A game, as Wikipedia describes it, is structured playing. Wikipedia also describes some key components of how games work, by explaining goals that need to be accomplished by the players. Among those are:
- rules
- challenge
- interaction
There are other things that can be introduced to the list, but most can fall under any of those three. Interaction is much broader than the other two components likely because interaction can be between a computer/console and the player, or players/player.
These three aspects of a game are what is commonly known as: "Gameplay". You would think by the name that is all that needs to be listed, but aesthetic seems to be a common complaint or praise for many videogames.
Let's brown townyze some popular video game review sites and how they create their reviews.First up, Gamespot.com's reviews.Gamespot reviewers work under a template that basically lists the
good aspects of a game first, and the
bad afterwards. There's no real structure to it, which means that one reviewer might lean more towards the aesthetic portion of a game, or one might learn towards the gameplay aspect.
Second, G4TV reviews.G4TV's reviews are basically structured fundamentally the same way as gamespot, except that the good and the bad are somehow quantified into a
x/5 star rating. The issue here is that the way that a reviewer summarizes both the positive and negative attributes of a game can HIGHLY differ from person to person, basically making a consensus almost impossible.
Third, IGN reviewsIGN videogame reviews function similar to G4TV reviews except the good and bad aspects of the game aren't sorted into two different separate categories, and the flow of the review is up to the discretion of the writer. The rating system functions on a
1 to 10 level scale, from (as it says on the
review guide)
0/0.5 - Disaster
One of the worst games ever made. Roger Ebert holds this game while standing on his soap box and declares it proof that games are not art.
to
10.0 - Masterpiece
The pinnacle of gaming, a masterpiece may not be flawless, but it is so exceptional that it is hard to imagine a game being better. At the time of its release, this game is the not just the best the system can offer, but better than we could have expected.
The most obvious flaw with this, much like the G4TV reviews, is that there's no order to how a reviewer summarizes both the bad and good aspects of a game and sorts it into a rating that accurately represents the three gameplay aspects I listed at the beginning of this post. Because of that, one reviewer could call a game terrible because it has terrible aesthetic, and one reviewer could call a game terrific because it has terrific gameplay.
And finally, metacriticInstead of talking about all the many different review sites that attempt to form a, "consensus" based on many many different site reviews, I choose metacritic because it's the largest one and the standard for Steam. Metacritic takes reviews from MANY MANY different sites, along with user reviews posted on the website, and creates a percentage that is supposed to represent the consensus among a large spectrum of reviewers. Metacritic reviews on a
1-100 scale assembled from hundreds of review websites.So what's wrong with any of these?Look over all four sites I listed. Specifically what I emboldened. Notice how different the four websites scale their reviews. The issue here is how reviewers form consensus. No one reviewer should ever be the #1 source for knowing the quality of videogames. Sorry Ben Kuchera, but you're loving useless on your own! The way these sites assemble a number that represents the quality of a videogame is what is wrong!
So how do we create a percentage that a prospective buyer can use to determine whether they want to buy a game or not?
Simple!
You don't!It's completely impossible to take different areas of quality in an art form like a videogame and compress it into one number that will represent what most players think of the game to a reasonable margin of error. What's really important to understand through reading this is that
everyone has a bias as to what they enjoy in a videogame. Whether it be how well it's structured, how difficult it is, how attractive the aesthetic is, everyone has a preference. Trying to quantify all these different aspects of quality is impossible to perform without massive error.
Let's show an example.
XXXware releases a videogame with incredibly primitive graphics, but incredibly hard difficulty.
Reviewer 1 said the game was a 0/10 because the aesthetic ruined the experience for him. It was terrible
Reviewer 2 said the game was a 10/10 because the difficulty had him glued to the screen to be able to get to the next level. It was great.
Assembling a consensus based on these two reviews would, on IGN's scale, be a 5. Which is mediocre on the
rating chart.
So how do we fix it?Easy, assemble a table of as many quality aspects of videogames as you can find. The more individual aspects, the better. Assemble as many people as possible into each group based whether it's their FAVORITE (like all they care about) aspect of a game, and have them review one. Assemble a mean average in each individual category and list it out on the table. That way someone who only likes aesthetic can look and see, "The game scored an 80% on aesthetic, which means I'll probably like it".
There doesn't even need to be an explanation for how it's scaled. As long as there is a decent amount of people reviewing each category that they care about,
a standard will form that prospective buyers will be able to interpret. Even if it means that a game with subpar graphics gets a zero even if it wasn't completely bad, people who like aesthetic will stay away from it and won't be victims to buyer's remorse.
Everyone, and I mean everyone, has one specific quality that they will only pay attention to when trying to think critically about a game. This solves all problems.
I'm writing this as the last sentence because it's what most skimmers will read. Don't criticize any of this until you read the entire thing. I don't want to repeat myself a hundred times.