell a story, whereby your audience cannot follow it, then you failed in your job, and are guilty of objectively bad writing.
10/08/2009 at 11:04 Dante says:
Like that post I just did? That was badly formatted.
10/08/2009 at 12:30 Lars Westergren says:
I agree with Dante on this one. We can’t just always agree to disagree due to matters of taste (though sometimes I admit that we just get our reward/pleasure centers in our brain strongly stimulated by different things. I get it strongly from plot, others by cool graphics).
With regards to this particular sentence it gets even easier because though coding is a bit an art, more of it is engineering -
>What do you mean by “badly” coded?
Bad code is needlessly complicated, badly encapsulated, contains redundant code, is untested, slow, fragile, not understood completely even by the person who wrote it, and preferably doesn’t even solve the problem the customer wants it to.
Good code abstracts away all needless redundancy, is tested (and if possible logically proven to work), easy to understand, mathematically elegant, effective AND efficient.
10/08/2009 at 14:09 Cunzy1 1 says:
With relation to: Over at Maisonneuve, the Chris Lavigne ………. rises it above a “I must go to the gym more often”-ism.
I’m far happier getting overly passionate about games than any of the (fl/st)uff in the Review, Family, Guide, Guardian Magazine, Sports pullouts and more than half of the main newspaper itself in this weekend’s Guardian/Observer.
That is how I justify it to myself anyway.
10/08/2009 at 14:15 Tore says:
This one really, really turned out to be a gem. Thank you Kieron, EyeMessiah and Noc for a healthy and mature discussion on aestethics. I have to things to add though:
@ Kieron: ” In proper criticism, the buyers-guide nature of the review doesn’t even get a seat.” I’m not questioning this at all, but I am wondering about the motivation. Is it a necessary consequence of the realisation that an art review is an inherently subjective thing, or is there another reason entierly?
@Dante: I do agree with you that there is such a thing as objectively bad code or a badly built house. A code or the act of building a house have some predefined purposes such as accurately presenting the “vision of the designer” to the consumer with a minimum of bugs, memory leaks, water leaks or improperly mounted beams (in short, production faults). This is because a coder of a constructor are simply engineers contracted to make a designer’s or architect’s vision happen. They are not artists themselves. This is why the analogy between bad constuction and a “bad house” is incorrect. Because even if, and sometimes even because of , the construction of a house is incorrect engineering-wise, the finished house can still hold a high aestethic value, i.e. be beautiful.
10/08/2009 at 14:40 Kieron Gillen says:
Tom: It’s because criticism’s purpose is to explain how something does what it does and what it means, basically. You can say that its purpose is forwarding the formalist theoretical framework of games, but I think even that’s pushing it. I’m not sure the practical necessarily comes into it at all.
Put it like this: Criticism is primarily academic in nature.
(If you read the piece linked, its forwarding what it thinks more formalist criticism should be.)
KG
10/08/2009 at 14:46 Helm says:
Noc, great posts in this thread.
10/08/2009 at 15:01 Lars Westergren says:
>This is because a coder of a constructor are simply engineers contracted to make a designer’s or architect’s vision happen. They are not artists themselves.
I don’t agree. Coding has some aspects of art in it. Not as in “It makes people think about life and cry”, but in the same way that a really skilled martial artist performing a kata makes art of grace and power.
Coding often requires tradeoffs – simplicity vs speed vs extendability. When to choose one before the other can’t be reduced to set rules, but it something that is learned over time.
10/08/2009 at 15:46 Catastrophe says:
Langdell deserves to be sue’d so hard he’s left pennyless living in the streets.
I’ve read he tried to sue U2′s The Edge and I saw a banner on his site literally saying MIRRORS a game by EDGE (“a game by” was wrote so small you could only read it by squinting and squishing your face on your monitor.)
Hes also known to get people to make games for him, then not pay the full agreed amount and credit himself with alot of the work done on the game. (Eg. Fairlight)
10/08/2009 at 15:48 Tore says:
@Kieron: By “Tom”, do you mean “Tore”? :)
10/08/2009 at 17:57 Dante says:
@ Tore
Either that or he’s figured out my real name.
I can’t fully agree with you there, I think there are two aspects writing a story, one is deciding what you want to do, the other is pulling it off.
If I don’t like what you set out to do, well that’s subjective, but if you’ve failed to do what you set out to do, well then that’s a failure, objectively. I’ll give you that. If a house falls down, it doesn’t matter how pretty the rubble is, you’ve failed in your attempt to make a house. Whether it can succeed accidentally is a tricky tangent, and rather complicated to get into now.
Some simple examples, let us say that I do not like films about gangsters, then I do not like the Godfather, but I understand it tells the story it wants to tell well, so I might dislike it subjectively, but objectively it’s good (or at least ‘sound’). But although I might like stories about alien invasions, I still don’t like Plan Nine, because although it has picked a story I might like, it has failed to deliver it soundly.
10/08/2009 at 20:42 EyeMessiah says:
@Dante & also Lars
“If a house falls down for no reason then it is a badly made house. There are no ifs or buts here, this isn’t subjective art, it’s a basic, practical failure of craft.”
