Communicative Clarity - Nintendo And Its E3 Fans

July 23, 2008

This morning my brother suggested that I head over to the MTV Multiplayer blog and check out an article titled: Nintendo And Its E3 Fans: A Failure To Communicate by Stephen Totilo. It was pleasingly odd that my brother recommended this article to me after my suggestion for him to check out this blog some weeks ago. The article highlights the misunderstandings among Nintendo and its “hardcore” fanbase using last week’s E3 presentation as the case in point.

To be honest, I was expecting another off the shelf smear article on the conference despite my great admiration for Stephen and his gang of writers over at MTV. What he posted was actually something that I myself was planning to write in this time slot; a clear outline of the misunderstandings between Nintendo and the “hardcore” audience that follow them. This issue has been something that I’ve been struggling to write about for a few months now and with the dismay over the conference still relevant, I figured that this was the perfect opportunity to give it another shot. Fortunately for me, Stephen summarized my thoughts much clearer than I could do myself. I strongly recommend that you read this article as it’s one of my favourite articles that I have read so far this year.

- Link Me


Tags: e3, nintendo
Posted in Industry Issues | Comments (0)

What’s with all the Hating on E3?

July 20, 2008

I’m very disappointed with this year’s E3 and unlike the majority of press and enthusiasts alike it has nothing to do with the convention itself. I’ve been greatly let down to read the overall negative toned commentary put out in the media and community. What really bothers me most of all though is the comment that the conferences were boring.

While I understand that E3’s is, of course, not the show that it use to be, I fail to agree with the idea that it was in any way boring. I personally got something out of each of the conferences and they all excited me in different ways with uniquely interesting software. While by no means earth shattering, they were all closer to success than failure. I can understand people being disappointed by the Nintendo conference due to the bullshit rumour mill, given steam by so many of the press. The typically “hip to be over critical” factor is probably at work here too but even with these in place, the level of pessimism is unfortunately off the charts, much to my dismay.

Much more commentary will be pouring out over the next week (ready for your “Best of E3” propaganda?) so maybe that will bring this confusion to light. Anyways finding professional opinions (let alone opinions from the press at all) in this industry is like getting blood out of a stone.

How did you guys find the show?

- Link Me


Tags: e3
Posted in Industry Issues | Comments (0)

Game Reviews: Critique, Subjectivity and the 10 Point Scale

July 4, 2008

I have already put forth my own frustrations with game reviews but I would like to add a little more as I feel that there is still a substantial amount of work that still needs to be done on fixing the current make up of video game assessment.

The Reviewing Vs Critiquing Framework

For a long time this has been (and no surprises here, still remains) the crux of my argument for improving game reviews. The word ‘review’ doesn’t really work in this context as I am comparing ‘reviews’ to critique and the final product will still classified as a review. So lets give it a name like ‘Check Box Review’.

Check box reviews are reviews where a game is judged based on a preconceived set of builds that determine where the game falls on the scale of good or bad. There is a “standardized” set of these prerequisites which are often clearly labeled in the reviews such as graphics, gameplay and sound .

More importantly are other controls which are not spoken of but still greatly affect the outcome of a review’s text. This is the company’s/reviewer’s perception as to what formula and framework make a perfect game. This is a little tough to explain, what I am referring are the opinions that speak to you as:

“I’m a reviewer and for this I know what a great game should consist of and these variables are what I am going to measure my games on”.

Basically, as the quotation says, the reviewer is the person whom defines what video games are and he reviews based on that judgment. Unfortunately the reviewer is wrong as he should have no role in defining the experience, the experience defines itself. So when we add the already familiar variables (gameplay, sound etc.) in with this pre-purposed idea as to what exactly defines a video game then the result is this broken set of rules for analyzing games with the narrowest of perspectives.
(more…)

- Link Me


Tags: critique, review
Posted in Industry Issues | Comments (0)



Next Page »