As usual, the opinions expressed in this column are the author’s alone, and do not reflect those of MyGaming
So what’s a review, anyway? We’ve been thrashing this one hither and yon for the past few days now, since Myles’s rather thought-provoking Criticising the Critics: Reviewing the Reviewers piece, and I’ve a few arguments of my own to chuck into the debate.
Let’s start out with a formal definition, because I’m such a shameless slut for dictionaries. And it’s kinda relevant.
re-view
–noun
1. a critical article or report, as in a periodical, on a book, play, recital, or the like; critique; evaluation. [www.dictionary.com]
Okay, it’s a bit ambiguous. What exactly constitutes “critical” discourse? I mean, as the bland aphorism goes, everyone’s a critic. They’re not really, of course. Most people can scarcely construct a coherent sentence (see: the internet), much less declare anything even remotely resembling something like credible authority on a subject or product or your mom. So critical discourse is necessarily somewhat relative, and anybody who’s ever squandered time and neural synapses reading YouTube’s comment boxes or anything on N4G would have to agree.
Perhaps more pertinently, however, it’s difficult to work out where, in the context of critique, the distinction between a writer’s own opinions and objective analysis of anything should be. Oh, it’s easy enough to say there’s no place whatsoever for opinion in a game review, but that would be an exceedingly naive statement to make. Nobody exists in vacuum (more’s the pity, since I can’t think of a better place for Counter-Strike players), and personal opinion is – inconvenient reality! – sort of indispensible. I mean, informed opinion is determined by experience, and experience largely determines one’s capacity for constructive critique, surely. Accordingly, someone who’s never played a video game would likely be a rubbish writer of game reviews.
Anyway, with all the drab science stuff out of the way, let’s talk business. Game reviewing is a business. I kind of tripped and fell into this business myself, after qualifying as a high school English teacher and realising I’d rather be eaten from the inside out by necrotising bacteria and doused with napalm and hand grenades than actually get a job doing that. Fortunately enough, however, I’m enough of an opinionated ******* to convince people I know what I’m doing, so I got this job writing about games instead.
The “opinionated” bit is important, though. I don’t presume to impart incontrovertible, universal truths. And when it comes to reviewing games, I don’t think that’s even possible. So I write opinions. Why’s that? Because I write the sort of stuff I like to read, and because it turns out other people are coming with me on that. No, not everybody. But as I’ve recently pointed out here and there, one of the first lessons any trembling writer initiate learns is that there’s just no pleasing everybody. Where one reader’s looking for a bulleted list of gameplay features and some sort of methodological deconstruction of pre-post-remodernism in a review, another’s looking for an opinion.
Although, for whatever it’s worth, I think review scores are an egregious load of intellectually dishonest wank. Really, it’s a review – an opinion or an analysis, not a number – and if you’re too lazy to read it, shove off and get a new hobby that doesn’t require anything like intelligent engagement. Like Counter-Strike.
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