Dante, if the house really fell down for “no reason” then it seems a little mean spirited to blame the carpenter for dumb bad luck! ;)
Seriously though, when I asked you what you mean by “badly coded” I wasn’t trying to suggest that you could never validly assert that some program could be a “bad example” of something called “good code”, rather I was trying to suggest that without further specification “bad” doesn’t say much about the code except that you don’t like it and clearly we can disagree about whether or not we each like the code without contradiction.
There are certainly lots of situations where we can agree that if something fails to meet some set of conventionally established criteria, it is therefore a bad example of thing X.
I understand what you might mean by “this car makes for a bad aeroplane” for instance.
So yes, the fact of whether or not some thing meets an agreed set of criteria is indeed an objective fact, and if we disagree about this then one of us is wrong.
The problem with trying to apply this kind of analysis to art\entertainment is that coming up with a set of criteria that doesn’t “miss-the-point” with regard to what people found meaningful about said art in the first place is practically impossible once you get beyond trying to talk about it in terms of people who like all the same stuff for the same reasons you do.
Sorry if that’s not clear, its hard to put into words. Maybe its easier if we think about it in terms of how you would actually come up with a set of fairly concrete criteria to judge works by.
Taking writing as the example. You mention an example of a criteria for “good writing” as being telling a story in such a way that your audience can follow. Right away you are going to struggle to get literary critics to agree to this because one of the recurring themes in critically successful post modern literature has been the problematicisation of exposition. You might think that this is BS, but if you can’t get them to agree with your criteria for “good writing”, then you can’t make objective assertions (objective properties being observable properties that we can all agree on remember) about whether or not Finnegans wake is well written.
So you might think, well screw those guys – I’ll just pick some OBJECTIVE criteria, which have authority of their own and then it doesn’t matter if they get all whiny about it and say they disagree.
There are a few of different options for declaring that some set of criteria come with authority built-in, but they are all pretty broken, imo.
The first one that most people go for is the appeal to critical authority. In your case this one won’t work because a quick skim over some university literature courses will show us that, as we have seen, the academic literary canon includes – perhaps even favours – works which violate your only stated criteria. They assert that works which barely tell a story, demonstrate terrible grammar, lack structure or possibly even characters are examples of good, nay, great writing!
So maybe you decide you would rather get a bit more down to earth – a bit more “common-sense”. If its self-evident then regular people everywhere must be able to agree on what constitutes “good writing”, right? So lets take a poll, and rank the great works of literature by popularity, and then we can declare that Harry Potter, LOTR and the Da Vinci code are the finest examples of writing ever seen and surely the standard by which all other literature must be judged. Maybe not.
So what about authorial intent? We can just examine the end result in relation to what the author had in mind as their ultimate goal and derive an objective measure of how successful the work is from the comparison. But even if we put aside the question of whether or not how “on-target” the work is is the same thing as how well written it is, we will quickly find ourselves mired in an impossible debate about what the authors intentions really were, or whether they were lying about them or they were misreported or whether the author really had anything clear in mind at all.
(If you had some other argument in mind for how your criteria derive their authority I’d be very interested to hear it.)
At the end of the day if you are talking about some literary work, people aren’t really interested in the book itself, the objective thing, – they are interested in the subjective experience of the consumption of the work, and you can’t make objective assertions about the subjective properties of subjective things without straying into easily picked apart illogical nonsense. Its like trying to build a house of stone on quicksand. In other words, even if your logic is internally consistent, its built on axioms so slippery and nebulous that your manipulations won’t yield reliably truthful conclusions.
@KG
So, I don’t think that art criticism can explain how a work of art functions, at least not in terms that I find rationally accessible. As for what a work of art “means”, I’m not at all sure I know what *that* means tbh.
Yes, I’m being crass though. I know. And long winded…
11/08/2009 at 07:26 bonuswavepilot says:
@EM et al re: ‘bad’ code
Seems to me (he said, hooking his thumbs into his braces and rocking on is heels) that you can make non-subjective ‘bad’ statements about code for the simple reason that there are objective metrics you can apply. Does this version run faster or slower than the last? How often does it crash? Does it leak memory? etc.
(That said, as regards the elegance of the code – I’m prepared to concede an element of the artistic, but most of the time you don’t get to see this when you play a game unless its open-source, and you can be bothered…)
Subjective writeups of the type you might find here make no claim to objectivity, but I think they still function well in a ‘buyer’s guide’ sense simply because once you get to know the hivemind hereabouts, you can adjust for bias. eg. “Jim always hates the stuff I will like best.” or “Kieron is always wrong when zombies are involved.” (Examples for example purposes only)
11/08/2009 at 19:27 SwiftRanger says:
I agree on the “beginners guide” description of the Langdell EG article, nice for an introduction but there’s so much more to this story (the comments and links therein actually tell you 100x more interesting stuff) that I’d say it’s a pity a big site like EG didn’t really push it to the limit. I thought journalism could be a lot more than repeating things the internet mostly knew about a few weeks ago.
31/08/2009 at 20:02 jalf says:
Langdell resigned from the IGDA board: http://www.igda.org/newsroom/Tim%20Resigns.pdf